Melting into the Sun at Nijo-jo Castle

On one of the hottest, muggiest days of the summer so far, Skylar and I decided to put on our matching "grandma sun hats," stockpile the C.C. Lemon soda and iced green tea bottles, and bicycle from Doshisha University to the famous Nijo-jo Castle. The castle is one of the most popular tourist destinations for everyone who has ever traveled through Kyoto--right up there with Kinkakuji (the "Golden Pavillon") and Kiyomizu-dera Temple.

The trick to biking in the hot summer sun here--where there is simply no breeze whatsoever to cool you down--is to keep on moving. The faster you pedal, the cooler you feel. That is, until you stop, and then you melt from head to toe with heat exhaustion.

Nijo-jo Castle was built in 1603, when the shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa moved into its palatial quarters as his home sweet home. It is stunning as a piece of well fortified architecture--a double moat--with both an "inny" and and "outy" as Skylar points out. The castle is perhaps best known for its "uguisu bari"--or creaking floorboards that are engineered to sound like a bunch of singing nightingales should any assassin sneak into the castle on a secret mission to take down the warlord. Everyone who visits Nijo-jo loves walking on these squeaky wooden floorboards and seeing the "secret" compartments where the shogun's personal bodyguards would hide out ready to attack at a moment's notice.

When I told Skylar this story, he said it was the dumbest thing he ever heard of. He said he thought it was a total waste of a ninja to send one inside the castle on an assassination "hit." If it had been up to him, he would have sent a pack of ninjas across the moat by the main entrance to create a diversion. Then, he would have simply shot some flaming arrows directly into the highly combustible rice paper shoji screens in the castle's windows and burned the whole place to the ground.

I used to think that my 10 year old son might be the reincarnated soul of some wise old Buddist monk from Enrakuji Temple on Mt. Hiei. After eight weeks in Japan, I'm beginning to think he might instead be the reincarnated soul of one of Oda Nobunaga's craftiest tactical warriors--one of those guys who made mincemeat out of places like Enrakuji. When it comes to envisioning some of the dirtiest tactics for how warfare in old Kyoto might have been improved, Skylar rules.

More Kotooshu

Yesterday, Kotooshu went down for the count. Skylar says I am jinxing our favorite sumo wrestler. Whenever I watch him compete, he loses. If I miss his 3 minutes on television, he wins. I made the great mistake yesterday of lingering at home just long enough to watch him take on his arch rival, Toyonoshima. The latter twirled and tossed our favorite Bulgarian down into the dohyo in what the sumo pundits described as a "perfectly timed beltless arm throw." Is it too late for Kotooshu to turn things around? The Japanese press is mad at him and likes to remind everyone that as a little boy, Kotooshu had a powder puff predilection for baking (and eating?) too many caramel filled cakes. So what is he in 2008? A wimpy caramel cake baker? Or a powerful wannabee Yokozuna? I will shun the TV today and keep my fingers crossed for his fourth match.

Last night I had a dream: I was pinned down by a 340lb Bulgarian caramel cake and could not move. Skylar says I really need to stop watching so much television.

The Return of Kotooshu

The two best things about July in Japan (in this order):
The return of Kotooshu, our favorite 340lb Bulgarian sumo wrestler, to late afternoon television and the colorful festivities of the Gion Matsuri Festival in downtown Kyoto.

The Nagoya Grand Sumo Tournament began just two days ago and our Bulgarian boy got off to a rocky start. The gods did not favor him on Day One (Skylar thinks it's because Kotooshu did not throw enough salt into the dohyo and didn't look fiercely enough into his opponent's eyes during the "cold warrior" stare-down before they smashed into one another). At any rate, before you could blink, Kotooshu was tossed out. But yesterday, was a different story. Yesterday, he was, according to Skylar, "in the zone" and was able to use the classic sumo wrestler move "oshidashi" and pushed his hefty opponet Hokutoriki right out of the ring. If Kotooshu can remain focused, and if he can keep the evil spirits away, he has a shot at reaching the title of Yokozuna--which is a Japanese way of saying the "Big Kahuna" of Sumo. To us though, whether or not he wins in Nagoya, he is just a hunka hunka burning Bulgarian love.

