Month: January 2011
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Progress Report
There was another meeting of the Kawasaki Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents on Sunday. Because the Open Meeting has a completely different format, this was the first normal meeting for over two months, with the result that most of us had more-or-less forgotten what we had been talking about. Fortunately, the secretariat had a summary…
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Nara, Day One
We visited Nara in early November, when my mother came over for Mayuki’s Shichi-go-san. Nara was basically the capital of Japan from 710 to 794 (with some breaks), before the capital moved to Kyoto. As a result, it has a number of very important shrines and temples built in those years, although many of them…
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Edosan Ryokan in Nara
At the beginning of November, when my mother came over for Mayuki’s Shichi-go-san, we all went to Nara, one of the ancient capitals of Japan. I do plan to write about our whole visit, which was very good, but first I want to write about where we stayed for the first night. We stayed at…
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Kamidana
A kamidana is a Shinto household shrine to the kami. According to a 2009 survey (reported in Ishii 2010 『神道はどこへいくけ』, page 21), about 43% of Japanese homes have one, although only 28% have one in the 14 largest cities. Since most of Japan’s population lives in the 14 largest cities, this means that kamidana must be…
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Happy New Year
Happy new year, everyone. I hope you all have a really good one. Even though I was the only one to make it to the shrine at midnight, Yuriko and Mayuki are still asleep as I type this. Maybe next year Mayuki will be excited enough to remain awake until midnight.