On priesthood

The priest I went drinking with, Mr N, shared with me a little of the details of life as a Shinto priest in Japan. These details were not won easily, I might add, since they involved the intense life-and-death struggle of my stupidity against his mumbling incoherence, so it could be that he actually told me something entirely different. Perhaps for all the facts I present hereunder, one should substitute "mud-wrestle my own grandmother", just in case I misunderstood a few points.

Firstly, I discovered that Shinto priests live entirely by donations and by services rendered to their local community. So for example, weddings, car blessings, special remembrance services and new year festivals provide the bulk of a Priest's income. Because of the separation of church and state (which has a special word in Japanese), Priests receive no income from the government at all. Shintoism also has no central authority or administrative body which provides funds for the maintenance of priests, so all of their income is derived from their congregation. When important buildings need to be refurbished the goverment provides half of the cost.

Secondly, becoming a priest is quite easy, since it merely requires that one study manners, learn the prayers, and study the history of Japan (starting at the Kojiki and reading forward) and Shintoism. There may be an internship involved - Mr. N worked for a while at the Yasukuni Jinja, which is surely going to lead to some charming conversations when we next meet - but I don't think this is essential. University attendance is not essential.

Mr. N decided to become a Priest at the age of 19, and since he is the eldest son in his family he felt that he was following a tradition of eldest sons becoming priests. He is at his busiest during the New Year and coming of age festivals, although he seems to randomly do various blessings during the year. He assured me that the alms of his congregation are more than sufficient to maintain a decent lifestyle, and agreed that yes, should the Japanese people lose interest in Shintoism he will be out of a job. Fair enough, I say.

Finally, I should mention that there is a common view in Japan (held by the Japanese) that Japanese people are irreligious. Quite often young people hold foreign religions - particularly Islam, but also Hindhuism and Christianity - in awe for their willingness to "live" their religion on a day to day basis. I think this is complete bunkum, for many reasons but not least of them the fact that you can't turn around in this country without seeing a shrine with attendant bowing local person. Once in Matsue, riding down a main street at night, I saw a tiny shrine nestled between two shops. It was so small it came up to a schoolboys knee, and I could tell this clearly because there were two schoolboys giving a little prayer as I rode past. The difference, I think, is that Japanese people do not wear their beliefs or feelings on their sleeves, and mistake people who show their emotions for people who have commitment of belief (and we all know what the truth of that can be, don't we Mr. Haggard?) In any case, Mr. N believes that modern Japanese people are indifferent to Shintoism. When I told him that foreigners generally regard Shinto as one of Japan's two state religions he laughed and said "Shinto is not religion, it is culture." So from the horse's mouth, if you will, even the Priest does not believe his own religion is, well, a religion. This country is, truly, a contrary and strange place at times...

Incommunicado

This weekend I went drinking with the Priest who married us, on his invitation. This was a suicide mission for one simple reason - I don't understand a word the man says. Even my Japanese teacher, who is Japanese, doesn't understand him. He is a middle-aged man, thus only comprehensible to other middle-aged men. Fortunately we had a cure - booze. We met at a restaurant in the nightlife district, where we drank beer and ate a remarkable plate of deep-fried flounder skeletons, which actually do have some flesh on them but so little that eating one is essentially the same as eating a thin sheet of crispy fish-flavoured bones. I may have mentioned before that bones are something of a popular food in this country, but I was surprised to find myself tucking in with gusto. After the crunchy bones and the beer, we left the bar and wandered to a nearby "Snack" called skeleton (well, strictly speaking it was called "skeriton"). A snack is a type of traditional Japanese bar which consists of, well, a bar, with stools at which one sits. The person behind the bar serves one booze, and various snacks, and a mysterious charging scheme of unknown provenance is applied to the guests. For my snacks I had:

• a soup made of daikon radish with shredded mushrooms, which was bland and gravy-like;
• a small bowl of minced raw potato with a raw egg cracked on top
• a piece of stingray, dried, rubberized, grilled over an open gas flame and then cut into shreds with scissors

So you can't say I didn't do my part to avenge Steve Irwin. I didn't touch the minced raw potato, nor will I until potato terrorists kill Olivia Newton John. Interestingly, the stingray was more palatable than it sounds, though very chewy. But I was quite drunk at this point, since the bar only serves two types of alcohol - Shochu (25% alcohol) and beer; and my babbling host was plying me with the former.

