Where the Gods go to gossip

Moving away from the theme of fish for a while, this is a post I've been wanting to do for months. Only now do I realise that it's quite fitting that I have delayed writing it until October.

This post is about the biggest and oldest shrine in Japan -Izumo Taisha- located in Shimane prefecture. As you start traveling around Japan, the one temple/shrine/castle begins to look like the previous one, and the next one.. But Izumo Taisha is the kind of shrine that will appear in dreams, that people will do pilgrimages to, that can change lives.



The most most significant things about this temple is that it's the official gathering place for the Gods, and a source of love.
Legend goes that, every October, the 8 million Shinto Gods of Japan gather inside this temple to catch up on the year's happenings, and discuss the potential matches of their yet unmarried worshippers. The old Japanese calendar even referred to October as "kannazuki" or "the month with no Gods". This name was used in 46 of the 47 prefectures - but in Shimane prefecture, home to Izumo Taisha - October was known as "kamiarizuki": The month of Gods.



The current Izumo Taisha, the one I visited, has been in exsistence since 1744. About 500 years before that, it looked different, but had the same basic shape as the "modern" temple. Before 1248 though, the temple stood 48 meters into the air, connected to the ground by an enormous flight of stairs, giant logs tied together in clumps of threes serving as pillars, and surely providing breakthtaking views over the forest sunrises and seaside sunsets.

Today, people go to Izumo Taisha to pray for finding love and keeping love. The prayers tied onto the trees repeated messages such as "suteki na hito aitai" - I want to meet a nice guy/girl. I swallowed my pride and clapped my hands together, wishing for the same. A newly wed couple posed for photos - probably the most prosperous location for wedding reception. Love was all around us, in the crunch of the hot, white gravel and in the mossy shade of the forests. There is some magic at Izumo.

Tsuri

So, the majority of my Japanese friends might share their birthdates with my parents, but they sure know how to take you out for a totally satisfying day. Those kind of days seem few and far between once you start working. As a kid, a Saturday would be.. - rise early, meet your friends, climb trees, spend a few hours splashing in a pool, eat watermelon and hotdogs for lunch, mission around the back streets poking things with sticks, ride around on bikes, and before you know it, the sun is setting and you have to go home, because darkness is your natural curfew. And you return grudingly, but with the full satisfaction of having had A DAY.









Saturday was like that. I woke up after yet again not having slept enough. Hiro picked us up in his big, white, legendary van and we made the 2-hour drive to Yonago with fishing rods in the back, me chattering away with the mindlessness of the sleep-deprived. We stopped in Yonago for an early lunch at a fish market, where I ate a plate of the most amazing raw sea creatures - raw octopus, squid, three kinds of fish, sazae (turban shell) and a vicious-looking soup with half a pregnant crab clawing it's way out. We washed it down with one-cup sake from Kyoto, while being pleasantly harrased by a strange little man with tiny hands and long, yellow nails who was telling us about Jusco stores and Korean massages in toothless, incomprehensible Japanese. And stalked us all the way to the toilet to give us a complimentary bag of tiny mikans (citrus fruit).


A beautiful drive up a typical Japanese mountain road (as wide as one small car and winding madly between bamboo forests and moss-covered trees), and we reached our destination - a tiny seaside town with 20 houses, a deserted pier, and tiny squid fishing boats with names in kanji characters written on the sides. Hiro started setting up the three fishing rods, which I looked at incredulously, but after trying it for myself, I was squealing in delight and talking to the fish I caught, apologising as I ripped the hooks out of their bony mouths.


There was this game we played at birthday parties as a kid, right after vroteier and before pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. I forget the intricacies of the game, but it involved a makeshift fishing rod with a magnet at the end, and a school of paper fish on the floor with paperclips attached. Fishing for aji (spanish mackerel) was like that - you literally dip your six-hook fishing line with shrimp-bait-bag at the end into the water, and pull it up seconds later with a tiny fish (or two or three or four) hooked and struggling. Hippies, don't fret - as Kurt Cobain said: "it's okay to eat fish, cause they don't have any feelings".



We did this, struggling against a wind that reminded me of Cape Town's fiercest south-east, laughing like children, and packed up as the sun started its descent. We stopped at the peninsula and had coffee at a lighthouse, watching clouds over the grey water (which would influence my dreams later on, as I dreamt an apocalypse where the clouds came crashing down into the ocean).

