Kurashi - News From Japan

In conjunction with the day “Earth Day” to think about the global environment of April 20, Earth Day Hamamatsu 2014 will be held in Municipal Enshu Seaside Park. I like how these guys spent the weekend enjoying music and all kinds of shopping with a focus on organic foods and crafts. They also went out on the beaches to pick up the kind of garbage - plastics, ropes, all kinds of nets and whatnot - that wash up from the ocean. Image from facebook Our heavy lifestyle choices are making that kind of dirty impression on our precious planet. Others who care are celebrating Earth Day in the Seto Uchi , or the Seto Inland Sea, south of Okayama.  It used to be that you would go to a beach to look for beautiful sea shells. Now, what you also find, is lots of garbage made of plastic. Sorry to say, but the footprint we are making on this planet and its oceans is not a pretty picture. Earth Day is one event that tries to make more people aware.

I am fortunate enough to often get the chance to go to Naoshima and the beautiful Seto Inland Sea, and this year, from March to November, 2013 they are again hosting an event that should attract visitors. Update: As David (merci!) notes in the comment section, the Triennale is held during three sessions: One in the Spring (March 20 - April 21), one in Summer (July 20 - September 1st) and Fall (October 5th - November 4th). Easy access from Okayama. If you have never been to these parts of Japan, you are missing out! First held in 2010, the Art Setouchi is now a much larger, more extended event with events being planned for a large number of locations and islands. Did I mention "events"? List of participating artists here . Setouchi Triennale Website (English) here . You will get stuff like this : Inujima Art House Project: S-Art House An elongated gallery made of transparent acrylic panels appears behind a curve on the road in front of a tangerine or...

When I lived in Okayama, I had to spend time with the old retired Zen priest, as he was slowly dying. I had to go to about three different hospitals, and stay with him, and fortunately, the staff and the nurses and doctors were superb, just first class, so amazingly helpful and supportive. I will never forget. I had to sleep on the floor, next to the boiler, and if anything was wrong, in the middle of the night, do whatever had to be done. In such emergencies, a smile or a helpful bow, or just a kind word from the nurses means a lot. I had similar experiences back in Sweden, but this was in Japan. When I pressed the emergency buzzer, as the old retired priest was moaning, and I had no idea what to do: the nurses and everyone were just amazing. At the 3 hospitals where I had to deal with this, 24 hours on duty, in Okayama, all of them were just so terrific. I really want to go back and say thank you to everyone. Dealing with death, as people around you are dying, how do you face your ow...

No aviation without brave pilots: There were people fascinated with flight even in the Edo period, such as Ukita Kokichi from Okayama, who made attempts at calculating what wingspan would be needed to let man soar like a bird, something he seems to have achieved in 1785: Ukita studied how birds fly. He finally concluded, "Compute the ratio of the wing's area to the body's weight and use that ratio to create an artificial wing. Humans may use them to fly like a bird." His skill of paperhanging was very useful for making wings. He made the wings' ribs of bamboo, covered them with paper and fabric and varnished the surface with lacquer from Japanese persimmons. (Source: Wikipedia ) Fast forward to the late 19th century, and we have Chuhachi (Tyuuhaci) Ninomiya, who made paper planes that may have been able to carry a man. The first airplane flight in Japan was likely on 29 April 1891, when a propeller-driven unmanned plane took off and flew about 10 meters at a heig...

Considering the suffering in many towns and the rural communities in Tohoku, I feel lucky. I moved to this town because I thought it would be safe, and so far, knock-on-wood, it has been just wonderful. Yesterday and today, we felt the effects of the planned power outages, however, and I can only try to imagine what people are going through in Tohoku region, in shelters, having lost everything. The schedule for when the electricity will be cut is impossible to understand, and my city hall makes public announcements on the outdoor PA system, which I think was installed before WW2. It sounds something like: "Bing-bong-bang, This is-this-is-is City hall-city hall-alall, We are now-a now-wow, Going to tell you something really important-tant-tant..." and from there on it gets increasingly impossibly to understand a single word. This means a planned power outage is imminent. OK, good, I can handle that. Last night I had supper with Robert, a friend who runs his own business, cool ...

Talking about biological diversity, food and agriculture this weekend - I like public speaking but I was in for a surprise on Friday in Fujita, Okayama, as the local radio station suddenly showed up for a live broadcast while I was in the middle of a talk with 6th graders at the Fujita Junior High School . You can imagine where their attention went as they saw a journalist enter with a microphone! (Loved talking with these kids, btw.) After that we were rushed in a Toyota Prius to the next event, meeting farmers part of the local 農協 (Noukyou, agricultural cooperative, also known by their alphabet letters JA, Japan Agriculture). Fujita is a huge river basin that was converted to rice and veggie cultivation with the help of a German landscape architect in the Meiji era. Great comments from some very astute onion and renkon farmers, and a lady who is known for not using chemicals for her akatombo kome (rice from a field with red dragon-flies that thrive without causing any harm to her ...

