So this is going to be a post about last weekend. This week's been busy and I haven't had the time to sit down and catch up for you until now. I'm a bit under the weather so I'll be staying inside, drinking fluids and eating soup the rest of the day :P

Last Sunday I went down to our local beach to watch some Yabusame, traditional Japanese archery performed on horseback. It was pretty chilly and windy but if I wimped out and didn't go, I would've always regretted it. When I got there, there wasn't much of a crowd and I was able to get a spot in front of one of the targets. I was then handed a piece of paper (IN ENGLISH!) explaining to me the history of Yabusame:

"Yabusame is a traditional art of archery which is performed from the horse-back of a running horse, and it was considered to be the utmost skill of martial art that all Samurai warriors endeavored to acquire.

Yabusame is said to have originated in the middle of the 6th century as a ritual of Shintoism - a traditional religion of Japan that worships nature, spirits, and ancestors. The rite is dedicated to a shrine in prayers for peace on earth, bountiful harvest, and happiness of people.

In theyear 1187, Minamoto Yoritomo - a famous feudalistic lord who reigned four corners of Japan for the first time in its history and established a national capital in Kamakura - fervently advocated this art of archery to his subordinate Samurai warriors and encouraged them to spread it throughout the country. It was staged in his imperial palace annually by Samurai warriors to demonstrate their highest skills of archery attained which became an important rite an event of the ruling Minamoto family. It also helped the family as a practical means of maintaining peace in the country and enforcing civil orders among their subjects. Thus, it was accredited as the best of all traditional martial arts of Japan and it was inherited in the family as long as three generations - to the year 1267.

This highly-praised art among Samurai warriors displays unique and the most sophisticated form of shooting an arrow from a horse-back while the horse is galloping. An archer, clad in an ancient Samurai costume, mounts on a horse with a bow and arrow. When ready, he orders his horse to run down a gallery (165 yards in length) at a full gallop. Riding skillfully, he aims and releases three arrows successively at a small target standing alongside the gallery (77 yards apart each). According to the archives, it was the first done on September 2, 199 on the beach front of adjacent Kotsubo in the city of Zushi.

In the 1920s when the U.S. military occupies "Nagisa Hotel" in Zushi located at its beach front, Kaneko Yurin - an instructor for Takeda school of Yabusame archery - was given a chance to demonstrate his skills to the military personnel. Having been overwhelmed by his demonstrations, the military personnel decided to try it themselves and they even built a temporary shooting gallery to practice. In November of 1948 and 1949, the U.S.-Japan Friendship Yabusame Archery Competition took place, which was open to everyone on the same beach front. Numbers of Zushi citizens with an archery background - although they were leading a miserable life then after the war without food, clothes, or any form of entertainment - were delighted with this opportunity and they rushed to sign up for the event. It helped them forget or alleviate the burdens of their daily life even for a short while. Simultaneously, it inspired hope in their mind for the future."

Soon, there was a processional presenting each of the Samurai archers...

I loved being so close because I was able to see the detail in their outfits, like the faun-pelt chaps and their fur-covered scabbards. After they walked down the beach and back, they then all galloped to the end and back. Then, at the signal of two large fans at opposite ends of the beach, they were off and shooting!


After the group of Samurai cycled through, one of the child helpers would hold up the arrows so that each passing Samurai could take his (or her! There was one female archer in this group.) arrow back. After they all got their arrows back, the bullseye targets were replaces with wooden squares that they had to break. These were a bit more difficult, I think, but they didn't seem to have a problem with them!


After everyone had cycled through, they narrowed the contestants down to a few Samurai (the ones who were able to break the board) and those Samurai went back through and hit bullseye targets again.


This guy got a dead on bullseye! Can you see it?
At this point I wasn't really able to feel one of my toes and since things were winding down, I left my post and wandered over to where the Samurai not competing were so I could see them closer.


To top it all off, there were even two guys wearing full on Samurai armor that stopped to pose with spectators.


And to think, I could have stayed at home sleeping while all this happened! I made a few videos of them in action and compiled them. Check it out!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdykaYTVuRY

Last Saturday I had a specific place I wanted to visit in Kamakura. On my map, there was a temple on the outskirts of Kamakura that had just been out of reach when I walked in the area over the summer. It would take about 45 minutes to get there walking so I decided to try and figure out how to use the buses to cut down on travel time. So I got there in the early afternoon, looked at the bus map and found what I thought was the right bus. Turns out I was wrong. Oops. It started going in the correct direction but soon headed further southeast than I thought was correct. I got off the bus and checked my GPS against the map that I had printed and indeed, I was way past where I needed to be. A bit dismayed, I thought that I might be able to walk further and find a road to cut up to where I needed to be.


I passed a small cemetery with gorinto overgrown with long grasses and it was really surprising. I've never really seen anything religiously-related be neglected like this. I would expect to see an old scary cemetery in the US overgrown with all sorts of things but here in Japan, it kind of caught me off guard.