We arrived in Niimi in the dark, where Hiro sliced our catch into sashimi (raw fish slices) and decapitated and de-gutted the rest, fried it in batter, and served with rice and miso soup (thanks Tara). Nothing quite beats eating something that you caught yourself.

Satisfied in so many ways, I walked down to my apartment, feeling that I had.. A Day.

Bachelor dinner, Japan style

After wearing a cartoon cloud over my head the entire day, and franctically researching articles about crime in SA the entire day, I decided to give in it a rest. If life in Paranoia Land makes you old before your time, I wil start my own fight by eating all the fish I can in Japan. Even from a can. And so starts a new chapter of arbitrary blog topics. Amen, and itadakimasu.

Dwindling patriotism

It is only after I moved out of South Africa, that I started having issues with my beautiful disastrous country. It's about getting perspective - you can't see the forest while walking next to the trees. But once you remove yourself from your daily situation, you unconsciously start creating an alternate viewpoint.

Fun Fact about South Africa: Per capita, it has the most rapes, assults and murders with firearms. Crime has become a business, and it's supported by the government.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/sf-south-africa/cri-crime

This is the most over-discussed topic in the country, I don't want to go off an a tangent about it. I just want to show you this article by David Bullard. I read it somewhere during this week, and was hit by a real depression afterwards. And since, my doubt in SA has been growing by the day. I realise that a country is not it's political system, but do I really want to live somewhere where paranoia and tragedy is so common that it just becomes the norm?

Anyways. Read.

Earlier this year, a few weeks before I was shot, I wrote in this column that the ANC had ‘‘effectively become the largest organised crime syndicate in the country”.




At the time of my shooting I dismissed suggestions that it could have had anything to do with the content of this column over the years. Now I am not so sure.

Thabo Mbeki’s complex web of evil is gradually being exposed by a fearless media, and I now believe anything is possible. Reading respected commentators such as Xolela Mangcu in The Weekender, I cannot avoid the conclusion that if we don’t do something soon, South Africa will self-destruct and go the way of other basket cases.

In the past I have flippantly accused the government of state-sponsored anarchy, but suddenly things are beginning to make sense. Our violent crime figures make us one of the most dangerous places to live in the world, including countries at war. The mere act of daily survival distracts us from the monstrous scale of theft and incompetence that has occurred under Mbeki’s presidency.

It helps explain his affection for Mad Bob Mugabe, and it maybe even gives some credence to a conspiracy theory currently doing the rounds: that the ludicrous level of violent crime is of no real concern to the government because the people dying are regarded as dispensable. A few weeks ago I would have snorted with cynical derision at this. Now I find it believable.

Mangcu wrote last week that “I have never been as depressed by this country’s politics as I am this point. Not even under apartheid was I ever this depressed.”

That’s quite a statement, particularly for one who suffered under apartheid. Fortunately, I don’t feel quite as despondent as Mangcu, but maybe my sunny optimism is misplaced. I believe there is still hope, precisely because of people like Mangcu, Financial Mail editor Barney Mthombothi, The Times columnist Justice Malala, Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee and this newspaper’s gutsy editorial staff. I’m a white boy who never suffered under apartheid and my criticism can easily be dismissed as post-colonial whining; not so for the aforementioned, who all have genuine struggle credentials and integrity measured by the ton.

I also desperately want to believe that not everyone in the ANC has been sucked into Mbeki’s web of evil. I really hope that there are some senior politicians who are reeling in shock at the daily revelations.

It’s a pity they haven’t the guts to speak out, but the ANC is run along the lines of a charismatic religion, and independence of thought is not encouraged. That doesn’t necessarily make those who remain silent guilty, but it is still disappointing. Several articles have asked rhetorically what Nelson Mandela makes of this sacrifice of the South African dream. Well, why doesn’t somebody ask him — or is he, too, not allowed to break the sacred law of omert€?

Under Mbeki this country has become a quagmire of corruption and vice. The media is often accused by politicians of stooping to offensive racist stereotypes, but when your country is run by offensive stereotypes, what choice do you have? If the allegations against Mbeki are even half true, then the word “impeachment“ should be in common usage before too long.

News at eight

Since about two weeks ago, I've been getting daily updates on what's happening in the Japanese news. It's rather shocking that I went 10 months in Japan without knowing more than the local weather report, but from living in SA, I know that your quality of life can be higher if you do not keep yourself updated with the news.

