Chasing Waterfalls

(Subtitle: That Time I Almost Rekt Myself Again )

If you're a longtime reader, you may remember that two years ago I tried to hike up to a waterfall.  Emphasis on tried, because some dumbass went up the wrong trail.  Originally I didn't plan to rectify that this go-round because I've become fairly lazy and also, I'm pink-blooded, which I'll probably explain some other time.  Then I started looking around the Arashiyama area, and realized I actually did want to hike that mother, particularly when I realized that I could take a single bus all the way to Kiyotaki.  That was my early roll-out I was trying to manage Tuesday - which probably I shouldn't have been quite so cloak-and-daggers about, I had a couple of worst-case scenario moments when I realized nobody would have a clue where to find my body - but believe it or not, I made it.

I had Google maps plot out the bus route and watched my phone as I got closer and closer.  Finally we pulled into the last bus stop and as I hopped off the bus I clicked on the x that marked the spot (or, you know, the star, because Google Maps doesn't have an x), and hit the directions button.  And waited.  AND waited.  And looked up at the mountains surrounding me on all sides.  This was when I realized that I didn't have service, and would have to rely on my wits.  Which admittedly are not what they used to be.

That said, I have a damn good memory, and I'd looked at the course relatively recently, so I figured I might actually be okay.  I'd just stick beside the river until I got to a trail that seemed to go toward the star that I could at least see on Maps.  It didn't take long, though, to realize my lack of directions might not be my only problem.  Remember the other day how I said the typhoon had done enough damage to call off the Kurama Hi Matsuri?  Well, they didn't make that shit up.  Trees were down all over the place.  The first time the trail split, there was caution tape (aka, keep out if you know what's good for you), and although I was afraid that was the trail I needed, I took my chances on the main trail, marveling at the amount of work it must have taken to clear it.  Of course, it was too good to last, and I eventually  came to a couple of trees leaning against power lines.

All those deeply ingrained childhood warnings about falling trees and power lines were yelling at me to turn around.  You'll be glad to know I ignored them.  Unless, of course, you're one of my parents, in which case, hell, you've had plenty of time to get used to my dumbassery.

I finally got to a turning I could take, and referred to Google Maps to see roughly which direction the star was.  It seemed pretty close and to the west.  If that hadn't been my clue, there was a stream trickling down from that direction, and a family of tanuki was watching me from the side of the trail.  I was pretty sure I was going to make my mark.

Up to this point the hike had been - as Shaggy and I (on separate occasions) had proclaimed to our sainted mother about other hikes - "not that bad."  It was vaguely uphill, but paved the whole way.  I hadn't stopped to rest at all, and I'm not really in good shape.  As I branched off from the main path...well, it still wasn't that bad, but it was definitely uphill.  And the further along I got, the more trees were fallen all over the place.  Probably they hadn't gotten around to putting the caution tape up.  Maybe they didn't think they needed to, that nobody would be dumb enough to go trekking up to the waterfall given the condition of the rest of the forest.  Isn't it nice to surpass people's expectations???

Eventually I came to a stone torii and a couple of buildings that looked like they'd been abandoned long before the typhoon hit.  A bit beyond that I crested the top of the final staircase and found what I'd come looking for - Kuuya-no-taki, a mystical place where a waterfall rushes over the edge of a cliff behind a little shrine.  Standing in front of the gate, I felt a breeze coming from the force of the water, cooling me off from my hike.  It seemed like the kind of waterfall my  master would tell me to stand under as I trained to awaken my yokai powers.  (No, I didn't try it.  There was a rope at the bottom of the torii barring the way, and since I hadn't mentioned to anyone that I was planning to go there I figured I'd pushed my luck enough).

I did, on the other hand, drag Yato out of my backpack for a quick photoshoot.  I'm not 100% happy with him - the clothes are fine but the fleece I had when I started him wasn't very good and I didn't really like the way his hair turned out.  That said, the damage he and Yukine did in some of their battles provided a much more satisfying explanation for all the downed trees.

I made my way back down the hill, which is scarier than going up, by the way.  The trees are a lot closer to you and you're not working as hard to breathe.  Also, I stopped to dip my hand in the stream at one point and got the shit scared out of my by a crab.  Admittedly it was a very small one, but what the hell was a crab doing up beside a mountain stream?   I got back to the bus stop with plenty of time to massage my feet while waiting for the hourly bus back to Arashiyama.  I got off early so I could revisit the bamboo grove, which was sadly annihilated compared to two years ago.  Life lesson of the week: typhoons suck.  Luckily bamboo grows quickly and I had a different forest I wanted to check out: the kimono forest, a series of illuminated pillars set up in the train station.

