Rurousha 2

I was muttering and moping aboutoosōji, the big clean-up that we're supposed to do before New Year's Day. Then I visited Shirahige Jinja in Mukōjima (向島白髭神社) and realized that I should stop grumbling forthwith: at least I don't have to clean my local shrine's mikoshi! Can you imagine taking that apart and polishing every little bit?

They cleaned everything, every lantern, every banner, every paper fan. Yikes. Nothing was spared. The lion mask (shishi-gashira)that is used every June in their lion dance (shishi-mai)was unpacked, clean, polished, cleaned again and polished again. It kept grinning throughout.

Shirahige was founded in 951, but has been rebuilt many times. The deity that is worshipped here is Jurōjin, the god of wisdom and longevity (and one of the seven lucky gods). The interesting thing about this shrine is its Korean history. It's named after Shirahige, a Korean tutelary god who was brought to Japan by immigrants who settled in the Lake Biwa area.
The ma…

Look! Fuji-san has moved to Tanzania!


I saw this photo on The Big Picture, in an article entitled "50 best photos from the natural world". The mountain is Ol Doinyo Lengai, an active volcano in Tanzania's Rift Valley, and the lake is Lake Natron.

I share it with you in this quiet let's-start-winding-down few days before the 1st. (Actually it's not winding down at all. I still have to tackle oosōji, the big cleaning that we're supposed to do before New Year's Day, but I'm in total denial. It's more fun to look at pretty pictures.)

I first noticed it during my recent walk to Tokyo Sky Tree: in every single photo there was a fuzzy spot floating in the sky, always in the same place, persistently present. There was only one explanation: dust on the camera's sensor. Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two: why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a photographer, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old camera to have had so much dust in it?Dust on your DSLR's sensor is an inevitable result of changing lenses. Many cameras have a "self-cleaning" feature, but its efficacy is limited. You can buy a cleaning kit and do it yourself, but I'm too clumsy with my hands to attempt that. (I'm really stupid with my hands. If you ever see a screwdriver in my vicinity, run for your life and call the paramedics. There will be blood.) I decided to go to the Canon Service Center in Shinjuku.

The bad thing abo…

I don't know what other foreigners in Tokyo do on Christmas – eat Kentucky? – but I go walking, and today I headed for Tokyo Sky Tree.
I love this tower. It's clearly visible from this apartment, and I've been watching its progress over the past two years. The last time I walked there was on 19 March, the day after it reached its maximum height of 634 meters (a week after the big quake). Today I went there again, and wow, it's looking great – not only the tower itself, but also the huge commercial complex that surrounds it.
The area buzzes with sightseers, and it's obvious that many new shops, especially restaurants, have opened in the area. Oshiage Station has undergone a metamorphosis; it will be directly linked to the complex and will become the area's main station. Narihirabashi, the other nearby station, remains as small as always.
A suggestion to Tobu Railways, who developed the complex: I know the opening is still five months away, but you’re going to have …

I'm a heathen whose only religion is to worship at the altar of the book, but Japan has also brainwashed me into becoming a devoted follower of the cult of the cute. Thanks to the latter I succumbed to the temptation of this photo and its accompanying Christmas message. I refuse to go PC and say Happy Holidays. This is a Christian day (with pagan roots, if you want to be historically pedantic). So this zazenning animist would like to say Merry Christmas to my Christian friends.


I spotted this photo in The Guardian. The animal in it is a meerkat, a kind of mongoose that lives in Southern Africa. It's the cutest animal I've ever seen, with the possible exception of Rilakkuma. (Meerkat is an Afrikaans word that means "lake cat", but it's a desert animal. You're right, it doesn't make any sense. It's Africa.)

I wasn't planning on doing three stories in one day, but just after I'd posted the previous one, I happened to glance out of the window … and there it was. Tokyo Sky Tree. The tower is illuminated tonight, tomorrow night and on the 31st. It has 1 995 LED lights that will be switched on when it opens in May 2012; but only 720 lights in strategic spots above 125 m will be lit on the three nights this year. More information (Japanese) here.
Fellow blogger Lina of Urutora no hi asked me to take photos of the illuminated tower, so I did. I'm a very bad night photographer, I don't have a tripod and it's freezing on the balcony, but here it is.

This week there was another big quake in New Zealand. The earth remains restless. I'm not indifferent towards quakes, but neither do I fret about the next big one. It will come. Shōganai. (The March quake, instead of turning me into an edgy nervous wreck, has actually quietened down my concerns. Now I know what to expect. Roughly.) The recent jitterbugging reminded me of this poem in Anthony Thwaite's collection Letter from Tokyo:

An easing of walls,
A shuddering through soles:
A petal loosens, falls. In the room, alone: It begins, then it has gone. Ripples outlast stone. Rain-smell stirs the heart; Nostrils flare. A breath. We wait For something to start. The flavour of fear, Something fragile in the air, Gone, it remains here.
PS: I've gone into shut-down mode as the year-end approaches. That explains the quotations instead of any original writing. I have posts about Inari shrines and the seven lucky gods and my love affair with Tokyo Sky Tree, all half-written, but they will have t…

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.  ~Andrew Wyeth

The bulk of my book collection remains in South Africa with my family – there's no space in your average Tokyo apartment for 3 000 tomes – but I've shipped a few boxes to Tokyo. They remain piled on top of each other in the passage, guarded by two bronze lions from Benin.
I bought many books about Japan after I met The Hero, but before I moved to his country. Confront me with something unknown and my instinct is to dive into books. I discovered lots of useful information about the country; I'm still looking for an instruction manual for the man!
It's interesting to re-read these books after I've lived in Japan for several years, and theoretical knowledge has been replaced with real experience. Many books disappoint the second time around. Alan Booth and John W. Dower remain my heroes; but Pico Iyer's The Lady and The Monk now irritates me so much I want to throw it from the balcony. It's condescending and hypocritical.
Yesterday I paged through Dave Barry Does…