007 Monk

First of all, Happy Birthday Nan. <--- Click here.

It's all true.  This day was fantastic.

I organised to help a monk, with a couple of others, dig over some land in his garden, in order for him to create a vegetable plot.  In exchange, we'd be treated to an awesome food fest in an extremely traditional Japanese style.

However, we didn't do any digging, we just had an awesome feast.  It was brilliant.

These monks live in an amazing house, single storey, that covers some prime real estate in the kyoto region.  It's a really traditional Japanese style, and is absolutely unbelievable.  I want to live there.

So this is upalupa-chan.  I can't take a photograph of her without some kind of face being pulled.  She has an incredible talent, as soon as a camera is turned on, her face becomes some kind of comedy image.

うーぱーるーぱーちゃん。

This is an upalupa.  It's a salamander basically, and her nickname is upalupa-chan.  Besides, I like saying the word upalupa.  It's fantastic to say.

This is the monk.  He's particularly fond of James Bond and therefore takes a number of James Bond inspired nicknames.  Such as, 'James monk,' Double 'O' monk etcetera.

He's basically amazing.  He's a really nice guy, and has more energy than anyone I've ever met before, so he's just really good fun to be around.  I think this is only really true if you're five years old at heart, like me, so he could probably become a little tiring after a while.

 So some people asked for more pictures of me, here they are.

We randomly came across these girls dressed in Kimono, and I stole a couple of photographs with them.

See below for the comedy version of this picture.

Yeah, the comedy version.

They instinctively knew the pose to strike, without any input from me; so I just played along with them.


It's genetic, all asians can do this pose with zero thought.

If you see this pose, it means someone is taking a photograph.

This is taken from a bridge over a 'creek' kind of thing, looking up at a bridge.

If you go to the correct areas in Kyoto, which I did through these Japanese J-hopper connections, the streets and town feel like something from the 18th century.  It really is fantastic.

There are still parts of Japan that fit the postcard image!

A temple whose name I've already forgotten.

The compound contains the largest monks sitting place in Japan.

Essentially it's a hall, where up to four hundred monks congregate at any once time in order to practice their meditation.  It's a solo study, so it's one of those scenarios where they could be in there for a month, or an hour, or forever.

This is a different bulding, and one that was used to stage a big budget concert in 2006.  Interestingly they filmed the whole affair and put it on dvd, in 5 different languages!

The monk who lives in the house we visited opened a brand new dvd case to show us the video, so I don't think he has many foreign guests.

In case you were wondering.  Yes he has a 30 inch HD LCD tv with a built in blu-ray player and a ps3 slim.  He also has a motorbike, and another TV in his well equipped kitchen.

He is definitely a monk too.

This is the entrance to the monks' house, with うーぱーるーぱーちゃん showing us how an open door works.

Basically speaking, you walk through it.  Although the bike proved to be something of a hindrance.

It's an amazing house, like I've said before.

This is the garden we should have been digging over, but were quickly ushered away from.

A part of me is vey thankful that we didn't have to attack this area, because the task, as you can see, is a daunting one.

However another part of me felt quite gulty that we were stealing this guys food without giving anything back.  They're quite reliant on other people helping them.

So this is the interior sectio of the house, overlooking the back garden.  The back is an entirely different kettle of fish...

The whole building is extremely traditional and wooden; and presumably rather cold in winter.

This is the zen buddhist garden of choice.

If I knew anything about the religion I'm sure there ar some idols or icons I could point out, that create the quintessentially buddhist garden; but I don't so I won't.


The grass is actually a kind of moss.  I'm not sure how you would mow that...

This picture is to the left of the one above.

It's looking back at one of the wings of the house to the left when you enter.  Basically the whole thing seems to be quite modular, and I don't know whether it was all built at the same time, or if parts were added at different times.

It's an exceptional building though, as I keep saying.

And this is the guy that lives there.

He's うーぱーるーぱーちゃん's and James Monks friend.

He doesn't speak any English, but with the help of the other two (their names are too long to keep retyping!) we were led through something of a zen biddhist meditation ritual.

It was all very interesting, and it was fantastic to gain a small insight into their world.

They showed me their impressive collection of bells, gongs and all noise making instruments as well.

Ever impressed by noisy, shiny or silly things I really liked these particular aspects of the ritual we later undertook.

Also, James monk (pictured) demontrated why he has the name he does.  Watch the video I put at the bottom.

The thing he's holding would later be eaten, having just been picked from the forest/garden at the front.

It tastes awful.

I don't know what it's called either, but it looks horrible and tastes horrible, it's one of those fruits or vegetables that makes you wonder what its' purpose is.  What does that thing contribute to the world?

I don't think we will ever know.

I like this picture, because the great big bowl behind hi is one of the instruments I talked abotu earlier.  You hit it with some kind of small hammer, and it makes a noise, except it makes a noise for about a minute.  It's an extremely interesting instrument for sure!

The monk also looks really monk-ish.

Yeah we had to eat that...

Ah I just thought of a purpose for its' existence!

To make people laugh...

So they cooked the meal, we cleaned the dishes.

I hope they re-cleaned them again after we did the dishes, because I'm not very good at it.

I'll probably never see the monk again though, so I'm safe from his wrath.  Even though I don't think buddhists have wrath.

Everyone sits down for a pot of nabe.  Nabe is just hotpot; and this one had a little bit of everything thrown into it.

It was delicious.

The beer helped too, of course.

