Angry Summer, Quiet Fall

Fantasy

2012-04-28T09:28:00.001-04:00

For Rika.

Switched blogs

2010-05-03T15:09:00.002-04:00

My new blog is at

http://avery.morrow.name/blog/

I welcome all readers to come and subscribe.

Lists

2010-01-25T17:53:00.000-05:00

List of remedies I've tried for my sinusitis (persistent coughing), and their effects:

1. Amoxicillin, gave me stomach cramps
2. Nasal irrigation, clears up stuffiness
3. Apple cider vinegar, ineffective
4. Hot steam, relieves sinus pain
5. Chamomile, ineffective
6. Elderberry, ineffective
7. 富生堂系列前進牌珍珠金銀花, ineffective
8. 富生堂系列前進牌寓應甘和茶 ("Kam Wo Tea"), unclear
9. Vaporizer, stops coughing overnight
10. Guaifenesin, unclear (has strange effects initially)
11. Eucalyptus, works like cough drops
12. Luo Han Guo, cough suppressant

List of reasons to stay in Northfield during spring term:

1. All my friends are there
2. Druid ceremonies
3. Less to worry about
4. Can sit in on some classes
5. Comps presentations

Social Networks for Peace: A Comparison

2010-01-06T13:30:00.002-05:00

Do any of these networks do anything? Let's find out.

Peace Networks on Ning	DoPeace	PeaceNext	iPeace	MyPeace.tv
Logo
Sponsor	The Peace Alliance, the Student Peace Alliance and the Campaign for a U.S. Department of Peace	Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions	None
Focus	Establishing a U.S. Department of Peace	Interfaith dialogue	Spreading awareness of peace events	Making videos
Members as of January 2010	998	1,327	21,342	3,720
Blog posts made January 5	0	2	14	1
Twitter?	sort of	No	Yes	Yes
Facebook or MySpace?	Facebook Well-designed but has trouble attracting members without a strong interest.		MySpace Horrible designs, auto-playing music and video, difficult to navigate, but seems to attract many people with a wide variety of interests.
Potentially alienating aspects	Seems to be geared towards U.S. political policy	No room for atheists. (Who cares about them anyway?)	Administrator has a weird survey on signup. For example, you're asked whether "our shrinking freedoms" pose a threat to peace, or whether "religion" is the biggest threat.	Difficult to find content

Other networks I found: GandhiTopia, mepeace.org

On the cutting room floor

2009-12-28T22:13:00.000-05:00

This is the kind of stuff that I have to cut out of my thesis, because it's entirely tangential. I'll just leave it here instead.

-

Many parallels were drawn between patriotism and religion by Westerners in Japan. It is not always clear what “religion” means when it is used in this way. For example, one missionary wrote that “the war with China, 1894-1895, quickened the national consciousness and led to the exaltation of patriotism almost to a religion, under the name of 'Nihon Shugi,' whose most ardent advocates were Kimura Takatarō and Professors Motora and Inouye.” (Fisher 1908:55) Kimura indeed proposed to implement nihon shugi as a “national teaching” (国敎 kokkyō),[1] paralleling the suggestions of others to use Buddhism,[2] Confucianism,[3] or a Zen-Shinto-Confucian syncretism[4], but his philosophy had more in common with Byronic heroism than anyone else,[5] and this archetype was never called a “religion” in the West. Today, we would say that, using the contemporary wasei-eigo, there was a “Nihon Shugi boom” in Japan. If it had been a “religion”, even in the rhetorical sense, it would have had some staying power, but in fact Kimura's suggestions faded as quickly as they came.

Several years later, Basil Hall Chamberlain singled out “Japan-worship” and bushido as “the invention of a new religion”, but what he apparently meant by this is that the state was being run by intelligent citizens (“it not only governs, but aspires to lead in intellectual matters”), that the people were obedient to their head of state (“implicit obedience to [the emperor] as head of the army”), and that Japan had developed a national exceptionalism of the sort which rightfully belonged in the hearts of Europeans and Americans alone (“a corresponding belief that Japan is ... far superior to the common ruck of nations”). He compares this Japanese “religion” to the “pseudo-history” and “gospel” of the “fanatic” Rosseau. What Chamberlain really appears to be complaining about here is the lie of the state. He is watching a state being built, and feels “outraged” that the Japanese are being uncritically instructed in allegiance to their nation, using the same caliber of myths that have always been employed for such purposes. The word “religion” does not seem to have any meaning here other than a rhetorical device, and the point does not seem to have been pursued further by others.[6]

Although both were rhetorically compared to religion, neither nihon shugi nor bushido were ever actually subjected to interrogation by “objective religious scholars”. Perhaps it was recognized that to take these recently invented terms and single them out as Japan's “state religion” would stretch plausibility. Instead, the term “State Shinto”, although infrequently used in Japan, was given new life in the West in order to analyze the “religiousness” of the country's patriotic practices.

[1] Kimura Takatarō. 日本主義国敎論 Nihon shugi kokkyōron. 1899.
[2] Unshō 雲照. Dainihon kokkyōron 大日本国敎論. 1882
[3] Motoda Eifu 元田永孚. 国敎論 Kokkyōron. 1884
[4] Kawai Kiyomaru 川合清丸. 日本国教大道社設立主意. 1891
[5] Kikuchi Yuuki. “Byronism transformed into Japanism (Nihon-shugi): Kimura Takataro's interpretation of Byron”. 和洋女子大学英文学会誌 43.3 (2009). pp. 121-137.
[6] B.H. Chamerlain. "The Invention of a New Religion". 1918.

Chabad Chanukah

2009-12-13T17:52:00.000-05:00

When I get overwhelmed in a place, my brain shuts down and I start to feel dizzy. That's what happened to me today when I went to the Chanukah party at my local Chabad House. Chabad-Lubavitch is an Orthodox Jewish movement that aims to bring secular Jews back to their traditions. I have no familiarity with Jewish tradition at all, and my local Chabad (as I learned) is mainly a meetinghouse for observant Jews, so for me this was an overwhelming experience.