The news in Japan is different though -

The sad side is the suicides. Almost every day, there is news of family suicides, teenage suicides, group suicides. It's a popular way out. And in Japanese fashion, they seem to be on a mission to perfect the act. In this week's news, a 47-year old man killed his mother, then himself. Another bulletin featured a JR (Japan Rail) worker who left his suicide note on the platform before jumping in front of a bullet train in Osaka, screwing up the system for about 4 hours. The honorary award for creativity though, goes to a 50-year old man in Nagoya. He tied a rope around a tree, strung it through the back window of his car, tied it around his neck and hit the accelerator. Kinda like pulling a tooth, only bloodier.

That's the creepy side.

In other news, people have been giving away money.
In April, a man trew 57 10,000Yen bills from a bridge, in order to "vent frustration about work" (you get'em, tiger). Three months later, the man who did this strange crime was identified, and the police publicly requested the return of his money. So far, 47 of the 57 bills have been returned. The others probably haven't heard the request yet.

More recently, someone has been wrapping 10,000 Yen bills in white paper, and leaving it in municipal buildings. A few months ago, free money was popping up in cemetaries in Osaka and Hyogo. No one knows who is doing this, or why, but the money carries the message: "Please make use of this as a provision for ascetic practices".
So far, 545 bills have been found. And by that I mean returned to the police.

'Tis a strange country, this.

The 17th Space Children Gathering

Every golden week, as hordes of omiyage-seeking Japanese families chase their way around Japan in search of the perfect picture and the local delicacies, a small handful of people find their way to Kyushu and go off the beaten track. In a small town called Akamizu-cho, the train line from Kumamoto-shi ends. Only few kilometers from this final train station, a steep windy road snakes through trees, past a golf course and shrines, and opens up to a natural reserve. And that's where you'll find the Niji no misaki matsuri, a just-add-rain community, a small piece of paradise.

After a long, exhausting drive from Okayama-ken, we finally made it to the festival. We paid our entrance fee and chose the gemstones we wanted our entrance necklaces to be made from. Cars and tents created a little village, with teepees, stalls and festival-goers keeping it all together. I could see the stage from afar – a small, intimate stage, with the longest pieces of bamboo I've ever seen tied together at the top to form a roof. Next to it, a koinobori was flapping in the wind, a sign that kodomo no hi was just around the corner.

The van was parked, the beers opened, and the camping chairs broken in. Night was falling though, so grudgingly we put up our tents while the boys tried to get a fire going. With only a lighter and some coal it proved to be tricky, but within a few minutes our new neighbors were huddled around the barbeque, contributing all sorts of flammable materials. And so started a continuous theme through the weekend – without asking for anything in return, random strangers shared their food, their drinks, their ganja, drums, camping equipment, ideas.. they pushed cars out of the mud, looked after each others' kids, provided shelter from the rain, organized lifts for those traveling on luck, passed on their knowledge and skills.. and everyone smiled when you looked at them.

But a festival is not a festival without some good tunes. By the second day, with a light but persistent rain, the area in front of the stage had virtually turned into mud pit. Not that this deterred the party people from stomping hard onto the ground. Some donned gumboots, others just gave up on shoes and let the rich volcanic mud paint their feet black up to the ankles. I remember looking down and thinking: "I haven't been this dirty since I was 6 years old." And just after that, someone gave me free ice cream. It was beautiful.

Music for the festival was provided by an array of diverse artists, including a 7-man "let's-jam" outfit who rocked the stage with 60's sounding beats that led to spontaneous dancing while grinning, a rock trio with a front man who looked more like a front girl, a gaijin hippy lady wearing a patchwork dress crooning with her guitar, beautiful belly dancers who hypnotized the crowd with their liquid hip movements (and then gave a crash course from the stage), ギター　パンダ who later transformed into Elvis, more jembe drums than you could shake a bamboo at and an outfit called "seikatsu circus".

Truthfully, I can say that it was one of the best weekends I've had in Japan, if not in my life. It's a side of Japan that not everyone gets to see, where there are no foreigner/Japanese barriers, where people treat you like an old friend, and where you can join the fundoshi revolution if you are so inclined. With Mount Aso in the background, surrounded by bamboo forests and the smell of food and fire, you can be, just be. Without prejudice, worries or shoes.

The original document

What will follow is the original story I wrote for the Okayama JET publication, The Fuzzy Peach. Not that it's in any way a literary achievement.. it's like a community newspaper. Hey, it keeps up the illusion that I get mail.

