Finding Inspiration

Everybody has something for which they hold the opinion that, "If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all."  For example, the summer I moved to Korea for the first time, my parents took my younger siblings and I on a road trip to Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Now, if family road trips are challenging as kids, trust me when I say that they are even more difficult when you're adults, because everyone has an opinion and they all feel entitled to them.  My opinion was that I wanted to visit the art museum in Minneapolis.  My mom, on the other hand, had the aforementioned belief that as she'd already been to a few galleries in her day (mostly on my account) and thus, was good.

I bring this up in my Matsuyama interlude because I went to - you guessed it - more temples in Matsuyama (and - guess what?!? - there will be one more in Hiroshima.  Don't shoot me).  I had a really good reason for visiting so many temples and shrines.  Of course there was the pilgrimage and the fact that spiritual seeking is one of my things, but there was a little more to it than that this time.

I was hunting dragons.

I've mentioned my painting course in passing a couple of times, and I'm planning to eventually write about my body of work for the semester, but this is not (really) that post.  This is relevant because the subject of my second work is a kawaii pink dragon.  He has been a pain in the ass because I can't seem to get the back legs right, and to be honest, I'm not entirely happy with the front legs, but it's not exactly like I can call up my neighborhood dragon, and be like, "Yo D, my homes - come over and help me re-enact that scene from Titanic!"  So I've trawled the internet, the National Museum, and more than a few temples looking for source material.

Now, if I wasn't dragon hunting, temple hopping might get a little boring.  If, you know, I wasn't me and digging the atmosphere and taking shit tons of photos.  But because I had something to find, it made me take a closer look, really noticing what was in each shrine and temple.  So the moral of the story is that if someone you love is annoying the everloving crap out of you by dragging you to five bazillion things that - as far as you're concerned - are completely and totally indistinguishable, try and find something to look for.  Make a game out of it.

Or else you could ditch them.  I mean, either short-term or long-term - up to you.  One of my favorite things about being single is not having to pretend to be interested in other people's stuff, and this includes traveling, although I guess the argument could be made that you miss out on opportunities.  Really, the ideal travel buddies the ones that you can confidently leave to do their own thing at times - I pretty much refuse to go anywhere with someone who doesn't meet this qualification.

I was also trying to find ema - the wooden plaques you write your wishes on at temples and shrines.  In the last post I talked about the paintings I saw on some, and I've been toying with using them for my final painting project to create an installation of self-portraits about wishes.  The dragon at the front on the left was a particularly good score, since it references my current work. 

I can squeak one more dragon reference into this post, and bring up Spirited Away, Studio Ghibli's masterpiece about a girl who falls in love with a dragon in a bathhouse.  (Yes, that makes it sound sketchy...I prolly did that intentionally).  I've read in more than one place that Dogo Onsen was Miyazaki's inspiration for the bathhouse in Spirited Away, and after checking it out, I can believe it.  Dogo Onsen is one of the oldest in Japan (a country that loves their public baths), and their spring is known as kami-no-yu - the water of the gods.  Its facilities aren't as extensive as some I've been to, but you can feel the history etched into the walls as you soak away your train-induced weariness.  Considering its long, glorious history - everyone from empresses to Japanese literature's greatest writer have visited - the 410 admission seems pretty reasonable.

Speaking of Japan's greatest writer (according to some...) I coincidentally started my first Natsume Soseki book in Matsuyama - I Am a Cat, although I realize (now) it should have been Botchan if we work on the same principle that led me to re-read Kafka on the Shore this trip.  It's interesting, but so far my vote is still for Haruki Murakami.  I'm sure that will come as a surprise to nobody who both a.) has read any of his books, and b.) knows me.

Shrine Maiden

It occurs to me that if my life were a novel...let's say a light novel, being in Japan and all...the theme would be "experiencing things that can't be seen."  This strikes me as ironic, considering how much I love taking pictures, but still I've written before about the fact that most of what I do - in travel as well as other aspects of my life - has a spiritual theme to it.  My favorite anime almost all include aspects of higher powers.  If you extend this to include fantasy, then basically everything of any nature I willingly choose to read or watch is included.  I even take my history with a healthy dose of mythology - who needs hard facts and evidence when you can spin tales of the gods?  What can I say?  Mundane reality is kind of boring.

Today I decided I would go to one of Kyoto's bajillion shrines - literally.  Sunday afternoon a couple of foreigners stopped to ask me where the shrine was and I had to stop myself from laughing in their faces.  Shrine?  Which one???? -  that I missed eleven years ago.  Daigo-Ji is more than a little off the beaten track, its mountain being tucked behind already-off-the-track Fushimi-Inari-Taisha.  But then I saw a shot of this scene, and decided I had to go.  That is way too gorgeous to pass up.  Sadly, the fall colors haven't hit their high note yet.  Engrish got me all fired up talking about some thing she'd seen on the interwebs about Kyoto's fall foliage, and I was hoping to see some of it, but by and large the party hasn't started.  Still, totally worth it.

