7-5-3

You might be thinking "What kind of post title is that?  Did she forget to proofread?"  No, I did not. ;)  

It refers to a Japanese tradition called "Shichi-Go-San" which is the subject of today's post. Shichi-Go-San translates to "seven-five-three".  The tradition, in a nutshell, involves dressing your 3, 5 and 7 year old kids up to go take pictures of them, visit a shrine and/or have a party.  Traditionally the day to do this is November 15th, but since it isn't a national holiday most families do it on the closest weekend.  The tradition goes back as far as 800 A.D but changed a good bit around the 1800's and has stayed basically the same since.

I have an American friend here who has a 2 1/2 year old daughter.  She, in turn, is friends with a Japanese family who was kind enough to offer to do Shichi-Go-San with her daughter (I'll call my friend "M" and her daughter "R" in order to somewhat protect their identity). I was fortunate enough to be invited as the official photographer/blogger of the event.

This Japanese family actually has their own "family kimono" that has been passed down through three generations. So R was the fourth to get to wear it.  Not all families have their own real family kimono these days.  Many families will rent them for dress-up occasions as they are rather expensive.  

You may be wondering why I'm posting about this now as it isn't November.  Well, (and this is information that I could find nowhere else on the Internet but I have it on authority from actual Japanese people) if you have your own family kimono (or even if you rent, I suppose) you can opt to also do a kind of "preview" Shichi-Go-San in the spring.  This is for two reasons: 1) you can get pictures outdoors with the spring flowers and 2) you can get pictures of the kids before they get their summer tan.

You also may be wondering why we are doing this when R is only 2 1/2 years old.  It's traditional to do it all in the year the child turns three, even if their birthday hasn't passed yet.  Alternately, some families may choose to use the East Asian method of calculating age, in which a child is one year old at birth and gains a year on each lunar new year.

We started at a hair salon near the home of our host family (run by a family friend), where R was given a fancy updo.

We moved into a side room in the hair salon where the stylist (who is also known as a "kimono master") proceeded to dress R up in the many layers of a three-year-old's kimono.  I'll stop here and praise R, because she was extremely patient and well-behaved during all this.  I couldn't help but think of my own child, who wouldn't have stood for it, no way, no how (and I know this for a fact, but more on that in a later post).

After she was finished, we took a trip to a local shrine where we took family photos.  And then we went to a local park for more photos.  Below is one of my personal favorites.

Many thanks to M and her family for inviting me to see a Shichi-Go-San and for allowing me to blog about it!

Rebuilding Edo Castle Tower

During Golden Week we spent a weekend in Tokyo visiting the Imperial Gardens.  We went to the Gardens once before, a long time ago, but we just kinda walked in, looked at the palace from a distance, and walked out again.  This time we decided to really spend the day there, see as much as possible, and let Cora run around free-range if possible.

The gardens are big, and toddler-active-time has it's limitations so we ended up making a beeline for the ruins of the Edo Castle Tower.  Back in the samurai days (1600's) Tokyo was called Edo and it had a castle.  Initial construction of the castle and grounds were begun in 1457 and were very, very extensive. Over the centuries there has been lots of burning, wars, rebuilding and relocating of the various buildings and architectural features.  Details here.

Now all this is part of the Imperial Palace gardens.  At one end is a stone pedestal where the largest tower of the castle stood.  The tower had five stories and was 51 meters high.  It was the tallest tower in Japan.

the stone pedestal

from on top, looking back down into the gardens

Now, here's where it gets kinda interesting.  There is a group of citizens in Tokyo who believe that it's a shame that Tokyo doesn't have a castle.  Lots of other big cities in Japan have a castle they can show off, but not poor Tokyo.  So they've banded together and formed a committee to raise money and rebuild the main tower to it's original splendor.

We received the flyer below when we entered the gardens.  I didn't pay attention when we were handed the flyer, but I wonder if we were slipped an English one based on our appearance.  My response after reading it was "bless them".  They have a Facebook page and a website but it's all in Japanese.  (And as usual, if you let them be translated by a program, it's little more than gibberish.)  

I hope they can make their dream come true and if I ever see an actual opportunity to donate I'll totally do it.  It would be great to come back to Japan one day far in the future and see a tower here on this pedestal.    

the front: note that it "might" be a great monument....no promises

my favorite line is about them being ordinary people

Tomb Raider Part 2: Return of the King

Last month, during the height of cherry blossom season, I went with some friends to a new (for us) park over in Ashikaga (in fact, it is called Ashikaga Park).  There wasn't much to this park but it happens to be built on and around some more ancient burial mounds.  It was a much nicer experience than my previous trip to see some local random boring hills ancient burial mounds.