You see, this bar has a mysterious system called the bottle keep system which I am sure is contrary to all the rules of economics. Let us suppose, for a moment, that an alcoholic patron (imagine if you will that he is a priest) wishes to regularly booze it on at this local snack; in this case, he will ask the delightful old biddy behind the counter to set aside a bottle of his favourite shochu, and will pay her a single paltry sum, perhaps say $30. She will then ensure that his bottle is always full of shochu, and then whenever he visits the bar he can drink it for nothing. She will, however, ply him with snacks and he will have to pay for the snacks (I think) and anything else he consumes here (except the secondhand smoke, which is also gratis). Should he have two friends - say, a young student and his wife - he can give the charming old thespian behind the bar our - um, I mean, their names, and from then on they can also visit the Skeleton bar and suck from his bottle for nothing. This deal would be tempting, were the shochu anything other than appalling, and...

... were the bar not quite so... seedy. The woman who runs it is an old kabuki actress who has put pictures of herself all around the bar and in the toilet; the patrons were (besides yours truly and his one-time celebrant) toothless old people who yell slurred nothings (one told me "all men are fools", proving that cliches can transcend national boundaries); the decor was faded velvet from the 60s; there was no music; and the whole place was, in addition to being tiny, cluttered with various of the owner's personal effects so it felt as if one was drinking in a stranger's unrefurbished loungeroom. Now I know, dear reader, that after reading these missives for a year you are probably at the point where you would willingly do just that if the booze were free; but I can assure you that the shine wears off rapidly. So after two rather alarming glasses of shochu (the first of which was poured when I still thought the shochu bottle was actually water, due to a slight misreading of a kanji) I staggered outside, and homeward to safety. Now all I bear from the evening are some vague memories of rubbery fish, and a residual hangover. Until the next time the priest comes knocking, that is...

Japanese with Einstein

Recently I went to the bar "Drunken Tigers Wisdom" with the maths kids, to watch them eating chicken cartilage and raw eggs, and to practice my Japanese a little. One of the maths kids, a lecturer called Shuji, completed his undergraduate studies in Physics just as I did, and so we had some discussions about physics in Japanese. It was here that I learnt that most useful of phrases, "God does not play dice with the universe" - or, in Japanese, kami-samma wa saiko furenai. This is, of course, Einstein's most famous error (after the hairstyle), and interestingly seems to be quite a popular phrase here. Shuji also explained Bell's Inequality to the other students, again in Japanese, and sadly this was a test of my Japanese which I failed miserably. Since I understand and have studied Bell's Inequality, I hoped I would be able to test my Japanese by trying to understand it when he explained it - but sadly, my language skills have not progressed much further than "I think I have drunk too much, and now I need to go to the toilet." Still, Bell's Inequality was something of an epiphany for me at University, so maybe it will be an epiphany for me again at University - this time, when I can understand the language it is spoken in rather than the theorem. I wonder which is going to be harder?

Grotesque foods 1: Natto

As an introduction to some of the foodstuffs I may mention in the course of these adventures (and so one can see just how disturbing a trip out of doors can be in this country), I feel I should share with you a picture of one of Japan's more infamous foods, Natto. The full description of this Natto will hopefully be posted on Emma's blog shortly, since these pictures were taken during her (recent, surprisingly) obligatory first experience of this loathsome stuff. Let it suffice to say for now that it is nutty, slimy and slippery all at once, and best avoided.

Grave matters

The winter being almost hospitable to outdoor activities, the Delightful Miss E and I recently decided to go for a wander through one of the forested hills behind or little aparto. Here we found a small cemetery overlooking a valley of rice paddies, and I took some photos of the graves. Matsue's most famous foreign resident, Lafcadio Hearne, wrote an essay about these graves, inclding a detailed description of the philosophy behind the writing and the burial procedure. In brief, burial in Japan is conducted under the Buddhist religion, not the Shinto religion (Shinto considers death unclean, and in early times had to institute a caste system to ensure the dead got buried). Because Buddhism comes from India via China and Korea, it maintains some influences from these regions. The pole of wood in the second picture with this post is called a Stupa ( a name derived from Hindi, I think) and if you look closely halfway down this Stupa you can see what looks suspiciously like some kind of Indian script (Sanskrit?) I think the Stupa contains information about how the deceased is to be viewed in the afterlife, including a translation of their post-death name. According to Lafcadio Hearne, Japanese people take a new name after their death (well, I suppose they don't take it - someone else gives it to them). This usually has complex meaning related to a philosophical ideal derived from mainland Buddhism (possibly, this is related to that Indian writing). I do not know if Japanese people today still do this, but the presence of the Stupa suggests to me that they do. These Stupas have to be maintained by living relatives, and revisiting the grave regularly forms an important part of the process of mourning (even up to years after the event). Sometimes one can see a family group wandering into a shrine, dressed to the nines (for important memorial dates the women may wear kimonos) to pay their respects and give offerings at the graves.

