rachelgoestoyokohama
Kicking about in Yokohama for 10 months
I'm a graduate student in Japan for a language program. This is mostly a blog for the people in my life to keep up with what I'm up to. It's a pretty busy program, but I hope to be able to post fairly regularly!
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One of my favorite things about visiting Japan: limited edition specially flavored Kit Kats
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Just some animals I met today at Shōmyō-ji, Yokohama. Shirayuki, Rin, and Carrot
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Shōmyō-ji (称名寺) is a temple in Kamakura about an hour and change of a trip from where I’m staying. I stumbled upon it quite by accident, as I was actually intending to visit a different temple of the same name in Yokohama last Sunday. As it happened, I plotted the course to this temple into Google maps without checking to verify whether I was on the right track, only realizing my error en route. I’m glad that this is how things came to pass, though, since I had a fun visit.
Shōmyō-ji stands in a wooded area about a 45 minute walk away from Ofuna Station (I walked back to the station from the temple because I didn’t have bus change, but you can also bus it from Ofuna). Throughout the temple complex are several images of, among other beings, Jizō Bosatsu (a bodhisattva; Sk: Ksitigarbha) and Fudō Myōō (a wisdom king/bright king; Sk: vidyaraja). There’s also an icon of Dainichi Nyorai (Mahavairocana), one of the cosmic Five Great Buddhas. Dainichi Nyorai reigns over the cardinal direction of the center.
I’ve been really busy and thus haven’t had too much time to follow up on the history of this temple yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a Shingon Buddhist temple.
When one visits this temple, they will see a map by the entrance showing two possible pedestrian routes, but one of them is closed off for now. The other leads to a long stairway to an enclosure that houses 36 Dōji and beyond them, the Dainichi Nyorai image. The statue stands past the area where visitors may walk, so I don’t have any good photos of it, but the fourth through seventh photos show the array of Dōji that stand before him.
Going back down to the base of the staircase, if one turns right, there is a cemetery and past that, a waterfall leading into a stream. There are several images of Fudō Myōō in that area (pictured in the last two photos), including a grouping enclosed in a caved area. It was a truly beautiful space - I wish my photos did it justice.
I was also excited that people who were visiting the temple spoke to me. Because this temple is not a high profile, famous place (to the best of my understanding), it is probably less common for foreigners to visit. They approached me to ask where I’m from, how I got there, why I decided to visit, etc., and were generally very nice to me, even though I was not on top of my game in terms of my speaking skills.
All in all it was a really great experience, and one of the few times when Google maps’ famed incompetence in Japan yielded positive results.
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Look!! At!! This!! I've been illustrated! 💕
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Today was a national holiday, so we had school off. After getting some practical matters out of the way, I paid a visit to Sōji-ji (總持寺), one of the two main temples (daihonzan 大本山) of the Sōtō Zen school of Buddhism.
I’m a little drowsy after a long day, or I’d try to write more, but let me know if you had any questions you wanted to run by me about the pictures I’m sharing or about the temple.
#sojiji#soji-ji#yokohama#bonus points if you can find the crow on the roof of the sanmon#(sixth picture from the top)
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I got another nice coffee message! This one says “you’re good at Japanese.” I love it. Also, I really appreciated this barista because she corrected me when she heard me misuse a term, for which I’m very grateful. Thanks to her, my understanding of Japanese has improved!
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So lately I’ve been enamored of this campaign for public transportation etiquette for which it seems the city government held a kids' poster contest. I love this idea, and the submissions are all beautiful, but this is my favorite so far. It says, basically, “let’s abide by etiquette!” (マナーを守ろう！)
I just love that even a kid can tell how annoying manspreading (and putting your stuff in a perfectly usable seat) are. Even more so, I love the reactions of the bystanders (bysitters?), especially the older woman making an extremely concerned face.
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Also going on in my life - I went to my first ever museum opening last Tuesday!
It was a somewhat stressful day because it began in Yokohama with a four-hour placement test during which I experienced ego death, and the opening was in Chiba (about an hour and 45 minutes away), but it was 150% worth the trip.
