Sweetest Guardian living downtown

Near the busy Nagoya station and  in between tall  business tower buildings, there is one small Buddhist temple called "Keihouin" 桂芳院  that you definitely love to visit when you need to have someone listen to your complaints.

This SOMEONE always welcome you by putting his right hand on his right ear so that he can listen to you very attentively.  He never stops you no matter how long you complain, what you nag at or  whom you accuse of.  He sits still outdoor in the corner of the temple ground with a small red apron on from his neck.  He is wearing a gentle smile with his eyes closed.  He is ready to listen to you anytime.   He even keeps a square stool for you to sit on. Urr, it is made of stone, though.

As a matter of fact,  he should not been defined as "he" but  he is friendly called "Ojizou-sama (o-ji-zo-u-sa-ma)."  A local guardian deity that helps us free from every bit of pains and sorrows of daily human relationships.

See, we all know that keeping our complaints inside us is not good at all for our mental health.
So this Ojizou-sama helps us stay in peace every day.  He is such a sweet complaint listener.
Isn't it nice to see a board besides him, which says "All complaints this Ojizou-sama hears  are CONFIDENTIAL."

Maybe next time I visit there,  of course, not to complain but to say hello,  I'd like to meet the temple priest as well and ask him about how this little guardian diety has started his mission.
This is the sweetest Ojizou-sama I have ever seen.

Reunion

Friendship is one of  the incredible miracles in our life.  No matter how long or how far we are apart,  the same experiences and concerns that we shared in those days never made our friendship fade away.  This turns to be more than happiness when we finally meet again face to face across time and space.

Last weekend all this happened to me . For the first time in 30 years.  This is about the Rotary students who shared two months  during the summer at college in the US, where the Rotary International provided us with the orientation before we left for each applied university in the US.

My close friend, Suchada stopped by Tokyo over the weekend on her way back to LA from BK. We spent two days together. We felt for two days as if we were all riding on a merry-go-round.

Yes finally we made it.  The instant we saw each other at the hotel lobby,   we didn't feel we were apart for such a long time.  Ahead of the fancy dinner with two boys, now gentlemen, in the evening,  three girls enjoyed the afternoon chatting to fill in each 30 years' interval.  And the dinner was just lavish enough to make it up for our 30 years. Our talk seemed endless before we knew we stayed too long at the restaurant.   We talked and laughed a lot. The food was awesome and the service was great.

Now 17 Rotary classmates are united in Facebook group page.  In this reunion with Suchada,  wherever we go,  at every visiting spot,  she and I were busy "check-in" in Facebook with each iPhones to update our photos and messages to the rest of our friends.  It was just fun because every time we checked in,  our friends of all different places on the earth  gave us "likes" instantly.   We giggled at the results.  We owed Facebook so much.  There will be another reunions in the near future in Japan, or somewhere else in this world.  No matter where it comes up,  we will share our exciting moments together.  And one day, we are hoping , all of us will get together at one place like we once used to do.   How thrilling !  This was a great weekend.


You may also like to read this.

When it is too big to handle,

Our garden is overrun with weeds.

Whenever I visit temples, shrines and even private museums of old Japanese houses,  I feel so guilty for myself not taking good care of our own garden.

If I stayed home all day,   I would have made time to clean up the ground.  Since I have a job,  I make it a rule that I should put a priority to do my chores in a house first.  As a result,  most of the time I end up with indoor chores.   "I just don't have time for our garden."  And what is worse, my husband is away from home  every half a month abroad. He is not here when I really need his help.

Twice a year our gardeners come over to cut and trim all the trees and bushes but that is not enough. Weeds and grasses grow every season and they don't stop  growing  before the gardeners arrive.   Even the gardeners are too busy to spend sitting on the grounds to pick up weeds.  They just cut and trim the trees, sweeping the grounds, loading up all the stuff they cut out  on the trucks and rush to the next job. It still takes several days before they finish our garden.  Its ground is just too big for a housewife to take care of.  Now I am serious about asking a helper from the volunteer gardeners group from the city once a month so that the garden will not turned to be a bush again.

Our house is a typical traditional one.  It has a big garden full of trees around the house.  In the previous generations,  there used to be always someone coming over to clean the ground----but not any more.   Now our old heritage surely takes much time and budget from us  to take care of.  Yet my husband and I never thought  of the idea to abandon  our house and garden.  We like this old house but it is more than old.   Somehow we would like to  preserve it for our next young generation. Some way some how.

A delight in the rain

Finally the rainy season is with us almost everywhere in Japan.