There are twelve mounds in the immediate area, two of which have blocked-off passageways.  Not too much to say about them that I didn't say in the previous post about the ones in Ota.  My Japanese friend who was with me informed me that old Japanese "kings" were buried here.

There was also at some point a geocache buried near a shrine in the park.  I went back later to try to find it but no luck.  It hasn't been found in a long time so I think it's defunct.

Anyway, it only took three years and going to a different town, but I finally got my interesting (or at least pretty) burial mounds!

hey, where'd that American kid come from?

I hope this poor thing hasn't been growing since 1945

it's rare to get a pic of the sakura that doesn't also include five hundred people

from the top of a mound---can you see the cardboard laying at the bottom?  kids bring it and "sled" down the hill.
and I was afraid of climbing the other burial mounds because it might be rude.  Ha!

view from the top over Ashikaga

Claim to Fame

So most of you probably know that we live in a little town called Ota.  To be honest, there isn't a lot going on here but Ota does have one claim to fame.  It's where the Subaru car company was born.  It's hard to miss this, since there's an enormous Subaru factory right in the middle of town.

According to my research, a local guy named Chikuhei Nakajima founded the Nakajima Aircraft Company in 1917.  It became a prominent aircraft manufacturer for Japan during WWII.  From what I read, the factory here in town (or it's predecessor) was heavily bombed during WWII.  As you can imagine, after the war they were no longer allowed to make aircraft.  So they started using  leftover airplane parts to make scooters and.....cars.  The umbrella company is now called Fuji Heavy Industries, Ltd. and Subaru is just a division within it.  If you're at all interested in auto-manufacturer history this link and the one above re Nakajima lead to some good reading on Wikipedia.

I took a special trip downtown to take some pictures of the factory but they don't do justice to the enormity of it.  Seriously it's acres and acres of car plant.  And it's quite the bustling area, with lots of trucks---not the best place to be trying to take photos from a moving car.  I tried to pull over in a side parking lot at one point only to be honked at by a semi who wanted me to move so he could pull in too.

There are lots of Subaru dealers around this area and a lot of people drive them, including Chad.  The big semis that carry lots of stacked cars are a common sight here in town too.

the entrance, right before I was nearly mowed down by the semi

driving by, you can barely see a red/white airplane out front.
I can only assume it's in reference to the company's beginning

employee parking?  I assume it's a major employer in the area

A Well-Defended Park

Another geocaching story!  (Again, if you don't know what I'm talking about go here before you continue.) Don't worry, this one involves no blood-shed and disaster.  Several weeks ago I decided to look for a cache in which to drop a travelbug that I had been carrying around for some time.  I looked at the list of caches near our house to see if I could find an easy one that was big enough to hold stuff.

One immediately piqued my interest....it was called "Ruins of a Small Fortress".  Who doesn't want to go see a fortress on a lazy weekday afternoon?  And it was only about three miles from my house!

So I loaded up Cora and off we went.  After some going around in circles on one-way streets I finally got us into.....a very small neighborhood park surrounded by a moat.  It was a bit of a let-down.

This "fortress" is so small that I can't find any information about it at all on the Internet, except for these random photos that are better than mine.  You'll notice at this website that the fortress is labeled "Koizumi Castle".  That's stretching it a bit if you ask me.

iPhone photo of the moat, sorry

no idea, but it down't look old enough to be actual ruins

stone markers and the entrance to an underground cave

ducks in the moat

and the requisite carp

If you're wondering about the geocache, well, I never found it.  After we got there I checked to see if it had been found recently and it had not, so one presumes it is lost.  Let-down all around, but after our most recent geocaching experience, I call it a success that no one was harmed in the hunt. ;)

Also, I will be taking some time off from blogging throughout December but check back after the New Year for more adventures!  Happy Holidays!

Geocache 'Til You Drop

This past weekend we all went to Tokyo to get flu shots.  We spent a night in a hotel so we would have time to eat some good food and do some sight-seeing.  While we were there we did some geocaching.  If you don't know what geocaching is, stop right now and go read this.

Alright, so we headed for a cache located in the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden.  This garden used to be the home of a feudal lord in the 1600's- 1800's.  It eventually became Imperial Gardens for the royal family of Japan and then after that became a national garden open to the public for a small fee.  It's about 140 acres, very wooded and well-landscaped.

taken on my iPhone, hence the quality

we will refer back to this picture later

So we went to the cache location and it turned out to be one of the best kind of geocaches in that it was located exactly where you thought it would be.  It was in the edge of the woods near some old concrete rubble.  It was big enough to hold items and we dropped off a trackable travelbug that we had picked up in a cache near the Tokyo SkyTree.  We picked up a new travelbug to take to the US over the holidays.

