Kansai Livin'

For a couple weeks last month, I subbed at a junior high school in Moriyama, Shiga-ken.

Upon arrival, I was informed that this city was famous for lightning bugs. Unfortunately, spring is not lightning bug season.
But the cherry blossoms were out around the lakeside town, which had some small, peaceful temples...

Although the school was a bit rougher. Two eighth-grade boys came to class with bleached-orange hair and rows of silver earrings up their lobes; one was wearing an oversized electric-pink hoodie that marshmallowed out from the neck and armholes of his black uniform jacket. In my last district, the moment these kids set foot on school grounds, they would have been hauled off by the Vice Principal (with several other teachers along for backup) to be stripped of jewelry and bright clothes, and thoroughly scolded whilst having their hair coated with black shoe polish. For real.

The school days proceeded mostly as normal...except for the day, my second day, when a group of ninth-grade exchange students arrived from Moriyama's sister city in Michigan, and I was responsible for making sure they were all right, translating for them when necessary. Did I mention I was subbing for a guy who is fluent in Japanese? The Michigan students were pretty good sports about watching classes for the day, except for when the music teacher asked two of the boys to please try to play the recorder along with the class, and they showed their disdain for her request by loudly squealing incorrect notes throughout the song. At the end of the day, I was asked to translate a PowerPoint presentation given by the head teacher, about the school and its traditions. I did all right with the slides that had pictures, but when it came to a few that merely displayed a graph or a pie chart, I could only guess...and laugh hysterically inside.

During the weekend that I stayed over in Moriyama, I got to explore more of the Kansai area, with Kyoto just 20 minutes south by local train, and Osaka another 20 minutes south from there. On Saturday, I started at Kyoto's Daitoku-ji, considered the head Rinzai Zen temple in Japan, still active today.

Never have I seen trees so old and tired, just wanting to return to the earth, yet propped up with so many crutches:

Then on to Osaka to visit the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum!

A replica of Momofuku Ando's kitchen, the birthplace of dirt-cheap, slightly tasty instant noodles: Did you know instant ramen went into space with a Japanese astronaut?! This is SPACE RAM.

Timeline of flavors developed since 1958:

Then, for just 300 yen, visitors could make personalized Cup Noodle, choosing the flavorings from a whole salad bar of dried ingredients. Decorate the cup, insert the noodles and seasonings, then send it down the line to be lidded and sealed in plastic.

Next, on to the Osaka Human Rights Museum, not quite so fun but actually really interesting. Exhibits explained the state of human rights in Japan today, then gave a bunch of information about groups historically (and even currently, in some cases) discriminated against, such as Koreans in Japan (many of whom came to Japan when Korea was under Japanese rule, and particularly women who were used as "comfort women" for powerful Japanese men), Okinawans (who, when they move to the mainland, have at times been excluded from communities), the Ainu people of northern Hokkaido (indigenous people who struggle to keep their culture alive), sexual minorities, people with disabilities and disease, and the Buraku (a social minority stemming from the caste system, which was dissolved in 1871, though these people are still sometimes limited in the type of occupation they can pursue).

Then it was time to catch a little Osaka (Namba-Shinsaibashi area) nightlife before heading back to my hotel home. If there's a place to be considered the seedy underbelly of Japan, I'm pretty sure it would be this neighborhood in Osaka.

Sunday morning, I took a loop around Byodo-in, the southern Osaka "phoenix temple" featured on the 10-yen coin.

Then another train ride took me southeast to Nara, the capital of Japan from 710 to 784 (yes, Nara was celebrating its 1300th anniversary), packed with temples and shrines within primeval forest, the whole place considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Kofuku-ji is a Buddhist temple complex that was established here in 710; the octagonal hall, Nanendo, and the five-storied pagoda, Goju-no-to, are the first main sights to greet visitors to Nara Park.

Then a wide walkway lined with souvenir shops and food stands leads through huge wooden gates toward the largest wooden building in the world!

Todai-ji, constructed in 752, has been destroyed twice over the years, rebuilt both times on a smaller scale. Inside the building is a display showing the dimensions of the original structure, and it's incredible. The original was far wider and taller, and on each side of the main building stood a pagoda twice as tall as the present five-storied pagoda in Kofuku-ji.

Todai-ji houses the largest enclosed Buddha statue in Japan (the one on the right), which in 752, took half of the bronze in all of Japan to create, putting the country into great debt.Yet another declared National Treasure in Nara Park is the population of tame deer. The whole town is filthy with deer, some lazing about waiting for tourists to feed them rice crackers, some hungrier once going after whatever's in tourists' hands or pockets. There's a festival each spring to de-horn them.

Well, the animals aren't entirely tame, or harmless without horns; I saw at least a couple kids get pushed over and frightened by a hungry or annoyed deer. I'm not sure anyone was paying attention to the Bite/Kick/Butt/Knock down warning signs.

Nara is a sister city to Gyeong-ju, the cultural capital of South Korea, which I just visited a few days ago! I'm once again quite behind on posting photos. Up soon: the largest castle in Japan, a sumo tournament, and my trip to South Korea.