Temple Trips and Disturbing Metaphors

Wow this post is late. We're talking like Second Coming of Christ late. Damn, I'm proud of that one; sorry to all my Christian friends and family for the minor sacrilege. I have good reason, but whatever. Sorry people.

This week Thomas got sick. Oh so very sick. This is made doubly scary by Garret informing me of some crazy West Coast epidemic with everyone getting sick recently. Apparently it affects West Coasters living out of the country. So it started last Wednesday with me waking up with one of the awful headaches I get. Migraines run in my mom's side of the family for women. As a guy, I am apparently lucky enough to just get massively painful normal headaches 3-4 times a year, so I assumed it was just that. Since blinking hurt, I decided to call into work. Mayumi sensei said it was probably the flu (wtf?) and told me I should go to the hospital (because that's what Japanese people do when they're sick), but I managed to convince her it was just a headache. By the end of the day, I was feeling a little bit feverish. Figures the only fucking time I've ever gotten a cold with my headache is the one time I spent ten minutes convincing my boss that I wasn't sick and would be better by the next day. I did feel a bit better though, because Naoko insisted on being amazing and coming over to give me medicine, make a delicious dinner, and even give me a back rub. 

The next day, trying to be a man of my word, I went in to work. Boy, do I regret that. By the end of my shift, I wanted to die, and I felt even worse the next morning. Called in again with my best "please don't say I told you so" voice, and went to the hospital (it was actually a small clinic. Apparently they use the word hospital wantonly over here). The doctor actually spoke some English, so it was easy to explain what was wrong. She said I had a minor cold, which caused Mayumi to emphasize to me repeatedly that the doctor had said mild. Yeah, screw you, that doesn't account for the massive pounding in my head that I can only imagine was your sense of subtlety trying to escape from my brain and jump back on your high horse. We then proceeded to get four (!) different kinds of medicine from the pharmacy and I went home to wish I was dead for a while. The cost of the whole trip? 1,700 yen, or about 20 bucks. Holy crap Japanese health insurance is amazing. No wonder they go to the doctor for colds. 

The medicine fixed me up well enough to go to work the next day and get me through the weekend. Yesterday I felt like crap again (my medicine ran out. Also why this wasn't posted yesterday), but I slept for about 10 hours and now I just have a minor headache and sore throat.

Went drinking with Yuko and Mac on Saturday because it had been planned for a while and there was no way in hell I was letting a cold keep me away from some of the best sake in Matsue (according to Yuko). It was a really good time, and some embarrassing pictures spawned from it. Apparently I throw up signs backwards when I'm drinking. First peace signs, now the West Side sign. Whatever, that's how the cool kids do it...

Sunday, I finally roused myself to go to Teramachi, or temple city. It's a portion of Matsue with a shitload of, well, temples. I had an ambitious trek planned out to see all of it in one day. After two hours and a dead camera battery, I had done 1/3 of that, so I went shopping and went home. Warning: massive image dump ahead. Some will have comments, some will have a tiny, invisible finger made of the words "These took an hour and half to cherry pick and edit, so Thomas is tired."

The first temple I found! There were two old ladies inside that looked at me funny when I went in, so I decided to come back later.

But first I took a picture of cool acrobat lion!

A couple steps away (seriously, the temples are that close in some places), I found this.

The gate looking out, because I would have had to stand in the street to get one looking in.

Awesome tree was awesome.

The next one I went to was... busy.

That's one old dude.

He's had a lot of time to practice his serious face.

Awesome rock that I couldn't even begin to understand.

I quickly had to start deciding what parts of the temples were interesting enough to take pictures of. The little (or sometimes big) carvings near where the bell hangs or above the doors pretty much always took priority. I like them a lot.

This was on the building opposite of the one above.

Those hanging chains anchored to the ground were a common feature of the temples around this area, and I don't know why. Pretty sure I haven't seen them at other ones.

After that one, I found this tiny shrine. It was in its own lot behind the bigger ones.

This guy didn't like me taking pictures.

This guy, however, didn't really mind.

Naoko doesn't understand why I find this incredibly creepy. She thinks it's cute. Obviously she's a witch and we should burn her.

Most of the temples had cemeteries appended to the back, sometimes in a creepy, tunnel-like manner. Since everywhere was so busy, I didn't want to explore them. Worried it would bother people. But I admired from afar, dammit!

Er, guys, I know that's how you can enter it on a keyboard, but that's not how it's actually spelled...

Oh wait, this is the entrance to your school? You share a space with a fucking temple? Okay then, it's all good. You don't even really need to speak English there.

Why can't my English school be this cool?

This is the main building in the area with the English school.

It was here that I first noticed that the buildings all have seals on them, and they're not always the same seals.

A more stylized version on the roof.

This one was... not that inviting. Guess you can't enter from here.

Didn't stop me from walking around the outside and taking pictures!

The seal here. You'll see a lot of them from here on out. They fascinate me and I want to research them. Are they clan marks, maker marks, religious symbols?

I feel like I should have a pseudo-witty comment for this.

Wow, what a friendly inanimate object! (yeah, like that one)

Another Japanese Kitty for Danielle!

Looking out into the open space in front of one of the bigger temples I found.