Why is there a kimono forest at the train station?  Damned if I know.  I may have read somewhere that silk for kimonos was once dyed in Arashiyama, but my mind may also be making that up.  What I can tell you is that I would totally buy a kimono made in that skeleton fabric.  It was totally lit (pun totally intended.  Because.  You know.  The pillars are lit up from inside.)

Bean Counter

So.  It's been a while.  January was a hard, cold month for me.  I was feeling homesick and just plain sick not to mention cold.  I had my second snow day ever as a teacher.  I was pretty pathetic - I had two posts I was sitting on, but neither came to fruition because I was in such a funk.  But now it's February, and that changes everything.

My good friend Sensei was teaching her Japanese class in my art room (because that's how crowded we are in the school) one day last week, when I heard a word I recognized, oni.  And then I heard Setsubun, which is a holiday and when Flower Boy said our cold spell was due to be broken, and after a quick search on them interwebs I realized it was this weekend!  I had to reschedule my nihonga painting class, because if I was there at 1 I couldn't be at any of the festivities throughout the city, but suddenly I had a subject for my first painting (all of which I'll tell you about eventually, but this post is for Setsubun...we'll save nihonga for a proper art post).

Once that was settled, I had to pick a celebration to attend.  Setsubun can be celebrated at home, by throwing dried soybeans at a family member wearing the oni, or ogre, mask.  This duty (or is it a privilege?) usually falls to the dad, but mine is in Iowa, and knowing him, pelting him with lucky beans would count as an invitation to annihilate us with flatulence.  So I looked through my sources to choose a festivity to attend.  Ikegami's known for wrestlers, and Senso-ji has a shichifukujin dance.  Gototen in Ueno uses chrysanthemum leaves instead of beans, while apparently plenty of celebrities go to Zojo-ji.  All of which was very well and good, but in the end I decided to go to a little temple in Setagaya called Shinryu-ji.

What made their Setsubun special was that instead of the red-skinned, black-haired oni in a tigerskin loincloth (the traditional face of the holiday), their procession features tengu, a kind of crow demon.  Being the otome that I am, with the interests that I have, there was really no choice.  I walked down the lanes from Shimo-Kitazawa station til I found the temple, where according to legend a tengu is enshrined.  Since they are thought to live on the mountains, and Shimo-Kitazawa seemed hilly at best, I found myself wondering if this was likely, but hell - they'd probably wonder what a white-skinned, red-haired foreign demon was doing here, too.  Who am I to judge?

It was just a little past one when I got to the quiet little temple.  The mikoshi was sitting to the side, a huge red face with a long, red nose its most prominent feature.  It wasn't too crowded yet, and the "pre-game" ceremony seemed to have just started, while attendants were still getting ready.  I've got enough festivals under my belt now to think this is the way to do it - show up early so you're already in place when the action starts.

The ceremony involved some chanting by a monk, possibly the head monk - he was old and well-dressed, so that would be my guess, anyways.  He had an accordion-folded  book of sutras that he flipped open and closed as he chanted, eventually flipping it all the back and shutting it as he finished his chant or his prayer.  There were lots of official looking people, men and women in suits, in addition to the regular temple attendants.  After the head monk finished and shuffled out of view, these came to the front of the temple porch, with their sake boxes full of fukumame.  There was some drumming and shouts, and they threw their beans out into the crowd, thrice if I'm not mistaken.  I was way too far back to catch any, but I figured my time would come, so I just stood in the back, enjoying the slightly warmer weather and the atmosphere of the day, keeping an eye on my surroundings so I'd be ready for whatever happened next.  (I say that, but actually I still missed it when they moved the mikoshi down the hill to the street running perpendicular.  Those tengu can be sneaky, I guess).

After a little more pomp and circumstance, they took their show on the road.  I let myself be swept out to the entrance to the temple grounds, where I had the misfortune of standing next to some other gaijin. They were talking about how everyone was taking so many pictures of their baby, which just about made me barf.  The woman kept asking her husband if he was taking pictures, and THEN one of the tengu started walking towards us, and she started talking about how she thought it was a medieval plague mask.

