Where the Wild Things Are

The post-vacation blues are hitting me hardcore right now.  With the exception of Sensei's fantastic Hallowgiving feast, I basically didn't leave the house the last two days.  I just slept and avoided my homework.  Now I'm sitting in my classroom, which is way too quiet because Horn Blower is on maternity leave, totally demotivated because I got to rehash the glory days during my discussions with the Kawaii Kingpin last week and I can't.  I just can't.  I'm sure I'll get over it eventually, but I can't even use the best holiday of all time to derail my funk because this is a "non-denominational school" so we don't celebrate it.  Sucks to be me.

I've been preparing on my own though, in my own way, by watching some spooky anime.  I started with the most gorgeous piece of horror you could imagine, Mononoke, and chased it with a more child-friendly anime with a long, distinguished history:  Gegege no Kitaro.  At the time, I didn't know that it was going to lead right into my vacation, but I started to figure it out on day 3, as I passed the Toei Studio and thought, "Wait a minute, why do I know that name?"

I stopped on my way back, but overall I felt like it was a huge waste of money, and mama always said, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."  However, you may infer from my backwards peace sign that I wasn't super happy.  That said, it at least got me thinking, and once I start thinking, that's when you have to watch out.  "And now," cried the Great One, "let the wild rumpus start!"

Because basically Kyoto is an old city filled with youkai, yurei, and all sorts of other spiritual beings.  My first encounter with them came courtesy of an article on Sora News.  It turns out that Kitaro's origin story comes from a shop in Higashiyama.  Four-hundred years ago this candy shop was repeatedly visited by a woman at midnight to buy candy.  When the curiosity of the shop owner finally got the best of him, he tailed her to a nearby graveyard, where she disappeared.  When he got to the spot where he vanished, he found a fresh grave and heard a baby crying from within.  The legend goes that the mother's ghost was trying to keep the child alive, and the shop now calls their specialty "ghost child-care candy."  Is this story full of holes?  Maybe, but supposedly it's true - the baby who was rescued from the grave went on to become a priest.  Or so they say.  I tracked the shop down and bought some of the candy, and it was alright, but I don't think I would come back as a ghost for it.

After that, I really had no choice but to visit the Mizuki Shigeru exhibit at the Ryukoku Museum.  I discovered a poster for it while wandering around Teramachi.  He's the mangaka responsible for Gegege no Kitaro, and it was interesting to see the artwork, and the ways his illustrations were different from more contemporary manga.  That said, nothing was in English.  I went in knowing that, so I don't really have any regrets especially since you don't have to read kanji to read art.  But it might have been nice to actually learn something...for example, why a museum devoted to Buddhism had an exhibit about a mangaka.  But I digress.  The art was good.  I got ideas.  It was not as crowded as many museums I've been to.  Overall it was a win.

If you're thinking this should probably be part of an Otaku Report, you're not wrong.  There's actually one coming up, but this post kind of turned into its own thing.

Let's hope that eyeball doesn't stand up...

I thought I'd seen everything after a trip to the bookstore my penultimate night in Kyoto, but then I went to the Hosomi Museum for their exhibition called "Shunga* and Youkai."  It's a slightly misleading title, because you think it's going to combine both themes simultaneously.  While there are some works that do - the scroll that showed a walking penis and vagina, for example, or the tanukis who were cuddled up under their own scrotums, giving new meaning to the phrase "hot as balls" - on the whole the exhibition showed either shunga or youkai in ukiyo-e.  Which is actually for the best...I'd already been scarred enough that week.

I had one last close encounter with the unseen world while I was on vacation, and it happened on Youkai Street.  Taishogun street - as it's officially called - is a shopping street near Kitano Tenmangu.  The catch is that many of the shops are inhabited by monsters.  According to yet another legend, once upon a time a bunch of discarded household objects felt hurt and abandoned by humanity, so they became youkai and returned to march on the area.  These days the sculptures, handmade by the shopkeepers, are pretty friendly and go about their business without causing any issues.  They hold events though, which I sadly missed - both the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons and the Mononoke Ichi happened before I got there.

With that, the school day is almost over.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and since I'm not dead yet I suppose I'll manage to get through tomorrow, too.  After all, it's only 35 working days til Christmas break...

*Shunga is a genre of Japanese erotic art, basically the forerunner of hentai.  So the next time someone tells you, "It's called hentai, and it's art," they're not totally inaccurate.  Just FYI.