Wednesday, September 30, 2015

More touring with friends! (To-ji again, Byodo-in, Osaka Aquarium, Sumiyoshi-taisha) (Days 135, 136)

I already had a bunch of stuff on yesterday's blog, so I put the tail end of that day into this blog. We went from Kinkaku-ji to To-ji. I already posted a bunch of pictures of To-ji (biggest wooden pagoda) back in March, so go there and check those out if you haven't already. From there we went to Fushimi Inari-taisha which I also already posted a bunch of pictures of (lots of red gates on a small mountain). I got a couple other good pictures that day though, so those are the first three posted here.


When I visited To-ji before, the lotus weren't in bloom. So, I snapped a shot of them. 



At the train station on the way to Inari I found a cicada on the ground, These guys were deafening, by the way. If you stand under the wrong tree, you literally cannot hear the person standing next to you talk.


I flipped him over. He was alright.

The next day we got up early and went to Uji (a small city neighboring Kyoto) to see Byodo-in. Byodo-in is a Buddhist temple which houses the famous Phoenix Hall (pictured below). The Phoenix Hall is pictured on the ten yen coin, and the phoenix himself is on the 10000 yen note. The phoenixes can just barely be seen on top of the central section of the hall. There was also a really awesome museum, with tons of statues of little bodhisattvas flying around on clouds, but you couldn't take pictures in there.


You can see some people visiting the inner chamber of the hall here. It only cost a little more money to go in, but there was a wait. Being that it was over 100 degrees, we decided to skip it.



Here you can see the temple reflected in the pond surrounding it.


You can faintly see the giant Buddha sitting inside the hall. You can also see the phoenixes on top of the hall a bit better. Apparently, centuries ago people would bring the dying here to help guide them to paradise.

We then left Uji and headed to Osaka where we visited the world famous aquarium there. My pictures there mostly kind of sucked because of reflections and dirty glass, so I edited them pretty heavily to not look so sucky. Still you can see reflections and stuff, oh well.



Aren't these things creepy? They're huge, by the way. Not sure if you can tell, but those legs are like six feet long.


These jellies were also kind of creepy. Not much more to say there.


These two were the main attraction. The whale sharks! They were in the biggest aquarium I've ever seen, and still it wasn't big enough for them. I believe that when they reach adulthood the aquarium releases them and adopts new babies to replace them.

From the aquarium we went to Sumiyoshi-taisha, one of the oldest shrines in Japan. It predates Chinese influence, and thus has a uniquely Japanese architecture. This bridge especially is pretty neato.










I just liked this picture. It's very Japanese. Modern and ancient stuff just thrown together all hodge podge. Also, you can maybe get an idea of how many people ride bicycles from this picture.

Until next time! (Tomorrow is Fuji, get hype!)

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Touring with friends, Genko-an and Kinkakuji (Part deux) (Day 135)

So, after the school year wrapped up, my friends David, Stephen, and Ed came to visit. For the first few days we explored Kyoto and neighboring cities Uji and Osaka.


There's David feeling the zen, in the courtyard of Genko-an.

Genko-an is a buddhist temple north of Kyoto with a couple noteworthy features. First, the ceiling of the temple is made from the old floorboards of Fushimi Castle. At that castle 2,000 samurai held off 40,000 men for 11 days, long enough that their lord Tokugawa Ieyasu could escape. Tokugawa would go on to unify the fragmented country, leading to over two hundred years of (relative) peace.

The last few men standing at the end of the siege commit seppuku (ritual suicide), rather than be captured by their enemies. Today, over 400 years later, you can see their bloodstains on the ceiling of Genko-an.


One of the most striking stains, you can clearly see a footprint here.


The other feature that draws a lot of visitors are the windows of confusion and enlightenment. I'm sure it bears a lot more significance for practitioners of Buddhism. They are supposed to relate to one the benefits of an enlightened perspective. I'm not sure I felt enlightened, but they were pretty cool.


The Window of Confusion


The Window of Enlightenment


Side by side




We then went to Kinkaku-ji. It's a tourist trap, but it's a must see. So, I showed them around but tried not to linger. There were a buttload of Chinese tourists there.



From left to right: David, Stephen, and Ed.



Sort of a dry wishing well. People stand behind a nearby rope and try to toss 1 and 5 yen coins into the pot.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Gion Matsuri! (Day 119)

The whole month of July is filled with Gion related festivities, with the main event being the parade on the 17th. Three days before the parade, the main streets are shutdown to normal traffic, and the entire downtown area is inundated with pedestrians and street vendors. I wasn't able to make the parade due to typhoon, but I did check out the festivities on the 16th.



Here are some of my friends (from left to right): Guillermo (Spain), Haruna (Japan), Lena (Germany), Clara (Germany), Yuri (Japan), Kenji (Taiwan), and Oscar (Bolivia). Also present but not pictured were Adam (Michigan), Nick (Michigan), and Felix (Germany).



It was insanely crowded. State Fair doesn't compare.


You saw lots and lots of people in traditional clothing.


