Temples and Miko and Shrines, oh my
This weekend was a three-day weekend with Health and Sports Day on Monday, but I feel like I barely had any vacation. Friday night I went to Omiwa Shrine to see the Moon Viewing Festival. It was really awesome with miko dancing and traditional instruments and sacrifices to the dead. Very big energy and spiritually wow. Afterwards the miko gave us a saucerfull of sake and some mochi and anko--I usually don't like mochi, but this was soft and tasty.
Sorry these pictures are blurry. It was much more beautiful in person!
The fountain thing.
Miko dancing.
Then on Sunday I went to Yakushiji (temple) for its like Big Day (maybe anniversary?). Anyway, there was some stuff there on display that isn't usually there. TONS of people. And there was a big procession of gods and demons and stuff (people in costume! I don't know!) that someone said were the Basara, which may be the generals of Hell. In any event, the gaijin team from the Basara Matsuri earlier that summer performed their dance again for the people and the gods (the people in costume were up on a dais watching us). I had never done this dance, not having participated in the steaming hot (and this year rainy) Basara Matsuri either year. So I wasn't wearing appropriate garb (not that it mattered, but nobody told me!), and I had to learn the dance in like half an hour (which I did). We went first of the three dance groups, and we were soooo bad. Like we introduced ourselves as "dancing from the heart", because obviously we weren't dancing from any kind of skill or practice. The other two groups were seriously awesome. omg embarrassing. So I don't know why they invited us. Our group did win a "Special Prize" at Basara Matsuri (lol), and apparently we were the highest-ranked group there. (That scale was a little off!)
These were our costumes. (This is a teammate.)
I was totally rocking the 80s headband and armbands.
These were the costumes of another group. They had awesome facepaint too.
These are the gods on the dais thing. The kids in front danced with us, too, upping our cuteness quotient.
After the dance we helped set up lanterns, and I walked around the temple a bit. Yakushiji is my favorite temple so far, and it's the third time I've been there. I listened to a monk give a variation on the same speech I'd heard there before. He talked about how all of us tell lies and have bad thoughts and want things, and if we didn't then (he gestured behind him to the buddhas) we should go up there because we were obviously buddhas. He said that the health of the heart was very important and often neglected in our busy lives, and that we should take a few minutes each day to tend to the health of our heart. Then he did the thing where he said that palm to palm, shiwa to shiwa naraba shiawase ni naru, and the backs of the hands together knuckle to knuckle, fushi to fushi naraba fushiawase ni naru. So I guess pray more?
There were groups of monks going around and chanting and bowing to the various statues of gods, and then there was this pile of piney branches and a monk was chopping at it with a sword without actually touching it while other monks played traditional instruments. Don't ask me.
These keitai pics are kind of pathetic, but my camera batteries ran out. Sigh.
After that we walked a long way to an onsen, which was very big and nice. It had a bath that was purple and smelled like grapes, but the sign said apples. Obviously just to confuse everyone. And it had an outside bath filled with dirt minerals, too. And a tv on the wall in case you got bored with all that *nature*. There was this one place with an electric charge running through the water. It felt like stinging nettles. Very odd. What is that supposed to do? And there were many other baths with massaging jets. After that we walked another long way to eat Indian food, and then out to karaoke and then I stayed at friends' apartment until morning because the trains were gone. It was fun, yeah. But a lot more *walking* and dancing (and biking!) than I was used to.
Sorry these pictures are blurry. It was much more beautiful in person!
The fountain thing.
Miko dancing.
Then on Sunday I went to Yakushiji (temple) for its like Big Day (maybe anniversary?). Anyway, there was some stuff there on display that isn't usually there. TONS of people. And there was a big procession of gods and demons and stuff (people in costume! I don't know!) that someone said were the Basara, which may be the generals of Hell. In any event, the gaijin team from the Basara Matsuri earlier that summer performed their dance again for the people and the gods (the people in costume were up on a dais watching us). I had never done this dance, not having participated in the steaming hot (and this year rainy) Basara Matsuri either year. So I wasn't wearing appropriate garb (not that it mattered, but nobody told me!), and I had to learn the dance in like half an hour (which I did). We went first of the three dance groups, and we were soooo bad. Like we introduced ourselves as "dancing from the heart", because obviously we weren't dancing from any kind of skill or practice. The other two groups were seriously awesome. omg embarrassing. So I don't know why they invited us. Our group did win a "Special Prize" at Basara Matsuri (lol), and apparently we were the highest-ranked group there. (That scale was a little off!)
These were our costumes. (This is a teammate.)
I was totally rocking the 80s headband and armbands.
These were the costumes of another group. They had awesome facepaint too.
These are the gods on the dais thing. The kids in front danced with us, too, upping our cuteness quotient.
After the dance we helped set up lanterns, and I walked around the temple a bit. Yakushiji is my favorite temple so far, and it's the third time I've been there. I listened to a monk give a variation on the same speech I'd heard there before. He talked about how all of us tell lies and have bad thoughts and want things, and if we didn't then (he gestured behind him to the buddhas) we should go up there because we were obviously buddhas. He said that the health of the heart was very important and often neglected in our busy lives, and that we should take a few minutes each day to tend to the health of our heart. Then he did the thing where he said that palm to palm, shiwa to shiwa naraba shiawase ni naru, and the backs of the hands together knuckle to knuckle, fushi to fushi naraba fushiawase ni naru. So I guess pray more?
There were groups of monks going around and chanting and bowing to the various statues of gods, and then there was this pile of piney branches and a monk was chopping at it with a sword without actually touching it while other monks played traditional instruments. Don't ask me.
These keitai pics are kind of pathetic, but my camera batteries ran out. Sigh.
After that we walked a long way to an onsen, which was very big and nice. It had a bath that was purple and smelled like grapes, but the sign said apples. Obviously just to confuse everyone. And it had an outside bath filled with dirt minerals, too. And a tv on the wall in case you got bored with all that *nature*. There was this one place with an electric charge running through the water. It felt like stinging nettles. Very odd. What is that supposed to do? And there were many other baths with massaging jets. After that we walked another long way to eat Indian food, and then out to karaoke and then I stayed at friends' apartment until morning because the trains were gone. It was fun, yeah. But a lot more *walking* and dancing (and biking!) than I was used to.