halloweekend

Even though it technically is a 'long weekend,' tomorrow is a national holiday, AKP still has classes tomorrow. So it was really just a long weekend, lots of busy activities.

Friday night I went to a Halloween party, because it was Halloween, go figure. Jason K. rented out an entire bar overlooking the river, with free food and drinks for 2+ hours. Very fun. Good people, good view, good dancing, good costumes (I went as Tengu, a famous demon in Japanese folklore. Small history lesson: Tengu appeared to Minamoto no Yoshitsune at the end of the Heian period at Yoshitsune's hiding place on Kurama and taught him how to use swords, enabling Yoshitsune to defeat the Taira clan and usher in the Kamakura period). After the party, Jason B. spent the night at my house, making me realize that something I really miss about life in the US is slumber parties. 

Saturday, I went with Jason and my host parents on an optional AKP field trip to the Miho Museum and a pottery studio in Shigaraki. It was a pretty good day. It was fun seeing people's host families now that I am familiar with the identities of my AKP peers. The Miho Museum was absolutely beautiful. The special exhibit was called "Japan is Beautiful" or something like that, and focused on the writings and artwork associated with Kawabata Yasunari (the first Japanese person to ever win a Nobel prize) and Yasuda Yukihiko. But the theme of the museum is 'beauty' --the way I understand it, the museum was founded by a New Religious Sect that prizes beauty above all else, artwork being the means by which humans reflect what we see in nature. For example: "It is important for us to reflect and carefully observe the work of our predecessors. By looking at them extensively and observing them deeply, one gradually cultivates a true appreciation of the good, and whit is truly good becomes apparent. A lofty mountain is not beautiful when gazing at its foot. It is something like that when we raise our eyes higher, and the height of the mountains become higher and the lower peaks become lower. That reveals the true beauty of high peaks." --Yasuda Yukihiko

The pottery studio was funny. It was filled with raccoon statues, some enormous, most creepy, because to place a raccoon (tanuki) statue at your front door is good luck. I made a bowl just the right size to either drink tea out of, or eat donburi out of. 

Then Sunday, I went with the History of Kyoto class on their field trip up Mt. Hiei. The hike was really great, I loved the moment when I was high enough on the mountain that the kinds of trees changed and suddenly I was in a forest of Japanese cedars. At the top of the mountain was the "Hiei Garden Museum," which was really pretty but really stupid. The top of Mt. Hiei is associated with Shimogamo and Kamigamo Shrines because of the spirit that lives in this one rock on the top of the mountain. But as Prof. Boggett says, "history is slowly being erased"; the god-rock is huge, and beautiful, but not marked at all, and surrounded by flowers. (The Hiei Garden Museum has lots of reproductions of Monet and other impressionist painters next to really pretty, but totally random, European style gardens. ???) Apparently the Japanese government, in their attempts to nationalize Shinto, are trying to cover up the way Shinto mythologies stem from local legends... 

After this, we went to a Buddhist temple complex, Enryakuji, which was way too touristy for being on the top of this mountain. But the west side of the complex was totally deserted, and I saw the tomb of Saicho, one of the most important people in the history of Japanese Buddhism.