Category: Japan
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On Shijō this afternoon the Naginata-hoko is going up. Look at the rope work and the size of some of the posts! #gion #祇園祭 #kyoto
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Such a glorious day today in #kyoto 😁 Hope you all had a lovely Tanabata 🎋
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My neighbourhood has a lot of Buddhist craftspeople. They make altar fittings, carve statues, etc. One warehouse is used for cleaning parts of temples. I pass by every day and there is some new chunk of a temple that has been hauled over to be cleaned and repaired, before it is sent back to be…
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Blowing away your sins
Although we live in downtown Kyoto, we are somehow still within the precinct of Fushimi Inari, the mountain shrine south of the city with all the torii gates (some photos from our hike up there a couple years ago →). The other day, to my surprise, an envelope arrived unbidden from that famous shrine. It…
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Rainy remembrance
In the rain today I walked to Bukkō-ji 佛光寺, an important temple in the centre of Kyoto for Shinran, the founder of Shin Buddhism. I am not a temple member, but this is the neighborhood temple. In a famously gridded city, its grounds are the local shortcut. Every day we walk diagonally through Bukko-ji to…
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Microblogging everyday Kyoto
After arriving in Kyoto I considered how I should journal daily life here. For the month of May I experimented with the indie Micro.blog service, posting pics, videos, and short updates at everydaykyoto.micro.blog. The service is pretty straightforward, with a simple non-surveillance capitalist business model. The community is really nice too. So I can recommend…
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Michiko
On the Nordic Asia podcast this week Dr Satoko Naito interviewed Dr Kanako Kuramitsu about her research on an unseen population: children of consensual relationships between Japanese fathers and Chinese mothers in the war years. The emphasis on the word “consensual” is mine, meant to underscore that this is not the most commonly heard narrative…
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Walking down Shijō, above the crowd is the sound of practice: they are getting ready for Gion Matsuri at the Naginata-hoko! 🔊
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Sun setting on Nijo castle
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Sunday morning. I hear the calling of Buddhist monks on alms round as they walk down the narrow street in front of my house. I give some dana. I had always lived in apartments in Kyoto, so never had this experience before. Anumodana! 🙏📿