At my Zen temple in Okayama, seveal years ago, I remember the biting cold of mid-January. It was truly terrible. Early mornings as we woke up, as the bell was ringing at 4:40am, were just hell. Then, around 6am or in late January close to 7am, the sun would rise. We had a pretty solid routine each morning, just to get through that. Going along, doing zazen, running, sitting, eating, working in the garden or cleaning the buildings. Suddenly it was noon and time for lunch. The tea routine was a very important part of each day. Especially, I remember how things slowed down after lunch. The roshi would meet with guests in the small tea room. He was really such a pro at whipping up the green teas for each guest. That is his way of meeting each person, face-to-face, cup-to-cup. We didn't always see him like that - so relaxed, happy, just being himself. But it was really hard. Kitchen duty meant you were serving rice and miso soup to the entire sangha . The person in charge of the kitch...

Food and farming in Japan are topics close to the heart of this blog. Kurashi is not a place where you can read a lot of comments about election matters, and there are other bloggers who are far more savvy at commenting on the platforms (called "manifesto" in Japan using the English? Spanish? Russian? Latin-inspired? name) of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Party of Japan and the rest. I will try to comment on a couple of things that appeared on Tobias Harris' excellent blog, Observing Japan. He is also interested in the Free Trade Agreement policies of Japan's major parties, such as the possibility of a deal between Japan and the U.S., but I think he gets this all wrong: "Aso was delivering the same message on a different front in Shimane and Okayama Wednesday, when he attacked the DPJ for its position on a US-Japan FTA. Exhibiting the LDP's full-out reversion to agricultural protectionism — discussed here by Aurelia George Mulgan — Aso stres...

I meant to post this last week, when Departures (Okuribito) got the Academy Award for Best foreign language film, but you know how it can be. This is a trailer with subtitles, thanks to Youtube. Here at Kurashi, we tend to talk a lot about the living, and while death is always just around the corner, we ignore it at our own peril. At the temple in Okayama where I stayed 6 years ago, we had to care for the (very) old retired priest, who finally died late one night, maybe around this time of year, just after my shift to care for him had ended. The following day, I had to sit at his side (with another, much more experienced shugyosha from Seattle). Our duty was to greet visitors who wanted to say a final farewell to him, and to keep the incense sticks burning. Many people knew him as a great tea teacher. The old priest looked very peaceful. Sitting next to a dead person half a day: it wasn't as difficult as it sounds, and not strange at all. We buried him the next day, with some of t...

My Buddhist name is Bodhisattva Joy Increasing . What's yours? By all means, do enter your name on the silly website and see what comes out. Actually, I do have a Buddhist name, 紹的 (Shoteki), given to me by the Rinzai Zen roshi at the Sogenji temple in Okayama. That was hard training. Waking up 3:40AM every morning to do zazen and cleaning... After that, my life seems easy. Read more: Shodo Harada Roshi: Nuclear Reactor of Zen (From The Buddhadharma.com ) His teacher was Yamada Mumon Roshi , head of Hanazono University in Kyoto.

Reuters reports that Japan's military illegally gathered information on the activities of ordinary citizens in 2003 and 2004, including those who opposed the dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq. Surveillance activities were carried out on ordinary citizens as well as journalists, photographers and artists: The surveillance covered some 293 groups and individuals, including high school students, and in some cases mentioned specific names or included photographs taken at demonstrations... Boston Globe: Japan's military watched citizens: Communist Party Asahi: GSDF kept files on peace groups Mainichi: Japan's army monitoring civic groups This is of course illegal unless cleared by the authorities. As it were, I participated in a peace demonstration in Okayama in March 2003. If the government has any cool photos of me from that event, I would love to see them.

Today is the anniversary of my grandfather's birthday. In Japan, Buddhist sutras are read daily at temples and at a family altar on anniversaries related to life and death. By a lucky coinsidence, a link appeared to the Heart sutra (Flash), in Japanese called Hannya Haramita Shingyo, so I invite everyone to listen. The central passage is "shiki soku ze ku ku soku ze shiki" which translates as "emptiness is form and form is emptiness". I love how this sutra connects ancient India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan - and recently, America and Europe as well. Read more here and here . The photo is from the gate at Sogenji, my Rinzai zen temple in Okayama prefecture.