as of 06/06/2011, both elliott and josh have internships for the summer.
whoot whoot.
-j
8 hours on local trains from kyoto to tokyo.
elliott and i decided to make a video… enjoy!
(via kleee)
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
THANK YOU.
ENJOY!
This is Hideaki Akaiwa. When the Tsunami hit his home town of Ishinomaki, Hideaki was at work. Realising his wife was trapped in their home, he ignored the advice of professionals, who told him to wait for the army to arrive to provide search and rescue.
Instead he found some scuba gear, jumped in the raging torrent - dodging cars, houses and other debris being dragged around by the powerful current, any of which could have killed him instantly - and navigated the now submerged streets in pitch dark, freezing water until he found his house. Swimming inside, he discovered his wife alive on the upper level with only a small amount of breathing room, and sharing his respirator, pulled her out to safety.
If he had waited for the army, his wife of 20 years would be dead.
Oh, and if that’s not enough badassery for one lifetime, Hideaki realised his mother was also unaccounted for, so jumped back in the water and managed to save her life also. Since then Hideaki enters the water everyday on a one man search and rescue mission, saving countless lives and proving that two natural disasters in a single day - and insurmountable odds - can’t stand in the way of love. This man is my hero.
one day, in a land called osaka far away somewhere over the rainbow, there lives a prince of a castle. his castle is grand, overlooking his wonderful city.
but what is all this beauty when there is no one to share it with? someone like…a princess.
however life is never without some struggle. albeit prince josh may be worthy of the presence of a darling damsel, a more dire situation has surfaced. A rival prince from the next town threatens prince josh!
the two meet to find a peaceful way to settle the feud; however, no amount of diplomacy nor fake smiling could successfully find a solution to this problem. the two decide to settle this through the local wise man. the wise man decided that there is no other way to settle the matter unless it was a fight to the death. the two agree with invigorating passion.
they strap on their armor. prince josh of the black peacock nation:
pitted against prince elliott of the deer nation.
their two armies rushed at each other, fighting to the death for their princes.
their tactics were clever yet at times immoral when they began to use children as spies disguised as penguins.
it was long and hard before it finally came down to a final duel between the two princes. who will be the victor?
and so began the long and peaceful reign of prince elliott. the end.
if you remember back in day seven part 1, we had a money crisis where we were short on yen and we needed to find a currency exchanger. i was able to exchange 50 dollars to 4000 yen, but it was nice to try to find a place where we can exchange the rest of our cash to yen so we would feel safer. we heard that there was a currency exchange in umeda (the osaka train station) so we headed over to continue our day.
on arriving at umeda, we asked around (asking people for directions is the most fun) and found the currency exchange. it was in the basement of an 11 story department store. for those of you who have not been to asia, asian department stores are shopping malls that are stacked high instead of wide lots like in america, and there is typically a food court in the basement or in the top floor. side note: japan also has food department stores where there are floors upon floors of restaurants.
so we exchanged our money and decided to stay in the area and explore the department store. they mainly sold electronics varying from pc and mac to dslrs, camcorders, washing machines, etc. we went through the camera section and i checked out some of the cameras they had. in a quick summary, japan point and shoots are amazing nowadays and apparently, sony’s newer point and shoots are trying to imitate the old style of leica cameras with mounted lenses.
anywho we moved on to look at canon dslrs, specifically the 5d mark2. we thought that since canon was made in japan, it would be cheaper in its motherland, but alas…no. well actually it’s cheaper by maybe 100 dollars or so, but i was hoping for half price >_> well i guess i’ll just have to wait till forever to get one.
we continued exploring the area into the mac section. macs are about 1/3 more expensive in japan probably due to import costs. we moved on to the music section and found some cool toys to play with like hand drumset and some synthesizers.
there’s josh playing with the synthesizers. by the way if you notice, stores like these in japan all have one thing in common: the artistic use of empty space to cram as much colorful and obnoxious ads and signs. the ceiling was so crowded with signs and price listings here and there that it felt like walking through a dense jungle without a machete. i wonder how a 6 foot 5 person would be able to see through it all and walk.
we eventually got bored and went up to the top floor to look for something quick to eat. as usual, the choices are great the pricing is not. we decided to just grab a quick snack before dinner. i was really in the mood for some tonkatsu so we went into a cozy restaurant with a full display of everything fried.
it’s become quite a trend for us to wipe our plates clean every meal. i hope those restaurants don’t think we are fatties or something.
we realized that at this point, osaka castle was a lost cause so we just bummed again. as usual. we came back to the hostel and wondered
“what should we eat for dinner today?”