There is a final ticket booth before you enter the area leading up to that scene.  (I assume the pamphlet they gave me explains what that building is, but I got better things to do than read brochures on vacation, so I guess I'm going to keep calling it that).  After you buy your ticket, or have it torn, if you bought it already, you enter this densely wooded grove.  When I stepped inside, I was hot and sweaty - the sun had been beating down and October in Kyoto feels a lot like July in Ulaanbaatar.  As I walked up the path, suddenly a chill breeze blew toward me, and when I stepped out of the grove at the other end, the skies were cloudy.

It felt as it I had stepped into a different world, one where scenes like this are actually possible.  I wanted to lie down in the sun on that patch of moss and pull it over me like a blanket, build a house there and start raising baby Totoros.  The amount of beautiful places like this that exist in or around Kyoto is mind-blowing.

Finding things to do in the evening is always a challenge for me, and when I found myself pondering what to do tonight, I came up with a genius plan...I was going to go to yet ANOTHER off-the-beaten-track shrine place.  I didn't think I was going to get to go to Kibune, but having nothing better to do, I decided dinner, a shrine visit, and a soak in the onsen was in order.  Thus, I hopped the train bound for Kurama, getting off at the Kibune stop, and walked over to the bus stop that would take me up the hill.  It was 5:24.  The last bus came at 5:24.  I counted myself lucky and headed on up to the village, admiring all the waterfalls along the narrow, poorly lit road along the way.

I walked up to the shrine, figuring I'd have dinner at a restaurant so it could get good and dark before I started shooting.  Except, all the restaurants seemed to be closed.  Kibune is famous for their kawadoko restaurants, set up on platforms over the river that keep you nice and cool during the summer.  Unfortunately, summer is behind us, the amount I have sweated in the last few days notwithstanding, so they were all closed.  Nevermind, I told myself, I've survived all day on a single cookie - I'll manage a while longer.  I went ahead and took my photos, and started walking back down the hill, til I got to Kibune onsen, which the bus had passed on it's way up.  It was nice, but small, with only 5 pools.  Since I was the only one there, I wasn't too bothered, but it probably gets crowded when it's not 6pm on a Tuesday night in October.

Alright now, here's where it gets interesting.

Actually, it gets boring from here.  Mom, if you've been reading this, you should stop now.  I left the onsen all fresh and clean, walked outside, and - poof! - I was back in central Kyoto.





Is she gone???  Cause actually, it got a little scary then.  See, the bus wasn't running anymore.  I was way the heck up on the side of a mountain, in the deep, dark woods, with a decently long, poorly-lit road running alongside a rushing creek between me and the train station.  AND I have been reading this sort of creepy urban fantasy book for the last week or so, with nasty things lurking in the dark trying to kill each other.  This was either a terrible time to have an overactive imagination...or a good one, I guess, if you want to look at it that way.  I can't remember all of the 23rd Psalm, but I remember that good line about, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."  And it seemed entirely apropos all of a sudden.  When that started to feel repetitive, I started singing hymns.  It probably says something about my spiritual state that I have forgotten a fair number of words, but then, how many songs can you sing perfectly with all the words?  That's what I thought.  And then - hallelujah! - a very nice Japanese lady pulled her car over and asked if I would like a ride?  But what did I do?  I told her it was okay.

Yes, you read that right.  I literally fucking - excuse my language, this was supposed to be some sort of spiritual post and it has degraded into profanity, but I can't express my sheer idiocy without it - I literally fucking told her, "It's okay."  Now up to that point, it had been okay.  The road wasn't perfectly well lit but there were street lights pretty regularly and no monsters had jumped out of the woods to devour my soul.  But just around that corner, there were no lights.  The road continued to wind.  The station was not right there like I suppose I must have thought it was - I felt like I'd been walking for a while.  So she drove off and when I realized what I'd just done...as educators we say, "You made a bad choice."  And then the praying really got intense, alternating with me freaking out on myself a little.

I believe there is a lesson there for me about making bad fucking choices and how it leads to walking in the dark, but I try not to get too religious on my blog, so we'll leave it where I'm most comfortable - with profanity.  Which probably demonstrates said lesson in some way, but again, I'll leave it at that.

Spiriting Away

When the Robot show was over, I was pretty much ready to leave Tokyo.  I didn't get to see everything I would have liked, but I came damn close.  The fact is, though, you can't "do" Tokyo in a few days, or really even a month.  I think to really see a city as big and complex as Tokyo you need to live there, get to know it a little at a time...but I guess that's true of anywhere.  That's what drew me into this life and made a hopeless wanderer of me.