And now we see why she is called salamander-chan...

Nice gills you've got there!

Two of the three girls I live with.  The other turns out to be quiter camera shy, despite being a rockstar.

They're the same girls that performed nans birthday celebratory song.

  So this is the band (nameless at the moment) about to perform their song.

The things the middle girl is holding were the exploding flowers full of confetti that I accidentally set-off.

And finally, when all others had gone to bed; mado showed me how to make onigiri (the thing on the right) and yakisoba (the thing on the left).  I can't make them, but these examples were particularly delicious!

Thank you!



This is how he got his James Bond inspired moniker...



This is an instructional video designed to show how to make onigiri.  The process seems quite easy, yet the actual mechanics elude me, despite having this video to help.



My camera only takes three minutes of footage, so I split it into two parts.

That was the day of zen buddhism and birthday celebrations.

A Trip to Harujuku and Shibuya

So yesterday me and a couple of guys I met in the hostel went to Harujuku to see the crazy dressed up people, and to see what the part of Tokyo you see on the T.V is actually like.  It was a little too hot for all the costume people yesterday, so there weren't that many out and about; but the dedicated few who were present provided quite a show.

After one of the party members left to head to Osaka (I think) we decided to go to Shibuya, where he hit some arcades and I laughed as he got whooped repeatedly.

After another hundred mile day we got home, and after agreeing to meet up for dinner I fell asleep and woke up at 8 this morning.  Oops.

Onto the photos!

Welcome to jam packed Tokyo.  This bit is the cool section, evidenced by the macdonalds signs everywhere, and the western shops on every corner.   For the record, it was in the high twenty degrees with a whopping humidity, bear that in mind when you see some of the costumes...

These dodgy maid outfits are everywhere.  I thought they were just myth, but they actually exist.

Is this a well recognised chain?

Ok that red suit is head to toe... Hot much?  Those glasses are also awesome and so is the hat.  He even moves as if he were a robot.  I have no idea what he's selling, if he's selling anything at all.  I do want his glasses though.

Same guy again, he's worth three pictures I think.

Again, I don't know what she's selling, all I know is that it's worth 980円.  This picture has a spiderman just offscreen.  He was livid that we were taking pictures of this girl, and we presumed that was because he fancied her, and was trying to chat her up.  He was awfully friendly with her, for simply being colleagues...

We saw this guy a few times around the place, but were never able to get a good shot.  He is some kind of tron/power rangers mix, and the bicycle he walks around with kind of makes me lean towards tron more.

This guy/girl was standing in the exact spot for more than three hours, we walked past him twice!  A lot of effort went into this one, ten out of ten!

These girls went the extra mile, even putting blue contact lenses in.  Tons of effort also went into these costumes, 10/10!

Same guys again, slightly closer to show the detail that's gone into these madhat costumes.

The golden flowers mean this is some kind of imperial owned site I think.

Shinto priests.  A wedding procession went past while we were ambling around the site.  It felt kind of weird to take pictures of the procession as tourists, not knowing the couple and generally being an unwanted nuisance.  From a selfish perspective however, I'll never get  an opportunity to see that again so I took as many discreet photos as I could.

More covert photographs.

This is the procession.  Everyone doled up in their finery.

A closer look at the formalities.  I was going to use the word 'festivities,' but somehow it doesn't seem apt for this particular photo.

They had the whole thing filmed, and all the cameramen wore green armbands.  To make sure everyone knew who was holding the camera?

The woman in the green/gold/beige was running around in and out of train organising everyone and everything.

I noticed that I hadn't managed to get a photo of someone wearing the traditional dress, so I pretended to be american, and asked this woman if I could take a photo.  The exasperation was evident in her demeanour, but it was a minor victory for non american English speakers everywhere.

As you can probably see by now, these ornately constructed roof and edge parts of their shrines hold a particular fascination for me, look at how detailed and ornate they are!

Another covert photo op.

I don't know whether these guys are asian or what, but they are insane looking.

These are the guys I went around with.  Whereas Europeans try to look normal in photos, and Asians do the two finger peace thing, americans try to look like they're about to shoot you.

As they would say, 'go figure.'

Also, never follow a texan, their sense of direction is awful.

Elvis is not dead.  He has been cloned, and taught to 'bodypop,' and now performs in duplicate, in the park at harujuku.  I bet you didn't see that one coming!

Showing off is showing off in any country.

I've no idea how you spell didgerydoo.  But his has a mic and is attached to an amp...

This dog park, is in the middle of the normal park and has several zones.  The little dogs go here, and the big dogs go elsewhere.  This is quite possibly the most pointless thing ever.  For one, how do you get the dogs here without taking them through the normal park?

There were a lot of people chatting away though, so maybe it's more of a way to meet people than to do some actual dog based exercise.

The weight categories made no sense either, 3kg - 12kg?  That's mike tyson versus me.  That's plainly not fair.

One of their old olympic facilities.

This is the picture of Tokyo you see in the news, on tele generally and in the films.   This is the view from street level.

This is the same view from a few storeys up.  This is a non-crowded, average, any time of  day scenario for crossing this street.

 

There is a person inside that, waving his or her arms up and down in a slightly worried kind of way...

For all your voltage testing needs.  They had about five stalls in a row, owned by different people all trying to peddle the exact same models of these.  Strange.  And kind of utilitarian for a country that doesn't have the D.I.Y concept.

It's a real shame this photo came out badly, because these guys were good.







That's all for yesterdays trips.