Blog-IT-o ergo sum

	6/25/2004

Buddha Watch

Kyoto is famous for its Buddhist Temples. The tendency to Japanisize imported culture though means that even Japanese like my wife sometimes have trouble telling the difference between a Buddhist Temple and a Japanese Shinto Shrine. A tall orange gateway usually means shrine and a statue of Buddha figure is the dead give away for a temple. The Kiyomizu Dera (dera meaning temple) is definitely a temple but we puzzeled at first on the orange gateway being thrown into to confuse us. (The Shinto ones are much more simplistic in design and we should have figured that out sooner.)

The last time I was in Kyoto was almost 20 years ago on a business trip in 1986. At that time the Buddhists had closed all the temples to visitors in protest of the Japanese government's attempt to force them to collect a tax on their ticket sales to the public. In the end the monks won. On that first trip though all I could do was walk up the approach to this temple and commiserate in broken Japanese with the shopkeepers who business was being devastated by the strike.

I can confirm now that either sensitivity or basic economics has afforded an end to the sale of "souvenir" Nazi flags that used to go on in the shops around these temples. The shopkeepers seemed to think the colorful red, black and white swastikas were so similar to the Buddhist temple markings that they made for good stock items.

Incredibly at that time, the 100 year old English language paper of record The Japan Times had the chutzpah to suggest to a reader who wrote to complain about the flags that she had most likely just mistaken some Buddhist temple flags for the modified Nazi versions. This was to a reader who identified herself as a concentration camp survivor! They did print an apology however when I sent them a photo of a Nazi flag I took in one of the shops along with a suggestion not to question whether a holocaust survivor knows a Nazi flag or not when she sees one. I'd like to think the flags disappeared shortly after being outed in the Japan Times, but it took me 18 years to get back here and the trail is now decidedly cold.

Unlike our Southern partisans who were not the invaders, the Kyoto shopkeepers are still flying the rising sun battle flag in spite of the fact that many of the historical markers in the area are now being also translated into Korean and Mandarin -- to attract the tourists from those former Japanese conquests. And, while the little black Sambo dolls of the pre-bubble 1980's have disappeared in the souvenir shops their replacements are still suspect. You would think that being right in the shadow of the temples preaching peace and diversity, the monks would be able to persuade the shopkeepers on this stuff as effectively as they have government tax collectors.

One group is getting some minor media hype. The image on this Kyoto shop trinket also was noted on t-shirts back in Tokyo and Fuji department stores. You can even vote for one of his party's current torch bearers in the upcoming elctions in Japan as Machiko noted on this campaign poster we found on a backroad to Kyoto Station.

10:29:26 PM

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Food

kaidenzushi Food is a major item for us in Japan. Even if you manage to find the same materials outside of Japan the presentation is essentially impossible to replicate. Eating raw fish, their eggs and other parts of their bodies is a wholly different experience when you can pull your dishes off a chilled conveyor belt runnnig by your place setting.

We also enjoyed eating "Japan's best yakisoba;" a dish of shreded cabbage, soba noodles, and spices with optional pork, squid or shrimp often prepared as you watch. Factory town Fujinomiya (paper and Fuji Film) is trying to gain the reputation as THE spot to eat this traditional economically priced dish. We gave the Ito family restaruant 5 stars for theirs. yakisobs

9:25:47 PM

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