Link to beautiful Kyoto photo blog

Check out this lovely blog by a Doshisha colleague who posts gorgeous daily photos taken in and around Kyoto.

http://yakumosworld.aminus3.com/

Iwatayama Monkey Park

There's a good reason why there are warning signs that say, “do not feed the monkeys," posted all over the walkway leading up to the Iwatayama Monkey Park. Those things have gigantic canine teeth—razors in fact that they do not hesitate to use on a daily basis.

Skylar and I thought that the macaques at Kyoto's monkey park were a little terrifying. (Personally, I’ve spent too much time as an undergraduate watching how macaques interact with one another to know that they can get ugly really fast). After climbing up the trail to the park, where some 200 Japanese macaques live in the open as one big happy extended monkey family, you can go into the safety of an enclosed human retreat that looks suspiciously like the primitive human cage in Episode 1 of "Planet of the Apes."

For 100 yen you can then offer the monkeys treats in the form of sliced apples, chestnuts, or sweet potatoes. They know the drill. When they see that you have purchased a plastic bag of goodies, they swarm around the caged windows with their hands thrust through, palms outstretched, in a kind of “Brother, can you spare a dime?” gesture. This is when the alpha male gets busy. The alpha monkey tries to hog all the handouts for himself. If other monkeys dare to stretch their hands towards you, he grabs them by the head--or any convenient wound--and twists, pulls, and bites until the lower ranking brethren run away screaming for their lives.

I tried to outwit the Alpha by surreptitiously bypassing him and slipping a sweet potato on the sly to some of the monkey mothers who were holding their babies while muttering under my breath, “sorry, I don’t feed alphas.”

Skylar was too nervous to feed any of the monkeys directly (probably because I had already traumatized him on the hike up the hill with tale after tale of “The World’s Worst Monkey on Human Attacks"). Or maybe, because ever since I made him sit through all five parts of the "Planet of the Apes," he just can't bring himself to trust our simian friends. After all, look where it got Charlton Heston.

Geisha Celebrity Sightings

If you judge by our growing collection of photos of the back of various maikos that we have spotted in Kyoto, one thing is clear: we have become shameless "geisha" stalkers. How embarrassing. But what is perhaps more embarrassing is that there is a mini-industry in Kyoto for women who harbor geisha fantasies and pay to dress up and walk through the Gion district wearing full kimono, makeup, and wigs. Here's the cultural challenge for tourists: Can you spot the "real" geisha from the "fake"? It's entirely possible that we've been stalking fake geishas all along.

Attack of the deer at Nara & Skylar declines enlightenment

Skylar, Grandma Chiyohi, and I joined our neighbor Y for a Saturday outing to the famous and nearby historical city of Nara. Our destination: The magnificent Todai-ji temple (which includes the Daibutsuden, a.k.a., "the Great
Buddha Hall"--the largest wooden structure in the world--which houses the largest bronze statue of Buddha in Japan--created in 752AD).

Nara is also famous both as the "birth place" of Japanese culture and for the hundreds of deer which roam freely and under protection as a sacred animal in this ancient city.The sacred deer, however, are so badly spoiled by all the tourists who feed them sacred biscuits (which you can conveniently purchase on the spot for 150 yen) as well as anything else people might be munching on from the many vendors surrounding the temple. As a result, the deer act more like badly behaved ponies with antlers as they beg, follow, and dive bomb anything that looks remotely like food in your hand. One deer ate grandma's paper admission ticket to the temple (right out of her handbag when she wasn't looking), another clenched my teeshirt between its teeth in a vicious tug-of-war, and another nipped me in the stomach. Skylar thought all of this was quite hilarious and definitely more entertaining than anything going in inside the temple.


Speaking of which, behind the great bronze Buddha, there is a famous wooden support column with a small hole carved into its base. It is said that whoever can squeeze through the hole will receive enlightenment. After watching countless toddlers shimmy through the hole (and at least one very skinny female high school student do the same), Skylar declined the invitation to crawl through. Besides, he reminded us, he already squeezed through the opening seven years ago and has been receiving the benefits every since.
Outside the Daibutsuden there is also an 18th century wooden statue of Binzuru (one of the disciples of Buddha). Many believe that if you rub any part of Binzuru's body and then touch the corresponding ailing part on your own, you will be healed. I tried to persuade Grandma to rub Binzuru's aching legs and then touch her own, but she said there was no way she was going to touch something that one million people had already rubbed this year. It just wasn't sanitary.