Rather than reserving space beforehand I decided to just drop by. Of course, the Chabad rabbi is prepared for any and all unexpected visitors. He picked me out as I walked through the door, gave me a yarmulke, and had me put on tefillin, a cube with Torah inside, and recite a prayer. I had never even seen tefillin before, but I enjoyed the experience and it felt spiritual. The rabbi got my name and sent his son to go chat with me, but I was unable to make conversation because I had got dizzy at that point and had to sit down.

Two Jewish mothers sat down in the seats directly left and right of me, with their kids behind. This isn't normal Boston practice (usually you sit on the opposite side of the table) but I was glad for the company. On the right was a Russian immigrant who seemed to appreciate the support network of Chabad. On the left was a mystery--a visitor from Sherborn who was continuously talking about the problems immigrants face. When I brought up the tefillin she told me that I had no idea what a big mitzvah I had performed by saying that prayer, and that I was causing some mighty big changes "up there", as she pointed with her finger, and I realized that she that she was Lubavitch! She looked totally normal... well, my stereotypes were shaken. I told her that I had learned about Chabad House from a book on Lubavitch women, and she told me that her husband volunteered setting up kosher kitchens for Jews.

Lubavitch men walked by wearing top hats and looking down at their prayer books. There was a huge ice sculpture menorah, Chinese food, and latkes. The hours rushed by as the rabbi did a rap about Chanukah and a band struck up corny Jewish folk songs (including, yes, the dreidel song), giving the meeting the homely atmosphere of a bar mitzvah. The rabbi was having his son's hair cut and announced it was a big mitzvah for everyone to come up and join in, so I did so. The Lubavitch lady gave me a pile of latkes I was too stuffed to touch. I feel more glad than ever to be at home now. It was a fun experience but totally unfamiliar-- like a whole new universe.

Eleanor Zelliot

2009-11-20T16:25:00.000-05:00

I wasted Thursday in a daze. I hadn't gotten drunk or anything but for some reason I woke up around noon, and felt dizzy and tired until about 1:30AM. Needless to say, I really needed any available time to work on my final papers, so I stayed up until 3:30 writing and woke up at noon again today.

In that context there was nothing to shake me awake like a one-on-one talk with Eleanor Zelliot, the dean of international Ambedkar studies. (Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar is the guy who was born an impoverished Untouchable in rural India, secured an American education, authored the Indian Constitution, reformed the Hindu Code, and converted over three million Untouchables to Buddhism. Yet he plays second fiddle to Gandhiji.) I had scheduled this meeting with Prof. Zelliot because I wanted to know more about the current state of Ambedkar Buddhism for long term graduate study. But she was rather confused, because she thought I had called her over for something related to my thesis-- which is on State Shinto, a subject she knows nothing about. Nonetheless I had a great conversation. I learned about Mayawati, the TBMSG's successful Pali program, that Babasaheb did not burn the full Manusmriti but only the anti-shudra sections, and that there is no such thing as Hindu studies in India, a fact which astounds me. Apparently they are worried that academic study of Hinduism will lead to more right wing stuff than currently exists. But in fact academic study in America has created such comprehensive refutations of Hindutva as Was Hinduism Invented? and The Hindus: An Alternative History, while banning the practice in India must have been the direct cause of all the false professors of the sort parodied here.

Anyway, I've got to go before I get seriously distracted from finals again.

How I was hacked

2009-11-06T12:13:00.002-05:00

In November 2008 I was living in a hostel in Tokyo which had set up some computers for my use in their lounge. These computers were all infected with keyloggers. Some Russian guy hacked me and added some spam links to shii.org. I removed them, changed my password, and didn't think about it for a year.

On 5 November 2009 I woke up to a dozen e-mails from people worried about my website being blocked by Google's malware detector. Indeed, I discovered, there were malicious iframes on every page of my website. I cleaned them out, but I still had no clue how it had happened.

Only with the help of DreamHost tech support did I discover that I had been rather lazy when my website got hacked. They didn't do too much to tell me why it had happened though, so I pieced this together by looking through logs this morning (and I'm rather proud of myself).

What I should have done
When I was hacked I should have scanned every page that was modified in the past X days and fixed all the hacks.

What happened because I didn't do this
I had forgotten about the shii.org/tech/ directory entirely. The hacker put a php file in this directory and executed it a year later. Thankfully all it did was add iframes to every page pointing to malware Google already knew about and blocked. Google was also right to block my website, because a file had been uploaded to /temp/index.php which served malware to a single unsuspecting user on the afternoon of Nov. 5th.

Why DreamHost is awesome
They discovered and deleted the back door when I asked them to determine the source of the hack. Of course, this should have happened automatically, but it required them to notice this error log, which probably happens far too often:

[Wed Nov 04 23:21:37 2009] [error] [client 213.163.xx.xx] ModSecurity: Access denied with code 404 (phase 4). Pattern match at RESPONSE_BODY. [file "/dh/apache2/template/etc/mod_sec2/99_dreamhost_rules.conf"] [line "9"] [id "10000001"] [msg "Backdoor access"] [severity "CRITICAL"] [tag "MALICIOUS_SOFTWARE/TROJAN"] [hostname "shii.org"] [uri "/tech/eula.php"] [unique_id "SvJ87EWjqwYAAB0XDO0AAAAX"]

For people who can't read Apache logs: DreamHost is aware of this kind of exploit and put in a rule to prevent their box from getting rooted. The only fool affected by this hack was me.

Iraqi Kurdistan

2009-11-05T20:22:00.001-05:00

My website went down so I can no longer post cool stuff I find on the Internets to my wiki. Instead, I'll be posting it to this blog. Here are some pictures of Kurdistan. I'm not going to visit there anytime soon but it's kind of awesome. (read more)

Visit to Hawler

Visit to Amadiya

V with a Vendetta

2009-11-03T22:05:00.001-05:00

The season premiere of V promised a remade version of this classic tale of alien visitation that was relevant to the modern day. Instead, what we got was Left Behind In Space. I mean, quite seriously, that there is no philosophical difference between this series and the neoconservative paranoid schizophrenia of Left Behind. Let's match this up, side by side:

The basic plotline
Left Behind: A mysterious person appears out of nowhere, capturing for no apparent reason the devotion and praise of the entire world, except for a small team of devoted rebels who seem to sit on the sidelines rather than doing anything meaningful, but it doesn't matter because they know the Truth.
V: A mysterious alien species appears out of nowhere, capturing for no apparent reason the devotion and praise of the entire world, except for a small team of devoted rebels who seem to sit on the sidelines rather than doing anything meaningful, but it doesn't matter because they know the Truth.