“uhm…i don’t know…dotonburi?”
“fine”
you know you have a problem when you wonder about the next meal when you just had a meal.
we decided to visit amemura (short for amerika-mura meaning “america village”) on the way. this is supposed to be the place where the fashion reflects what japan’s idea of americans look like. therefore, it is one of the highest trendsetting areas in osaka. we thought we might give this place a look and see how we compare to the elite fashion of the area.
i have to say, upon arriving in the area, i noticed immediately that me and josh didn’t fit in “america village.” there could be one of two explanations:
1. the japanese person’s idea of american fashion is highly skewed
2. me and josh’s general idea of fashion is highly skewed
i vote for number 1. the area was littered with small boutiques and stores that advertise mainly hip hop and gangster fashion. i’m talking about busta rhymes blasting, baggy jeans sagging, iced out mannequins, and walking with excess swagger. there’s a limit between being a trendsetter and walking with a third leg. and when was american fashion exclusively hip hop or rough and tough? where’s the j.crew? where’s the pea coats? where’s the ray bans? whatever.
one other thing i noticed was that this was the only part of osaka that had black people. and i mean, black people with perfect japanese. kind of shocking really. we saw two black guys standing on a corner and two girls passed by and one of the guys whispered into one of the girl’s ear. next thing you know, he’s leading the two girls into his import low-rider. i guess that’s about as american as this place.
heading onto dotonburi, we came across some street performers
they were really good. that lady with the flute was fantastic and she was playing at 32nd notes. all of their songs were upbeat though, so the fast flute was annoying right around the third song.
we then walked through shinsaibashi which is, along with amemura, the main shopping and fashion area of osaka. japan is littered with shopping arcades like these. shopping arcades are streets of stores and occasional restaurants that are usually roofed, but not always.
we finally arrived at dotonburi and decided to go to a place called zuboraya to try a japanese delicacy: fugu. fugu is japanese for pufferfish. if you don’t know what pufferfish is, you can wiki it but i’ll give you a short version: it’s one of the deadliest poisons in the world and a singly tiny drop can kill you. the poison attacks the nervous system and systematically stops your lungs so you suffocate. the poison is primarily located in the liver, skin, and reproductive organs of the fish and a skilled sushi chef will cut away every bit of poison from the fish. he will then cut the flesh into paper thin slices.
there is always the possibility of residual poison within the flesh of the fish which gives a tingling sensation on the tongue when eaten.are we brave? or stupid? we like to live on the edge mehehehhh.
fugu from elliott josh on Vimeo.
unfortunately, neither of us felt anything. not even a near death experience. either our sushi chef is super skilled, or these pufferfish are the genetically altered no-poison pufferfish. wasn’t anything special. the texture is rubbery, almost like chewing on beef tendon, and the flavor is just a subtle hint of fresh raw fish. nothing distinct. oh well. at least we tried.
unfortunately after this point our camera battery died so we don’t have any more cool things to look at except these black words.
we decided to have real sushi this time and went over to ganko zushi which is one of the biggest sushi chains in japan. however, being a sushi chain, it was nothing more than commercialized expensive sushi. it was pretty good, but it wasn’t mind blowing. the tuna and salmon were the best, and the unagi was a different type of eel, a very creamy texture which subtle unagi flavor.
we left feeling quite jipped. i’d say that night was the least successful dotonburi outing. >sad face<
to our dear readers,
i know we haven’t updated in a few days for new content and we’ll work on getting that up, but i’ll be writing about 1.6.2011. as of now, we are currently in kyoto, the gion area.
we started the day off very well, meeting a new friend. his name is louis and he is a senior from university of arizona studying engineering. he travelled with us for the day and we had a lot of fun.
…and there goes my shout-out. :D (this is the only picture we have of louis, just fyi)
so elliott, louis and i decided to go to the kyoto imperial palace, a place full of history and tradition. the imperial palace in kyoto was the place where the emperor of japan and the royal family resided until 1869 (when the capital was moved to tokyo).
here is a little video that we introducing the palace (and louis as well):
as you can see, while the palace garden is quite beautiful and natural, the palace itself is quite modest. our guide explained that while the emperor and his family was the symbol of a unified japan, the real political power (and thus wealth, as well) lied with the samurai general, the shogun.
(we weren’t able to catch the shogun’s palace, but it is supposed to be one that is much more wealthy and extravagant.)
1. one of the inner gates of the palace - the bright orange color in the gate is said to have chinese influence (china’s lucky color is red) but the function is different. the orange is supposed to represent fire, to scare away evil.
