Category: Japan

  • Shinto Traditions Course — Ise

    As the Shinto Traditions course at Kokugakuin University approaches its end, it has been covering the really big traditions within Shinto, the ones that it is hard to miss. This week’s lecture was about the shrines connected to Ise. The Grand Shrines of Ise enshrine Amaterasu Ohmikami, the kami of the sun and the legendary…

  • Sitting on Trains

    As I have mentioned before, there is a rumour on the internet that Japanese people will refuse to sit next to obvious foreigners on trains, even when the train is very crowded. As I have also mentioned before, I see no evidence that this is true. Today, I wish to report further evidence. Japanese people…

  • Nyotai Daijin and Wakamiya Hachimangu

    Yesterday we had another meeting of the various chairpeople of the Representative Assembly, and afterwards I took advantage of being in southern Kawasaki to visit a couple of the shrines there. One of them, Wakamiya Hachimangu, is a little notorious, due to the nature of a second shrine found in the grounds, so the pictures…

  • Shinto Traditions Course — Tenjin

    This week’s Shinto Traditions lecture at Kokugakuin University was on Tenjin. Tenjin is, these days, best known as the kami of passing entrance exams, but originally he was Sugawara no Michizane, a scholar and politician of the late ninth and early tenth century. The Sugawara family were mid-ranking aristocrats in Heian Japan, with hereditary jobs…

  • Finally, Real Discussions

    I’m afraid this post is a week or so late, but on the 26th September we had another meeting of the Kawasaki City Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents. This was the fifth meeting of the assembly, and we finally got on to actually discussing issues, at least in the Life and Society subcommittee. As you…

  • Shinto Traditions Course — Inari

    Today, the Shinto course at Kokugakuin University started again after the summer break. Of course, I’ve not posted any reports of the course in English since the very first lecture, way back in April, due to not having enough time, but I’m going to try to cover the last four lectures, because they cover the…

  • Hikawa Shrine

    A few weeks ago, I visited Hikawa Shrine, the Ichi-no-Miya of Musashi-no-Kuni. That sentence probably needs a bit of explanation. “Hikawa Shrine” is the name of the Shinto shrine I visited; there are several other shrines called that, but this is the main one, and it is located in Saitama City, the capital of Saitama…

  • Negative Evidence

    If you look around on the net, you can find a lot of anecdotes about how the Japanese exclude foreigners, along with generalised statements that don’t even include anecdotes to back them up. I’d like to provide some anecdotes on the other side. They’re still just anecdotes, and the vast majority are only significant because…

  • Yet More Preliminaries

    Today we had another meeting of the Kawasaki Representative Assembly for Foreign Residents. We are still working on the preliminaries, but we have, at least nearly finished. Today’s job was to choose the topics we will discuss in detail over the rest of our term. My goal for my subcommittee was to have the whole…

  • Welcome to Japan

    Yesterday, the three of us went to Shirahata Hachiman Daijin, our local shrine, to have a ceremony performed to mark my getting permanent resident status. I wanted to mark it in some way, because otherwise it would just be a matter of going and getting the sticker in my passport, and it really ought to…