Philosophy of peace
Left Behind: The mysterious person promises peace for all mankind, which we all know means that they are actually building the foundations for an evil reign of terror.
V: The mysterious species promises peace for all mankind, which we all know means that they are actually building the foundations for an evil reign of terror. Also, universal health care!

Philosophy of reporting
Left Behind: One of the main characters is a reporter who, despite personal misgivings, goes along with the mysterious person's plan to censor the media. This character is one of the Good Guys because of his unexpressed doubts.
V: One of the main characters is a reporter who, despite personal misgivings, goes along with the mysterious species' plan to censor the media. This character is one of the Good Guys because of his unexpressed doubts.

Philosophy of religion
Left Behind: The church is a place where the disillusioned can gather to discuss the unlikeliness of peace on earth. It is the home of the Good Guys.
V: The church is a place where the disillusioned can gather to discuss the unlikeliness of peace on earth. It is the home of some of the Good Guys.

Take-home message
Left Behind: Those who promise peace may secretly be representatives of the Antichrist.
V: Those who promise peace may secretly be reptilians from outer space.

"Hither, ye lucky few"

2009-10-30T19:52:00.001-04:00

Winter.

Most of my classmates have come down with H1N1. Those who haven't are participating in a college-wide blind date night. It's just me and Orange Pekoe in here right now.

A year has come and gone since my trip to Japan. Unfortunately, my attempt at chronicling it in my diary became less reliable with every month. Slowly, I reconstruct bits and pieces. I seem to remember spending a good amount of time living with an irritable anthropology professor. There's the strange memory of sneaking around in a construction site--twice--getting arrested the second time. Where did my summer go? I believe that aspect of my life was robbed from me, and this time for good. There'll be no more summers from now on.

My senior thesis is on State Shinto's relationship to the Western "religious-secular" dialectic. Earlier in this blog, I made a statement that Shinto was a religion with no system of ethics that was hijacked by the government during the Meiji period. I'd like to retract that now. I'll be writing about that subject on this blog if anyone's interested, but that's not why I've decided to start writing again.

There's a good variety of interesting things sitting in front of me. A bag full of potpourri. An out-of-print book on an alleged 1st century history text of unknown provenance. Ambedkar's The Buddha and His Dhamma. And here's something interesting-- a brochure for the JET program, and a half-finished JET application in an envelope.

Yes, this is where we left off, isn't it?

The beginning

2009-10-30T02:57:00.002-04:00

If you stayed subscribed to this blog you're a really cool person. Leave a comment.

Interesting thing. I was going to change the name of the blog but I discovered that if I changed the URL someone else would be able to take this one. So, screw that.

The end

2009-01-11T15:40:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if I could accurately say that college has been moving too quickly for me to finish this blog properly. I don't think I could say anything very interesting in conclusion. My life continues to change day by day, and the summer and fall are over; since December 22, it has been Grouchy Winter. I invite you to read my LiveJournal for continued updates from Minnesota.

Submitted to Carleton's study abroad office

2008-12-30T20:58:00.000-05:00

Evaluate the quality of instruction.

The teachers on this program were top-notch. The instruction alone made it equivalent to a Carleton trimester. The additional surprises, such as twice-daily meditation, pilgrimage, and hands-on monastic experience, made it worth the money as well. It's a firsthand encounter with Buddhism that could not possibly be duplicated on one's own.

Describe the most academically or intellectually challenging aspect of the program.

On the research period we were literally left to our own devices for a month and asked to figure out how to do research within the country. (The professors gave us ample preparation for this.) It was an amazing experience which introduced me to a sort of research I've never done before but I'd be glad to do again.

Describe your living arrangement. Would you recommend some other arrangement based on your experience? How did you get to know local people in the community?

We lived and slept in the sanctuary of an active Shin Buddhist temple. Most students did not know Japanese so we were mainly set up to meet English-speaking students at the local university-- many of my classmates hit it off well. I personally became acquainted with the temple's other residents.

What could you have done to better prepare yourself? What was your most satisfying outcome?

We were given a pamphlet before the program began with a list of books we might read. I should have done more of these readings because the ones I did were vastly enlightening and gave me great things to be on the lookout for in Japan.

I was most satisfied with gaining a complete knowledge of Buddhist history and philosophy.

Add other comments, narratives, or advice you have for other students interested in your program.

Get used to the director because you're not getting a new one.

Set up homestays. The director and his wife are friends with many Japanese families who will welcome you into their homes with open arms.

Don't be afraid to take a risk, and don't be stupid enough to ignore the goodwill of your Japanese hosts.

Learn the language.

Go for it.

Going home

2008-12-23T20:36:00.003-05:00

The last three days of the Antioch Buddhist Studies program would be spent getting some rest, drinking plenty of fluids, and finishing my paper... so I thought. In fact, my classmates had decided, not without cause, that it was party time. They built a fort out of mattresses in my bedroom sometime around 1AM on the first night; I lay awake wondering what I had done to deserve this. I spent a short second day mostly packing, and after I got into bed, my classmates decided to play Pictionary. One of them, bless his heart, soon realized I was trying to sleep. I could have chased them out myself, but I didn't have the energy. My final paper was delayed two days, although I was satisfied when I turned it in. What I really cared about, though, was getting back to Massachusetts and enjoying some quality naptime alone.

But how difficult that is when you're 15,000 kilometers away!

I switched out my seat on the plane so I'd be a dozen rows away from the other students on the program. The girl who sat down next to me was a professional model who was working in Osaka. She described her Japan experience as something out of Lost in Translation. I emphasized deeply, since that's what Tokyo was like for me, but I told her I wished she had gone to Kyoto! If there's one thing I learned from this trip, it's that Kyoto is the best city in Japan.