Every theme park needs animated characters - these were from a series called Tiger & Bunny

In spite of the fact that I'm a prudish (stop choking on your laughter, Domestic Goddess), most decidedly FAT American, I love public bathing.  I've done it in Korea, Turkey, China (it's not really a Chinese thing, but they like their Korean dramas, so the few Korean saunas in Shanghai did quite well), and even in Kyoto, my first trip in Japan (an electrifying experience - literally!  I visited one of the onsen Lonely Planet recommended, and it had an electric bath, which gave you a shock, sitting in it).

I took a lot of baths during this trip - the B&B Pension, where I stayed in Hakone, gave me a discount pass for the Yunessun onsen, which I made good use of, and my ryokan in Tokyo had their own Japanese style bath.  Under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn't have gone to Oedo Onsen World, but it let me get "close" to the airport, while giving me something to do through the wee small hours before checking in for my flight.  I took one of the newer lines of the Tokyo metro, which went over a bridge to the artificial islands in the bay, and gave me a great view of the city (something which I hadn't seen yet) before letting me off a block from the "bathing theme park."  It was one of the weirdest experiences I've had with public bathing thus far.

In the initial changing area you leave your street clothes and change into a yukata.  I thought this would be a vast improvement over the "uniform" you wear at Korean jjimjjilbangs, whose shorts have lately, inexplicably become too tight on me...  The top part of the women's yukata fit me fine, but my hips are apparently "fuller" than your typical Japanese woman's.  So I took it back and asked if I could try the men's largest size.  When they finally got permission for me to do that - heaven forbid I cross-dress in a piece of clothing that's essentially unisex! - I went back to the changing area to try again.  Not surprisingly, I am also hippier than your typical Japanese man.  >le sigh<  Fortunately I had a pair of leggings, and if I looked a little weird, well, I guess that's truth in advertising.

I thought about trying a couple of new things on the blog during my time in Tokyo.  There are times when a camera can't actually capture what the moment is like, or when you're not allowed to take pictures, and to remedy this, I decided to try writing more lyrically, and to make drawings.  Except I didn't get around to doing the drawings I was going to do of the steam swirling up from the outdoor, rock-lined baths under the moonlight.  Being naked in a huge pool of hot spring water with the night air cooling your skin as you look up at the stars is amazing, but you'll have to imagine it.  Heck, if you get to Oedo Onsen World late enough, you'll have to imagine it, even though you can see it just outside from the indoor baths - they lock up the outside part at midnight.  That was kind of a raw deal - while the actual baths are gender segregated, there is an outdoor area with doctor fish and a walking bath and other cool stuff that I didn't get to try.  The whole point of going there was that they were open through the night, but I wish I could have had a little more time before the closed down those areas.

Instead I had the indoor part to explore, which was decorated to look like an old Japanese town from whatever era.  There are shops and restaurants in this part, and several of them were still open, even after midnight.  It seemed like an awfully long time since my shabu-shabu supper at that point, so I had an order of gyoza and an order of edamame, neither of which I'd had by then.  The gyoza was fine, but I was shocked that the edamame were served cold!  Our sushi place here in UB, Miko, serves them warm, but when I got back and asked Blondie she said that they're prepared differently depending on the season. 

In case you are in Tokyo and thinking this is a good way to kill time before an early flight, you should know that there are shuttles that go from Onsen World to both Haneda and Narita, but apparently you have to make a reservation.  I only found out about them when I was checking in, but the man who told me said that it would be okay, and that the bus is at 3:50.  When I left around then, I asked again, and was told that no, I needed a reservation.  Not only was that disappointing, the extra time at the onsen cost me - 1600 yen, I think? - and I had to pay for a taxi still, too.  I'd planned to take a taxi, anyways - and it cost me 6000 yen! - but I would have left earlier and saved myself a little bit of money if I'd known I couldn't take the bus.

Spring Forward; Fall's Back!

My last week has gone by in a cherry-coke fueled blur.  I have done really well at building good habits in the last year, and that has kind of all gone out the window.  Luckily, tomorrow is another day, Ms. Scarlett, and hey, when we've actually got cherry coke in Mongolia, can you blame me for a little...indulgence?  I've also spend quite a lot of the last 24 hours indulging my other addiction - reading.  My knickers have been in a twist ever since the most recent October Daye book came out, and I've had no way to read it - my Nook broke and it wasn't available for Nook for web yet.  I finally broke down and ordered a hard copy from Amazon (along with a bunch of other stuff that I honestly probably didn't need...), and then yesterday, I checked Evil's account, and it was ready for the web reader.  I got an hour into it before I had to meet my friends, and it was hard to convince myself that I should go have lunch with them...or dinner, rather.  We were actually trying to have a cultural experience, but after an hour and a half on the bus without making it as far as the British school, we gave up and went to have Indian instead.  Worse things have happened.  When I got home, I started reading again, and I just finished the book about an hour ago (yes, I slept.  Surprisingly).  It was excellent.  The problem, of course, is that now I have to wait another year for the next one.  :-(