I was kindly invited by my former boss from a volunteering job I did over the summer. The show (which came from the Boston MFA and is traveling through Japan), covers the career of the ukiyo-e trailblazer Suzuki Harunobu (active mid-1700s, died 1770). Among other things, Harunobu pioneered a new aesthetic for beauty and beautiful people (bijin 美人), and he was the first print artist to use the recently created nishiki-e technology (1760s). (Nishiki-e - 錦絵 - meaning brocade prints, refers to woodblock prints that included a greater number of colors than had previously been possible, usually between 5 and 9.)
The exhibit covers Harunobu’s development from the earlier years of his career, including images by other artists that preceded or coincided with his breakout as an ukiyo-e celebrity. It continues through his timeline, exhibiting his images from various genres, including parody (mitate-e 見立絵) and scenes from daily life. Additionally, later artists such as Kitagawa Utamaro receive attention in this show, demonstrating the legacy of Harunobu, as well as the different ways in which ukiyo-e developed following his career. It is a truly impressive display of the vastness and high quality of the print collection housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
At the opening, I was able to see most of the exhibit before closing (I definitely plan to go to back for more), and I also met some wonderful new people. One of the highlights was that as a guest of the reception, I received a free copy of the exhibit catalogue, which is chock full of beautiful reproductions of the images on display (my cell phone photos do not do it justice).
It really is a wonderful exhibit, and if you’re in Japan and have an interest in ukiyo-e, or just art generally, ぜひ check it out! Chiba may be far from where you are, but it will be traveling through I believe 4 other cities, so look out for it. And if you’re in America and want to get your ukiyo-e fix, consider going to the MFA exhibit Showdown! Kuniyoshi vs. Kunisada (open through 12/10/17), where you will be able to see vibrant and dynamic scenes of warrior prints (musha-e 武者絵), parody prints, images of beautiful people (bijinga 美人画) and Edo-era celebrities, and also a lot of cats (on paper - not real cats)! It’s a wonderful show, and I feel very lucky that I was able to see it before leaving for Japan for the year.
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What’s my apartment like?
So as far as I know, my new digs are a pretty standard example of a smaller scale “manshon” (マンション), which is a term that borrows from the French word “mansion,” and it actually refers to an apartment.
Everything is condensed into two main rooms (with the exclusion of a shower/bath and a bathroom, both visible in the second photo). The entry room is kind of like a combination kitchen/laundry room. The second room, separated from the first by a sliding door paneled with foggy glass is the bedroom/den/office area. The closet and storage space visible in the back of this inner room holds things like my futon and bedding, the clothing I’ve hung, and some other bits and bobs. Also, through the window, you can see my clothes-drying mechanism, which is hanger decked with clothes pins from which you can hang clothes to dry. These are pretty common in Japan and I’ve used one the other times I’ve lived here as well, though I think I may have overloaded it just a bit this time around.
As it is, my apartment’s not much, but it’s cozy and it does the job. I hope to spruce the place up with some furniture that will better suit my working habits and lifestyle (for example, I don’t work too well at the desk I have now, and may try something new).
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I know I’ve been bad about giving updates and posting pictures - sorry! m(_ _)m It’s been very busy this week with orientation meetings and the placement exam, but I expect to be able to do more with this blog soon.
I just wanted to share this picture of my latte from this morning because the people at the Starbucks near my school are very kind, and this message on my cup was a huge pick-me-up.
I often hear it said that in Japan, people don’t take kindly to foreigners, but that’s not unilaterally true. There’s a lot of nuance missing from such statements that I don’t have the spoons to go into, but in short, attitudes toward 外国人 differ region by region, city by city, and often the coldness a foreigner might feel from the people around them in Japan has more to do with the fact that most city folk don’t want to stop and talk to random strangers. Additionally, when tourists visit another country and make no effort to learn any language or adapt to local conventions, it should not surprise them if they are unenthusiastically received.
Surely every traveler to Japan has had their own unique experiences, and many of them may contradict my own, but as a visitor here, I’ve found that more often than not, people are friendly and warm.
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I haven’t been able to do much yet other than unpack my belongings and buy basic necessities, but I thought I’d share this adorable kiwi mascot I ran into at the super market yesterday 💕
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Just arrived at Narita and I'm en route to my new lodgings.
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