Surprise Yosakoi

While I was at the kids kagura last saturday, a little bird whispered in my ear that there was going to be a secret, surprise yosakoi performance next morning in front of the local train station. I really like yosakoi dancing, so sunday morning we turned up in front of the deserted station.

Yosakoi dancing was invented in Kochi City back in 1954 and is pretty much traditional movements combined with modern music. Really the only rule is that naruko, japanese castanets, must be used. Yosakoi has spread all over Japan now, and has led to a wide range of styles. costumes etc.

The group performing here, Team Mugen from Okayama City, chose to use kagura flute and kagura melody in their dance, so they turned to 87 year old Ebiya-san, a friend of ours who lives in Kawado. He is the inventor and maker of the "Hero flute" that is now the standard flute in kagura performances here in the west of Japan.

The group had rented a bus and driven up more than 100 miles from Okayama to stage a surprise performance for Ebiya-san, who lives right next to the station.

I hadn't seen a group use lanterns before.

Though quite a few groups have a flag bearer.

You can seee a slideshow of all 47 photos here.

Hibara Shrine

Hibara Shrine lies on the Yamanobenomichi at the base of Miwa-san. It is an affiliate shrine of Omiwa Shrine, and like it, enshrines the kami of the mountain, now reckoned to be Okuninushi.

There are no buildings at Hibara Shrine. Buildings at shrines only began after the introduction of Buddhist temples.

Amaterasu was worshipped here but it seems that after Okuninushi was installed from Izumo there were problems between the two of them, so Amaterasu was moved to Ise.

This small shrine was added in 1987. Called Toyosuki-iri-hime no miya. Toyosuki iri hime was an imperial princess who was the "priestess" in charge of the mirror that was the shintai ( god body) of Amaterasu.

Typical Japanese Landscape 24

With a total length of 29,761 Kms, the coastline of Japan is where a large proportion of the population lived historically. The idea, underpinning much Nihonjinron, that the Japanese were primarily rice-growers is, I think, an exaggeration and a fairly modern invention.

This small port is in Asahi Town, in the SW corner of Kochi Prefecture on Shikoku.

Monsters in the garden

Found a whole bunch of these critters under some rotting wood.

I gave them to a friend's sons, because they ( the critters, not the boys) turn into.....

...one of the most popular pets for young boys in Japan, Kabuto Mushi.

It's the biggest beetle in Japan, and Kabuto means "samurai helmet".

In English we call them Rhinocerous Beetle.

I found this monster after it had eaten half of one of my tomato plants. We get a few every year, but this one was the biggest I've seen,... it was as long as my hand. If it was in the U.S. it would become a Luna Moth. Not sure what they become here.

2009 Ichiyama Kids kagura festival

We went over to Ichiyama last night for the annual Kids Kagura Festival. Each year there are fewer and fewer kids performing. Partly thats due to the village losing population to the cities, but a friend suggested that because Ichiyama still dances the older, slower 6-beat style that some kids from the village dance with other groups that dance the more exciting 8-beat. I think it is due to the commitments that Japanese kids have to their school clubs and brutal exam system. Japanese kids get very little free time nowadays.

The video is from the Iwato dance. Koyane, mythical ancestor of the Nakatomi, who became the Fujiwara, and Futotama, mythical ancestor of the Imbe Clan, perform rituals, unsuccessfully, to entice Amaterasu out of the cave.

Uzume's dance, considered to be the mythical origin of all kagura, is successful in enticing the hidden sun out of her cave.

The arrival of the demon,... here in the Hachiman dance, is always fun!

As usual we had a very enjoyable time.

An umbrella at Matsuo Shrine

Just 4 shots of a red Japanese umbrella I saw at Matsuo Shrine near Kyoto.

My favorite is the last one.

Looking down on mom.

One of the reasons our Turkey trip was so cheap, I think, is because we flew with Uzbekistan Airways. After spending 4 hours in the middle of the night in the holding tank that is Tashkent Airport Transit Lounge, the leg of our flight to Istanbul flew over some amazing country.

Not sure what they are mining here in the middle of the desert.

Another very noticeable man-made mark upon the earth.

Whenever I travel I spend the whole time with my nose stuck to the window. I was lucky enough to have a window seat, clear skies, and low light of the early morning.

I think these very high mountains were in Georgia.

Another mine, this time in Turkey

The suburbs of Istanbul.

