Japan

Yamanote challenge

The Yamanote line is, as Dad calls it, the 'limey green line' - not to be confused with the forest green Chiyoda line, the blue green Nanboku line or the dark green Saikyo line - is the central loop line of JR in Tokyo. There are 29 stops on the Yamanote line and it goes around and around, one in each direction, 34.5km long, typically taking about an hour. More than once I have done a loop and a half in the summer time when it just seemed too hot and my feet seemed too tired to get off.

Since we were in Tokyo anyway, we decided to follow up the Arakawa challenge on the Sat, with a Yamanote challenge on the Sun. It was a spur of the moment decision made a bit before 10. The aim was to see how many stops of the Yamanote line we could pass before it got dark. (Dark = cold and and also I still haven"t bought lights for the folding bikes.) We also had some shopping to be done in Nippori and Ginza.

The JR and subway stations in Tokyo each have a stamp. We bought a little book as we set out and stamped each station as we passed it. (which also means locating the stamp within the station). Hiro dutifully noted the time at each station.

We got the first stamp at Tabata at 10.10, and went around clockwise. At 4.40 we got the last stamp at Shinjuku. A respectable effort. Once the days are longer, and before the weather gets too hot, we might try it again and do the lot.

I will stick a photo of the stamping area in here later. I forgot to put my memory card back into the camera...

Arakawa to the sea

Something I have been meaning to do for years is to follow the Arakawa river - which flows near here - to the mouth, where it enters Tokyo Bay. Many times we have cycled part of the distance, but never the whole way to the mouth - even though it's only 20 km or so, down hill and basically flat. The New Year holdiay seemed like a good time to get on our oritatami (folding) bicycles and see what there was to see at the sea.

I have been thinking about the Arakawa recently since Lily asked me about characteristics of various parts of Tokyo. The Arakawa is historically prone to flooding. The map below shows major flooding that took place in 1910, which prompted dramatic government action to build sluice gates and diversion channels. This has some interesting pictures and explanation, and is where I took the map from.

http://www.ara.go.jp/english/arage/about/housui.html

Largely because of the flooding, and but also due to issues of the city limits, land along the Arakawa has historically been cheap. The lower reaches of the river also contain a large community of Dowa, the Japanese "untouchable" class of outcasts who traditionally work in death industries including meat, funerals, flowers, leather works and remain discriminated against. (I may expand on this some other time.)

These days the Arakawa is lined with sporting fields which act as a buffer zone to the floodwaters, light industry, large scale apartment buildings, and on the North /East side major expressways. There is also a conspicuous presence of homeless people living in blue tarpaulin constructions along the river bank. (The local governments have pulled down the homeless villages in Ueno and Hibiya Parks, and no doubt others as well. )

We cycled, and cycled, and cycled, each kilometre a marker announced how many more kms to the river mouth. After a couple of hours of leisurely cycling we reached the 0km. What a let down! I was expecting to see something impressive... something like... the sea.... as far as I could determine, the river continued, and the cycle track continued. I am not sure how a geographer measures the end of a river.... We continued on and we did see Tokyo Bay.. and it was... well.. Tokyo Bay... nothing more, nothing less. Water....

Having reached the end of the cycle path / river, we opted to cross the bridge across the bay to have lunch in Nishi Kasai, a machi that is worth a quick note. It's built on reclaimed land, and has a reputation as one of Tokyo"s suburban multicultural hubs. The reputation, seems deserved. There was a conspicious South Asian presence on the streets, a branch of our much loved local Indian restaurant - Abiskar, a Filipino restaurant - the first I can remember seeing in Tokyo, a general store with an impressive herb and spice collection, and a Mexican restaurant all within 200m.

We had some rather average Mexican before folding up the bikes and taking the subway home.

Thailand in Japan

I got an email the other day from a former student in Thailand. She was a stunningly good student: super motivated, extremely focused and consistently topped my Geography class. Her brother is at high school in Japan and because his school was shut down over the winter break and he and several of his Thai classmates would be be staying at Wat Paknam Thai temple in Chiba, she wanted to know if we would mind being an emergency contact for him.
That was fine by us, it requires Hiro"s co-operation, because I am not likely to be all that much help in an emergency esp. if the communication was over the phone. In the shoes of a year 10 boy, probably the thought of contacting his sister"s former teacher who doesn"t speak Thai, doesn"t speak such flash Japanese is probably a bit daunting, so we took a trip out to Narita to meet him and check on how he was getting on.

