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My mission the weekend before this was twofold: first, buy a digital camera, and second, figure out how to use said digital camera.
So Saturday involved a trip to Yodanbashi Camera in Osaka, where after plaguing the poor sales rep my friend flagged down with questions in a bizarre mixture of Japanese, English, and gestures, I finally bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 in classic black, with an upgraded memory card to cope with my tendancy to take copious amounts of pictures.
Naturally I feel guilty about the amount of money I spent on it, but I've been needing a good camera for a while, and the camera itself . . . it's so freaking cool. I chose it over a similar Olympus model mainly for the manual zoom option. Optical zoom was a must for me, but manual zoom was a close second. There's nothing more frustrating than having your camera refuse to take a picture, insisting that it's digital brain is superior to yours in terms of judgement.
A lot of people seem to go for the digital cameras that are the same size and weight as credit cards, but really, I could care less about that particular aspect. What I want from a camera is the highest quality photo possible, and control over how that photo is taken. Quite frankly I prefer film to digital, but practicality in this case dictated my choice.
. . . no, I'm no artist when it comes to photography. I can't even claim the title of skilled amateur. But as always, what I like are options, and I feel like this camera gives me the option of becoming, say, a skilled amatuer.
Sunday proved lovely and temperate, perhaps the best day weather-wise in a long while. I passed Toji Temple on my way to my shakuhachi lesson, and saw to my surprise that there was a flea market going on there. I learned later that, while the major flea market at Toji is on the 21st of every month, they have a small version of the same on the first Sunday of every month. Released from my lesson and lacking in plans for the day, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to shop for my little sister's birthday present, enjoy the early spring weather, and figure out how to use my new camera.
Shopping, as the most urgent errand, took first priority. But what do you get for a 13-going-on-14 year old girl with a hugely cluttered room, whose only request when asked for a list was "something cool and Japanese?" What do 13-going-on-14 year old girls consider cool, anyway? I'm ashamed to admit that I don't even recall. The fact that said little sister has so much stuff was a further difficulty. Her floor is nearly unnavicable, covered in school books and library books and magazines and papers and clothes and anything that lost the fight for space on the shelves. Her walls are cluttered with posters and calendars and hangings and mobiles. Her bookshelf is overflowing with books, every available flat surface of her room is taken up by stuffed animals or various and sundry small toys, objects, curios, et cetera, she has more jewelry than any teenager could ever wear, her collection of various hair acoutrements is nothing short of astonishing for a girl who doesn't actually seem to care that much about her hair . . .
Why my little sister is not the most spoiled rotten brat on the face of the earth is rather a mystery to me, come to think of it. We (all five people in my family) love and adore her and shower her with gifts and consider nothing too good for her. And yet she is kind, charming, intelligent, fun, pretty, athletic, talented, and probably better-adjusted than any other child to come out of my rather ecclectic family. And that's not entirely the doting big sister speaking-- that's also the somewhat bemused but in-touch-with-reality big sister speaking.
They have just about everything you can think of at the Toji market, even in its smaller incarnation, and doubtless a whole lot you can't. As with all flea markets, the large majority of it is junk. But it is possible to get some amazingly good deals. Not wanting to further add to the clutter of my sister's room, I decided to buy her clothing, and ended up purchasing two quite lovely happi coats for a mere 1500 yen. They're versatile, they're pretty, they're easy to ship, they're Japanese, and (I think, at least) they're quite cool. And you can put them on a hangar so they don't clutter up an already cluttered room.
Shopping done, I sat down in the shade of one of the side gates to figure out my new camera. The temple buildings and the shoppers wandering back and forth provided me with plenty of subjects, at least until I had the basics down. Then I paid my 500 yen to enter the main Toji buildings and gardens, which despite having passed on numerous occasions I had never actually visited. Toji itself is ancient and massive, and belongs to one of the esoteric sects of Buddhism, Shingon. A large portion of the grounds are open gravel dotted with trees; this portion is where the market is held and is also used as a parking lot. There are three or four sub-temples within the grounds itself, as well as two small shrine complexes. A substantial section that includes the two main halls, the garden, and the pagoda, is fenced off. That's the part you have to pay 500 yen to enter.
