prayers and fortunes in japan

I have to admit that I have been a little overwhelmed thinking about describing my trip to Japan. So I have decided to chop it into several little posts - so you won't get bored reading a long narrative and I won't procrastinate and not write anything at all! Even though I used a tour company when I went to Japan, it wasn't the sort of tour where you are with a group of people all the time. This tour company has a variety of tours - whether they are one morning or two weeks - and you can just design what you want to do. The tour I signed up for included a day in Tokyo, not including the day you arrive. The day in Tokyo had a quick morning tour of a few sights of Tokyo. I really wanted a little more time in Tokyo, so I arrived a day earlier to have a complete day of wandering. I headed out on the subway for the Asakusa area of the city. I had read that this area still had a sense of "old Tokyo". And it is also home to the Sensoji Temple. This temple houses a golden image of Kannon (the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy) - which is not on display to the public. For some unbelievable reason, I didn't take a picture of the temple in its entirety - just bits and pieces. This is part of the beautifully painted ceiling in the temple. Around, and in, the temple there are shops that sell items relating to Buddhism. I was also intrigued with an area that had numerous small drawers with Japanese characters on it. I just had to open one of the drawers and see what was in it. I found a stack of papers with alot of Japanese written on it, but if you turned it over there was a small portion in English. A couple walked up to the drawers and I finally got to see what the significance was. There was a metal container that had a small opening in the top. You donated 100 yen and shook the container to dispense a stick that corresponded with a Japanese character on one of the drawers. You then opened the drawer and took one of the pieces of paper. I decided to follow suit and luckily received good fortune. I saved my paper, but I noticed that some of them were knotted on pieces of wire close by. It wasn't until I got home and got to do some looking on the internet, that I found out that they are called omikuji, or written fortunes. There are 12 levels of the fortunes, ranging from Great Blessing to Great Curse. Wow, if I had known that I had the possibility of getting the Great Curse, I never would have done it! I also read that whenever the fortune is bad, it is believed that if you leave it on a pine tree (or a specially prepared place), the bad luck will stay there rather than attach itself to the bearer. If you are interested in a little bit more, click on here to get more info. There are also small wooden plaques that you purchase and write prayers and wishes on.


Another interesting scene is this pot of incense burning. People will come up and wave the smoke towards themselves and also rub it on their clothes. This is for good health.








You can watch a video I took of the process.
There was also an area with water and cups that you drank from? I am sorry, but I don't know too much about that. I hope it isn't for good health - I can't see that using communal cups is good for any one's health. A few days later, one of my tour guides gave an interesting insight into religion in Japan. (Don't quote me on any of my facts about all of this. I didn't research it like I did with SPAM. Most of this is from the mouth of a tour guide or a travel book.) He said that Shinto is a religion that is native to Japan and once was the official religion. Most Japanese practice Buddhism today. However, they supposedly interlace it with some Shintoist beliefs and practices. As my tour guide said - birth is celebrated in the Shinto religion, death is commemorated at a Buddhist temple - and nowadays the trend is to have a wedding in a Christian church!

time to go.......to Japan

I thought it was about time for a trip of some sort. Ken is extremely busy with trying to get the first drillship finished, so I knew that he wouldn't be involved in this trip. So I decided to head to the closest place I wanted to go - Japan!

I am usually the sort that can navigate all the ins and outs of going to a new destination - you know, alot of reading up, comparing things and making an informed decision of some sort. However, I did this sort of on the spur of the moment, so I elected to go with a tour company. I also thought that this would be best since I was alone - but I did want some alone time to do some exploring. I elected for a package that had a morning tour in Tokyo, a day at Mt. Fuji and Lake Hakone and a day in Kyoto and Nara. It included a free day in Kyoto and I arranged for an extra free day in Tokyo. I would have liked to taken some time to go to Sagamihara (a suburb of Tokyo where I lived for 3 years when I was in grade school). We lived on an army base and so I knew that I probably would need some sort of authorization to get on base and I really didn't have the time to figure all of that out at this time. Maybe I will take a day of layover in Tokyo and do that on one of my jaunts back to the U.S. sometime.

I will go into more depth later, with pictures and such, about my trip. But I want to say that I had a wonderful time and I was so glad that I took the leap to go on my own. I have such wonderful memories of my previous time in Japan. We moved there the last part of second grade for me and left around the first week of fifth grade, so I was old enough to remember alot. (But if you really want someone with a memory, you need to ask my sister. She remembers everything.)

I remember......

ice skating outside with my girl scout troop with a view of Mt. Fuji

my wonderful bicycle I had there (I thought it was so neat because it had hand brakes)

chocolate umbrella candy and Botan candy - you could eat the rice paper wrapper

staying at a traditional Japanese hotel and sleeping on the floor

watching sumo wrestling on TV with my father

being in a Japanese play at my school in which I wore a kimono

seeing Japanese school children in their uniforms

restaurants with plastic food on plates outside to advertise what they served

I could go on and on (and I am sure my sister can fill in any gaps I may have). Surely, most of this means nothing to some people, but to me, these memories are a part of my attraction to Japan. Being that I lived there a while ago (we won't say how long ago - but another memory of mine was waking up one morning and hearing that JFK had been assassinated), I knew that things had probably changed alot. And you know how different everything looks to a child.

I was pleasantly surprised - many things hadn't changed after all.

Food was still advertised in the windows outside.

Little girls still wore kimonos.

School children still wore delightful uniforms.