My seatmate soon fell asleep, but I was barely able to close my eyes due to nonstop coughing. I ended up watching all three in-flight movies, which were: Wall-E, a boring religious flick called (Character's Name) Is Here, and the excellent Son of Rambow. Finally I got off the plane and promptly threw up.

I awarded myself a mental badge of courage for surviving the dizzying descent without grossing out the girl next to me, but my next problem was getting to my hotel, and then to a hospital. My stomach was still threatening me very badly and I needed to lie down, not go through customs. What I ended up doing was waiting until everyone else had finished, then rushing almost non-stop through security, to the baggage, and out the door to the hotel buses without even saying goodbye to anyone. Then I collapsed on the concrete and waited for my bus to come. Three of my classmates found me there-- they apparently had just met Richard Baker, the infamous deposed abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, in the airport completely by coincidence. And apparently Richard Baker was a huge asshole. Before I could really explain what had happened my bus arrived and I braved the bumpy ride to the hotel.

I passed out in my room and woke up five hours later. My parents called and confirmed that there was basically one option: go to the hospital, get meds, and attempt to proceed with going home the next day. I took a taxi to the emergency room, waited two hours (I saw crying children come and go, and sat through two hour-long episodes of The Biggest Loser on TV--who writes this stuff?), and was diagnosed with sinusitis. There was no pharmacy at the hospital (?!) but the nurse on duty offered to get me a cab. It turned out the cab was driven by an angry New York emigrant with an accent like the Tappet Brothers on Car Talk, who took me to three separate pharmacies before I could get my medication. He had no idea where my hotel was, and neither did I, but luckily there was some guy sitting on his ass in the cab office browsing Wikipedia--"this dope just learned what a platypus is", the driver grunted at me, as the CB radio rattled off exciting facts about platypus anatomy. This man looked up the hotel on Google, and after ten minutes of intense sleuthing he had the address. The driver then interrogated me severely over whether the address was right ("Whaddaya MEAN, 'PROBABLY'?!") and I was back in the hotel by midnight.

The next day I woke up at 4:30AM to get on the early plane to... Long Beach, California. I do not know where exactly Long Beach is, nor will I ever know, insh'allah. In their infinite wisdom JetBlue had decided it would be cheaper to bus me over there and put me on that plane to Boston instead of taking me directly home. But everything else JetBlue did was very nice, and I especially appreciated the mood of the early morning flight to Long Beach. Ten minutes after boarding, the pilot walked into the cabin and told us that everyone was on board so they were going to take off early, and also there were plenty of empty seats so people could feel free to "scooch around" and take any seat they wanted.

"This is America," I thought, tears glistening in my eyes. "It's good to be home." (In Japan, they'd have to conform the seating and takeoff to the exact flight plans.) I later wrote JetBlue a letter thanking them for being everything that makes America great.

They also had thirty channels of satellite TV and a hundred channels of radio. Here is a picture of Long Beach Detention Center, where I took my prescribed codeine and passed out for several hours.

I watched in a state of drug-induced befuddlement as all the puppy-dog-bearing, wheely-suitcase-carrying vacationgoers lined up to get on the plane half an hour before boarding, were told to sit down and assured that everyone would get a seat on the plane, and then subsequently refused to sit down. This... this is a race to be the most important person, I concluded to myself.

I was asleep for much of the plane ride to Boston; I watched Keith Olbermann live for the remainder, and thanked the gods of satellite television. TSA confiscated my bag (they must have suspected the Buddhist anime I was bringing home was extremist literature), I found my parents, and at about 10PM we arrived back in Wellesley.

I was home.

Next: Tenri City; remainders; conclusion

Return to Kurume

2008-12-18T22:33:00.000-05:00

My host family frankly sounded bored when I called them from Tokyo. I did not get a "so nice to hear from you" or an excited yell, "Hey it's Avery from three years ago!" They merely confirmed the date with me and hung up. I felt quite anxious. Was I really just wasting their time? Maybe my homestay of three years ago would be better off forgotten.

I arrived at the station an hour early, called them again, and sat tiredly on the sidewalk. Soon their car came up and my host dad Toshiki came bounding out with the most energetic expression I have ever seen on his face. I knew already I had made the right choice. Etsuko, the mom, reacted with glee when she heard me speaking Japanese. "Wait till Takashi-kun hears this!" she assured me all the way back to the apartment. "Your Japanese is so good!"

The landlord looked at us with confusion. "Here for another homestay?" she asked me in Japanese. She had remembered my face from three years before.

At their house Natsumi had invited over two of her girlfriends who were energetic otaku. They quizzed me about my favorite anime series and giggled over my knowledge of Japanese Internet memes. Meanwhile, my host parents had brought me two plates of taiyaki, a traditional pancake-like snack shaped like a fish. I had wanted taiyaki three years ago, due to an obscure anime reference, but they couldn't find it for me then. Clearly they wanted to make up for that now.

I had developed a fever in Mojikou, and I should have slept early but food and alcohol were pressed upon me--soon my Japanese became slurred and even though the guests had not left I declared I would soon collapse. The next day I was sick as a dog. I woke up with a bad cough and after taking the pictures above, a stomachache developed as well. Luckily my host parents were both doctors, but they could not diagnose me on the spot as I was a difficult case. (Four days later in an emergency room in California I would learn that I had sinusitis.) Instead, they gave me an antacid and we went off to see parts of Kurume that neither I nor they had ever been to before.

First we went to the famous Wax Trees of Kurume, which they had heard were nice this time of year... but they'd never been there before. It took a while to find, and when we got there Etsuko said "you know, these aren't all that great" and we drove right past. To be quite honest they were not as nice as the maple tree in a nearby front yard. But I was mainly relieved I did not have to do any walking as I was getting sicker.

We went to this enormous Kannon in the outskirts of Kurume. One of my classmates also went here and told me that the Hells in the bowels of the Kannon ($5 entry fee) were first-rate comedy gore and one of the highlights of his trip. Animatronic people getting disemboweled, etc. I asked to go home because I was feeling awful, so I didn't get to see these. The Kannon was quite big though.