To see the whole sequence of 42 photos, please click below

Tashkent to Istanbul

Izumo Dome. One of he biggest wooden buildings in Japan.

Depending on how you define "biggest" or "largest", then the Izumo Dome is the biggest wooden building in Japan. Most sources give the biggest wooden building in the WORLD as the Great Hall housing the Buddha at Todai-Ji in Nara, but the Izumo Dome is a little taller, and has a larger base area, but because of its shape it contains a smaller volume than Todai-Ji.

Anyway, its a pretty impressive structure. Built in 1992, and designed by the Kajima Corporation, it stands more than 49 metres high and has a diameter of 143 metres.

The design is modelled on a Japanese umbrella, and the translucent skin means no artificial lighting is needed during the daytime. It doesn't actually get used much as there are no pro sports team in the area, and most days a 200yen entrance fee will get you inside to look around.

Its located about 10k from Izumo Station, not too far from Izumo taisha, close the the Kitayama mountains.

Actually I recently discovered an even larger wooden stadium, the Nipro Hachiko Stadium in Akita, and it also looks cool, but I still like the symmetry of the umbrella design of Izumo Dome.

Notes on a Japanese package tour.

Back in July we went on an 8 day package tour of Turkey. It was very much a spur of the moment thing, I've never felt any draw to Turkey, but we saw an ad in the paper and the price was so low that we took it.

I've been on a package tour before,... a 200k, 10 day trek across the Moroccan desert,... but I suspected this would be a different kettle of fish.

I was hoping for a vacation where I wouldn't have to do any thinking or make any decisions, and I got what I hoped for.

There were 38 of us in the group, A Japanese guide who spoke reasonable English but no Turkish, a Turkish guide who spoke fluent Japanese and English, 2 young couples ( I include Yoko and myself in that definition hah!), several retired couples, a couple of grandmas with grandaughters in tow (no grandsons), but the biggest demographic group was young women. Sisters, colleagues, friends.

The tour was gruelling! More than 3,000k in 6 days, so most of the time was spent on the bus. This enabled most of the group to engage in what seems to be the prime activity for Japanese on vacation... sleeping!

We hit several sightseeing spots each day, though only a brief time was allotted for the sightseeing as the more important activity, and the one that took at least as much time as the actual sightseeing, was shopping!

The shopping was done in State-run showrooms, and we were ushered in to airconditioned spaces, given refreshments, and then treated to a entertaining "performance" in perfect Japanese before being descended upon by a horde of salespersons, all of whom spoke japanese. The items were all expensive,... carpets, turquopise jewelery, fashionable leather clothes, etc

The hotels were all excellent, some luxury, several resort-style with mostly foreign groups, and a nice seaside resort with mostly Turkish tourists. Most hotel staff spoke a little Japanese, and of course English.

The food was fine. Most breakfasts and dinners at the hotels were buffets, so plenty to choose from and no need to go hungry. Lunches and some of the dinners were in restaurants, and the portions were rather small and tended towards the Japanese palate. I know the Turks eat rice and fish, but I don't believe they eat it as often as we were served it. My gripe about the food was that we never got to eat donner kebab, though every restaurant served it.

One of the most striking memories was while we were visiting Ephesus. There were thousands of tourists crammed into this World Heritage site, and I lost count of the number of different languages I heard. It was a hot day, and there were lots of halter tops, shorts, and a few men topless. The Japanese group were easy to spot. Covered from head to foot, long sleeved, gloves, hats, sunglasses, amd topped off with umbrellas. No chance of any deadly rays from Amaterasu piercing through to flesh.

What's all the noise about?

No, this is not going to be a rant about the loudspeaker vans passing through the village electioneering right now. Actually we don't get them very often, and being surrounded on 3 sides by mountains mean the slogans echo and reverberate and kind of sound like a Charles Ives piece.

And I'm not talking about the hot-dogging, top gun watching, U.S. airforce jets that scream overhead just above the trees.... though what a huge waste of resources they are......

I'm talking about these guys....

...Cicadas, or "semi" in Japanese.

Just as the frogs quite down they are replaced by the calls of the cicada. By now they have reduced their sound to a random buzzing, but when they first start up they start up in unison. It can be quite eerie, standing in the garden when suddenly all the cicadas in a few hundred metres of forest start up simultaneously.

There are about 30 different species of cicada in Japan, and they have long been celebrated in song and poem. The sound of the cicada used in a movie ( or drawn in a manga "nim nim nim") lets the viewer know the setting is the heat of the summer.