And now....for the rest of the story.  You didn't think this was just a nice, boring tale about a garden and a geocache, did you?

As I walked out of the woods after replacing the cache, I banged my knee hard on a piece of the concrete sticking up out of the ground. I hit it riiiight on the bone but it was a small gash with minimal bleeding.  I came out onto the path and told Chad what I'd done.  And then I tried really, really hard to walk it off.  I'm a big fan of  "walking it off"......in theory.  I thought I was fine and over it.

And then.... I had this really good dream that I can't remember.  I was very confused when  I woke up on the ground with Chad holding me and yelling at me frantically.  I was cold and wait....oh, yeah...I'm in this park. Fortunately Chad had caught me before I hit the pavement in a dead faint.

Now those of you who know me very well said "Uh-oh." two paragraphs ago.  For the rest of you, well....I pass out easily.  Blood, needles, childbirth, intense sharp pain of the funny-bone type or any combination thereof and I will keel over in a second.  It's very annoying and seems to be getting worse as I get older.  At this point I've had enough "episodes" that I know I'm supposed to lie down.  But the park was chilly and there was no place to lie down (refer to the photo above) so I was just going to walk it off.

As Chad was trying to get me to wake up a nice man came by and tried to help.  There was a language barrier but he was trying.  I told him I was fine (in Japanese, no less!) and sent him on his way.  Because clearly I was fine, right?  I was just walking it off.

Chad left me kneeling on the ground and went to see to poor Cora who by this time was crying in her stroller.  I was drinking some water and then....I had another great dream that I can't remember. This time when Chad woke me up I was much less confused and Chad was much more frantic.  Let's stop here and appreciate his dilemma.  He didn't want to leave me lying on the ground and go for help yet he couldn't move me and handle the stroller.  And I'd sent away the only person who had offered to help.

At that point I managed to get it together and get up and walk out of the park.  We took a taxi the half mile back to where we'd left the car and just went home.  I'd like to say it ended there but apparently my digestive system had been compromised and I polished off the morning with some carsickness on the drive out of the city.  And now Chad I both have bum knees because he wrenched his catching me as I fell.

But now we're home, safe and mostly sound with another geocache found and a (hopefully) entertaining story to tell.

The end! :D

Meiji Jingu Shrine

A month or so ago (when we had a visitor from home) we took a trip into Tokyo and explored the area around Yoyogi Park more thoroughly.  We went there once before but we didn't actually go see the main feature of Yoyogi Park which is the Meiji Jingu shrine.

Meiji Jingu is a massive Shinto shrine dedicated to the spirits of the Meiji Emperor (he ruled 1867 to 1912) and his wife.  It's in the middle of Yoyogi Park which is 175 acres of huge trees smack in the middle of Tokyo.  The trees were donated from all over Japan and the world and installed when the shrine and park were constructed in 1920.

Two interesting things about Meiji Jingu:

First, it was completely destroyed in the Tokyo air raids during WWII.  Public funds were raised to reconstruct it in the late 50's.

Second, world leaders (I use that term loosely) like to visit it.  Hillary Clinton was there in 2009 right after she was made Secretary of State.  And, if you go to the Wikipedia page there's a photo of Nazis visiting it in 1938.*  So, yeah.

main building

panorama of the complex

exiting

this photo is from our previous visit.  if you look carefully at the bottom right of the torii you can see Chad and a
stroller with our abandoned child

*This is in no way meant to compare the two.

Japan's Castles

(I think it's been a month again.  <sigh>  I always hate it when bloggers slack off.)

So when you think about castles, ruined or otherwise, you probably think about Europe.  They've got all the castles, right?  Well, as it turns out, they do not.

Japan is literally covered in ancient castles.  You may recall us visiting one in Okinawa in 2011.   I mentioned a quasi-castle in my last post.  There are so many castles that there is one about 15 minutes from my house (close to the children's park I blogged about here).  Is there a castle 15 minutes from your house?  I doubt it.

My local castle is called Kanayama and is in ruins.  It was constructed on a mountaintop in 1469 by one Iwamatsu Iezumi.  It was attacked a lot in the 1500's but stood strong until it was "decommissioned" in 1590, whatever that means. It's a national historic site and one of the more famous castles in this region of Japan.  In person it's an interesting area to walk around, very nicely maintained and popular for walkers/joggers. 

this reflection pond is part of the remnants of
a rather massive irrigation system

you can't really tell, but just past that sign is a really deep ditch.  it was
designed for invading samurai armies to fall into when they charged the mountain.

there are lots of informative sign maps, all in Japanese

the irrigation system

at the top of the mountain, no idea who it is

mostly, it's a lot of stone walls

For more on Japan's castles there is a great website called J-Castle that maintains a really thorough database of them all.  I hope to visit a few more before our time here is up!