We got home, my host sister departed, and I lay down to watch some biased Japanese television. Seriously, it was a whole show devoted to poking fun at Prime Minister Aso Taro. Apparently Japanese public opinion is strongly against him, but I was surprised to see a show like that on daytime broadcast TV, and not hidden away on a small cable channel. I guess I am used to the American style of downplaying and disguising criticism.

My host family's house, I had come to realize, was littered with souvenirs of my visit. I was on the screensaver of their laptop, a photo of me was on their bulletin board, and my candy jar of Boston Baked Beans remained on their table. I felt very gracious that even though I had done so little to impress them, they still demonstrated they cared for me in this way. Toshiki insisted on accompanying me to the shinkansen in Hakata, buying a ticket to go all the way to the platform.

We waited around, I lied down and got myself comfortable, and as the train pulled out he gave me a big grin and waved. When he got out of sight I started crying immediately.

Mojikou Retro

2008-12-12T15:39:00.003-05:00

The wonderful manager at K's House Hiroshima let me know that I could save $50 by taking a bus to Japan's southern island Kyuushuu instead of the shinkansen bullet train. If I got on the bus at 3:30PM, I could get there by 6PM-- quite a deal. Unfortunately I was not going to the tourist destination Hakata but rather to a sprawling industrial park, which the Japanese government has worryingly dubbed (I am not making this up) "Northern Kyuushuu City", in order to interview Burmese monks living there. Lucky for me, the bus to Hakata stopped at Kokura, which I knew to be part of this urbo-Orwellian complex. I assumed the bus stop at "North Kokura Entrance" was somewhere in the vicinity of Kokura Station, providing easy access to my hostel. I thereby made an ass out of you, me, and the owner of the hostel when, at my 6PM check-in time and well after dark, I was dropped unceremoniously onto a side road overlooking a sea of rice fields as far as I could see.

Me and my 30 pounds of luggage hauled our sorry little butts down the dark highway to a bus station. Soon, a bus pulled up and drove me slowly through endless acres of sprawling chain restaurants and karaoke bars, with no Kokura Station in sight. As the minutes ticked by I leaned over another passenger and anxiously studied the bus map next to the ceiling.

"Hey, gaijin-san!" shouted the driver in curt Japanese. "Where are you going?"

"Kokura Station."

"I'm going there, so siddown!"

I would not recommend Northern Kyuushuu City to tourists.

Twenty stops and one hour later, the driver kicked me off at Kokura Station, a sprawling mass of monorails and skyways. I made a hasty and apologetic call to the hostelkeeper, who gave me directions to his part of Northern Kyuushuu City in such rapid Japanese that I simply couldn't handle it and had to deduce things myself inside the station.

When I got to Yahata Station, the hostelkeeper picked me up right outside, drove me up a steep hill to what was undoubtedly the most scenic part of the whole city, told me brightly (in Japanese) I was the only guest he'd had in several weeks, showed me my private room, and left at 9PM to get a much-delayed dinner. I turned on the heat, took a shower, and thought long and hard about how much of an improvement this was from Tokyo, then slept gratefully.

The next day I was served breakfast, then the hostelkeeper dropped me off at the station. The entire stay cost me $35. I rode the train to the last stop, Mojikou, which to my delight was barely Northern Kyuushuu City at all.

Mojikou, port of the city of Moji, was merged into Northern Kyuushuu City by the Japanese government in the 1960s. Around this time, perhaps, the little town realized it was no longer going to be able to sustain itself by its port alone. They were probably clued in by the immense bridge running into their hillside from Japan's main island, and the enormous factories being erected to the south which Mojikou was not receiving. It was therefore decided that Mojikou should become a tourist trap. The definite emphasis here is on "trap" because there was no preexisting attraction to Mojikou, except perhaps the World Peace Pagoda. Instead, they started preserving their old buildings from the Meiji period, such as the old post office and the old train station.

This sort of building, which you might call fairly typical in New England or a novelty in California, is the main attraction of Mojikou Retro. I think there are seven or eight of them. The town cannot really decide whether these buildings are meant to represent something cool about early modern Japan, or if they are meant to be a taste of Western architecture (as they were when they were built). Luckily, this lack of consistency is overshadowed, quite literally, by the construction of insanely inappropriate buildings in the name of revitalization.

You can see the "retro" building (the "old library", constructed 1994) on the bottom right if you squint. The building on the left is an office building that doubles as an observatory for tourists, so they can look at all the retro.

The wall on the far left reads "Welcome to Mojikou Retro". Scratching my head over that one. This is a strip mall for tourists which is right on the water. It has little to distinguish itself from a strip mall in, say, Los Angeles.

The nice bits of Mojikou include their local specialty, fried curry; the railway museum which was creatively built next to the real rail station and continues to attract otaku; the inexplicable one-room "exhibit hall" of old telephones; their genuinely pretty old temple; and the World Peace Pagoda.

I reached the Pagoda by hiking past some houses made out of corrugated metal and into the woods. The Pagoda is actually two buildings. The first is the literal pagoda you see here, which is a memorial to Japanese soldiers who fought in Burma. The second is a decrepit old monastery which continues to house three Burmese monks. One of the monks was pacing around when I came up the stairs and insisted that nobody spoke any English. When I asked him how the Pagoda came to be built, he referred me to the abbot U Khe Min Da, who turned out to speak perfect English. I found the abbot sitting in his room writing New Year's postcards.

"I'm researching this pagoda," I told him. "I was wondering who it was who founded it."

The abbot did not even look up from his postcards. "He's dead now," he eventually responded. "Died long time ago."

I realized this was going to be a difficult conversation. The abbot did not volunteer any names. I had to wring out of him the surname Ichihara, a veteran of the Burmese front who "died long time ago". I did not find out the name of the Japanese Theravada convert who I heard played a role, but the abbot felt fit to inform me that he had been a mere scammer who had no interest in Buddhism.

I was eager to hear if there was any Japanese interest in Theravada Buddhism. "No," said the abbot, still working on his postcards. Did anyone come to the monastery with questions? "No." Have you communicated with the Japan Theravada Buddhist Association? "No."