The architectural style of the two halls is certainly worthy of note. I don't know much about the details, of course, but I do know that one of the halls is in a very traditional Japanese style, and the other incorporates elements of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese styles in its construction. Both halls are immense, and their ceilings high and shadowed. They both contain massive statues. The first hall holds three massive golden Buddhas flanked by carved plants, casting their intricate and looming shadows on the wall behind. The second likewise holds statues, but somewhat smaller and a great deal more numerous. They are arranged according to a mandala pattern, with the Buddhas in the center flanked by various other Buddhas, deities, and gaurdians. I expect that they were all once brilliantly painted, but now (with the exception of the gilded Buddhas) the pain has worn away and left dark, dusty wood behind. It lends solemnity and the weight of age to their fierceness.
The interwoven threads of Buddhist and Hindu mythology are, alas, nearly incomprehensible to me. I haven't been able to find a good resource that lays out all the stories and symbols, and I wonder if there is one. There are so many variations, so many stories, the various gods and deities take on so many roles (and occasionally each other's roles and stories), they have so many incarnations and names . . . trying to keep track of them seems a hopeless task. If you want to explore just how complex it is, try this website.
After I had seen the statues, I decided to wander around the garden that occupies the southeastern corner of the temple grounds. Said garden is dominated by a massive five-story pagoda, the tallest in Japan (though not the oldest; it's been burned down several times in the temple's long history). The garden itself is lovely, though quite "tamed" as Japanese gardens go. The carp that inhabit the small pond are mostly dull in shade but impressive in terms of size-- much like the temple itself. The plum trees off to one side were just coming into blossom, and I tested the manual zoom of my camera on them.
After I had wandered through the garden I visited the subtemples on the west side of the temple complex. These were not particularly interesting in and of themselves, fairly standard in terms of design and decoration. What was much more interesting was watching the people who had come to worship at said subtemples, particularly those who grouped themselves around a set of tall stone monuments.
Naturally I don't know the significance of the various monuments, unable to read the Japanese inscriptions. Several were large slabs incised with Chinese characters. One, a tall bronze statue garbed in a red cloth hood and multiple bibs, I suspect was of Jizo. At the base of its staff were tied several more bibs, and based on an anecdote I heard somewhere I think they were from mothers who had prayed to that statue and subsequently delivered healthy children. Another of the statues was a large tortise with a slab balanced on its back, yet another a low stone fenced with marble.
Those two statues were the focus of the people I was watching. A father led his son in a circle around the tortise, making sure that he kept his hand on the shell and touched each individual leg. An older woman, her hair fully grey and wiry, repeatedly bent over to rest her hands on the fenced-in rock, then straightened and rubbed her hands over her body. Two Japanese girls stopped to look curiously at the rock, and were treated to a lecture on its properties by the old woman that I wish I could have heard and understood.
I was already tired and footsore when I stepped over the high lintel of Toji's adopted gate and back onto the busy street outside, but the day wasn't over and the weather was still too fine to waste. But as it was too late in the day to make my way to another Kyoto Temple, I decided to stop at Momoyama, which is on my way home. You can see a castle from the train tracks, and a truly massive tori of red metal (dwarfed only by the ones that frame the National Museum grounds in Kyoto) heralds a shrine famous for its water a mere minute's walk from the Kintetsu Station.
Gokonomiya is famous for its historical gate, for the Hanagasa Matsuri (which I participated in earlier this year), and for a spring on the premises. I was more impressed by several other features, however: first, the intricate architecture and carvings on the main shrine buildings. Not only were the carvings delicately done, they were also beautifully painted in a rainbow's worth of colors. Birds, mystical animals, folk tales, plants . . . the roof that shaded them was thatched and gracefully curved, and the whole place was immacculately kept.
The second thing that impressed me about it was the peacefulness and quiet. Tall trees lined the main walkway and shaded the back of the shrine, and even though there were people about it felt as if there was a hush over the whole place. It felt . . . holy, and after the noise and size of Toji, the refreshing quiet that pervaded it was a welcome change. I spent some time just sitting next to the broad path inwards, resting my feet and recovering from the day.
I watched a brief Shinto ritual while I was there, as well, listened to the priest read his patron's request, watched them make their offering, clap twice, and bow twice before they left the shrine. I wondered if there was less mystery in it for them than there was for me . . . but how to tell? Religious matters are largely a puzzle to those lay people who participate in them, I've found; said participants only know the basics, and the technicalities and symbolism of each act is left to the priest to understand. This seems true no matter where I've been on my travels.
Shinto itself is very much tied to its location, though. I find that the longer I'm here the more connection I feel to it. In many ways Shinto and Japan are inseparable. Now, despite being a temporary resident, I feel no hypocracy or guilt in making an offering to the kami. They live here; so do I.