2. the kyoto “imperial palace” that we saw is something called a saiki-dairi, or temporary residence of the the emperor. the original residence of the emperor, the daidairi was constantly being burned to the ground due to fires and wars so that the emperor was constantly in the houses of the nobles. this is saiki-dairi.
3. there were inner gates and outer gates, this is a picture of an inner gate.
4. another look at the emperor’s quarters (15 rooms).
6. here is the garden of the imperial palace. the guide said that japanese gardens are one of two kinds - either natural gardens or landscape gardens. this isn’t the complete picture of the garden, but each plant, rock and body of water was place strategically in order to symbolize something about japan.
7. here we are. elliott is great at not blinking. :D
8. afterwards, we made a brief stop at kyoto tower (i won’t really be writing too much about it, as our stay was very brief) - it is actually a hotel and an outlook point to the city.
after kyoto tower, the three of us travelers went to eat shabu shabu again in gion: let me not elaborate too much and just say this. do not believe the advertising, “all you can eat” is not really all you can eat. elliott will elaborate more on food later.
sorry to cut this post short, i just wanted to give a brief introduction to our time in kyoto thus far. :D
day 6 part 2
I make a good newscaster no?
day 6 part 1 arrival at fushimi inari-taisha
day five video three: shittenoji temple recap!
(suggested viewing time on the post)
day five video two: shittenoji temple intro!
day five video one: korea town on new years eve!
today is the first sunday that we’ve experienced in japan. to kind of give away the ending of our little story, we actually did quite a lot today. as for this post however, i’d like to just focus on one main thing - our experience with momodani kurishitan kyoukai.
if you read our “day zero” blog post, you may know that we had originally wanted to come to japan as short term missionaries. but to be completely honest, e and i had completely forgotten all about the lord’s day until the day was already underway.
you see, our day was planned out to be somewhat of a “chill-out” day - wake up, go to the bank to exchange our dollars for more yen, visit osaka castle, visit amerika mura and finish off eating sushi in dotomburi. however human plans are sometimes just not meant to be seen through. instead of the morning that we had planned, we had sort of a “God smack us in the face” event instead.
first off, we went to the bank, assuming that as new years had already passed and we’d be okay to change the rest of the dollars we brought with us… only that it being sunday, all the banks were closed.
…and in short, we were screwed. elliott had a grand total of 790 yen left (the equivalent of a $10 lunch, or four or five train rides) and i had about 2500 yen left (you can do the math - a dollar to 79 yen). it was 11 am (lunch time) and we had no idea how we could best stretch our yen considering the high cost of… well, everything.
it was at this time that we both remembered that it was sunday - the Lord’s day. a few nights ago, when we were exploring momodani (the area surrounding the nearest train stop), we found a small クリシタ教会 (kurishita kyoukai - christian church). we were in the area and decided to try to find it again.
from the outside, the small but very charming church looks like this:
the church service started at 10:30am and we were 30 minutes late, but we found the church again and went inside to join the congregation for worship:
there was a guest speaker by the name of dr. koichi kitano, whom we later learned is the president of central bible college in tokyo. i couldn’t really understand too much of his sermon (it was in japanese after all), and to be honest i was really sleepy from the late night blogging from the day before so i might have nodded off a few times, but i could tell that dr. kitano really knew his stuff. he preached at least partially from 1 samuel about how God answers our prayers through ‘yes’ answers, ‘no’ answers, and ‘wait’ answers.
here’s a picture of dr. kitano for good measure:
we met the man and his daughter, joyce kitano after the service and they all knew how to speak english perfectly. it turned out that they are from hawaii and were visiting the area before returning to their home church in tokyo. more on them later.
after the sermon, this young couple went up to the front of the church and performed a wonderful song (see an excerpt in video below) - it really reminded me of e and my little performance at my parents’ church over christmas eve. i felt quite blessed to heard true heartfelt worship, especially in japanese and (obviously) especially in japan - i sort of had an ‘ahh wakaru wakaru! (i understand now!)’ moment - how acapella and/or instrumental harmonies coupled with a desire to worship God can really bless others.
after service was finally over, the pastor (sensei rei ooe) of the congregation actually invited e and i to have lunch with the church. problem #1 solved: lunch. we had udon noodles (as per usual for japanese people, haha) and i even got a “double portion” according to e. it was great, grand even.