It's possible that one of the reasons why Hozuki is my favorite character is the fact that he freely beats on idiots.  He's kind of the animated embodiment of my id.

The procession came all the way down the hill to the street, and I went along behind it, trying to get some better pictures when the English speakers in the crowd weren't driving me batshit crazy with their culturally incorrect discussions...

This is the tengu they were talking about, by the way.  That looks nothing like a plague mask.  I could cross my eyes and let them go out of focus and it STILL wouldn't look like a plague mask.  Baka gaijin. 

I caught up and enjoyed the sounds of the drums (not taiko...in fact, I'm not sure I've seen any taiko since moving here, which is sad.  Maybe I'll have to look up the taiko lab in Tokyo...) and the conch shells being blown.  I also really loved seeing the traditional clothes up close.  Many of them were wearing a kind of kimono with a stiff shoulder line, and I caught myself a few times wanting to reach out and touch it to see how they made them stand up...was there a rod in that fold?  Lots of starch?  I probably could have gotten away with looking up their sleeves, but for some reason it never occurred to me...possibly because even subconsciously I knew that was a weirdo thing to do.

Finally the Big Boss tengu made his way past, with all of his coterie.  The mask and clothes were impressive, of course, but the real marvel was his shoes!  The geta seemed to be about 6 inches off the ground, and had only a single stilt underneath.  He kept one hand on the shoulder of the attendant in front of him, presumably to help him keep his balance.  As I told my mother one time, I can't help falling down in normal shoes...these would be a lost cause!

As the mikoshi was pulled past, the caboose of the train, I noticed I was standing next to a cupcake shop that looked very promising.  I was just thinking about going in and checking out their wares when half a block down the street the parade started throwing packets of fukumame.  You're supposed to eat one bean for each year of your age for good luck, and although I did complete the shichifukujin meguri just last month, I didn't want to leave anything to chance.  2018 needs to be a banner year.  So I sumimasen-ed my way up to the side of the parade, and walked along beside for a while, until the procession halted and the beans were thrown again.  I managed to grab 3 packs and was given another by a kind Japanese lady who must have thought I needed them.  I didn't count to see if I made it to 38...I was too busy making sure I didn't pass the cupcake shop.

Teacher of Fortune

For the past couple of years I've posted my New Years' "shrine visit" on Facebook, checking in at Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum.  I'd learned enough about Japan from anime to know this is a big deal culturally, but I wasn't here yet, so I figured an art museum was a pretty good substitute for me.  But those days are over - at 3:17 pm January 2nd I was catching the Keikyu line back to Yokohama, and the question wasn't if I would be dropping in on a shrine in the coming days...it was which shrine to visit.  The answer was actually a holdover from last Spring.  The day before Five joined me in Kyoto I got it into my head that I'd like to visit a shrine or temple for each of Japan's Seven Gods of Fortune (Noragami was my #1 anime still back then).  That didn't actually happen because I got lazy and decided I'd go to the Karuta temple instead, but the idea was still in the back of my head, so when I saw the Shichifukujin Meguri mentioned on one of my websites in December, I decided the time had finally come to pay my respects to Bishamon et al.

One of the wonderful things about Japan is its syncretic nature.  In other countries, incoming religious beliefs snuff out their predecessors, but here they just get assimilated into the whole.  This means that there are a LOT of gods running around Japan, and many of them aren't even Japanese...in fact, only one of the Seven is native.  The rest are imports from India and China.  How this idea of a lucky seven came about, I'm not sure - that hasn't been covered by any of the anime I've watched, so if you really want to know, you can look it up.  But really, if you had thousands of gods in your belief system, why wouldn't you designate 7 (shichi in Japanese, with fuku meaning luck and jin for person) to be the most lucky?

There are at least three designated courses for the Shichifukujin Meguri in Tokyo.  I went for the shortest, which coincidentally took me back to Ningyocho.  I thought that was pretty fitting since one of my contingency plans involves launching a line of cosplay plush dolls, and I also liked the fact that all the stops were at shrines, rather than temples.  The Wow-J article in which I read about it suggested starting at Koami Jinja, which was dedicated to Fukurokuju and Benzaiten.  I marked the shrines on Google maps before I went out, and set out from Ningyocho Station wending down one-way streets, so I was expecting a small shrine, and that is what I found.  What I was not expecting was the long-ass line winding around the corner and then half a block further.  It was a little past ten when I joined the queue, and it just got longer from that point.  Part of me wanted to give up - I did not want to spend all day standing in lines - but I figured I didn't have much better to do with my day, so instead I started thinking about what I should wish for at each shrine.

