Last weekend

After coming back from Tottori last weekend, I spent Saturday on the historic tour of Yonago. The tour was given by volunteers at the city history museum in Japanese, and translated by Steve's (the self-proclaimed queen of J-pop) adult students. Although their efforts were commendable, the quality of their translation rather reminded me of the scene in "Lost in Translation" between Murray and the Jap. director. Example: the tour guide will make a speech for minutes with wild hand gestures about "You can see the castle on the mountain 200 years ago, which is over there." Still, I saw some pretty cool shit which I otherwise wouldn't even have known was right here in the city.


Shrines of Pu-Sa. I know what they are in Chinese, but I don't exactly know how this Buddhist/Daoist/Shintoist diety-type translates into English. Anyway, there are 23 of these guys in Yonago, all of which are cleaned and flowered regularly by whomever felt like it, which, judging by the freshness of the flowers, was probably often. The red and white papers were prayers of mourning offered by monks. White ones were pasted during the 49 days of mourning(7x7), and red ones were pasted at the conclusion of the mourning period. I asked about the meanings of the different colors, an observation that impressed the tourguide enough to give me a thumbs up.



This is Shachi, a legendary half-fish half-dragon placed on top of castles to show a daimyo's dignity, also a traditional symbol guarding against fire. This one came from Yonago castle, which was given to repay debt incurred during castle repair. This thing was in a courtyard between the houses of several Japanese families, and we had to walk through the house, interrupting the lunches of several Jap. families to see this. The houses in which these Japanese families lived left a more lasting impression than the dragon/fish thing. It looked like a giant single house shared by 3-4 families. We walked through a corridor, and could see into several tatamy living rooms. Maybe they were just one huge family? That would explain the shockingly lack of privacy and the communalism but not the number of apparent family groupings having lunches on separate dining tables.



The house of the Goto family, a family of wealthy merchants. In an earlier part of the tour, it was mentioned that only samurais lived within the moat/canal, while ordinary people lived outside (which was counterintuitive: aren't the samurais supposed to protect the people? why do they need the protection of the moat?). This house was within the canal, an area supposedly restricted to commoners. I pointed this out, and the tour guide was ostensively impressed with my observation and rounds of "sugoi" (great/awesome) were offered to me by everybody. He then proceeded to make a ten-part speech, apparently about "The Goto family were special merchants."



Kids flocking around a drinking fountain right outside of the Goto house.



A picture of our group at the Teramachi, the temple district, a row of 9 temples on the same street.


One of them. When people moved to Yonago from different parts of the country, they brought the different local temples and sects with them. This fact took about 5 minutes and 3-4 different people to explain. These temples also house cemeteries of previous Yonago shoguns. Another interesting fact: Japanese monks can take wives. Apparently abstinence was not a prerequisite to spiritual purity.

That was about it. The tour overall was not very satisfying. It felt like going to a restaurant to eat the salad and skip the steak.

The next day, almost all of the new Yonago JETs (I think Adam was the only one missing) met up and trained to Matsue, a city in Shimane-ken for the matsuri there. Apparently the fireworks were supposed to me amazing. Before dusk, we checked out the still standing Matsue castle.


Outside of the castle.


Amy. I thought this was the perfect picture for Amy.


Courtney, Manjinder, and Simona.


A cute Japanese girl in traditional yucata, sitting underneath a statue of a Japanese modernizing tycoon, and talking into a cell phone. I wish you can spell irony with pictures.


All these pictures of cute girls had me poking about.


Steps leading up to the castle.


Steps leading to nowhere in particular. Just one of my attempts at cheesy photographic poetry.


A temple inside castle walls. The characters said "sacrifice."


Inside the castle walls.


The Matsue castle


and Jeff the Sackster. It was a museum of sorts inside the castle. Lots of cool samurai armors and weapons and old castle parts.

After the castle, we walked around Matsue. Ian sort of took off by himself. People who were in Matsue the previous night went back to Yonago, leaving me, Pam, and Simona to watch the fireworks. Which was AMAZING. Absolutely one of the best I've seen and remembered in my life.


Felt like postcarding this.



There was quite a crowd for the fireworks. Needlessly to say it was a pain in the ass getting out of Matsue. We took the 10:15pm train out of there and met a Shimane JET on the train, whose number I got but will probably never use. He asked for mine so what was I supposed to do?