shrines and shops

my feet are dead today. this trip is once again highlighting how out of shape i am. last year i had already spent an entire day resting without leaving the room at all, though, so i am at least doing better this time around.

today we visited a local shinto shrine at shinobu-san’s recommendation, because it was holding a festival celebrating the cherry blossom bloom. we also went to an ochazuke restaurant she recommended, and popped over to odaiba again to go to diver city mall, because it is a really beautiful place to walk around.

horenji temple

the shrine we were headed to is pretty close by, only a single train stop away from where we are staying. this is a somewhat quiet area of tokyo, so the temple next door to the shrine was completely empty.

i also took this photo, which i think may very well end up being the best (non monkey) photo of the entire trip:

it sort of reminds me of something…

hagaoka hachiman shrine

right next to the temple, about a 2 minute walk from the train station, is the shrine we came to see.

they were in the middle of holding a festival in celebration of the sakura blooming. this was a great experience. especially in tokyo, it is very easy to feel like the place you are is not that different from home. its a giant city, nearly all the signs have english on them, the people are very welcoming, you see familiar american brands and stores like mcdonalds, 7-eleven, nike, adidas, etc. sure the architecture is very different and they have public transit that actually doesn’t suck, but it would not be hard to come to tokyo and have a pretty regular run-of-the-mill day. so coming here and being surrounded by an extreme dose of culture completely unfamiliar to us is a great thing.

we were also the only non japanese people here. we felt very fish out of water here (in a good way, i think).

i speak a little japanese, and i can read the 2 easy alphabets that children can read, but whatever was going on here was way above me. i don’t really know what they were talking about or what events this theater display was covering. i only got a very brief clip of it, because i wasn’t sure if we were supposed to be recording, and also because i haven’t figured out the video image stabilization on this camera, so its very shaky when handheld.

this display had a couple people in these masks slowly dancing around waving cherry blossom branches, and then 2 more people in different masks in front of them. it was very interesting. i believe that man in the green and white on the left side of the stage is the head priest of this shrine, or something. i don’t really know what this display was about. but i have since read up a little on hachiman shrines and the syncretic deity hachiman. there are many different types of shinto shrine, but the two most common by far are inari shrines, which are dedicated to inari, the kami of “foxes, fertility, rice, tea, sake, agriculture, industry, and general prosperity and worldly success”, and hachiman shrines, which are dedicated to hachiman, the kami of war or warriors.

hachiman is a syncretic deity, or Shinbutsu-shūgō, which refers to deities whose identities and mythology or folklore are jumbled between shinto and buddhism. shinto was the prevailing religion in japan for hundred of years before buddhism made its way over from china, and when buddhism was introduced, rather than casting aside their existing belief system, they sort of integrated buddhism into their existing belief structure, which leads to some deities and figures being kind of a jumble of traditional shinto folklore and buddhist ideology.

shinto is a really fascinating religion, and even just reading through the wikipedia page for it is very interesting. for a brief overview (warning: i am not an expert and am just repeating what i have learned from reading online or being told by a japanese person) - shinto is polytheistic, meaning it is not centered around one god or creator. rather, there are thousands of kami. technically, kami are not gods. but kami is often translated into english as “god” or “spirit” despite religious scholars’ insistence that this should not be the translation. kami are not otherworldy beings, either. people can even become kami. for example, the japanese emperor ojin became the kami hachiman, for whom the hachiman shrines are dedicated.

i am really fascinated by shinto and buddhism. i think they are really interesting and it feels like through them you can see the roots of what makes japanese culture an society the way it is. i feel like you can kind of see the through line for the way they are so welcoming and kind, but also what makes japanese society so different from the west. i am not a religious scholar, but i much of what i have seen in of shinto and buddhism are focused on what you do here and now, making the world around you a better place for yourself and future generations, honoring and respecting your ancestors and ecosystem, and maintaining social order.

that isn’t to say that western religion has an absence of these things, but what i have seen of shinto and buddhism is a focus on these for their own sake rather than as a metric to determine worthiness for the afterlife. it feels like shinto is about acknowledging the beauty and pain and struggle of everything, and is much less focused on the teachings and/or rules determined by a single person or religious text. in fact, despite many of them actively practicing shinto and/or buddhist activities and traditions, the vast majority of japanese people consider themselves non-religious. it feels like shinto is very much just a cultural tradition or way of life rather than any kind of moral code or set of rules.

i have realized that the above section may wrinkle some brows. i need to reiterate that i am not a religious scholar, or even very religious myself, and am not qualified to really speak on the differences. it is just my comparison between what i have seen here and what i grew up seeing at home.

ochazuke

one of my favorite meals i had last year’ trip was at an ochazuke restaurant in kyoto. i wanted my mom to try it while she was here, so i asked shinobu-san if she had a recommendation for a place to get it here in tokyo. she recommended a place only a couple stops away from where we were, so that was our next stop.

ochazuke is a meal japanese people often eat when they are sick, and i totally understand why. it is a (usually) pretty simple meal consisting of a bowl of white rice with some toppings like pickled vegetables, fish, seaweed, etc. you pour hot tea into the bowl and make sort of a tea soup. it sounds weird, but its extremely good. one of my favorite japanese meals, and i have never seen it in the states.

operation: acquire a scarf

we still had plenty of time left in the day, and were trying to think of something to go do. i wanted to buy a scarf last trip, but never stumbled into a place to do so. i also needed to stop by the mugiwara store again this year for some souvenirs, so i figured the best way to accomplish both things would be to head over to the diver city mall in odaiba. malls may be dying in america, but they are surviving and thriving here.