See, each of the Seven has a specific bailiwick, so it seemed like I should break a general wish for good luck down and ask for what I wanted with the guy or gal most likely to make it happen.  Since Benzaiten has her own shrine a little later, I focused on Fukurokuju at Koami Jinja.  As a Fukujin he has a lot of overlap with the others, and apparently at one time he was replaced by another female deity, but his domain is largely about longevity.  When I got to the front of the line and threw in my coin, I had decided I didn't really need a long life - owing to my Mormon lifestyle I'm already ridiculously healthy - but I interpreted youth as a part of longevity, and the beauty that society generally ascribes to being young, and wished for those.

I stayed long enough to pick up an ema and find out that they wouldn't put my stamps in my sketchbook - there's a stamp rally thing you can do, but you have to buy the proper shrine-approved board thing, which kind of pissed me off, but I'm trying to be all philosophical and see this as an opportunity to get artistic.  From there it took about five minutes to walk to Cha No Ki Jinja, the shrine of Hotei.  Hotei is kind of awesome - he's fat and sassy, as befitting the Fukujin responsible for children, diviners, and barmen.  His special province is popularity, and even though I spent the last few years in Mongolia saying otherwise, you really can't have too many friends, so that's what I asked him for.  I was glad the line wasn't as long here, but it was such a small shrine that they didn't have ema, so my artistic plans didn't get any help from Hotei.

Which is just as well, because my next visit was to Benzaiten, patron goddess of artists, writers, dancers, and musicians, which kind of makes me her target audience.  This was another long line, through which I occupied myself wondering about Suiten-Gu.  It was a beautiful shrine, but it looked fairly new and was on a kind of pedestal building.  Eventually I was pushed to the front and got to ring the bell and ask for support in my artistic pursuits.

Basically catty-corner from Suiten-Gu was Matsushima Jinja, abode of Daikokuten.  There was a little line for this little shrine, so it didn't take long before I was throwing in a coin to ask for wisdom in using my wealth, since he specifically watches over prosperity.  While I was waiting, I had the chance to ponder the fact that I hadn't done ablutions at any of the shrines.  This may be a mark against me (probably not as big a mark as the fact that I was unprepared and only had 1 yen coins in my wallet, when any Noragami fan can tell you 5 yen is the traditional offering...) but it.  Was.  Chilly.  Not American Midwest WTF-who-says-climate-change-is-an-urban-myth?-cold, but cold enough to be getting the fuck on with, and I had no desire to run fresh spring water over my hands, under the circumstances.

In fact, the idea left me so chilled that I decided to warm up by stopping for lunch at Coco Curry.  If you are thinking I also chose Ningyocho's Shichifukujin Meguri because I knew the closest branch of my favorite Japanese restaurant chain, well, you're not wrong.  But one thing I've taken with me from Mongolia is the belief that New Years' is not time to start a diet - if you want to be prosperous and happy all year long, don't start by counting calories.  There's always next week for that.

After my first taste of curry for 2018, I walked a couple of blocks to get to Bishamonten's place, Suehiro Jinja.  No matter how many times I see the traditional version of the God of fortune in wars and battles, with his fierce eyebrows and goatee, Bisha will always be a smokin' hot blonde badass femme fatale to me, and so it seemed apropos to me that the war I'd ask for her help with would be my battle of the bulge.

As I stood in line to make my request (photo bombing the girls taking selfies in front of me, which got a huge laugh out of one of them when she looked at the pictures) I realized there was a tengu manning the stamp table.  As I watched, he put on a hooded mask with a lion's face and proceeded to dance for us.  Even with the cold, standing there listening to the music as he did his lucky lion dance while petitioners shook the bells and clapped at the shrine made me want to stay in Japan forever.  Maybe that should have been one of my wishes.

Instead, when I arrived at Kasama Inari Jinja I asked Jurojin for good health, particularly when it comes to my feet.  He is also a God of longevity, but without good health long life would actually be a curse, so I figured it works. 