So Saturday involved a trip to Yodanbashi Camera in Osaka, where after plaguing the poor sales rep my friend flagged down with questions in a bizarre mixture of Japanese, English, and gestures, I finally bought a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 in classic black, with an upgraded memory card to cope with my tendancy to take copious amounts of pictures.
Naturally I feel guilty about the amount of money I spent on it, but I've been needing a good camera for a while, and the camera itself . . . it's so freaking cool. I chose it over a similar Olympus model mainly for the manual zoom option. Optical zoom was a must for me, but manual zoom was a close second. There's nothing more frustrating than having your camera refuse to take a picture, insisting that it's digital brain is superior to yours in terms of judgement.
A lot of people seem to go for the digital cameras that are the same size and weight as credit cards, but really, I could care less about that particular aspect. What I want from a camera is the highest quality photo possible, and control over how that photo is taken. Quite frankly I prefer film to digital, but practicality in this case dictated my choice.
. . . no, I'm no artist when it comes to photography. I can't even claim the title of skilled amateur. But as always, what I like are options, and I feel like this camera gives me the option of becoming, say, a skilled amatuer.
Sunday proved lovely and temperate, perhaps the best day weather-wise in a long while. I passed Toji Temple on my way to my shakuhachi lesson, and saw to my surprise that there was a flea market going on there. I learned later that, while the major flea market at Toji is on the 21st of every month, they have a small version of the same on the first Sunday of every month. Released from my lesson and lacking in plans for the day, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to shop for my little sister's birthday present, enjoy the early spring weather, and figure out how to use my new camera.
Shopping, as the most urgent errand, took first priority. But what do you get for a 13-going-on-14 year old girl with a hugely cluttered room, whose only request when asked for a list was "something cool and Japanese?" What do 13-going-on-14 year old girls consider cool, anyway? I'm ashamed to admit that I don't even recall. The fact that said little sister has so much stuff was a further difficulty. Her floor is nearly unnavicable, covered in school books and library books and magazines and papers and clothes and anything that lost the fight for space on the shelves. Her walls are cluttered with posters and calendars and hangings and mobiles. Her bookshelf is overflowing with books, every available flat surface of her room is taken up by stuffed animals or various and sundry small toys, objects, curios, et cetera, she has more jewelry than any teenager could ever wear, her collection of various hair acoutrements is nothing short of astonishing for a girl who doesn't actually seem to care that much about her hair . . .
Why my little sister is not the most spoiled rotten brat on the face of the earth is rather a mystery to me, come to think of it. We (all five people in my family) love and adore her and shower her with gifts and consider nothing too good for her. And yet she is kind, charming, intelligent, fun, pretty, athletic, talented, and probably better-adjusted than any other child to come out of my rather ecclectic family. And that's not entirely the doting big sister speaking-- that's also the somewhat bemused but in-touch-with-reality big sister speaking.
They have just about everything you can think of at the Toji market, even in its smaller incarnation, and doubtless a whole lot you can't. As with all flea markets, the large majority of it is junk. But it is possible to get some amazingly good deals. Not wanting to further add to the clutter of my sister's room, I decided to buy her clothing, and ended up purchasing two quite lovely happi coats for a mere 1500 yen. They're versatile, they're pretty, they're easy to ship, they're Japanese, and (I think, at least) they're quite cool. And you can put them on a hangar so they don't clutter up an already cluttered room.
Shopping done, I sat down in the shade of one of the side gates to figure out my new camera. The temple buildings and the shoppers wandering back and forth provided me with plenty of subjects, at least until I had the basics down. Then I paid my 500 yen to enter the main Toji buildings and gardens, which despite having passed on numerous occasions I had never actually visited. Toji itself is ancient and massive, and belongs to one of the esoteric sects of Buddhism, Shingon. A large portion of the grounds are open gravel dotted with trees; this portion is where the market is held and is also used as a parking lot. There are three or four sub-temples within the grounds itself, as well as two small shrine complexes. A substantial section that includes the two main halls, the garden, and the pagoda, is fenced off. That's the part you have to pay 500 yen to enter.
The architectural style of the two halls is certainly worthy of note. I don't know much about the details, of course, but I do know that one of the halls is in a very traditional Japanese style, and the other incorporates elements of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese styles in its construction. Both halls are immense, and their ceilings high and shadowed. They both contain massive statues. The first hall holds three massive golden Buddhas flanked by carved plants, casting their intricate and looming shadows on the wall behind. The second likewise holds statues, but somewhat smaller and a great deal more numerous. They are arranged according to a mandala pattern, with the Buddhas in the center flanked by various other Buddhas, deities, and gaurdians. I expect that they were all once brilliantly painted, but now (with the exception of the gilded Buddhas) the pain has worn away and left dark, dusty wood behind. It lends solemnity and the weight of age to their fierceness.