so tying in my earlier note about the kitano family, during our lunch we were able to talk to joyce kitano quite extensively: it turns out that she also worked with campus ministries in japan with chi alpha. in our conversation with her we were able to learn a lot more about how it is like being a true japanese missionary - that japanese ground is truly hard, sometimes taking six years just for a single soul to be saved. paraphrasing joyce’s words, “each fruit is extremely precious, you pray and pray and when someone finally comes to know jesus, you are filled with joy”. to hear that from her was quite inspiring, and knowing that there were people like her and dr. kitano who dedicated their lives for the ministry was equally as inspiring, and quite a blessing for me.
in the course of the lunch, two other things happened that really blessed e and i (as well as others, i think…more on that soon). i will sort of summarize from here on out, as i’m getting a bit sleepy, :P.
first, joyce changed 4000 yen for elliott (being the poorer of the two of us at the time, yen wise). we really didn’t know if we would have been able to make it through two days without an open bank at that point and time, so the fact that she helped us was a godsend: problem #2 solved: yen exchange.
and secondly, we had mentioned to joyce that we sang in an a cappella at boston university (mustard seed shout-out! :D), and she made us sing for the church! on the spot! remember how i wrote about the “wakaru wakaru!” moment i had earlier? well, i felt like we were being given an opportunity to bless the church at momodani with that invitation!
e and i sang “listen to our hearts” again (the same song that we performed at my parents’ church), with e on melody and me on harmony. we did alright i think, but the more important point was that we were able to share in the action of worship with these brothers and sisters in japan. i really felt that God had prepared the way for us to this church this day, to not only receive so many blessings (sermon, food, yen haha, and the couple’s song) but also to give back and bless others through our song.
…well, that’s it mostly. that was the definite highlight of this day for e and i. we did some stuff after that i’ll mention in a later post (maybe) but this was really it. perhaps highlight of the day doesn’t do it justice, it was definitely the highlight of the whole trip so far. i certainly hope that we can continue to experience more of God’s graciousness through the rest of our trip.
i guess now would be an appropriate time to thank y’all for all of your prayers and support.
if you could also pray for momodani kurishitan kyoukai (http://ag-momodani.com), and japan in general, it would mean a lot to e and i.
to help put a face to the name, here is pastor rei ooe and his wife:
and here we are with the congregation that we worshipped with:
we’re in the back (slightly to the right), pastor rei ooe is in the tan blazer with dr. koichi kitano on his right and joyce kitano is taking the picture. :D
happy new years everyone!
the next part of our japanese cultural new years experience is something called hatsumode. japanese people take notice of all the first activities they do when the new year arrives such as the first sunrise of the new year, the first day of work, first tea ceremony, etc. hatsumode is the first temple visit of the new year and something that the majority of japanese people participate in.
we have already visited the shitennoji temple in osaka, so in order to diversify our sightseeing experience, we decided to go to kyoto (an hour train ride) for our temple visit. one of japan’s most famous temples is located in kyoto and is called fushimi inari-taisha. it’s a shinto temple sprawled across a mountain and is most famous for its thousands of red gates outlining the mountain paths. if you are an avid anime/memoirs of a geisha fan, you may recognize this temple somewhere.
so we quickly made our way to kyoto via the local train. here’s a little early morning hello
once in kyoto, we grabbed a quick bite of lunch. by the way, a quick note about japanese style fast foods, there’s an enormous variety, but the most popular one we’ve seen so far are udon/soba shops located in almost every train station. lunch time you would see it crammed with business men and other busy bodies looking for a quick grab of lunch.
we stepped of the station where the temple is located and it is packed. we had trouble just getting out of the station. it was an endless sea of people all gathered to pray.
the giant red gate is called a torii and it’s an oversized version of all the torii in the above picture. along this path leading up to the temple there were street food vendors serving a variety of food form takoyaki (a soft ball of batter with octopus inside) to yakisoba (pan fried noodles) to yakiniku (japanese bbq) to this:
fish on a stick!
and now we have the front gate of fushimi inari-taisha
passing through these gates there is a large courtyard with temples here and there and a big shrine area were people would go to pray and pick up a fortune. we weren’t a fan of waiting in lines anymore so we decided to hike up the mountain to reach the top shrine. it’s a 1.5 hour hike each way and we began our journey. the hike is amazing. it’s crowded beyond belief down in the main gate but as you climb higher and higher fewer people follow with you. however, there were still a handful of people (mostly the elderly) who dared to climb the whole way in order to pray at the shrine at the summit. the forest is amazing; covered in pine trees, the smell of the air is so clean and crisp. the low breeze would keep us cool while we trekked higher and the endless rows of torii gates distracted us from our sore legs.