Finally I came to Ebisu, the only purely Japanese Fukujin and god of wealth in business.  As mentioned before, one of my contingency plans involves selling my plushies, so I thought if there was anyone to petition for help in that (besides my Dark Lord and Master) it would be Ebisu.  When I got to Sugimori Jinja I was surprised to see it was white - I don't think I've ever seen a white shrine, so that was kind of cool.  There was actually another shrine on the circuit, a second Ebisu shrine a few blocks away, but I was out of coins and ready to be out of the cold again, so I decided not to show favoritism...at least not to Ebisu.  Since Benzaiten is the patron of artists, I figured it just made sense to drop 10 yen at her shrine.

Although I loved spending time at these little shrines, I confess I was tempted to complete a different meguri, one that had bells to collect along with stamps...but I figure there's always next year for that, and maybe then I will make my wishes on behalf of others.  Since then 2018 has been relatively quiet.  I've spent a lot of time trying to stay warm in my apartment while watching Gintama, and a little sitting in restaurants drinking free refills and letting them keep me warm (in fact, my game plan for today involves breakfast at Denny's as soon as I finish this post).  Although normally I shun the idea of resolutions, I do want to be healthier, and I have to make better use of my money than I did the last few months...but there's always next week.  Apparently the Japanese believe in shunning housework and cooking for the first few days of the new year, and hell, when in Rome...

Great Success!

It's my first evening in St. Petersburg, and my feet are killing me.  I've been walking a couple of miles each morning for the last several weeks, which has been nice because I've been able to reclaim my territory for the first time in two years and my feet have actually not been punishing me for it, but today that was not the case.  I hobbled my way back to my airBnB homestay thing (I'll let you know how that goes round about the time I get back to Mongolia) and have been off my feet pretty much ever since.

It took leaving Irina's (my hostess with the mostest) for me to really start getting excited about St. Petersburg.  Getting here was pretty straightforward...I took a shuttle from the airport to the metro, and the metro to a few blocks from Irina's, which I did not quite make it to, but I managed to find an unsecured wifi network and was able to call her on Skype from around the corner, so I made it in the end.  She showed me around the flat and explained that they would be gone the next couple of days (which makes me feel like I'm in high school and need to take advantage of the situation...so, hey, if anyone can make it to Russia in the next couple of days - PAR-TAYYYYY!) then turned me loose.

One of the things I managed to learn about in my extremely limited amount of research leading up to this part of the trip is the smallest statue in St. Petersburg, a little bird called Chizhyk-Pyzhik.  I found the story of it charming and decided my first wander out into the great Imperial City would aim to find him.

Chizhik-Pyzhik, where have you been?
Drank vodka on the Fontanka.
Took a shot, took another -
Got dizzy.

The little bird comes from the poem above, which isn't actually about birds, but is rather about law students, who attended the Imperial School of Jurisprudence when it was just across the Fontanka (that would be the river) and used to wear green and yellow uniforms, resembling the bird they were nicknamed for.

I was a little worried about being able to find him...I didn't find really great directions, other than that he was by the First Engineer Bridge.  I looked up the bridge and headed in that direction when I left Irina's.

I should have been keeping my eyes peeled, but before I could even realize that I'd made it to the bridge, I saw the Church of the Savior on the Blood in the distance, and in the ensuing excitement to get my camera out I very nearly dropped my wallet into the Fontanka (no, I wasn't drinking vodka, although sometimes I wish I could use being under the influence as an explanation for the stupid things I've done).  I'd crossed the bridge and had just had time to think, "Hey, I wonder if this is the river I'm looking for," when I heard a series of clinks, and looked up to see people dropping coins onto the pedestal.

Chizhyk-Pyzhik has only been in situ since 1994 (and not continuously...apparently he's been stolen to melt down several times and now they keep back-up casts on hand).  During that time a tradition has arisen that you try to land a coin on the plinth on which Chizhyk-Pyzhik sits for good luck.

Thanks to the fact that Russian coinage annoys the crap out of me (WHY are the sizes so disparate???) I'd managed to accumulate quite a lot of it and was ready to win myself some luck no matter how long it took!  Aaaand, then I got it in my third or fourth attempt.  That 10 ruble coin on the lower right corner of the picture next door here is mine.  Apparently I have good luck coming my way now.

I went onward and wandered into the center, but it was just that - me wandering.  I have the next three days to see everything in depth at my own pace.  However, I was glad that I got to start the trip on a good note.

(Epilogue: So I was actually falling asleep writing the last couple of paragraphs...jetlag caught up to me around 9 pm.  Sorry about the typos, I've fixed them now).