Next I passed an out-of-the-way playground that was empty and not very inviting. While the cement animals looked as though they'd seen better days, there wasn't anyone around to appreciate them. After saying goodbye to the playground, I kept walking until I came to a signpost in English that pointed to areas of interest for tourists. They generally point to temples or shrines but sometimes they point to graves and look out points. This sign said Kosokuji Temple and, go figure, it wasn't on my map. I figured, what the heck, I'm already here so I might as well see what it's all about. I'm so glad I did.


I walked through a little cemetery at the entrance and saw this little guy with a hat that now has some life of its own. It was very quiet as the only sound I could here was that of water trickling out of the cliff adjacent to the temple. It being fall, there were bright yellow ginkgo leaves everywhere and it just set the mood.


Besides the abundance of ginkgo leaf action, the pond and water collectors on the premises was very still and lead to some pretty awesome reflections.


By the time I was ready to head out, there was a young Japanese couple taking pictures with a large statue in the courtyard. They took a few tourist-y shots and then headed out. I took a few last looks around and did the same. On my way back, I managed to spy a bus stop and decided I should probably take a bus back since I was quite a ways away. Once I got back to the train station, I realized my initial bus error. I'm actually glad that I got myself lost because I was able to see such an amazingly beautiful temple but next time, I WILL take the right bus!

It's that time of year and some of my friends on Livejournal are already going ahead with the Christmas/Holiday card exchange! I think this is a really cute and fun idea and I'm going to try my best to participate from all the way over here.

Here's how it goes:

Post your name and address in the comments section of this post. They will be screened by Livejournal so you don't have to worry about other people getting it. If you're reading this on Facebook, send me a message instead.

Once I get it, I'll send you a card! It might not make it there super fast due to the fact that, well, we're in Japan, but you'll get it eventually!

So...have at it :D

Tags: meme, random

Last Thursday I decided enough was enough and needed to get off my butt and head outside. I did not want to become a sloth, moping about how bored I was when there's (forgive the cliché) an entire world outside! So I dusted off (yep) the GPS, downloaded some coordinates, and headed out to Kamakura.

One of the great parts about Kamakura is that if you walk a kilometer in any direction, the scenery totally changes, unlike the more urban areas of Japan. I encourage anyone to strike out on their own for half a mile and then walk a little further and see where you end up. Take the chance and get a little lost. Of course, if you're uncomfortable with that and don't have much of a sense of direction, you might want to print out a map just in case.

My first Geocache lead me down some familiar streets but then when I took a glance to my side, I saw something hidden and new and, well, it'd obviously been there before but to a busy eye could have been missed. On the side of the road was a small shrine that wasn't marked on my map.


There was a sign near the street that said it was Suwajinja Shrine. It was very empty and had a tiny parking lot which I suspected was for the office building pressed up against it. Even though its scale wasn't as grandeur as some of the more famous shrines in the area, the details and time and care put into making it were amazing!

I continued walking and headed in the direction I thought a cache was in. The unfortunate (or fortunate depending on how you look at it) part about about the street maps for Japan is that they're not terribly detailed. So when I picked a road that looked like it lead to the cache, I was quite mistaken as it lead up and around the wrong hillside.


Instead of being discouraged, I was actually grateful. I had found a one lane road that lead into a cluster of impossibly quiet houses set against a hillside. The only life I saw was a cat at the far end of an even narrower side street and numerous Golden Orb Web spiders above my head. Fact: these spiders, while not the world's largest, spin the world's strongest webs. A Google image search even comes up with some scarily impressive photos of one who managed to catch a finch in its web. O_O

Heading back down the road, I spied something I missed coming up just a few minutes ago.


A garden, and a very large and impressive one at that! I don't profess to have a green thumb AT ALL and am surprised I've kept a basil plant alive for this long but even so, this is very impressive. It makes me miss my mother's garden back home where I would pull out carrots, rinse them in rain buckets and chomp away. Ah, the country...

Once I was back to the main road, I figured out where I was SUPPOSED to be heading and headed that way. Turns out this cache was located in a shrine I'd already visited back in May: Sasuke Inari Jinja.


It looked basically the same, just a little darker atmosphere. Another difference was that while in May it was just me, Kevin, and a shrine attendant, this time it was me, a shrine attendant and a large number of high schoolers coming down through the shrine via a trail from the top of the mountain. They were quite noisy and chatted and yelled to one another as they joked around. I headed up to the back part of the shrine to hopefully wait them out enough so that I could search for the cache without being caught.


The railing on the way didn't instill much faith in me that it would hold should I slip on the stairs. As I was sitting and killing time, I looked over some of the ema that people had left prayers and wishes on and found 2 that a talented artist had used.


Now, I'm an anime nerd but I cannot place these characters. I'm going to call them made up unless someone can prove me wrong (and I wish they would because I'm intrigued). The high schoolers never left and so I had to try to find this cache in their midst. Unfortunately, I failed and so I headed on to the next one.

The next cache was located in the Zeniarai Benzaiten Ugafuku Shrine or Zeniarai Benzaiten Shrine for short..er. I'd heard about this shrine before as it was where you could wash your money there and after using your "cleaned" money, it would hopefully double and come back to you. Doesn't hurt to try, right? To enter the shrine area, you had to go through a tunnel in the side of a mountain. Obviously tunnels through mountains are dark and so you need light.