along the way there were smaller shrines here and there where some people would stop to pray at.
notice this shrine has foxes on each side. fushimi inari-taisha is a shrine for the god of rice (inari) and foxes were his messengers. some of these shrines graves of ancestors while others are shrines for various shinto gods (including inari). some people would leave fruits or various foods on the shrine while others would leave candles burning.
we reached the halfway point that offered an amazing view of kyoto.
anyway, moving on. we stopped several times to observe the rituals that people would do when in front of a shine.
within the shrine is a statue of a god (not sure who) and the red and white ropes in the middle of the shrine is attached to bells. a person would go up to the shrine, throw money in the wooden box for offering, then they would pray a quick prayer. they would then grab the colorful ropes and jingle the bells, then clap twice, then hold their hands together and pray. this ritual was repeated at every shrine by everyone.
We finally reached the summit and saw what seemed to be a large rock atop an altar.
we saw many of these rock altars through the shrine; we’re not sure exactly what rocks symbolize in the shinto religion but apparently its quite prominent as we saw an elderly couple pray intently in front of it and the man placed his hand on a stone and whispered to it.
after experiencing the most cultural/religious moments of japan, we decided to descend back down and do what we do best: eat japanese food.
JACKPOT
CHACHING
OHBABY
one of our favorite snacks so far is called dango. dango is a skewer of rice balls smothered in sweet and savory sauce.
well that marks the end of our new year celebration. hope you guys had a great start to a new year as well! akemashite omedettou onegaishimasu!
the new year is a time for one of the most important festivals in japan. Japanese homes would be cleaned during this time and the main doors would display wreaths in order to incur blessings as well as drive away evil spirits at the dawn of the new year.
The first new years activity on the list for us was to visit the local temple, which was the shitennoji temple in Osaka for us. The shitennoji temple is the first state recognized Buddhist temple in japan. People gather at the temple around 11pm on new year’s eve however so we had a full day until we could celebrate. So what did we do today while in japan? We visited korea.
(see day five video one: korea town)
the korea town in tsuruhashi (about a 10 minute walk from out hostel) was formed by Korean-japanese whose forefathers were brought over from korea during WWII for hard labor. From a korean person’s perspective, I’d have to say that the Korean town street that we visited was just like how I remember korea when I visited years ago. Every other store was selling homemade kimchi as well as various banchan (side dishes) that I recognized only from korea. It was beautiful. We feasted on Korean street food (pajeon, odeng, hodduk, etc) and bought ourselves soju (at 300 yen per bottle compared to 10 dollars per bottle in America) to round out the trip.
We spent the rest of the day napping (we had to recover from all that eating the day before; it’s an exercise you know). We planned to grab dinner at a local restaurant near the temple, but fear of places closing early led us to dotonburi once again. No regrets though; with the number of restaurants in dotonburi, you could visit the area for a month and still not try everything the place has to offer.
We had ramen once again but from the restaurant next door which is the most famous ramen restaurant in the area. It has an iconic golden dragon statue above the restaurant.
Compared to the glorious ramen that josh elaborated on yesterday, this one was roughly the same, but the 100 yen cheaper price as well as the unlimited kimchi and exponentially better roast pork made this ramen a yummy in my tummy. We transitioned to a restaurant across the street to try out an Osaka original called okonomiyaki.
after a great feast we were finally ready to visit shitennoji temple.
the first thing we noticed was a bell ringing in the distance. The tradition is that during the turning of the new year, the temples would ring their bell 108 times symbolizing the 108 sins of man’s senses.
(see day five video two - shittenoji intro)
People would come to the temples to hear the bells as each ring represents the cleansing of a sin so that they would enter the new year clean. There was also a long line leading to a shrine where people would ring a bell, pray, and receive an envelope with their new year’s fortune. We thought about standing in this line; however, we realized that we had no idea how the ritual goes and feared insulting somebody by entering the shrine and just standing there awkwardly waiting for a fortune.
a separate line led to the main temple where people would drop money into a wooden box and pray. Inside this temple would be a fire pit in the main hall and a Buddhist priest would be praying in front of the fire pit. We joined this line to the main temple mostly because we were pushed into the crowd. We carefully observed everyone else and when it was our turn, we decided to pray as well (to Jesus of course).
(see day five video three: shittenoji recap)
It was interesting to note that we noticed a lot of young peeps (even the gangster wannabe’s and the rebellious, over-fashioned type) partaking in the new years tradition. Surprising how they would choose to come here instead of going to a countdown party. I guess no matter what age you are, tradition and culture can still be quite influential.