The Temple of Bannaji

A couple of weeks ago I drove over to Ashikaga to document Bannaji Temple.  Bannaji is adjacent to the Ashikaga Gakko, which I visited last spring.  I just recently learned that it's technically considered a Japanese castle (you can find it listed as Ashikagashi Yakata), although I think the term "fortified samurai residence" is more apt.  It is surrounded by a very castle-y moat with some particularly voracious carp.  It dates to the mid-1100's (have I mentioned that stuff here is really old?) and is a national historic site.




the temple main walk and main hall

not sure what this is....maybe the library?

a really old, really big gingko tree



the moat



they follow you, snapping
their jaws ominously
 



and some statuary



the bell tower

 



The area around Bannaji and the Gakko is interesting because it's kind of like an old town square.  The streets are cobblestone (poor Cora nearly got her little brains rattled out in her stroller) and there are lots of interesting (read: international) restaurants and little shops.  There are also one way streets--- I learned this the hard way by going down one the wrong way and having a little old lady on a bicycle waggle her finger at me.  When we were there it was a little hot and buggy but I really enjoy walking around that part of Ashikaga--it's very picturesque.  It's what I wish all of rural Japan looked like.  Maybe one day I'll go back and just take photos of the streets around the area.

 

 







Tomb Raider

Back when we first arrived and I was looking for local things to do and see I found mention of some burial mounds nearby.  I enthusiastically thought "Oh, wow, burial mounds-- that'll be neat to go see!".  Shortly thereafter I realized that they were very close to our house and, in fact, were right across the street from the mall.

Cut to two years later.  Last Thursday, I think it was, I wearily thought "Geez, I've got to come up with something to get us out of the house this afternoon.  Maybe I'll go see if there is actually anything at those hills across from the mall."

So, <ahem> here goes:

These two burial mounds date from about the 5th century AD.  They're called "kofun" and the period they are from is sometimes called the Kofun Period because many of these types of mounds were built then.  The Kofun period is the earliest recorded era in the history of Japan. 

These particular mounds are called the Tenjin'yama and according to Wikipedia some terracotta figurines (called haniwa) were found here and are the only haniwa to be designated as national treasures. 

The mounds are right in the middle of a commercial area.  Here is one....

exciting, no?



 And standing in the same spot (a 7Eleven parking lot) but turned the opposite direction...

squint and you can see a McDonalds

There was a sign and a little statue but the sign was faded and all in Japanese.



it probably says "Why are you standing here looking at these dumb hills when
you could be at the mall with everyone else?"

I couldn't find an easy way to climb them, although now that I think of it, that might've been rude.  They're surrounded by rice paddies and ditches that I wasn't brave enough to jump with a baby strapped to my chest.

yep, it's a hill alright

Here's the other one after I drove around and around it trying to see if there was any identifiable path to the top.  There was not.

they do stand out because they are tree covered. 
concrete or rice paddy is the groundcover of choice here.

So, another local landmark checked off the list.  Better late than never, right?



Upgrading

To a classier level of shrine, that is.  Yesterday I visited one of Ashikaga's most famous shrines, Orihime (although sometimes it's spelled "Orijime").  When I was invited by another expat to visit it we didn't really know what the name of it was, or what it was for.  So today I spent some time on Google Image Search and Google Maps until I figured out what the heck it was I saw yesterday.

Orihime Shrine is a shrine to the textile/weaving industry in Ashikaga.  Exciting, no?  I grew up next to a textile town.  I move all the way across the world to.....live next to a textile town.  Go figure.   But we didn't have a textile shrine in my hometown, so that's something.  And it's specifically a folk story princess of weaving that's enshrined at Orihime.  We didn't have a princess either.

I gather Orihime also has a famous manga (aka Japanese comic book) character that shares it's name.  I believe I read that at the gift shop (yeah, the big shrines have gift shops....I don't think they're referred to as "gift shops" but that's what they are) you can sometimes buy stuff related to the manga character.  So they embrace the connection.

The shrine dates from about 1700 but burned in 1880 and was rebuilt in 1937.  So it isn't very old.

Orihime Shrine

closer

a building next to the shrine and the little wooden placards that
I think are wishes left by visitors

the top of the steps....did I mention that this shrine is also on top of a mountain?
they do love to put shrines on top of mountains



1-wisteria on the grounds
2-the admin building (with the gift shop)
3-down the steps overlooking Ashikaga
4-the grounds from the shrine steps
5-flagpole with carp flags
6-cherry/plum/whatever trees