Last weekend, on the other hand, was more interesting.  I've learned something new about Engrish: I don't have to ask if she wants to go to the countryside, because apparently the answer will always be yes.  I wanted to visit Amarbayasgalant Monastery, but Enkhe suggested a different option - the Tsenkher hot springs.  So off we went, with Geek in tow.  The downside to this trip was most of the driving was from UB to Kharkhorin - having seen it before makes it a little boring when you're driving for five hours.  On the upside, I got to add another animal crossing to my list - cranes, or togoruu in Mongolian.  And Geek had never seen the phallic rock in Kharkhorin (their driver wouldn't take them), while I discovered that the big phallic rock had been moved before our last adventure.  Good to have that figured out...now to just track down what happened to it.

We drove through what Lonely Planet calls the "prettiest aimag capital in Mongolia," Tsetserleg, but didn't stop.  Enkhe found the side road that he needed and started toward the hot spring.  The scenery in Arkhangai was magnificent...lots more trees and hills and rocks.   Enkhe said he thought he was lost at one point, which we didn't believe, but didn't care too much either way, because it was really that beautiful, and eventually his awesome sense of direction was proven right and we saw the ger camps surrounding the spring.

There are at least three of them there.  Two are listed in Lonely Planet, and we ended up staying at the expensive one (35,000 tugrugs a night not including food is expensive in Mongolia, although it's really only 20 bucks, and none of us minded paying for a little luxury).  Duut Resort is fairly new and looked nicer than the first one we poked our heads into.  Their food was good, although also expensive - the stir-fried beef we had for lunch was 18,000 tugrugs a plate, but it really was beef, which is always nice. 

After lunch we went for a little walk - hike seems like too strong a word - because Enkhe didn't think we were stressed enough to truly appreciate the hot springs.  We visited the source of the spring, and the water was REALLY hot.  It came out of the rock in little trickles, and there were man-made pools to catch it right there (you can see Geek sticking her finger in).  It was really soft, too, but I'm not sure what mineral gave it that quality - the only thing I've ever felt like this water was Dead Sea water, which has a sort of slippery feel (yeah, I know, it's kind of funny to call water "slippery").  I know the Tsenkher water didn't have salt in it, though.  Trust me - after foolishly opening my tortilla chips with my knife I would have known if there was salt in that water!

This is kind of the beginning of fall, here, and the color was coming up in the hillsides.  You can start to get an idea of what the forest looked like from this photo.  There were wild strawberries and some sort of other edible berry, as well as all the beautiful foliage.  After our pathetically short hike we were ready to hit the baths.  The pools were lined with stones, and it was nice sinking into a nice, hot bath...I've really missed the Korean bathhouses.  The manager on duty (I guess - he could just be their in-house English speaker) was very accommodating, and made the water hotter for us.  Their pools were segregated by gender, but there was no screen to hide you from prying eyes or splashing kids (the former wasn't a problem - we went with their "recommendation" of wearing swimsuits - but when we went in before bed there were three rowdy kids that eventually Engrish banished to the men's pool by virtue of her mad Mongolian skills and their lack of a mother in our pool).  The men that were out were playing some music, which we started singing along to, and it turned into a karaoke party featuring me and Engrish belting out Adele's best.

This trip also prompted a lot of thinking about whether I shouldn't do another year here.  There are just SO many amazing places in Mongolia, and there's no way I'm going to be able to make it to all of them.  The one I wish I had time to go to right now is Sukhbaatar aimag - they witness a huge migration of swans each year, and Engrish said it was amazing when she went.  There's also the fact that I kind of want to buy a ger.  My parents would probably NOT be thrilled with me if I brought yet another thing home to leave, but we could set it up in the corner of the field so I'd have my own little home, and the Princess, Dirt Devil, and Bunny could use it for a playhouse when they visited.  Also, I would definitely have the coolest "tent" at family reunions...if I could get my dad to agree to bring it with us!  I don't think I can afford to buy all the bits of the ger - about $5000 according to Enkhe - and ship it home this year, and this random, somewhat crazy sort of desire may fade before long.  A much more compelling argument is that both Five and Domestic Goddess both really miss Mongolia.  You get over it eventually (most of the time - there's always a little part of me still yearning for Korea), but at this point, I really love my life.  I love my students and just about all of my coworkers, I've adjusted to the changes from last year, and the negative things - first and foremost, the ridiculously cold winter - I've gotten used to (seriously...you wouldn't believe how tolerant I am of the cold.  I hardly even noticed the dung fire that the herders made for us our first night never really burned).  But we'll see.  As I've said, the world is a really big place and I haven't even begun to see it.