So yesterday while cleaning, I picked up the Fuzzy which featured my memories of Golden Week. I never read my article in the magazine cause, well, I knew what it was about. However, yesterday I read it for the first time, to notice to my horror that the article was mangled beyond recognition, and dumbass spelling mistakes appeared where I never would have left them. Would I ever spell "tent" as "tenet"? I don't think so.

After being silently offended all on my own, I got to school this morning to hear my JTE say: "Oh, I found your evaluation sheet but, Marilu, you made a spelling mistake. Memorisation is spelled with a z."

I'm done with arguing about "MY WAY" vs "The American Way", so, what the hell, let's spell it with a z.

I digress.

Next post to follow will be the article of the last bestest time on earth I had.

peace out.

The big question

Will I ever update my blog again?

Stay tuned to find out.

Golden Weekend

Because I just wrote a little blurb on it (which I'll post later) and I had to say "ahh, tanoshikatta" six thousand times, I'm sick of talking about what I did for golden week. So I will let these badly recorded videos do the talking.

Ree Reply.

Natuurlik onthou ek.

The soul of Seoul

There is this very nifty law in South Korea that states that every high-rise building has to have a piece of art in front of it. The city being a bit of a concrete jungle, this has led to Seoul being the most extensive outdoor art gallery on earth. Without exaggerating. It actually seems like people have taken this law into their own hands, and it is hard to walk one block without seeing a sculpture of some kind. There is a park in Seoul playing host to 200 bizarre sculptures from all over the world.

Unfortunately, there Just Wasn’t Enough Time to go see it. We also didn’t have time to visit any museums, and I was itching to stop at the Warhol exhibition, the museum of contemporary art, modern art, folk museums..

We did have time to stop at an intersection on the way to The Next Stop, where we played on the sculptures for a while before dragging our sleep-deprived bodies to whoknowswhere. And looked through many gallery windows for artworks that challenged every available media previously used to create something.
(My favourite one was a 2m tall picture of the Alice in Wonderland rabbit, using different shades of 2cm zip units as “pixels”)

Aside from the bazillion sculptures and museums, the theatre and film industry also seems to be pumping with life. Walls are littered with poster upon poster of the latest Korean musical, ballet, film or whatever stage production. And such variety! Seoul alone has 47 universities, a few of them directed at the arts, and I’m sure students creativity is limited only by their imagination.

On our first night, despite honorable intentions to get to bed early (having been awake since 5am that morning, and traveling around quite a bit), we ended up at a Live Jazz Bar after dinner. We saw a three-man-band called J-Story, who played the most irregular jazz I’ve ever seen. At times I was convinced that each of the musicians were just jamming to their own tunes (piano, double bass and drums), but then they’d come together in a perfect off-beat, grin at each other, and rock on.

Luckily, they stopped playing just after midnight, so we caught the subway home to Euljiro-4-ga, exit 4, right turn by the light blue sign, down the alley that smelt of decaying organic matter and into the unmarked side of Traveler’s A guesthouse, where late-night debates in Japanese would be the sound to which I’d fall asleep.

It's a big, big world.

I have tons to write about: Weekends in Okayama, Fukuyama and my first trip to Hiroshima; graduations, birthday celebrations and getting off at wrong train stations. But I will leave that for now, let it grow hazy, with only blurry photos to remind me of those times. And while it is still fresh in my mind and whispered in the dark circles under my eyes, I will write about Korea.

With no spring holiday to look forward to and no desire to give in to Japan's National Rip-off (golden week 400% increase in plane ticket prices), Vicky and I decided to go on a short holiday to Seoul in South Korea, a mere hour in the air from Hiroshima airport. Now, in this new life of mine, holiday does not equal “a period of rest”. Closer to the truth would be “long days, late nights, sensory overdose and rushing from one spot to the next”. As with my weekends, I return from my holidays even more exhausted than I was at the start. Is this the live fast, die young thing I’ve been reading about? It’s the symptom of the problem that there just isn’t enough time on earth.

Now that I’ve justified that sleeping is waste of time, it’s time to reporto on Korea.

After 8-9 months in Japan, I can finally walk down a street and make out a word or two on posters, banners and advertisements. I can ask basic questions if I get lost, or if I don’t understand. It’s not quite swimming, but it’s definitely treading water.
Then I went to Korea, and I was back to square one.