Eventually, I got up to leave, at which point he offered me a cup of tea. I drank the tea alone, sitting at the desk where he had apparently kept the books for the monastery for the past 50 years. The desk was deeply stained and the edges were rusty, but like the rest of the monastery it had never been replaced. This was certainly a case of single-minded devotion to carrying out the Buddha's teachings. I was not sure why it was necessary to maintain this place in Japan, but I did not ask the abbot-- I am sure it is a question he had either asked himself many times or never thought about.

"Isn't Mojikou a pretty town?" I asked the Japanese volunteer.

"Oh, yes! Mojikou Retro," she said.

Next: Kurume

It's morning in Hiroshima

2008-12-09T01:07:00.000-05:00

There are multiple technical issues going on right now that I won't get into. I'm also still recovering from sinusitis. Anyway, due to all of that the easiest post for me to write about right now is Hiroshima, which is out of chronological order: I am going to save Tenri City for last, or possibly insert it before the disastrous story of my return home. Sorry about that. Here's a photo of the A-Bomb Dome.

Hroshima is a bustling city where streetcars cut across intersections and salarymen walk to work. But in its center lies the reason most come to visit: the A-Bomb Dome, the only UNESCO World Heritage site chosen because it is a ruin, and the only one where its state of decay is carefully preserved. The Atomic Bomb Museum commemorates the destruction and suffering unleashed on this city to preempt any Soviet involvement in the Pacific front.

I had difficulty walking through the park without choking up and eventually I had to sit down. Three years ago in a Japanese middle school in Kurume I learned about the story of Sadako and the thousand paper cranes, but at the time I was more concerned with the bitterly sardonic way the school described the atomic bombs (they were introduced as "two visitors from America"). In Hiroshima, though, the monument simply tells the story: it does not layer on any extra meaning. You must do that yourself.

I sat on a park bench thinking to myself about the pain people inflict on others, and I summoned up the courage to ring the bell at the monument to Sadako only after a tour group of rowdy young students arrived and gave me an opportunity to look strong. I leaned over the few of them sitting around the monumentand gave the bell a big swing. I clapped my hands in prayer and bowed, then the laws of physics saw fit to slap the bell's chain in my face.

Hiroshima's Peace Park is a really powerful place. I have heard that Nagasaki is better in terms of architecture but where Hiroshima lacks in shock value it lets you fill in most of the details yourself. The museum is reknowned for its impartiality on the questions of right or wrong in World War II, admitting Japan's own war crimes before a deep discussion of the effects of the bomb. One of the exhibits in the museum was a burnt schoolboy's cap. I looked at the white cap then turned my head to the grammar school student standing next to me, still wearing a similar uniform. Anyone could be one of these victims, without any reason.

The park's fall colors were brilliant and some people were walking their dogs or playing with their kids. It was a normal day in the city, and nothing unpleasant was happening. The maple leaves found a strange juxtaposition in the ruined dome. Why, in the face of this overwhelming goodness, do people find reasons to do such horrible things to each other? Why can't we just leave our enemies alone? It seems like nobody can really explain this.

This photo is a lie. The one below is closer to the truth.

Before getting on the bus to Middle of Nowhere, Kyuushuu (there's a story for another day), I went to Miyajima. Others have told me of its virtues. For me, though, it was a hilarious tourist trap. The JR tour ferry thoughtfully included a loudspeaker which informed me in English of the exact width and height of the famous torii. I think this is a perhaps a sight best seen by ferry, because up close it is underwhelming. It was low tide, so it wasn't sitting in the water, but rather at the end of a beach filled with picture-taking tourists. While I did not enjoy the crowded sights, I did enjoy some "deer soft serve", vanilla ice cream covered with chocolate nougats that lent themselves to predictably hilarious simile.

My recommendation: just go to Nara instead. Actually, you should really just stick to the Kansai area in general. That is my favorite part of Japan.

Sick

2008-11-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

Guess who's still clueless.

I am kind of sick so right now finishing my final report must come before blog posts. Look forward to the exciting conclusion of this blog starting next Wednesday, including:

- How I cheated at Chutes and Ladders to make a little girl very happy
- The little Japanese town that doesn't know whether to be historic, modern, or foreign
- "They're all dead now. Long time ago." and more tales from a wizened old Burmese monk
- Meeting my host family from three years back and discovering memorabilia of my stay lovingly placed all over their house

A puzzle for everyone

2008-11-24T23:01:00.000-05:00

I got off the train and stuck my rail pass in my pocket. I lugged all my bags to the locker room at Koshoji where a memorial ceremony for Shinran was happening in my former bedroom. Getting to the basement, I pulled my dirty clothes out of my bag in order to put them in my laundry basket. Then I discovered that one of the two chain-smoking potheads on my trip had dropped by yesterday and dumped all their trash, including rotten food, cigarette butts, and dirty chopsticks, in my laundry basket. I slowly and painstakingly cleaned it out, then ran into a bathroom to change into something less smelly. Finally everything was ready. I went to get some laundry detergent and came back to find the abbot of Koshoji had barred the door. I asked the old lady who wanders around Koshoji for help, and she showed me a secret shortcut to the locker room. Finally I grabbed my backpack, my laundry bag, and my detergent and went over to a nearby coin laundry to use a washing machine that was not in the immediate vicinity of chanting monks. Sticking in my last 300 yen at 11am on the dot, I felt pretty satisfied that I was about to get started on my next great adventure.

Dear reader, what is wrong with the above story?

Did you figure it out?

If not, you have made me feel a little better, because 10 minutes later I realized what was wrong and ran back to the laundry in horror, only to find this:

Archaeological evidence suggests that is the remains of a $300 rail pass. It served honorably in my quest to get to Tokyo, Tenri, and back home to Kyoto before it departed prematurely to a watery grave. R.I.P.

I started walking to the station in a futile attempt at getting a new pass (no replacements are allowed). A Japanese man confronted me and started asking me questions in English. He told me he was a professor and generally came to explain his personal opinion on Buddhism, being very confrontational and insisting that one must practice Buddhism with all one's heart and not study it like a historian. He said that true Buddhism was the recognition of life in all objects, including inanimate ones-- so we do souji, he said, in order to make the floor feel happy and clean. He walked with me all the way to the station, stopping me several times and leaning into my face to drive home a point. I don't know if it was a meeting worth $180 but I was quite overwhelmed by how forward he was. Finally he stopped just before the ticket counter and asked me a question in English (he had a scrap of paper from a weird dictionary which incorrectly told him that you could say "I'm going to stationery's" instead of "I'm going to the stationery store", and I clarified that for him).