Problem solved! Something I found interesting besides the tiny plants and mosses growing toward one of the other lights was that there were what appeared to be paper seals pasted inside the light fixtures. I'm just guessing that these are some kind of seals, but since my only source is anime (thank you, Sailor Mars), I wouldn't trust that very much :P


There were even more of these paper seals stuck to the underside of the roof over the fountain where you wash your hands and mouth before entering. I just loved the shade on the light there - designs of Japanese maple leaves (momiji). It cast a warming light on what was a pretty dark and chilly day.


You enter through this line of torii into the shrine complex. To the back is the cave where you take a small basket, place your money in it, and sift it through the water. There were groups of 1000 paper cranes hung from the ceiling and a large shrine inside the cave. I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures in there but if you're curious you can Google it and find other pictures. I really want to take Kevin back there because I really think he'd like the cave.

After making my rounds through the shrine, I went back and started looking for the cache. It was right. at. the. entrance. That was a tricky one to pull out without anyone seeing me. I eventually just sat down and pulled it out, signing it right in front of people. They hadn't seen me take it out and seeing me sitting with some paper didn't make me very worried.

I had planned to look for four caches that day. By the time I was headed towards my third, I started getting tired and cold and realized, oh, maybe it's because you haven't eaten all day. Not one of my smarter moves. I decided that the third cache was going to be my final one and that I would head home soon after. On the way I passed a rather large and seemingly abandoned shrine by the name of Tatsumijinja.


Obviously no one had rung this bell in quite some time. The grounds of the shrine looked kind of unkempt and bare and the only new thing on there was a new rope for a bell on the larger shrine. It was eerie and dark and quiet and I headed out pretty quickly.

My final cache was located near the entrance of Jufukuji Temple, one of the famous zen temples of Kamakura. It wasn't very late in the day - maybe 3:00pm - but it was already very dark out.


There were only a few people there who had wandered in on their way home. Even a Salary Man had come by, taken a picture with his phone, and continued on his way. It was very quiet and, again, kind of eerie. I couldn't get into the main temple area but did manage to take a photo through the entrance.


I kind of wonder if its kept closed all the time or just on random Thursday afternoons in the fall. I could really see the potential for it to be a great zen temple and I'm sure it was further past the bamboo railing. After wandering up and down the pathway for a little while, I finally was able to find my geocache in a dark corner of a wall and found my first travel bug! A travel bug is something with a serial number that corresponds to a page online that gives you information about who sent the bug, where they'd like it to travel to, and where it's come from before you. I was the first person to find this bug and I'm planning to take it home with me in December.

Now that I was done caching, I headed back towards the train station. Before I got on the train, I stopped and bought one of the pigeon-shaped cookies that Kamakura is famous for. Definitely a nice reward after a long and chilly day. Maybe next time I'll wear a hat.

Yes, I've already slapped myself on the wrist for not updating, well, at all in the past week or so. Honestly, not a lot has been going on. The weather's gotten a little cooler, the days are getting shorter and the leaves are past the pretty colors point and are all brown and gross. I've still been working at pottery, although it seems out of the multiple things I make each time, something always breaks in the kiln. I had made 2 vases and both were shown to me in pieces the next week. Frustrating? Absolutely. Enough for me to quit? Absolutely not.

Things with Kevin and the Navy have been unsurprising. He's almost at the final stage of the paperwork that we hope will be processing him out of the Navy. There was a due date for this paperwork this past Sunday but in typical fashion, it missed the deadline by 2, maybe even 3 days now. I've stopped asking about it because if I do, I always receive bad news and I'm just tired of hearing it.

Not to be a downer, but I'm having a more difficult time being away from home recently. I'm not sure if it's because the seasons are changing and I'm starting to think of Christmas and everything happy associated with it or something else. I was on the phone with Kevin the other night and just burst into hysterics - uncontrollable bawling and the inability to catch my breath. It was out of the blue and so very much out of character for me. I'm missing my friends and family very much and I've been trying my best to keep in touch with everyone, yet having a difficult time getting anywhere.

My best friend Ben calls me at least every other day as he drives to work in the morning. It doesn't cost him much of anything since he's now got me as one of his "Friends and Family" through Verizon and to be honest, calling a Tennessee based number isn't THAT expensive. We don't really chat about much in particular, like for example: last night he taught me how to sign "dolphin" and "whale" in sign language. I talk with my great friend Josh pretty much every day about, again, nothing in particular most times. Yesterday I got a message from my friend Arnold, completely out of the blue. He wanted to say hello and apologized for falling out of touch and wondered how I was. That little message from him just made me feel so special and so good. Just the fact that he even thought of me and took the time to send off a few sentences was incredible to me.

So now I'm trying harder to reconnect with people who I've lost touch with. I have a feeling most people aren't going to respond because they're busy and have lives outside of the internet, but at least I'm going to try. I also hope my laptop survives the night since it's been blue screening for about an hour and it's not like I can just get my tech support (aka Kevin) over here to fix it.