Wait. Time out. Stop... the boat, Mr. Wonka. I need to retrace my steps. As I was walking down the empty stone roads in the Jongmyo Royal Shrine, I started mentally composing my blog entry. I only just now remembered that stroll of thought. So here goes.. it went something like this:

While I was living in Pretoria, I was completely fascinated with the outside of a certain fruit & veg shop, which soon became my favourite. The green glass panes were covered in strange scribbles which I thought of as alien hieroglyphs. It became my favorite alphabet to look at, and still is. Little did I know that, less that a year later, I’d be walking down the streets of the country that uses that alphabet, assaulted by its lines and circles, drowned in neon miscomprehension.

(Insert photo)

That’s how far I got. But really, the language is even more impenetrable than Japanese. Even if you have a Korean street name or local dish written out in roman letters.. your pronunciation is so far off, you just confuse them even more. Japanese also helped a bit, as we found out just after we booked into the hostel and the Russian owner could not speak a word of English or Korean, but managed alright in broken Japanese. In fact, the Japanese influence is visible everywhere. More than half of the kids in our hostel were from Japan, shopfronts had signs like ようこそいらっしゃいませ！ and taxis boasted 日本語O.K. It did make me feel a little bit more at home. Even with Japan being the major source of tourism and influence, there is still an underlying bitterness towards Japan, stemming from Japan’s annexation of Korea from 1910-1945, and the harsh rule that ensued. In fact, there are many fights still going on today, such as what the name of the sea between Japan and Korea should be, which country owns the Takeshima islands (or Dokdo Islands, according to S.Korea) and Japan refusing to extend warcrime compensation or apologies to the South Korean comfort women that were obviously scarred during the colonial rule. (Even today, they still protest once a week on front of the Japanese Embassy in S.K, but are skillfully ignored).

I’m digressing, but it was really interesting to see another thriving Asian country while having Japan as a reference. If you take fashion as an example, it was a breath of fresh air to not see bags adorned with stuffed animals, keitais without 1kg of dangly pink things, no cartoon characters on everything from trucks to tampons, to see boys dressed like boys (as opposed to the furry jackets and hairclips the Japanese androgenous sport). Who knows why Japan cannot grow up, and even adults are caught up in the “kawaii” (cute) culture. SK seems more mature, sensible and level-headed than Japan.

In fact, if I have to sum up my impression of South Korea (wait, who am I kidding, I don’t know shit about South Korea. Spent 4 days in one city.) Okay, my impression of Seoul is.. an intelligent fusion of art and technology. This is dynamic Korea.

Moenie Huh se nie.

Ek wens nogsteeds ek kan kappies maak. Maar nie op hierdie keyboards nie.

Anyways. Dis sneeu vandag en dit freak my uit. Wou net vir iemand vertel. Ek het gedog dis as van die fabrieke of 'n moerse trop duiwe wat deur 'n vliegtuig enjin gevlieg het. Maar nee, dis sneeu. En dis warm. Weird.

Dangerous Individual Training

When the PE teacher changed his purple raincoat and ski-goggles for a black suit jacket, I knew that something was going to happen at school.
Then, Kyoto Sensei turned off al the lights, and told me I could go home at 4:00, because they will be having a meeting.
Half an hour later, all the teachers walked out of the teacher's room, video cameras and long sticks in their hands. My JTE must have noticed my amused looks, because he came over and explained: "These people are here for.. dangerous individual training."

They re-enacted an entire scene. Half an hour ago, I was sniggering and snorting at the articles on watkykjy, and now I had a live re-enactment of dangerous individual threats. A good day.

Someone rang the buzzer. The Kyoto Sensei walked slowly to go open it. As if he didn't know what was waiting for him. Everyone pretended to be busy for 20 seconds, and then.. the whistle blew.
The jacket-clad PE teacher and the short teacher both grabbed their holding sticks (think of a metal halfmoon attached to a long stick - ideal for pinning bad guys onto walls - but still big enough for them to slip out of, haha, didn't think about that now did you!) and ran into the hallway. The JTE ran after, holding the camera.

There were a few sounds of commotion.. and they returned to the staffroom bearing triumphant smiles.

This training was not only exciting, but also practical. Now we are just waiting for a dangerous individual to come to Japan, trek through the mountains, make it to this small town, climb up the long hill to my school, make it past the video cameras outside, get through the video camera'ed front door (maybe disguised as a lady selling apples) and disturb the general peace.
Or maybe one of the townsfolk will go crazy.
We can only hope.