Conventional Thai Buddhism is very different from conventional Japanese Buddhism.
In Thailand monks are celibate, live in communities. It is of the Theravada school which believes that most people don"t attain enlightment in this lifetime and the good done in this life time is to achieve 'merit' (essentially brownie points) for the next life. The monastries take in poor boys for education, and old women that have no where to go. There are also some monastry hospices. The monks have few possessions, eat two meals a day, and don't eat after midday. In Thailand the monks go into the streets each morning and people give them food.

Japan has Buddhist priests rather than monks in the main. Priests marry and have families and the temple is passed to the oldest son much like a family business. Rather than the Theravada school of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Sri Lanka, Japanese Buddhism is of the Mahayana school which sees the Buddha in everyone and strives for enlightenment in this lifetime, rather than doing good to build "merit" for the next life.. Japanese Buddhism seems not to be as active in social welfare for the old or the poor, but they also don't go to the community each morning to ask for food.

Thai temples also tend to be very gold, many in Japan are also gold, but the simple aesthetic of Zenlike temples is not found in Thailand, except perhaps for the Shanti Asok who shun all materialism.

The boys seemed happy and well looked after. They were getting up at 5.30 each morning to chant with the monks. They cooked and cleaned in the temple too. We had lunch there with them (I"d expected we could take them to lunch but it was so far from anywhere it was completely impractical - I was greatly relieved we had gone by motor bike and not public transport). The lunch was a real feast. A taste of Thailand in Japan.
http://www.watpaknam.org/branch.html

It was

Akemashite Omedetou - Happy New Year

The dazzle of Christmas lights has faded, and they were dazzling, replaced by New Year festivities. Welcome to the Year of the Tiger. The traditional machis  (towns or more aptly suburbs) of tokyo skipped the Christmas trimmings in the hubub of New Year preparations. Asakusa's main shopping street - Nakamise- was decked out with Tigers and new year trims,   not a Christmas tree to be seen.

In it's Meiji era quest for "Civilization and Englightenment" Japan ditched the Chinese lunar New Year as the marker of the New Year, in favour of the Western 1st of January. I have puzzled about how that affects the horoscope of people born in January, but haven't found the right person to ask abou it yet. The animal years remain the same, as do the traditions, only the date changed. (These days, there is a definite commercial advantage for Japan in having it earlier as excess stock of New Year paraphenalia can no doubt be sold in Taiwan, HK, Singapore or China...)

Typically Japanese people go to the temple or shrine on New Years Eve, or early in the New Year for Hatsumode - the first visit to the shrine for the year. Shrines are Shinto, temples are Buddhist, Shrines are probably more popular for New Year but for most people it doesn"t really matter which, and going to both is OK too.
On the afternoon of NYE we took our visitors to Meiji Jingu, one of the most popular shrines in Tokyo, where there were signs fluttering announcing the 'yakudoshi' or unlucky years.   In Japanese custom men and women at particular ages have an unlucky year; according to Meiji Jingu the men born in 1950 (the 25th year of the reign of emperor Showa otherwise known as Hirohito), 1969 (Showa 44) and 1986 (Showa 61) will have an unlucky year. Women born in Showa 49 (1974),   Showa 53 (1978) or Heisei 4 (1992) will have unlucky years. The year before and after the yakudoshi are also yakudoshi.   To escape the unluckiness of the yakudoshi, people will sometimes go to the shrine for a ceremony. Exorcism would be too strong, blessing may be more apt. While we were at Meiji we saw what I presume was such a ceremony - robed people at the front undergoing ceremonial purification. There were people in ordinary clothes also involved in the ceremony, who either were family / friends of the robed participants, or participants who had paid a lesser fee, I am not sure which. Next time I stumble across something similar I will ask.

We walked passed our local shrine on New Years day on our way back from Tokyo station. Though it was after lunch on NYD the queue was more than 300 m. long so Hiro was happy to pass on Hatsumode. In Odate, Hiro"s hometown, on the one occasion we braved the snow to go to the shrine at midnight   even at midnight there was a queue of less than 10 people....