Be careful what you dream of, it may come up and surprise you
I took advantage of a free Hyatt night and went to Hakone Friday night. There is an old train that chugs up the side of a mountain. I saw this notice in the train.
Read it however you want. I’m juvenile and found it funny. English translation is a bit different than the Japanese.
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I thought my blogging had picked up again, but I hit a wall. Lot’s of work I guess. I have some fun pictures from Nara that I have to post pretty soon.
Will I ever actually start writing what I intended to write about two hours ago when I first sat down at my computer to add to my blog? I hope. Things just kept popping in to my head, so they became their own entries.
You need to read June 6 entries from bottom to top.
So indeed, I had a great weekend. Recapping, in case you don’t want to read from bottom to top,
My friend David (or Dave) from Los Angeles / San Francisco was visiting Japan with his from David (or Dave) from San Francisco. Apparently, Nagoya isn’t interesting enough to warrant a visit (sigh) so I made the trek up to Tokyo. That’s a huge sacrifice of course, having to go to Tokyo.
Dave (my old friend and not his friend) and I planned to meet for dinner on Friday night at 8:00 pm in Shinjuku. Dave had met my friend Jin during his visits to LA so I invited Jin to join us as well.
Jin invited a friend of his along as well, and we went to a nice café in Shinjuku Ni-chome and checked out the scene. It isn’t West Hollywood or the Castro, but it had its own vibe. Jin’s friend remains unidentified per his request. Sigh.
Dave, Dave, Dave’s friend Kenji and I met Saturday morning to do a day trip to Kamakura. I had not been to Kamakura in years. Some of my favorite black and white photos from Japan are from Kamakura.
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I was curious what it would be like to go back to Kamakura with a digital camera instead of my film camera. Can I say I miss shooting on film?
We had a great time hanging out together, and I enjoyed Dave’s friend Dave and Dave’s friend Dave’s friend Kenji. I think from now on I’ll refer to Dave’s friend Dave as Dave II. I wish Tomo could have joined us, and that was the plan, but unfortunately last minute work plans messed up his schedule.
Kamakura is known for it’s å¤§ä» (daibutsu) or huge statue of Buddha. When we got off the train I saw the picture below and thought, “What’s the big deal?â€
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Ha ha. We walked to some different areas than I had not seen before and visited lots of temples. We stumbled across a Shinto wedding, complete with the traditional videographer.
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It was cool to catch just the bride, groom, and the attendants.
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There were a number of beautiful things to see at the various temples.
Honestly though, we saw so many, I’ve forgotten what we actually saw, so just enjoy the pictures below with no sense of place. Sorry about that.
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At one temple, there was a woman selling cookies. It was clear that it was a fundraiser and she had samples. The cookies were very good. She was trying to communicate what the fundraising was about. I totally misunderstood her, and Dave II will claim that it was my doing. Anyway, I thought she was telling me that the cookies will make you smart because she was pointing to her head. Then she pointed to the picture which clearly indicated that the cookies were hand made by children with Down’s Syndrome. Needless to say, we bought some and referred to them as “the guilt cookies†as we munched them throughout the day. Miscommunication – you’ve got to hate it sometimes.
We had a terrific lunch and Dave II took some amazing food porn pictures. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not so good with food porn, so you’ll just have to believe me.
We wandered back to downtown Kamakura by train and then went to the daibutsu. It was as great as I remember.
Giving a sense of scale
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A color version of my previous black and white
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It gets pretty hot being the daibutsu ..
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Here are Dave II, Dave, and Kenji at the shrine
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We also went to check at the 地蔵 (jizou) at Hasedera. Jizou are the guardian deity of children, or the patron deity of pregnant women. Many times, a statue is placed at this temple for lost children, often times aborted children. In the past when I was there, many of the jizou were highly decorated with toys, beads, and clothes. This time it seems there is an effort to tone things down.
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We walked to the beach at Kamakura as well and decided it was pretty ugly and dirty. For dinner, we thought we’d go to Chinatown in Yokohama. On the way there we saw something I’ve never seen before – a parent falling asleep instead of a child. It must have been a long day.
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We walked around Chinatown and finally made it to dinner.
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Of course, on our travels, we saw a few things that just didn’t make sense to us.
I’ve never seen a name this long in Japan
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I have no idea how Amish cooking is related to Kamakura.
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On Sunday, Tomo and I got to hang out together. We saw Star Trek. He had not seen any of the Star Trek movies and enjoyed it. I liked it too, although I think J. J. Abrams needs to stay away from time travel in everything he does. It is too convenient.
There, that’s a major blog entry.
As promised, today I went to the fertility festival in Komaki. Yet another famous festival very close to where I live. I have never seen so many gaijin (foreigners) concentrated in one place in Japan. It was CRAWLING with foreigners.
Our friends at What’s Up Aichi state,
At the Tagata Shrine Fertility Festival in Komaki, a Shinto priest leads five women who carry offerings to the female god of fertility. Holding all-too-detailed carvings of oversized phalli, the women walk the short distance from shrine to shrine surrounded by townspeople and visitors with hopes of a bountiful harvest and prosperous year in their hearts. The star of the show, an enormous male member carved especially for the festival from a local cypress tree, soon makes its way from Kumano Shrine on the shoulders of the town’s 42-year-old men (the age is considered unlucky for unrelated reasons).
While the festival is generally light-hearted and the sake flows generously into the cups of pilgrims from far and wide, a serious aura also pervades, revealing the venerated place that the ceremony holds in the local lore. Don’t be surprised to come across the local clergy blessing the offering with the utmost gravitas.
Early in the adventure, the pressure was put on me by a colleague. “You speak Japanese, go ask where the [6 foot penis] is.†I was successful in my inquiry, and led our group of about 10 people to the giant member on the mountain.
Some claim the photos are not safe for work (NSFW). To see more, click through. Continue reading “Fertility Festival – Otherwise known as the festival of the p33n”
Tomo announced this morning as we were getting ready to go out that he had “just shoaved.†I learned that “shoaved†is the past tense of “shave.†I had a good laugh at that, knowing that it sort of made sense but could not come up with a rule that would make shave go to shoaved. Of course, we have the ride/rode combination. Compare that to the hide/hid combination. Or what about the make/made combination? Pay/paid? Write/wrote? Strike/struck? Yikes!
I don’t know how anyone learns English. I can recall in my Japanese class that my fellow classmates wanted some rules to follow for certain patterns. Rules? RULES? Try learning English I bet. The only rule is the exception. Conjugation in Japanese is very easy – and except for one or two exceptions, rules are followed.
I caught Coldplay again tonight. Again on the front row, and again violated. We had a good time. Pictures coming soon I hope.
I forgot I had this wonderful example of Engrish in iPhoto.
Don’t you want to drink beautiful juices from the body? I know I do! What I find interesting is that in Japanese, it basically says, ‘beautiful juice from the body.†That’s an accurate translation. I am guessing that 体ã®å†…, which translates to inside the body, might mean inside the body of the FRUIT instead of, well, the human body. My dictionary doesn’t confirm that, but language can be subtle.