Entries this day: AM Butoh Nara Todaiji buddha kyoto sanyo_solar_ark zzz_bad

AM

11:11am JST Sunday 5 October 2003

Chowed at the pastry bakery that janette scoped on our first night in Kyoto. Definitely less protein, more sugar, (and more dough) for less dough than the hotel restaurant.

Checked out of the hotel at 10:30, walked outside, and I checked our shinkansen tickets.

"We have 7 hours until we have to be somewhere. Let's go to Nara."

Awesome. Walked without extra guidance and without errors to the train and shooped to Kyoto station.

We dropped off our bags (I took all my clothes out of my backpack, kept my backpack and computer) in a locker on the east side of Kyoto station (locker 5068) and paid 690 each for the 40 minute train ride to Nara.

(hmm; they've got grub on the train; I want some; oh yeah, I have an extra yumyum from the bakery!)

This train is rather nice, with forward facing seats with antimatamasgars (*) instead of sideways bench seats.

* This is what janette called the little plastic doily seat cover things.

Butoh

1:16pm JST Sunday 5 October 2003

Got lost-ish in Nara (just started following something and then realized oh I need to go this way instead) and therefore happened across a performance that I'm sure was butoh. Nice.

Nara

2:37pm JST Sunday 5 October 2003

After watching the Butoh, I told janette my story of how I learned about butoh, including Alexis training me at KTRU, me getting a crush on Alexis, bringing a printout of the longest English word in the world to the radio station as Alexis was interviewing Philip Gayle, going to see Philip Gayle and his friend perform improvisational music, seeing Philip Gayle's friend and his friend perform Butoh, hanging out with PG and friend and friend, then attending a workshop on butoh the next day, at which I was the only participant.

We actually got sidetracked before I got to that point of the story, but that's not the point of this story. We were soon to arrive at Five Story Pagoda, a featured temple in Nara. janette was like, "wow man" and stuff, which is understandable, cause it's pretty tall and cool. But I was like, "this isn't why we came to Nara. C'mon let's go."

We turned around and saw another big temple thing. I don't know what it is, but it's also not why we came to Nara.

Oh, a deer!

Geez louise how sidetracked can we get? (not that it matters, we're on a lovely leisurely vacation) I looked over then thought, hey a deer! Sure enough, there was a deer. I got a picture of it similar to my pic with the goat in Costa Rica. Weird. A deer. But that's not the reason we came to Nara. Peace out, deer.

3:34pm JST Sunday 5 October 2003

Wow. There were a million deer in Nara!

Most did not have antlers; they had been sawed off to keep gougings to a minimum, I'm sure.

Deer biscuits were available for 150 yen. About 5 biscuits for that price.

Turns out that first deer near the Five Story Pagoda was just a deercoy keeping us away from all the other deer. Literally bajillions, and it was made all the more spectacular because I had no idea they would be here. I was surprised enough by the one deer, and then when we saw three behind a guy selling something, I was triply surprised and took a picture, etc, and then looked up... hey there are deer all over the place!

They were almost completely tame: one tried to bite the sheet of paper (map) I had, so I jerked it back from him and hit another deer in the nose, but that deer didn't even flinch. Woah. Sorry, deer. Be nice, deer! No eating my map.

Got cute deer pictures; probably 100 total... (Hey I wonder if I could sell copies of all my pictures on CD. Certainly a self aggrandizing idea that anyone would *care* to see all the pictures I have (near 2000 at the end of this jaunt), plus the slight detail that my CD burner won't recognize blank CDs and therefore won't burn CDs, but hey it's still an idea.)

Okay, anyway, got cute pictures, including some nosing my camera, like that dog in California; I wonder if I can start a collection of pictures of animals sniffing the camera.

Twice I saw some deer aggression toward other deer trying to get the crackers provided by pedestrians. This was rare presumably due to the wide availability of crackers.

Todaiji

3:43pm JST Sunday 5 October 2003

The statue of the Buddha Rushana in the Great Buddha Hall of the Todaiji Temple is the largest bronze statue in the world and it was completed in 749 A.D. In the year 743 the Emperor Shomu ordered the construction ofa larg statue of the Buddha Rushana and work proceeded under the direcdtioin of Kuninaka no Muraji Kimimaro. Eight casting over a period of three years and the work of large numbers of craftsmen and artisans were neededbefore the statue was finally complete.

The statue stands fifteen meters in height and all the scientific knowledge available in eight-century Japan was required for its successful completion. It is recorded that the following amounts of metal were used:

copper       500 tons
tin          8.5 tons
mercury      2.5 tons
gold         440 kilograms

Up until this time the gold used in the gold-plating of Buddhist statue had come from the continental mainland, but in 749 gold was found in northern Japan and then later in what is now Shizuoka Prefecture. Work on gilding the statue began in 752, the year in which the dedicatory ceremonies were held, and it continued for about five years. The ceremonies were attended by the Empress Koken and the ex-Emperor Shomu, who had retired in 749, and more than ten thousand priests and musicians from Inida, China and Korea as well as Japan took part.