I wanted his name card because he was a genius of a teacher, but he refused.

I'm sorry I am telling you absolutely nothing about Tenri City, which is an amazing place that rightfully belongs in the guidebooks it is missing from (all of them), but I need to figure out how to get to Hiroshima on a budget sometime very soon. Sorry!!

Ghibli Museum

2008-11-22T08:38:00.001-05:00

I have been sort of sick recently and I stayed in for two days. All I did was go to the Ghibli Museum yesterday. Tomorrow begins a long tramp around the country but I may not be able to write about it until I'm done! I hope that's okay with you guys. How many people are reading this anyway?...

I already had a cold, but hey, I had reservations. So, I rode into the morning sunlight of western Tokyo and had a nice walk through the park.

While I waited for my turn to enter I found a birdwatching section in the park. It was really amazing! The birds were going crazy over there. I've never seen anything like it before. Unfortunately my camera was no good, but here are two that were just sitting in front of me chirping their beaks off...

Not allowed to take pictures inside, etc. You should know the drill by now. I wandered through the place in a a feverish stupor, overwhelmed by how many people were making their way through the tiny, beautiful exhibits. Everything was great, but my favorite bit was an exhibit demonstrating how animation is made with a 3D example of lots of little Totoro models spinning around an axis in front of a strobe light. It was entrancing.

I was lucky-- the movie I got to see was also about Totoro. It was a fairly pointless little story about the little girl from Totoro making friends with a baby catbus, or as she called it in Japanese, a kittenbus. I was charmed, and pleased that I understood all the dialogue. It helped that the target audience was 3 to 5 year olds.

Anyway, I climbed around the maze of exhibits for a while, had a croque monsieur with Australian tourists in the super classy Straw Hat Cafe, and finally bought a tin of cookies. I think I will refrain from mentioning the amount of money I have spent in Tokyo but it is truly outrageous. I don't think I would like to come here to live...

Japan Theravada Buddhist Association

2008-11-19T08:03:00.001-05:00

The past two days I have gotten back to work on my final report on Theravada Buddhism in Japan. To accomplish this I visited the Japan Theravada Buddhist Assocation's head temple, the Gotami Vihara, and one of its "branch" temples, a place called International Buddhist Center Shouzanji.

Let's talk about the latter place first, because I went there first. I set out for Shouzanji yesterday afternoon. It was quite far from Tokyo and it cost me $8 and an hour for the train ride alone. It was also a considerable walk but the fall colors were more prominent in this town than they ever are in central Tokyo and I was filled with happy memories of childhood-- or certain anime series...

Eventually I came to a point in the midst of the playgrounds and suburban houses where my frankly awful hand-drawn map was no longer useful. It was only then that I realized that my destination might have something to do with the enormous ten-story pagoda down the street from me.

The pagoda turned out to belong to a different but somehow related temple. After getting lost once, a police officer offered to show me the way. As we walked the sun set crisply in front of us. "It's a very pretty sunset, isn't it?" he said in Japanese. "What's the word for it in English?" For the life of me I cannot imagine an American cop being as friendly to a foreigner as this one was to me.

When I arrived at the temple, unfortunately, the monk at the door did not know much English and he told me to come back tomorrow. I walked back down the hill and went home emptyhanded.

Today was a little different. I woke up late with a bad sore throat and unfortunately did not arrive at the JBTA until 3PM, but I knew beforehand that there would be people there because this was the day the monthly newsletter was being sent out. The monks and laity were very friendly and gave me cake and pie while they called their leader, the Ven. Sumanasara, who apparently spent an hour driving to the temple to chat with me-- very embarassing as I had not prepared any questions! As a result I forgot to ask him some vital questions such as the vinaya rules at the JBTA but we had a very lively conversation. Sumanasara is definitely one of the most intelligent people I have met in Japan and I felt very privileged to talk one-on-one with him, and I still feel stupid that I rejected his offer for tea and additional conversation. Kyoto manners dictate that you must reject any offer for tea, but I have a feeling he was adhering to British/Sri Lankan manners, where it is rude to reject such an offer. Afterwards I once again spent an hour and a half heading to Shouzanji.

It was kind of late and I think I was rude to go in without prior arrangements. I encountered a mixture of Sri Lankans and Japanese in the dining room, and once again nobody spoke English, but I got some simple questions answered in Japanese such as when it was founded (35 years ago, but they only started doing meditation 6 years ago-- quite mysterious). The head monk then gave me a blessing of what he called omamori, but was actually a multicolored string that went around my wrist as is traditionally done on Vesak in Theravada countries (I forgot the word, sorry).

I was feeling quite under the weather by the time I got on the first of the three trains necessary to head home. Maybe I shouldn't have walked that half-hour in the cold! One thing you will not find at a conbini in Japan is medicine. Instead there is a display full of dorinku, which is somewhere between an energy drink and a poor attempt at medicine--they seem to have things like Vitamin C or ginkgo in them. In Kyoto I did not see much dorinku to go around, but here in Tokyo I see salarymen popping dorinku as if it were a job requirement. However, I don't really think my fever can be remedied with some gross-tasting caffeinated syrup. So, I purchased the Western equivalent to dorinku-- that is, vegetable juice and a banana. And now, hopefully, some sleep.

Cosplaying miko, dutiful miko

2008-11-17T10:59:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was Comitia. All the otakus got lined up at the Tokyo Big Sight. Meanwhile, a jobs fair was being held in the same building! So, lined up next to us were a huge crowd of young urban professionals in black suits and ties. The two groups occasionally passed furtive, Japanese glances at each other. It was clear which group had their priorities straight in life. (Hint: it was us)

Today I went to Nakano Broadway but there was really nothing there. I had dinner at a cutlet fast food place--note for the Japan-bound: Japanese fast food is the cheapest way to eat out if you know a little of the language--and headed home. But I felt like I was returning empty-handed. Never before have I felt like I did not spend enough money in town, but Tokyo will do that to you. So, I stopped in Akihabara and did my normal rounds. What did I find but a $10 doujin I had been unsuccessfully looking for... for $4.20! Yay! I decided to celebrate by going to a miko cafe. Or, rather, a cosplayer was on the street handing out brochures for a miko cafe that I had thought was closed, so I decided to take a looksie.