Soon I’ll get fed up with damp and wet climate which lasts about a month. I can’t do without my umbrella all the time.  
Yet one blessing during this season is to see hydrangeas in the rain.  At our back garden, this year too, they surely delight our eyes under a heavy, gray sky.  I'd love to see them especially wear raindrops.  It definitely drags me out of my discrimination against the rainy season.

I didn’t know home of hydrangeas is Japan before I read this on the web a few years ago.

Since they have so many different species throughout the world, it is seemingly hard to state how they were originally introduced at the very first stage.  

Strictly speaking, hydrangeas with round mop heads which are very much popular and  seen at any places in the world are not origin in Japan.  The original one from Japan has fewer outer flowers around smaller tiny inner flowers. 

It is said in 18th century a Japanese hydrangea was brought all the way to Kew Garden, England  by way of China. Soon they started to cultivate so as to meet up with its own condition such as climate, soil. This way they modified flowers to suit their preferences. It is also widely known that in 19th century a German physician and scientist, Phillipp Franz von Seibold introduced 17 species of Japanese plants to a  botanical garden in Lieden, which made it possible for hydrangeas to grow in Europe.

Eventually it was turned to a hydrangea of which head was like a pom-pom. Later a mop head hydrangea was re-imported to Japan.

Nowadays we see mop head hydrangeas at many house gardens or public venues or even at temples and shrines or landscapes in our country. So do original ones with simple frames.  No matter what kind of hydrangea flowers they are, we enjoy seeing a large volume of flowers and amazing color-changes.  They are such a gracious gift in the rainy season.

Do you remember "Travel Volunteer"?

Do you remember "Travel Volunteer"?  
Last year it was just six months after 3.11 Tohoku disaster when Katy Morrison  and Jamie Lafferty started traveling across Japan from north to south for 100 days. 

While traveling, they posted great articles and amazing pictures every day in their blog so as to say Japan is as beautiful as ever and this report helped a lot to support the recovery of tourism to Japan.

Today their blog  was released as a digital book titled "Smiles of Japan"  and it is just free.

Why don't you get this now and read it. No matter whether you are from Japan or from abroad you'll be fascinated with their experiences.

The book is available from URL below:

http://travelvolunteer.net/book01/pageview/pageview.html

Just let me add one thing. 

 It was such a rewarding experience for me that I accompanied them when they visited Aichi Prefecture in Oct. last year.

A notepad in my bag

I feel so bad about my recent absence from updating my blog.  I haven't given up on it, though.  I just didn't have enough time to write. Well, that's an excuse.

This year　I've made up my mind to spend more time as a volunteer guide interpreter rather than that of a language interpreter in English.  It seems to me that there is more opportunity to act as an guide since recently we  don't have big international events such as the Expo or the international conferences in Nagoya that many volunteer interpreters used to make the best of their language ability during the past few years.
One difference between an interpreter and a guide is the latter can talk and explain with her own words and idea ,while the former  is required to translate what other speaks. Both are challenging and on a volunteer base I really like doing both.

Ever since I have more chances to guide visitors from abroad as a volunteer,  I have one addition in terms of the items in my bag.  I always keep a little notepad in my bag to write down some  information for them.  It may not be something new at all for those experienced guides.   Well it  occurs  to me more often when I am not in charge of guiding but at some other occasions such as when I just walk across the tickets machines at a local train or subway station,  I run into a foreign visitor at a loss. Most of the times, he/she is in trouble figuring out the way  to their destination. So I jotted down the directions on a notepad page and hand it out to them. It is interesting but I am often asked to write down the names of the stations, the buildings or even some sentences using the Japanese letters such as "この電車は刈谷駅で止まりますか？　Does this train make a stop at Karia station?"
This happened one day.  The young man from Christchurch who landed on Japan for the first time in his life asked me to do this. He explained that he was going to show this piece of paper  to anyone on a platform so that he would not take a wrong train.   "Ah, that is smart," I thought.
Since then I have a small note pad with me in my bag.  Just a piece of note can be a help.
At the same time, however, I have to keep it in mind that a foreigner in trouble is not necessarily a tourist but a resident and he/she speaks Japanese so well.

