Travels
Since it's been a while since I last posted, I give you 2 in the same day.
I went away on a recent weekend to a town called Kobe. If you've never heard of Kobe, it's known for two things, really - it's beef, and a 6.9 earthquake which devastated it in 1995. It's been 11 years since then, and the city has rebuilt itself quite fast. The only real signs of the earthquake are at the memorial by the wharf, which have been preserved exactly how they were immediately following the quake.
Kobe is not much of a touristy town - well, it is a little bit for Japanese people, but not so much for foreigners. So my Japanese skills were really put to the test. I did pretty well, all things considered. Made it to their semi-famous Chinatown for some fantastic food, including some of the best dumplings (gyoza) I have ever eaten. Even met some guys from Turkey serving kebabs. Not sure why kebabs were being served in Chinatown in Japan by Turks, but I'm even more taken aback as to why a Turk and an American (that's me) spoke Japanese in Chinatown.
Kobe will also be known to me as the place with strange sculptures and architecture...
That last image is of a giant salmon and a to-scale bald eagle to signify the import/export relationship Kobe has with Seattle, the salmon being a symbol of the area, and the bald eagle for America.
I thought this building looked the city flipping the bird.
Walking down a street (without a construction zone in sight), I came across this guy. It's not every day you see someone in a suit, sneakers, sporting a backpack, and a hard hat.
Near Kobe is a small town Himeji that's known for its castle. I believe Himeji castle is the oldest in Japan, and it was fantastic. It is still how it was several hundred years ago, and exactly how I pictured Japanese castles to be. Multi-leveled, square, with sliding wood doors and very simple decorations. Very NOT European.
The castle and the buildings in the complex all had similar roof ornaments - what appear to be dragons. Very cool looking.
As it turned out, an annual festival took place in Himeji the weekend I went. It's quite hard to explain exactly what happened - I went to the festival with 4 Japanese people, and none of them had much of a clue either. The festival was called Nada-no-Kenka Matsuri, and nearby towns or temples (it was never made clear which) each had a color. Each town/temple had built a very elaborate vehicle to carry four men who played one large drum with an exacting rhythm. The drum was played as each shrine was brought out of the center temple, shaken, dropped, tilted as people around it chanted.
The colors were very vibrant and the people very many. The reason for the ceremony is still unknown to me. But it was such an important event, the Goodyear blimp made an appearance.
After each team brought out their elaborate shrine-vehicles (we witnessed the red, blue and yellow teams), there was some running, and chanting in and out of the central temple gate.
Then it got strange.
Three teams - the white, yellow and orange - each carried out a smaller, yet still fairly elaborate, shrine to the center of the square in front of the temple. Each shrine was lifted and carried by somewhere in the order of 50 or 60 people. With great enthusiasm, these elaborate shrines representing a town or temple were then smashed into each other. Toppling back and forth until one fell to the ground. Then they were picked up, and the action repeated. It was never made clear who the "winner" was as the shrines were eventually carried to the base of the nearby mountain for more "fighting."
It's also worth mentioning the clothes that the festival participants were wearing. Most of the men - well, only men participated in the ceremonies - were wearing fundoshi. Fundoshi was translated as "Japanese underpants" by my companions. I asked if they had ever heard of Japanese pants. They said the fundoshi were comfortable. Let me know if you think they are or not.
One of my Japanese companions asked if we have anything like this in America. Uhh....
I went away on a recent weekend to a town called Kobe. If you've never heard of Kobe, it's known for two things, really - it's beef, and a 6.9 earthquake which devastated it in 1995. It's been 11 years since then, and the city has rebuilt itself quite fast. The only real signs of the earthquake are at the memorial by the wharf, which have been preserved exactly how they were immediately following the quake.
Kobe is not much of a touristy town - well, it is a little bit for Japanese people, but not so much for foreigners. So my Japanese skills were really put to the test. I did pretty well, all things considered. Made it to their semi-famous Chinatown for some fantastic food, including some of the best dumplings (gyoza) I have ever eaten. Even met some guys from Turkey serving kebabs. Not sure why kebabs were being served in Chinatown in Japan by Turks, but I'm even more taken aback as to why a Turk and an American (that's me) spoke Japanese in Chinatown.
Kobe will also be known to me as the place with strange sculptures and architecture...
That last image is of a giant salmon and a to-scale bald eagle to signify the import/export relationship Kobe has with Seattle, the salmon being a symbol of the area, and the bald eagle for America.
I thought this building looked the city flipping the bird.
Walking down a street (without a construction zone in sight), I came across this guy. It's not every day you see someone in a suit, sneakers, sporting a backpack, and a hard hat.
Near Kobe is a small town Himeji that's known for its castle. I believe Himeji castle is the oldest in Japan, and it was fantastic. It is still how it was several hundred years ago, and exactly how I pictured Japanese castles to be. Multi-leveled, square, with sliding wood doors and very simple decorations. Very NOT European.
The castle and the buildings in the complex all had similar roof ornaments - what appear to be dragons. Very cool looking.
As it turned out, an annual festival took place in Himeji the weekend I went. It's quite hard to explain exactly what happened - I went to the festival with 4 Japanese people, and none of them had much of a clue either. The festival was called Nada-no-Kenka Matsuri, and nearby towns or temples (it was never made clear which) each had a color. Each town/temple had built a very elaborate vehicle to carry four men who played one large drum with an exacting rhythm. The drum was played as each shrine was brought out of the center temple, shaken, dropped, tilted as people around it chanted.
The colors were very vibrant and the people very many. The reason for the ceremony is still unknown to me. But it was such an important event, the Goodyear blimp made an appearance.
After each team brought out their elaborate shrine-vehicles (we witnessed the red, blue and yellow teams), there was some running, and chanting in and out of the central temple gate.
Then it got strange.
Three teams - the white, yellow and orange - each carried out a smaller, yet still fairly elaborate, shrine to the center of the square in front of the temple. Each shrine was lifted and carried by somewhere in the order of 50 or 60 people. With great enthusiasm, these elaborate shrines representing a town or temple were then smashed into each other. Toppling back and forth until one fell to the ground. Then they were picked up, and the action repeated. It was never made clear who the "winner" was as the shrines were eventually carried to the base of the nearby mountain for more "fighting."
It's also worth mentioning the clothes that the festival participants were wearing. Most of the men - well, only men participated in the ceremonies - were wearing fundoshi. Fundoshi was translated as "Japanese underpants" by my companions. I asked if they had ever heard of Japanese pants. They said the fundoshi were comfortable. Let me know if you think they are or not.
One of my Japanese companions asked if we have anything like this in America. Uhh....
posted by David at 1:13 PM
2 Comments:
Your picture of the gentleman wearing hard hat is a DREAM of every constr.company in CZ where we had workers not wearing it while placing large blocks of sandstone on the facade /place:scaffolding,floor:eleventh/.Local "Karlstejn" is fascinating same as the underwear fashion show. Looking at the pants, the third part of the Japanese abbreviation "FUN","DO","SHI" provokes serious doubts that the missing letter in "SHI." part is "P".
M.
Cool. I gotta get to Himeji! Everyone says that castle is like the best thing since ridiculously thickly sliced bread. Nice pics!
"Kenka" means fight (that's one I've picked up from schoolteaching), so maybe that helps to understand the festival a little more?
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