The interwoven threads of Buddhist and Hindu mythology are, alas, nearly incomprehensible to me. I haven't been able to find a good resource that lays out all the stories and symbols, and I wonder if there is one. There are so many variations, so many stories, the various gods and deities take on so many roles (and occasionally each other's roles and stories), they have so many incarnations and names . . . trying to keep track of them seems a hopeless task. If you want to explore just how complex it is, try this website.
After I had seen the statues, I decided to wander around the garden that occupies the southeastern corner of the temple grounds. Said garden is dominated by a massive five-story pagoda, the tallest in Japan (though not the oldest; it's been burned down several times in the temple's long history). The garden itself is lovely, though quite "tamed" as Japanese gardens go. The carp that inhabit the small pond are mostly dull in shade but impressive in terms of size-- much like the temple itself. The plum trees off to one side were just coming into blossom, and I tested the manual zoom of my camera on them.
After I had wandered through the garden I visited the subtemples on the west side of the temple complex. These were not particularly interesting in and of themselves, fairly standard in terms of design and decoration. What was much more interesting was watching the people who had come to worship at said subtemples, particularly those who grouped themselves around a set of tall stone monuments.
Naturally I don't know the significance of the various monuments, unable to read the Japanese inscriptions. Several were large slabs incised with Chinese characters. One, a tall bronze statue garbed in a red cloth hood and multiple bibs, I suspect was of Jizo. At the base of its staff were tied several more bibs, and based on an anecdote I heard somewhere I think they were from mothers who had prayed to that statue and subsequently delivered healthy children. Another of the statues was a large tortise with a slab balanced on its back, yet another a low stone fenced with marble.
Those two statues were the focus of the people I was watching. A father led his son in a circle around the tortise, making sure that he kept his hand on the shell and touched each individual leg. An older woman, her hair fully grey and wiry, repeatedly bent over to rest her hands on the fenced-in rock, then straightened and rubbed her hands over her body. Two Japanese girls stopped to look curiously at the rock, and were treated to a lecture on its properties by the old woman that I wish I could have heard and understood.
I was already tired and footsore when I stepped over the high lintel of Toji's adopted gate and back onto the busy street outside, but the day wasn't over and the weather was still too fine to waste. But as it was too late in the day to make my way to another Kyoto Temple, I decided to stop at Momoyama, which is on my way home. You can see a castle from the train tracks, and a truly massive tori of red metal (dwarfed only by the ones that frame the National Museum grounds in Kyoto) heralds a shrine famous for its water a mere minute's walk from the Kintetsu Station.
Gokonomiya is famous for its historical gate, for the Hanagasa Matsuri (which I participated in earlier this year), and for a spring on the premises. I was more impressed by several other features, however: first, the intricate architecture and carvings on the main shrine buildings. Not only were the carvings delicately done, they were also beautifully painted in a rainbow's worth of colors. Birds, mystical animals, folk tales, plants . . . the roof that shaded them was thatched and gracefully curved, and the whole place was immacculately kept.
The second thing that impressed me about it was the peacefulness and quiet. Tall trees lined the main walkway and shaded the back of the shrine, and even though there were people about it felt as if there was a hush over the whole place. It felt . . . holy, and after the noise and size of Toji, the refreshing quiet that pervaded it was a welcome change. I spent some time just sitting next to the broad path inwards, resting my feet and recovering from the day.
I watched a brief Shinto ritual while I was there, as well, listened to the priest read his patron's request, watched them make their offering, clap twice, and bow twice before they left the shrine. I wondered if there was less mystery in it for them than there was for me . . . but how to tell? Religious matters are largely a puzzle to those lay people who participate in them, I've found; said participants only know the basics, and the technicalities and symbolism of each act is left to the priest to understand. This seems true no matter where I've been on my travels.
Shinto itself is very much tied to its location, though. I find that the longer I'm here the more connection I feel to it. In many ways Shinto and Japan are inseparable. Now, despite being a temporary resident, I feel no hypocracy or guilt in making an offering to the kami. They live here; so do I.
no subject
Thank you for writing posts like this. It affords me a glimpse of places I would dearly love to see but may not for years, if ever, and it is so welcome. Oddly refreshing.