Getting Lucky

Call it a simplistic analysis if you like, but to a casual observer Buddhism seems to be all about "getting lucky." Temples are surrounded by fortune tellers and trinket sellers and bells you can ring and sacred springs you can drink from... all to bring you luck. Good fortune for your daughters, good fortune for your sons, good fortune for your rice crop - you name it, and you can probably find something to dong, pray to or throw money at to help you out. Similar to some branches of charismatic Christianity, I suspect... When are we going to understand that the gospel calls us to the exact opposite of "getting lucky" - a life of service, and sacrifice, where things won't always go our way?

60 second Tokyo tour

I know how boring it is looking at other peoples' holiday snaps - so here's our tour of Tokyo compressed into a one minute video. Try it - it's painless!

Something fishy going on...

Tokyo's fishmarkets are a major tourist attraction, mainly because they're so vast. It's smelly, it's noisy, it smells of fish... and you're in constant danger of being run down by a tiny truck! Take a look at the video...

Travel Summary

In the last week we...
a) caught the Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka to Tokyo where we stayed three days
b) came back, changed trains at Shin-Osaka and continued to Hiroshima, where we stayed two nights.
c) Spent an afternoon at Miyajima, just out of Hiroshima.
d) Returned to Osaka where Shoko linked up with us at the station.

After trying to fight off a head cold for a few days, at this point I admitted defeat and came down with a nasty fever and chest infection. The pharmacists here refuse to dispense over-the-counter cough medicine... I'd love some Benadryl!

Bomb Zone

Here are a few surprising things I learned from the Atomic Bomb Museum in Hiroshima...
1. By today's standards, the bomb that the Enola Gay dropped on Hiroshima was quite small.
2. Hiroshima was chosen as the target by an American military committee, and was preferred over Tokyo - among other reasons - because 'if it didn't go off' the bomb would land in deep water, and couldn't be recovered and reverse engineered by the Japanese. It went off.
3. America invested $2 billion into developing the A-bomb. That was one of the big reasons they decided to use it for real rather than just stage a demonstration. More bang for your American taxpayers bucks.
3. Almost everything within a 3km radius was flattened. That's big... though I think I expected it would be bigger. Oddly, though, the building immediately under the blast remained standing, probably because the main force was downwards rather than sideways. It's now the Atomic Bomb Dome memorial.
4. A disproportionate number of school kids were killed, as they were being used as forced labour to demolish areas of timber housing around government buildings to reduce the fire threat from bombings. The museum is full of sad little stories of kids who made their way home after suffering horrific burns, and died the next day.
5. Estimates of fatalities vary between 60,000 and 160,000 people. As so many institutional records were destroyed, it was hard to assess.
6. It was kind of eerie walking the streets of Hiroshima after visiting the museum, looking around at the people doing their normal, everyday stuff... the atmosphere would have been much the same in August 1945.

Max Headroom

So far this trip, I have painfully whacked my head almost daily. Yes, I know, I’ｍ a slow learner. But it's not just the short doorways that get me - I've clunked on the overhead handrail in a train, the top edge of the rear opening in a small car, and the exhaust fan in the hostel kitchen. Ouch.

Electric Town

I'm dictating this entry via the new Canon ThoughtScribe I picked up at Akihabura 'Electric Town' this afternoon. Plug in the USB port, stick the electrode on your forehead, and just think the words, and they appear on the whats for dinner screen. It works amazingly well unless you get maybe noodles distracted. Akihabura is like a never-ending Harvey Norman store, with endless cameras, pcs and gadgets. Sadly, though, I'm kidding about the ThoughtScribe. The reality is, I couldn't find anything new and interesting other that a $400 Sony Rolly, a cute egg shaped mp3 player with fold out speakers that rolls around on your table while it plays tunes. Cute. But I won't be bringing one home. Overall, both the prices and the technology are pretty much on par with Brisbane. Globalisation has taken all the fun out of consumer-tourism!

A few good shots...

I've put a few photos online here. I will probably add some more next Saturday. We're off to Tokyo for the week, and we're travelling light, so I won't take the laptop. Goodbye world!

Speaking in Tongues

As reported below (in "One in a Hundred") church today was encouraging. The language barrier was substantial, but most of the tunes were familiar. Apart from anything else, to be so far from home, and in such a different culture, and yet be welcomed as brothers and sisters really packs a powerful punch. Here are a few pics of our 'home away from home.'

Jinglish

Japan has a strange love affair with the English language. I don't think it's for our benefit - they seem to think it's kind of cool to stick english labels on things as decorations, or maybe just because it seems sophisticated. Sometimes the signs even make sense. It's often the sentiment that stands out more than the actual words - like "Hamburger is my Life" on the wall of the burger shop, "something changed! Friends" on the clothing store; or in the case of "Baby Dack", just missing the mark by a letter or two... and I'm just not sure what to make of "Pacari Sweat" softdrink. Good to remember, though, that the standard of their worst attempts at English is still much better than the best of my Japanese. Konichiwa

World's Biggest Wooden Building

Like most historic buildings in Japan, Daibutsu-den Hall (Hall of the Great Buddha) was once destroyed by fire and rebuilt. In fact, I think it's version 3. Even though it was rebuilt at 2/3 the original scale in 1709, it's still the largest wooden building in the world. It also features what I'm sure is one of the largest bronze buddha statue in the world, standing over 16m high*. Photos fail to do it justice. As we walked in the doors, it was hard not to be dumbfounded by both the scale and age of the building itself - even version 3 is hundreds of years old - and the immense scale of the Buddha. If you try scaling from the people in front of the building, you can imagine the statue inside taking up around half the height. Even after a couple of days shrine-watching you start to get jaded ... but this one had the WOW factor. (*Buddha was also recast in the Edo period. Shame about the original.)