These cemeteries frequently appear out of nowhere - single graves standing alone at the side of a road, a little copse of stones nestled between the hillside and the railway line, or a large plot under the windows of an apartment block. I have not yet seen a large cemetery, but it seems that every forested hillside in Matsue and Tottori has its resident plot of graves - often completely disconnected from a temple, and standing alone on the hillside. I have heard from my Japanese teachers that in Tokyo there are mechanised graves, like safety deposit boxes where, once you put your money in, your relatives' ashes come to the fore by some kind of mechanical process; you can worship, give offerings, and then return them to the darkness, to nestle again in the bowels of the uncomprehending machinery of modern life. Such are the contrasts of modern Japan.

The disappointments of Matsue winter

I know, I know, everyone thinks it's global warming which has made this year's winter so mild all around the world, and I shan't be bothered giving an opinion one way or another about the science of the issue, but all I can say is, if this is global warming, bring it on! (I reserve the right to change my view in summer).

Before coming to Matsue I was threatened with outrageous piles of vicious, deadly, cold, white snow. Last year in Tottori I am told it snowed without cease for 2 months. These pictures should give you, dear reader, some idea of the kind of harsh conditions I have had to suffer day after day in this tempestuous winter. Terrible! Some days, the temperature is as high as 9 degrees! This is the kind of cold weather I can (almost) handle! On such a day one only needs a thermal, a thick t-shirt, a turtleneck jumper, a scarf, a coat, gloves and a beany to be able to walk in the open for a full hour. Now that's what I call luxury!!!

(Although, the flipside is a constant feeling of being cheated - at least when it snows one gets some kind of reward from the cold!)

Little Wedding moments

Many things happen in one day at a wedding, and it is difficult to make a coherent story out of such an event without making a very long post. Since I am already under investigation by various international bodies for the length and pointlessness of my posts, I have decided to reduce my other report on this big day into a series of fragmented episodes which you, dear reader, can skip through or enjoy at your leisure.

We started the day in Flawless, a kimono shop near the University, getting dressed. Here we discovered that a kimono is a considerably stricter affair than it looks, with much tugging and tightening of cords before it is ready to wear. There is some kind of stiff board in the back of the mens kimono which gives its wearer an upright (or perhaps stuffed) look, and breathing is a little impaired. So too are other essential functions, including walking (on account of the thong-like footwear which has to be worn). Some of you may be surprised to know that I am also not used to walking upstairs in a dress.

At the shrine we had to ascend a long flight of stairs while our 8 guests watched - a hazardous task, especially in the cold in ungainly shoes. I managed, however, not to slip or trip on my way up (the first time). Emma came separately, and both of us were applauded into the shrine by our guests.

After the ceremony we had to gather for a professional group photo, and at this point the snow started falling. The sun was still shining, a type of weather we were rather pleased to discover is called "Foxes' wedding march." However, the weather was only charming for the first minute, after which time we were still sitting on our chairs waiting for the photo to be taken, because every time the assistant arranged the long sleeves of various kimonos the wind would blow them out of place. This wind was so strong that outside the shelter of the surrounding trees the snow was now being driven horizontally, but around us it was still (mostly) falling gently. Even 1 minute was too long for a photo in these conditions!

The actual ceremony is something of a blur, of course, but I managed to avoid the major mistakes (fluffing the vows; spilling the sake; drinking the wrong amounts of the sake; standing or sitting at the wrong times). The rest of the day was much easier, the reception being really just an expensive lunch with friends.

Our Japanese friends followed tradition and gave us envelopes with money in them (which we opened later, and whose contents shall remain secret); we also received (and gave) various presents, these being from Australia for the Japanese guests, and from Japan for the Australians. We also managed to get quite drunk on nice wine, which is a pleasant way to end a wedding. The staff at the restaurant were nice but very talkative; by happy coincidence the manager's husband is American, but he was very interested in chatting to us because he very rarely gets to meet foreigners; and the other Japanese staff were very eager to talk to our Japanese guests. It is a strange phenomenon to have the staff being very obtrusive in a Japanese restaurant ...

Finally, at 5pm we all returned to Flawless to return our clothes and collect the luggage of the Australians who had turned up that same morning for the wedding; and retired to the Ryokan to have a well-deserved (and altogether thoroughly too hot) bath in the Onsen. Overall, a perfectly successful, very simple and very enjoyable wedding.