Unfortunately I did not bring a camera on my trip. Taking pictures was probably forbidden anyway but there were many funny things that I would have liked to show you. The door to the cafe had a torii gate behind it. It was like a Shinto shrine on the 7th floor of an office building, which was funny. The manager gave me an "English menu" which was also very funny. I guess I should have recorded some of the items on this menu because I can't really do it justice. Basically the cafe had this wacky Japanese-Western fusion menu, which made sense in Japanese, but when translated it was incomprehensible and did not sound entirely like food. I asked for a Japanese menu and ordered a short item, which turned out to be pound cake with anko (adzuki beans).

The cafe's theme was a Shinto shrine run by "miko", the shrine maidens or vestal virgins common even today at Japanese shrines. There was a real shrine (a mirror on a perch; it looked like a Tenrikyo shrine) and offering box inside, and a miko gave me a 5 yen coin to throw in the offering box. I threw it in, clapped my hands, and bowed for the housed gods. Was it making a mockery of religion? Well, I guess Japanese people don't take religion too seriously anyway. According to the website the cafe/shrine houses some kami who will help you get better at drawing anime or making money.

After my anko cake arrived, I asked for cheki-kuji. You may recall from my Schatzkiste entry that cheki is a service in Akihabara where you receive pictures of the waitresses for a fee. It is supposed to be the English words "check it", but God knows why. Kuji, found in the common words omikuji (a fortune which you draw from a box) or takarakuji (the lottery found on every street), means drawing lots, but there is some sort of implication that fate is involved. So, although cheki-kuji is an absurd mixture of new and old concepts, when you think about it, it fits the miko cafe very well. Anyway, they gave me a wheel of sealed cheki photos and I took an envelope. It turns out that it was a picture of the miko who did the cheki-kuji for me and she was very embarassed.

I somehow managed on my own in the miko cafe even though nobody knew English. Since Fumi was not there, I screwed up slightly on the crucial moment of blessing my food with moé magic, but the miko were very nice and talked to me in simple Japanese about their favorite anime and America. I ate very slowly and some of them got bored, but they all came out at the end to bid me farewell in super moé fashion. Weirdly, nobody else came into the cafe for the half hour I was there. If you visit Akihabara, please go to the miko-san cafe! Miko outfits are the cutest.

In the evening I went to the Asakusa Tori no Ichi matsuri and saw some real miko doing their duty. These miko were guys, though. Traditionally miko were the daughters of the head priest but understandably this tradition has not carried on in recent times so now male miko are more common. The miko stood over the entrance to the shrine and waved bushels of white paper over our heads. Uh... I didn't really understand the meaning, actually. In any case, the purpose of this festival is to purchase New Year's wreaths to ensure prosperity for a family or business, and you'd better believe that modern Japanese are all over any festival that involves buying things.

Yeah, this festival is popular in a big way. When you purchase a wreath, you clap your hands in synchrony with the stall owner while chanting in Japanese. I told my Japanese friend that the miko cosplayers at the cafe did the same thing for me. "No, not the same," he insisted, laughing.

I ate a taiyaki, a chocolate-covered banana, and a hot dog. The end!!

Comitia

2008-11-16T07:30:00.000-05:00

Schatzkiste

2008-11-15T10:33:00.005-05:00

The concept of this cafe is “an attic”. It is considered as a secret attic left by a young gentleman who got married in a foreign country. The maids served this master, and are maintaining this attic while dreaming about the day when the young master returns. Thus, unlike other maid cafes, you will not be called “master” or “lady” when you enter. You will be considered as a guest who is visiting the attic.

Some places in Tokyo attempt to take on the comforting small town feel but almost without exception they become parodies of themselves. Hordes of young people swarm the Kyoto-esque shrines and cafes, expansions are constructed, souvenirs are sold, and the decor goes over the top. The size of the city alone makes trying to take the Tokyo out of Tokyo a monumentous task. Today, though, I was magically teleported not just out of the city but to a side street in Germany. This is called the moé magic of Akihabara and it happened at Schatzkiste.

Schatzkiste was recommended to me by a friend. I had never heard of it before the word-of-mouth knowledge drop and it does not appear on any map of Akihabara. Seriously, we pulled all the maps off the shelves and scanned every street. Finally Fumi had to use his cell phone and open their website. Even with their online map in his hand, we walked past it several times until we noticed the low-key sign on a side door:

The entrance was almost purposefully obscured by a loud, bright poster from another cafe; there were no ads out front, and no signs within. We climbed all the way up the stairs past several businesses, finally reaching an unmarked door.

Doors like this go back at least to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Actually, I think putting the door inside a wardrobe is the only possible improvement that could be made on this cafe. Stepping inside, we discovered meticulously fitted cobblestones on the floor, a Victorian cash register, worn-down wooden walls, and a maid greeting us with a gentle smile.

At our seat there were German fairy tales, board games, and cute cartoon biographies of the maids.

We were served tea and cakes and Fumi made some polite conversation with our hostess. Unfortunately my Japanese skills were not up to par especially in such a nervous situation. But the seclusion of the cafe, looking out discreetly over the oblivious Akihabarans below, made my day.

I guess I should have taken a picture of the floor-- my bad. I was only allowed to take two pictures. Of course, I was not allowed to take any pictures with the maids, nor were any for sale. I was a little surprised to find out that there was no "cheki" (photo service for a fee) but I suppose it fits in with the lack of advertisement or public record. Later my friend told me that you need to spend 200 hours in the cafe before you can request the service.* Unfortunately, the cafe is closing in March so that doesn't seem likely for me. Consider this my secret invitation to visit it before it closes. :)

* At the rate we were given of $10 an hour one would hope they give discounts for regular customers.

I was also treated to dinner today at a department store. It brought back happy memories of the Mall of America. Ha ha, just kidding. Malls are terrible.