Sunday, May 23, 2010
Movie
TODAY I went to IMAX and saw Alice in Wonderland. It was pretty good, I don't think it's the best movie Johny Deep has ever done but it was worth seeing. I also went shopping and Jen bought some cool jeans and a gundam t-shirt!
Weird man on the train
ON friday, a few days ago I was taking the train home. It was late and I was a long trip home. I was at Kanazawa-bunko, one stop(12 min) from my place. An old woman came on and I gave her my seat. I then went and stood. There was a very drunk man standing near me. He was slowly spinning in circles as he lurched and kept grabbing the handle to stay straight. He was holding a large paper bag with some things inside and kept hitting me with it. So I moved down a ring. After a few seconds he saw me. He then extended his hand and tried to grab my face with one of his hands... So I jerked back and gave him an angry stare. He seemed to jump in surprise. I decided to move a few more rings down. He followed me. Then he took out his cellphone, opened it and tried to stick it in my pocket. I swatted his hand away and moved many rings farther away. He continued to slowly move towards me. Thankfully by the time he was getting close again it was my stop. I jumped off the train and walked away. This was the weirdest person I ever met!
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Laptop
Whoo! I bought a new (for me) laptop. I got it used from a person selling them on gaijinpot.com. It's an older model from Toshiba, and it's also a Japan only model, Dynabook SS21.
I think it's about 5 years old, it has:
a Pentium M,
768Mb of Ram,
and a 30Gig HDD.
It's a good laptop for what I need though, it's really light, even with the battery, about 1.2kg. when it came out it was selling at about $3000, lucky for me I got it for $160. So now when Jen goes in June, I'll still have some way to use internet.
I think it's about 5 years old, it has:
a Pentium M,
768Mb of Ram,
and a 30Gig HDD.
It's a good laptop for what I need though, it's really light, even with the battery, about 1.2kg. when it came out it was selling at about $3000, lucky for me I got it for $160. So now when Jen goes in June, I'll still have some way to use internet.
Asakusa
ON Sunday We met with a friend at Asakusa for Sanja Matsuri *literally "Three Shrine Festival")
It is one of the three great Shinto festivals in Tokyo, it is considered one of the wildest and largest. The festival is held in honor of the three men who established and founded Sensō-ji.
It is believed that two fishermen—brothers named Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takenari—found a statuette of the Bodhisattva Kannon caught in a fishing net in the Sumida River in May. The third man, a wealthy landlord named Hajino Nakatomo, heard about the discovery, approached the brothers and converted them to Buddhism. The three men then devoted their lives to the Buddhist faith and consecrated the statue in a small temple. This temple, now known as the Sensō-ji, currently houses the Kannon statue and is the oldest temple in Tokyo.
Sanja Matsuri is held on the third weekend of every May at Asakusa Shrine. To celebrate people play music and carry on their backs huge portable versions of shrines while shaking them up and down. These shrines weigh about a ton each and it takes a big group of people to carry them. Anyone can participate in carrying them. However you have to wear the right clothes. It's basically a white and blue shirt, with sumo wrestler bottoms.
The procession of the three Asakusa Shrine-owned mikoshi begin their march early Sunday morning. These three elaborate shrines honor and represent the three men responsible for founding the Sensō-ji. These important mikoshi are split up in order to visit and bestow blessing to all 44 districts of downtown and residential Asakusa. When evening falls, the three shrines slowly weave their way back to Asakusa Shrine in another grand procession that lasts late into the night.
We watched many parts of the festival and were within touching distance of all three mikoshi (three portable shrines referenced in the festival's name). It was really interesting and we really enjoyed the atmosphere or festivity which was everywhere. The streets were crowded with people and to get through intersections we had to slowly shove our way through.
We ate lots of festival food, and while we were sitting, a photographer thought the foreigners sitting in front of a Japanese temple, eating traditional Japanese food with chopsticks was too incredible a sight to pass, so he came and took a set of pictures of us. He gave me his card and he said he'd email me the pictures later.
It is one of the three great Shinto festivals in Tokyo, it is considered one of the wildest and largest. The festival is held in honor of the three men who established and founded Sensō-ji.