Goop

It seems Japanese love eating goop. Doesn't matter if it's rice based goop or bean based goop, if it's sticky and sweet (or even sticky and savoury) they just can't wait to eat it. These guys are bashing rice goop at Nara - whack some rice, add some green colouring, roll it into balls, and the people are queuing to buy it and eat it. Road test results: almost too tough to chew, sickly sweet and generally undesirable. Other goop varieties reside in large buckets, and you can buy them by the sticky scoopful to use in your cooking at home. Interestingly, bean paste is the secret ingedient of the delicious okonomiake, the fantastic omelette dish served with lashings of bbq sauce and mayonnaise. When you think about it, lots of our own food features soy bean meal or 'filler' - it's just that it's disguised under labels like 'ingredient R58.' I suspect that's because we prefer to be protected from the truth. (Another interesting fact... did you know that the flavour base for Marmite is MSG? It's the reason Japanese mayonaise is so delicious too!)

Colour My World

There's something odd going on with colours in Japan. It's like a love-hate relationship. Almost all the modern houses are a dull beige or brown. Almost all the cars and either black, white or silver. (In a ten minute drive today, I counted only around 9 cars of any other colour.) And in a city crowd, most people are similarly monochrome in their outfits. Anyone of 'colour' stands out as a real individual. The odd thing is, of course, that Japan has always been famous for its vivid colours - from the vivid orange highlights on the Kiyomizu Temple to the traditional silk outfits of the Geisha, to the garish pink and lime signage, it seems there's a kind of overcompensation for the drabness of everything else. The soon-to-bud cherry blossoms will no doubt liven things up too.

One in a Hundred

Only one percent of Japan is nominally "Christian." That's why it was a huge surprise when our homestay girl Shoko emailed after she returned to Japan to say her mum had become a Christian. Even weirder, her church had connections with our missionary friend Grahame Smith, who was doing university evangelism in Kobe with KGK through CMS. Last night we had a great dinner with Kayoko's church friends Kazu and Yoko Iumi and their daughter Nozumi, a beaut Christian family. (Picture -Yoko and Nozumi with Shoko) Kazu was converted when studying in Hawaii; Yoko met him there and was soon converted too. Their three daughters are all keen Christians, and his mum and her mum and dad are now Christians too - after some resistance at first! It's a great story, and great to see a fine family of daughters who have all the bearing and grace of delightful Christian women. All this while surrounded by the sort of idolatry that Paul wept over in Acts 17. And we think it's tough for us! Nozumi translated the sermon for us at church this morning; the style of church was much like ours, with a small band, and faithful bible teaching. Around 70 people attended including loads of young adults; they completed their 3 story building last year at a cost of (as best as I could understand with all the extra zeroes floating around) just under a million dollars. It's a great facility, and one that indicates they're serious about being here for the long haul. Yoko told me that their contemporary style shocks some of the more traditional ministers in their denomination - but it's one of the reasons the church is alive and well. Or conversely, because the church is alive and well, they're adapting to the new generation, while many of the other churches in the 110 strong denomination are fading away. In summary, the gospel seems alive and well - Shoko's mum is testimony to that - but the church is facing the same struggles we have at home.

Technology

I'm not sure which I'm going to miss the most when I get home...
the heated squirty toilet seats...
the self-opening cab doors...
or the electric horse exercise machines.

Other than that, Japan seems surprisingly low-tech. A surprising number of shopping centre doors, for example, are NOT automatic. And other stuff seems much like home.

Kyoto

As an industrial city, Kyoto is famous for something to do with the auto industry... Toyo tyres maybe? Or Mitsubishi? I don't recall. It's also famous for its history, with shrines, temples and other national treasures scatted liberally around the city. Kinkakuji, "The Golden Temple" (or Golden Pavilion?) is totally covered with gold leaf, and looks impressive. Sadly, the original, which was a thousand or so years old, burned down in 1950, and was rebuilt in 1955. Many of the ancient buildings have a similar story to tell, as almost all of them are cedar. Next we visited Kitano-tenman-gu, which was surrounded by artists with sketchpades. After spending the night at Kyoto Century Hotel, right near the station (which is the second largest building in Japan) we caught a cab to Kiyomizu Dera, sensational in traditional orange trim, on top of the hill approached by Teapot Lane. Loads of tourist shops there, all well priced. Lunch of Oikonomiake was delicious.

Washing

I think we're creating a daily faux pas by declining to bath before bedtime. There's a huge culture of washing here, which is maybe kind of relaxing, but is also hygeiene related. It's hard to know where they draw the line. The bathroom here is complex - a two room arrangement, where the second (wet) room is totally devoted to the bath and shower. There's special rubber footwear, a special rubber mat, a hand-held shower, and a spa bath that you leave the water in for the next person - though we've been assured you can change the water if you want to! We're sticking firmly to one shower per day in the morning, though so far we've been asked every night if we'd like to take a bath. They are always surprised when we decline... and maybe a little off-put.

Cars

Here we are at home base of the huge Japanese auto industry, and all people seem to drive is funny little box shaped cars, or Toyota Crowns that look exactly like the 1978 model driven by Uncle John. Especially the cabs - they're everywhere, and they're either old, or look like it. I suspect there's a factory somewhere pumping out the classic design. One thing I definitely haven't seen is a new model Mitsubishi Lancer like the one we drive at home. I'll keep spotting.