In 1180 and again in 1567 the Great Buddha Hall was twice burnt down in times of war and the present statue was recast in 1691, but it ws not replated with gold. The twenty-eight lotus petals on the pedastal and their line engravings give the best impression of the origianl appearance of the statue.

The Buddha Rushana, or Vairocana, is the Master Teacher of the doctrines of the Kegon-Kyo, aor Avatamsaka Sutra. This sutra is held to give a truly faithful account of the moment and nature of Buddha's Enlightenment and it is filled with a freshness and immediacy rarely to be found in other sutras. It depics the Universe known as the Lotus World, so called because the lotus flower, which rises above te mode in which the plant gorws, is used as a symbol of Engliishtenment. The view of the world which it presents is the at of the doctrine of dependent origination, or in Sanskrit pratityasamutpada, which holds that each and every constituent nad in habitant of this world is connected to all others in relationships of mutual dependence and complementarity. Vairocana is the Realisation of the truth of this doctrine.

In twas because he was much moved by the majestic Avatamsaka Sutra that the Emperor Shomu decided to have a huge statue of the Buddha Rushana constructed. His wish and that of the those who built the statue and have guarded it over the ages is that throught the grace of the Buddha Rushana all living creatures may attain a state of enlightenment in which they are bathed in the light of understanding.

buddha

4:17pm JST Sunday 5 October 2003

That thar Buddha is big.

I chose not to buy a 1000 yen tile on which I could write my name, presumably to be incorporated in the reconstruction of the shrine. I didn't want to cheapen immortality through a mass-marketed hand-written whatevermadoodle. Plus, where are these tiles going to go? In 500 years will they be visible for all to gawk and say, "aw in 2003 some little kid we've never heard of wrote their name on a tile, thereby effectively graffittiing a national treasure." Fuck that.

I did buy a little 8 x 10 image of the Buddha. On the back of that page was typed all the stuff I typed above. I didn't know this isn't the original Buddha. Oh well.

Behind the Buddha was another line. I couldn't see whyfor the line was forming, but janette pointed it out: there are little kids crawling through the hole in the pillar.

"I want to crawl through the pillar!" I had heard about it from Sumika and told her that I would crawl through it when I went to see the Buddha. I had forgotten all about that, but the memory came back. I squatted and watched the kids emerge and be photographed by their respective parents and strangers. I imagined it would be a squeeze for me to make it through. A slightly larger-than-a-kid young woman went through. She needed some help making it. "Could I make it through?" I asked janette.

"No," she said plainly. "You're wider than her hips."

"Hmmm." Fair enough. I'll report back to Sumika.

"You'd get stuck in front of all these people. Now wouldn't that be embarassing?"

"It would be funny if I crawled through, got stuck, then knocked down the pillar trying to get out."

Hahahhaaaha

kyoto

6:23pm JST Sunday 5 October 2003

Back in Kyoto we ate pastries and watched some kids from a badminton team play a rhythmic verbal game involving counting and quickness with rhythm. I've seen the game before, but this appeared to be a more complex version with a limit of 8 instead of 4.

"ooh we gotta go," I checked my watch and we had to be on the shinkansen in 35 minutes. From where we were, it turns out we coulda made it in 12 minutes, but I'm quite happy to be early and take pictures of shinkansens in the station for 20 minutes.

I bought some yumyums for the peeps at work as this seems customary when one of us goes on vacation. 'specially Carla; she brings us stuff all the time.

sanyo solar ark

6:42pm JST Sunday 5 October 2003

Tonight, Sanyo Solar Ark looks like a huge low bowl striped with layers of blue lights. It probably looks like this every night, but I'd never previously seen nor heard of it until we just passed it on our way home on the shinkansen. It's very near Gifu-Hashima station (next shinkansen station from Nagoya when escaping Tokyo)

zzz bad

1:28am JST Monday 6 October 2003

janette saw that I took a photograph of a cute blonde while we were in Kyoto and now we are breaking up.

What a dumb photograph. Can't even fucking see the girl in it except that she's blonde. What a dumb idea to take her photo. Fuck.

We talked about it, and it seems that I don't want to have a girlfriend because I want to do everything alone. I love having breakfast lovingly made for me, but I want to learn how to do it myself. I want to rely on no one but myself. Is this lunacy? Must we always rely on others? What about people living off the land? Must *I* always rely on others?

I want the world to take care of me. The world to make me breakfast. I want to have done amazing things in the world. I want the world to be amazed.

- - - -

I have offered janette my continued friendship, and a place to stay while she is in Japan.