A Wild Variety of Parsley

sooooo... first week and a half of winter semester classes over. they're drilling me into the ground this time, the japanese and the thick packets of assigned reading from the traditional japanese performing arts class. sometimes the japanese class is moving too fast to be of much value, but i'm picking up a lot, too.

what the hell's been going on? sorting through plans to try to fit this trip to taiwan in between folks visiting and school obligations. spent a while on friday afternoon building an enormous kamakura, or snow house, with a few people, carving out a little door, and then crawling inside with everyone who made it. about seven people fit in there. then there was a fine little party last friday night at a norwegian girl's room. about 15 people squooshed into a dinky dorm around a table stacked with dried squid, chips, chu-hi and sour norwegian candy. pretty dang fun, but hard on the ankles, sitting on that hardwood floor.

the next day, went out with the performing arts teacher and one other dude from america to the local entertainment monolith to sit in some gundam battle pod thingies and shoot at other robots controlled by folks playing at the same time around japan. that was some ok stuff. little far to go for a round or two of shoot 'em ups, though.

sunday was a damn jewel. got up around 8 to head out on a combined field trip with this semester's tohoku culture class and some people from the performing arts class. we drove two hours east into the next prefecture, iwate. first, we went to a temple that is built into the side of a cliff, and is surrounded by some statues, smaller shrines, and a buddha face carved into the cliff next to it. the area has had some sort of temple on the grounds for the last 1,200 years, and i think the carving in the cliff was about five or six hundred years old. we walked around there for a while, over small wooden bridges and through a few gardens, then headed off to a town called hiraizumi, which used to be some sort of old capital for the tohoku region before it was even a part of japan. there was a mountain path leading through a bunch of temples, shrines, grave sites, statues, and a museum holding nine hundred year old artifacts from the area like the remnants of swords, clothing, and furniture, and also a fully intact gold walled temple and three giant wooden buddha carvings from the heian era (around 1100). the paths leading from temple to temple were lined with massive bamboo stalks and old twisted trees.

next, we walked past the site of an old temple, where the garden still remains next to the markers for the entrance hall, to a restaurant where we all had the same dinner of sashimi, soba, and some locally famous beef on rice, a ton of damn food. i ate the sashimi particularly slow so it wouldn't dissapear too fast.

we walked from there back to the old temple and garden grounds where people were gathering for the local fire festival, standing around two big iron bowl-shaped cages blazing with sake fueled fires. people walked around pouring little cups of sake for everyone, and then they'd scoop some out of a bucket onto the fires. after a while, we heard some drums and flutes coming down the main road into the temple grounds, and the group ran ahead to get a good view of what was coming.

from the side of the path inside the grounds, we watched as about 20 or so men wrapped in nothing but a little white loincloth marched very slowly in two lines while propping a 10 foot long clump of burning sticks of some sort against their thighs. the whole group would chant and then take another big swinging step in the march, while behind them walked priests, and people who were playing drums and keeping the fires lit. when they got to the main temple area, they added the sticks to a big bonfire and then some of them charged inside the temple and did something i couldn't see. a few minutes later they came running out, i think chasing somebody, did something else i couldn't see while surrounded by spectators and camera crews, and eventually started tossing someone in the air. after they stopped tossing the guy around, they climbed up to the temple and threw bags of mochi out to the crowd. i cought one, but i poked myself in the damn pinkie and the mochi was tasteless because to catch it is just good luck, you're not actually supposed to eat it, which may have ruined the good luck, i dunno.

when that part of the festival was over, an audience settled into the temple, which had open walls to accomodate the large crowd, to watch the annual performance symbolizing a prayer for strong rice crops (i think), and incorporating some old myths about the goddess of the sun arguing with her brother the moon god (i think). the whole idea behind the fire festival is a commemoration of old rituals performed thousands of years ago to "re-ignite" the sun for spring. there were dancers in big straw hats representing the rice fields, and children in large hats representing the young sun and moon of the new year. we took off from there around 11pm, and didn't get back to school till after 1am, a 17 hour field trip.

this week i've just been trying to recover from that and keep up with what's going on in japanese class. next up is a trip on sunday with some of m'ladies to a glass tower out on the sea of japan to wander around, go up in the tower, and really basically just so's i can hobnob and carouse with aki, the lady what i met whilst dressed like santa, who is selling some of her stuff at a flea market because she's dirt poor.