RI Convention in Bangkok

 I am back from being in a pretty bad shape (that was why I didn't show up in FB for these weeks) and also a trip to Bangkok. Glad that I came over the two extremes for the last three weeks.
Two purposes for the trip to Bangkok were to attend the Rotary International Convention from 6-9 and to get reunited with one of my dear friends for these 30 years.   I was scheduled to arrive on 4th but due to my condition, I changed my flight on 6th. My husband left for BKK two days earlier.
I had the splendid days to get in touch with the amazing history and culture of Thailand and the pleasant encounter with people, especially my new friend,  Fay who is extremely talented and charming young Thai woman.
Unfortunately Suchada was not able to arrive at BKK from LA while I was staying but we are to make it next time somehow in BKK or in Tokyo with our friends.
In the House of Friendship, I met Mike, an Alumini Relations Specialist from the Rotary Foundation and had a nice suggestion to get reunited with more friends who spent time together in Statesboro, GA in 1980.
I'll try to write him sometime soon to get more information.
Hey, 17 guys, just wait for my next report. Oh my, where on earth is Yuna now?   We miss her sooo much.

Celestial Show in March

"Fly me to the moon and let me stay among the stars.
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars"

-----Well, it was not Mars tonight but Venus.
If the clouds were clear, we could have seen the beautiful show of the trio---Venus and Jupiter aligning with the young crescent Moon in the west sky.

Unfortunately the sky in Nagoya tonight was covered with clouds.
I saw only brilliant Venus and the young crescent moon.
Yet I definitely saw Jupiter just below the moon in my heart.
We will enjoy the quartet adding Mars with tonight's three in 2015!
How romantic!

Left or Right

Every time I display the Hina Dolls on our house alcove in time for the Festival on March 3, my husband never fails to bring about a topic just like an annual event.
It's a matter of the position of the two dolls. One is the Emperor Doll and the other is the Empress Doll. Now when I place the two dolls, I always put the Emperor on left and the Empress on right on the display. If you have a chance to look at all those Hina dolls decorations at the department stores or in the Internet, you will see most of them follow this position. Most Japanese take it for granted that the Emperor Doll sits on the left and the Empress Doll on the right. But my husband has the different idea.

popular position

Kyoto position

If you visit Kyoto,the ancient capital over a thousand years, you will notice the position of the two dolls is opposite from the position of our own dolls at home-----left right reversal, so to speak.
My husband would rather follow the Kyoto position. Why? Because in the ancient aristocratic society of Kyoto, "left" is considered more superior, sacred and divine than "right" during our long history. So when the ancient loyal couple appeared to the public, the Emperor had a seat on his left side and the empress on his right side. This custom which was deeply connected with the Chinese philosophy. It had been practiced over centuries until the new government changed its custom when the Meiji Emperor was crowned in 1867 in Tokyo, the new capital.

There are some explanations on why this manner was changed to the reversal after a long history of left-dominated value. At that time the government was open its doors to the foreign countries. It is said that they followed the western style and modified the ancient habits to the new ones. They changed our rule in the name of “internationalization.” Since then, our Emperor and Empress have appeared in the same way like many other loyal couples in the western world. This also affected the position of the Hina dolls which represented the Emperor and the Empress. Most people applied the same rule even to the Hina Dolls. Hmm, that was a problem. The whole display accompanied by an ancient aristocratic custom was disturbed and meant nothing.

I just wondered if there is a universal rule in the world. I saw some images of the loyal couples in the Internet. The pictures I saw didn’t convince me that they had a definite rule in terms of the standing position for the loyal couples in the world. It seems that there are both or some cases are exceptions. If there is not an universal rule, our people wouldn't have made a mess in the Hina Dolls position today. I feel so grateful that people of Kyoto have kept our ancient value in Hina Dolls display without being disturbed by a fraud "internationalization” that the old government declared.

examples of the loyal poses
(click for a larger image)

By the way, as far as our Hina dolls are concerned, I’d rather have them stay in the same position, though. If I changed, they might complain with saying,
“ Yuck, what is this all about? We don’t feel at home. We don't want changes. "

Listen ! Just a little sign of Spring will help us

It is often said that time heals one's sorrow but we have learned this is not true for people in Tohoku area at this moment. For many of them time has stopped since March 11, 2011.

The arrival of spring ----- it means very special to every Japanese this year, since many of those who met the huge disaster are now trying to make one step forward out of desperation, anger, and sorrow.

It was raining yesterday. It was chilly. And somewhere in my garden little guests called "Uguisu(Japanese bush warbler)" were singing on trees. In fact they showed up last week. They were too small for me to find on brances but their singing was so rich and clear. Their arrival is a sign of the spring.

It's ironic. We are just helpless against the mighty nature. However it is that nature that gives us lots of comfort and courage for the future.

For many victims time has stopped since then. Time never heals their minds. Yet I sincerely hope a sign of spring such as singing birds and cherry blossoms will tell people that they are "alive."