It is believed that two fishermen—brothers named Hinokuma Hamanari and Hinokuma Takenari—found a statuette of the Bodhisattva Kannon caught in a fishing net in the Sumida River in May. The third man, a wealthy landlord named Hajino Nakatomo, heard about the discovery, approached the brothers and converted them to Buddhism. The three men then devoted their lives to the Buddhist faith and consecrated the statue in a small temple. This temple, now known as the Sensō-ji, currently houses the Kannon statue and is the oldest temple in Tokyo.
Sanja Matsuri is held on the third weekend of every May at Asakusa Shrine. To celebrate people play music and carry on their backs huge portable versions of shrines while shaking them up and down. These shrines weigh about a ton each and it takes a big group of people to carry them. Anyone can participate in carrying them. However you have to wear the right clothes. It's basically a white and blue shirt, with sumo wrestler bottoms.
The procession of the three Asakusa Shrine-owned mikoshi begin their march early Sunday morning. These three elaborate shrines honor and represent the three men responsible for founding the Sensō-ji. These important mikoshi are split up in order to visit and bestow blessing to all 44 districts of downtown and residential Asakusa. When evening falls, the three shrines slowly weave their way back to Asakusa Shrine in another grand procession that lasts late into the night.
We watched many parts of the festival and were within touching distance of all three mikoshi (three portable shrines referenced in the festival's name). It was really interesting and we really enjoyed the atmosphere or festivity which was everywhere. The streets were crowded with people and to get through intersections we had to slowly shove our way through.
We ate lots of festival food, and while we were sitting, a photographer thought the foreigners sitting in front of a Japanese temple, eating traditional Japanese food with chopsticks was too incredible a sight to pass, so he came and took a set of pictures of us. He gave me his card and he said he'd email me the pictures later.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Kyoto
We went to see many more temples for the next couple of days, we saw the geisha street and I got a couple of pictures of them! Then we went to show where we saw traditional tea ceremony, dancing, plays and flower arranging. We saw a very famous temple with a bridge and to my great delight there were geisha doing a photo shoot. So of course I grabbed the opportunity to take some more pictures. The most interesting shrine was the 1000 tori gate temple. We didn't climb up the whole mountain but we did do a small tour. We got a lot of good pictures and saw quite a few friendly temple cats (I will update with full information later). The last day we went to the shrine near our house. It was beautiful, it was the largest I've seen. There were many buildings connected and at the front we got to feed lots of nearly tame pigeons who would fly up into your hands to eat from your palm of even eat right from your fingers. It was lots of fun! Then we saw it's sister shrine down the road. We then went back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and took the Shinkansen home.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Kyoto
Today we woke up early, had breakfast and went to see many temples and shrines, Ninna-ji, Ryoanji, Shimogamo, Kamigamo and Kinkakuji. We bought day bus passes for 500yen each, a really good price. The most interesting was Kinkakuji, the golden temple. It was very nice, the temple has squares of gold leaf everywhere. A guide said each leaf is 2 inches by 2 inches and is worth 37$. He said the temple is covered with more than 200.000 of them! The most beautiful was Ryoanji, it has the world famous stone garden. We sat and looked at it for a while and enjoyed the gorgeous gardens and pond.
We walked a bit today, we did a good 4km trek between the temples. Got a bit of sunburn too.
However this morning I had a bad surprise, I had done a load of clothes washing in Osaka. Most were dry except my socks, so I rolled all those into a plastic bag and packed them, or so I thought... I discovered that I somehow didn't pack them! Now I only have two pairs of socks left... I'm going to have to go buy some! Some person right now is looking at a plastic bag with a dozen pairs of humid clean socks... And I'm going to be washing the same two pairs of socks and drying them everyday of this trip...
We walked a bit today, we did a good 4km trek between the temples. Got a bit of sunburn too.
However this morning I had a bad surprise, I had done a load of clothes washing in Osaka. Most were dry except my socks, so I rolled all those into a plastic bag and packed them, or so I thought... I discovered that I somehow didn't pack them! Now I only have two pairs of socks left... I'm going to have to go buy some! Some person right now is looking at a plastic bag with a dozen pairs of humid clean socks... And I'm going to be washing the same two pairs of socks and drying them everyday of this trip...
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