And Mt. Fuji was still standing there in all it's splendor.

going up guksabong

A couple of Fridays ago, seduced by the fall coolness and color, I decided to go up Guksabong. This is one of the mountains that is behind our apartment. I have only completely gone up this once since we have been here. I know some people that do it several times a week and I am sure that many of the Korean people from Okpo hike it daily. The Koreans are big into trekking up mountains.....and goodness knows, there are alot of them here. At 464 meters, I don't know if Guksabong is considered a mountain or a hill, but it looks high enough to me. Most of the trails in Korea are clearly identified with a sign that has these little bean people on it.

I only have a short walk to the entrance of the trail.
The first part is a killer because it is so steep, but at least it is paved. You cross this little makeshift bridge




and then you are into the wild. Not really.....the most wildlife I saw were a few birds and this.....


But the path is now mostly dirt


and rocks.







Sometimes the path has some steps made of stone that someone kindly made.


I was thankful that I hardly saw anyone on my way up because I am sure that my face was red as a beet. Whenever I did see someone, I usually ended up taking a photo of something so that they couldn't see my redness. By the way, I had never seen hydrangeas in the woods.











Being by myself, I made sure I had my cell phone with me in case I needed to call Ken or someone else.....







You come to an area where you think you have reached the top. You are then greeted with this sign.









When you reach the top (actually I didn't go to the very top today, it is another .4km) there is a clearing that has a gazebo that looks out over the town and the water. This is the view of Okpo from the top.

If you look to the right, you can glimpse a view of the shipyard. If you look closely, you can see the two derricks that are on two of the drillships Ken is working on.


After sitting awhile and enjoying the view, I decided I was getting a little chilly due to the fact that the sweat I had produced was now making me cold. I elected not to warm up on any of the exercise equipment kindly supplied there.
So I headed down.
One of the main reasons I don't like to do these climbs is because after you climb to the top, you have to go down! The steep inclines tend to scare me a bit. So I elected to go the long way down. It definitely has some steeps walks down, but nothing like the path I took up. Since my eyes were mainly on the trail as I managed my way down, you are spared any more of my scenery pictures.

I did have to smile when I saw this along the path at the bottom of the mountain.

laundry day

I thought today I would comment on a mundane part of life - doing laundry. I was inspired by the beautiful day we are having today. Not a great day to be inside doing laundry, but rather a fantastic day for putting your laundry out to dry. Whenever there is a nice sunny day, you will see laundry hanging out of the apartment windows around here. I think that sometimes they are just airing out comforters, but they also have laundry.



Most of the apartments here (and I would guess in most of Korea) have a small room (about the size of a walk in closet) that is usually outside their kitchen.






Some are finished nicely and will have counter space, maybe a kimchi refrigerator and usually a washer/dryer combo. We live in a place that is circa 1980 and it only has a dryer in it (and sometimes a stray centipede). However, I am lucky to have the dryer. It is old, the wiring looks like an accident waiting to happen and the room gets all drippy from the steam if you don't open a window when you are using the dryer. But it does the job.



I also have one of the "handy" washer/dryers in my kitchen. It is a Tromm, which I think is a good brand. Everything is in Korean. The apartment manager had some instructions in English, so you could at least get the gist of it.

I have never used the dryer portion of it since I have been here though. We had one of these when we lived in Scotland in the early 1990's. It was a disaster. Imagine doing 2 loads of laundry - instead of doing one load in the washer, putting it in the dryer and then starting the next load in the washer, you can't start the second load until the first one is completely done. And it just seemed to dry unevenly and made everything very wrinkly....if it was dry at all. Luckily, we lived in a house with a backyard, so we had a clothesline in the backyard and I was able to hang (at least the jeans) out to finish drying. Unfortunately though, we did have alot of foggy and wet days. So sometimes the inside of our house looked like a dry cleaners. I don't know if the machines have advanced much since the 1990's - most of my friends that have one (with no extra dryer) say that they still don't dry well.



Since we live in a duplex, we do have a small garden and a clothesline contraption of sorts. It hangs down right in front of the window of our living area which is quite lovely (not!).
I don't use it on a regular basis. When we first moved here, I thought it would be nice to hang the towels out to dry. But even with using fabric softener in the wash, they came out all stiff and crinkly. Maybe it is the water here? However, the cleaning lady hangs my spare set of sheets out every week to dry and they don't do that.


Look around, and you will find clotheslines everywhere.

In the harbor area.









Outside restaurants.

I have actually seen fish drying on clotheslines along side the clothes. Couldn't find a picture of that, but this is some sort of marine life drying in the sun.









The gas station. Nothing like the scent of gas fumes to make your laundry smell nice and fresh!

in the mood

I know that I have been remiss with my blog lately. To tell you the truth, I just haven't been in the mood.

Because the weather has just been gorgeous and it was so much easier to get outside and marvel over the fall colors. Like the pyracantha berries.

And the chrysanthemums being planted in the pots along the street.

And the bright red peppers drying the sun.


And don't forget all the time I spent outside harvesting persimmons from my very own persimmon tree. Ha! Ha! Yes, I discovered that we have a persimmon tree in our minuscule backyard. I couldn't believe all the persimmons that came from this little tree. I don't particularly like persimmons, but I was excited to have the tree because persimmons (to me) are a very oriental type fruit. It just seemed fitting that I have a persimmon tree. I gave alot of them to my painting teacher.

Speaking of painting.... when I have been indoors, I seem to spend my spare time painting. I wasn't really thrilled to be painting ducks......
or tigers.

But my teacher insisted I try both of them. I actually ended up liking the ducks. But I think I am more a flower and scenery type of painter.

Anyway, we are off to Seoul for the weekend on Friday. When we get back, I think I will be back in the mood to write again.