You can see the rows of food vendors that seem to go on endlessly. In the foreground you can see Adam's novelty Taiyaki hat. Adam is a very large guy, well over 6' 0" and built like a lineman. He drew a lot of attention with this hat, which was actually only one in a collection of silly hats. He was constantly stopped and asked for pictures, and you could hear people whispering "sugoi" (amazing) and "deke" (huge) as they passed him.


Adam's hat again. Here you can see some people checking it out and Lena laughing at him.


Some kimono.

It was really unique being a part of that crowd and all of that energy. The collectivist culture in Japan makes it feel like you're really part of the crowd and part of the event.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

And now for something completely different (Day 115)

I didn't just check out the ancient and traditional while I was in Japan. In early July I went to Bitsummit 2015, an independent games convention. I apologize that the photos aren't that amazing, I was pretty zombified at the event. It took place during finals week and I stayed up through the night studying and went to this the following morning on no sleep. Still, it was a really exciting opportunity for me to get a look inside the industry and share a small space with some of the most iconic people in the world of video games.


This guy is Mayumaro. He's a "yuru-chara" mascot. These guys are all over Japan and usually serve to promote certain locations. There's a pretty good chance you've seen Kumamon. He's on pretty much everything in Japan and shows up a lot on my american facebook feed too. Mayumaro is the mascot for Kyoto and shows up at all kinds of events.


La Mulana was an underground hit released in 2005 that saw widespread popularity when it was re-released with a graphical facelift in 2011. Here you could test an early build of the sequel.


This guy (the MC) was really funny, but his music was pretty good too. His name is Professor Sakamoto and he played "chiptune" style music. The thing on his head is a Famicom system, the Japanese equivalent of the NES. He'd put different cartridges in his head and play remixes of the game's theme music on his keyboard.


Here you can see people trying out Mighty No. 9, developed by Inti Creates and created by Keiji Inafune. Inafune was the original illustrator for the Mega Man series and created the popular character Zero from that series. He was also a producer for the Dead Rising, Onimusha, and Lost Planet series of games before he left Capcom to make his own games.


Here you see the sequel to the popular game The Banner Saga. The first was notable for being one of the first games launched on mobile with deep story and gameplay.


The Crypt of the Necrodancer guys were super cool, and they had a couple dance pads set up for people to play their game on. This game is really interesting as it's the only game I know of which melds the roguelike genre and rhythm games so seemlessly.


Here you see the presenters interviewing the Professor about his music.


This was the main event. Ben Judd (voice of Phoenix Wright, a former producer at Capcom, and now a games industry agent) interviewed (from left to right) Koji Igarashi, Takuya Aizu, and Keiji Inafune.

Koji Igarashi is the creator of the popular "metroidvania" genre. His first creation in the genre (and possibly my favorite game of all time) was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. He continued developing Castlevania games for Konami (mainly on handheld consoles) until 2014 when he left with his brainchild Bloodstained to work independently. After a monumentally successful Kickstarter campaign (the most successful game campaign ever, raising over 5.5 million dollars), Igarashi is working with developer Inti Creates to realize his new project Bloodstained.

Keiji Inafune, as I already mentioned, was instrumental in the creation and success of Megaman and a number of other blockbuster franchises for Capcom. He was the first of these iconic Japanese developers to part ways with their companies and crowdfund a personal project. In his case, he's collaborating with Inti Creates to develop Mighty No. 9.

The guy in the middle is Takuya Aizu. He's the CEO of Inti Creates, the developer that's making both Inafune and Igarashi's games.


I know this post isn't that relatable for many of you reading this, but it was one of my favorite things I did while in Japan. So, I thought I'd share it anyway. Further entries will be more or less consistent with previous entries.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

The triumphant return of the Japan blog! (Day 57)

So, I know it's been awhile. Sorry about that. In fact, it's been so long I've actually been stateside for over a month. But there's good news! Even though I didn't post any blog entries for the last couple of months I was in Japan, I did continue to do awesome stuff and take pictures of it! I just got way too busy to take the time to post pictures. Anyway, now I'm working at a job where I have gobs of free time so I'm going to start posting entries almost daily until I've got all the pictures up I want to post. I've got over 2,000 to sort through, so this is gonna take a couple weeks most likely.

Today, we'll start with Aoi Matsuri (葵祭). This Hollyhock Festival is an annual summer festival held in Kyoto. Held on May 15th, It's a parade that starts from the imperial palace and goes all the way to the two Kamo shrines near the Kamogawa river. It started in the mid-6th century as a Shinto ritual to appease the Kamo deities after a succession or disastrous weather events and spreading illnesses occurred. They've done it every year since then, but thankfully today's festival doesn't have apparent connotations of starvation or disease.


I really liked the movement in this shot and the contrast between this guy's modern glasses and traditional clothing. Many of these pictures have good depth-of-field.





The big pink and white thing in the background is a hollyhock float.


This little girl was adorable. She was getting kind of impatient waiting for the parade to catch up with her float. I don't blame her, it was around 90 degrees and incredibly humid.

There was also supposed to be some horseback archery going on at the parade's destination, but the humidity soon turned to rain and I wasn't that dedicated.