Does anyone else think this looks like a Disney character?

This guy is much cooler.

Poor guy wants to look badass, but he can't stop drooling...

O.o

Remember when I said I liked the wood carvings? This was the best one. I'ma break it down for you in Five closeups because it's that fucking awesome.

Bottom

Middle

Top

Right side.

Left side.

Seriously. How the fuck do you get that good at carving wood?

Before I took this picture, a mom was taking pictures of her kids playing on this guy. Don't know why you need to know that.

A little side shrine.

With turtles? Money turtles?

And a moneybag mark?

Turtle at the back with a money box next to him. I think this was the greedy turtle shrine.

Back to the first temple I wanted to go to! Some broken old stuff on the ground that I liked.

Some stuff that wasn't on the ground that I liked.

The lighting is awful, but I really feel like this picture captured the feel of this building. Click on it to enlarge and get a better sense of it.

This guy wants to fight!

"Hey Guardian Lion, what it is?" "Just chillin' mang, you know what's up." Seriously. I think this is the pimp guardian.

Is it just me, or do these look like Megaman enemies? Specifically, ones you might fight on the air level in Megaman 2. Fuck that level...

Almost missed this one. It's really fucking old, and the seal at the top seems to be decayed.

The two old ladies from before were standing in front of this guy.

This very creepy guy.

He watches you while you sleep. Also, I just found out something amazing. Open those pictures in separate tabs, then move through them while adding a mental "Dun, dun, dunnnnnn." You can thank me later.

Spent the day with Yuko on Monday, but (as you might have been able to see from the temple pictures) the weather went from sunny to cloudy/rain pretty quick, so most of our plans were nixed. Instead we visited some stores and I found some more awesome Engrish that I'm not posting pictures of because it was too much work after adding 70 some-odd temple pictures.

Random shit:

1.) Last week, one of my students told me about Anpan man (all one word? I dunno). He's kind of like a Japanese super hero, and apparently he's very popular. He's really strong, and his head is made of... bread. Wait, it gets weirder. When he fights, his opponents weaken him by ripping off parts of his face and eating them. Not weird enough for you? His "father" is a baker that assists his fights by baking new face pieces and tossing them to his "son", who then shoves them back into his bread-face so they can be ripped off and eaten again.

2.) Just as a reminder of how much I stand out here, one of my students recently told me she found out I made soba. How did she find out? Her dad was there, and mentioned some foreigners came to make soba. All she had to do was ask "was one of them really tall?", and they were able to figure out it was me... the place I made soba is a 15 minute drive from where I live and teach...

3.) When Naoko and I were walking near the Matsue Art Museum, we saw a line of rabbit statues. The second to last (second? Guess it depends on where you decide the line starts) was surrounded by small shells, and we had no idea why. One of my students used to work there, so I asked her. Apparently there's a folktale that leaving a seashell near that rabbit will bring your perfect romantic partner to you. Pretty common stuff. Here's where it gets awesome: her boss made it up. He decided it would get the museum more visitors, so he made up the story, paid a vacation magazine in Tokyo to print it, and now people come from all over to leave fucking seashells around this stupid metal bunny. My student got to sit there daily telling people where the magical hare was and sell them tiny seashells when they could have just picked them up off the beach thirty feet from the statue. I love her old boss.

4.) My students keep warning me about the "yellow sand from China", and how it's bad for you to breathe. It's an actual thing, called loess, but for some reason the way they say it just sounds fucking hilarious to me. Like it's some malignant evil invading Japan. I dunno, maybe it's just me.

5.) One of my students told me I "look like a movie theater." Thanks. -.- (She later told me she meant "movie star". I think that was bs damage control ><).

Thomas' Play at Home Food Challenge, Bonus Edition: A New Challenger Has Appeared!

As mentioned above, when I told Naoko I was feeling crappy on Wednesday, she took it upon herself to come over and make sure I didn't die of a headache. Part of that was making dinner.

I'm not quite sure how to describe how her cooking compares to the other entries in the Food Challenge, but I'll give it a shot: Remember going to the arcade when you were a kid and feeling all cool because you were able to play the fighting game and beat the computer fairly often? Then that chubby dude in the faded Metallica t-shirt came in and popped in a quarter next to you, and his Cheeto-dusted fingers moved with such speed and arcane gestures on the joystick that you had to look away lest you be driven mad by some many-angled chanting? Then you looked back and your poor avatar lay defeated, his corpse ripped open and his blood used to scrawl obscene messages and comments questioning the purity of your genealogy upon your very soul? Then, as you walked away, you heard the opponents you had struggled so hard against querying what they had done wrong in between broken sobs and positing that maybe it was because they weren't pretty enough, and you had that brief moment where you wondered if you should say something or call the authorities before deciding with finality that it wasn't really any of your business? Yeah, it was kind of like that.

I guess what I'm saying here is that Naoko is kind of good at cooking.

Recipe: I don't know. Pretty sure I don't have the authority to link to dinner heaven.

Score to Date: Naoko: Win   Vengeful Food Gods: Running for the hills. Seriously, I think they threw in the towel as soon as she busted out a fucking checkered apron.

Thomas sleep now.