…and after the calm and serenity of Shimane and Okayama, we arrived back in Tokyo. Overwhelming in so many ways, I found it surprising that this was once normal for us; the volume of people, the noise and traffic at any time of the day or night. We were both incredibly excited to be back, we get a really different kind of energy from being in this city. We really do get homesick for Tokyo. even on the first night, we were already feeling like we didn’t want to return back to London…
I am sure I have mentioned to you all, the nicest thing about being back in Shimane and neighbouring prefecture Okayama, is that there is an abundance of onsen (hot springs). We’re able to go almost daily to the ones near Atsuko’s house and we never feel so clean as we do on these trips back home. Being frequent onsen visitors, the nakedness has obviously become completely normal but nevertheless, we were still quite shocked when we arrived at a small onsen village in Okayama. We have been to mixed baths before, at KDa we even designed one, but the openness of the baths in Hakkei was unbelievable.
Walking along the river, even from a great distance we could already see the naked guys lying around on the rocks, sunning themselves. These hot springs, right next to the river had no cover at all and so even from the road, you could see everything. It was quite funny and perhaps more surprising was that from our dinner and breakfast table, we could get the exact same view. Of course I don’t have too many pictures, but look closely at the last photograph here… : )
We didn’t feel quite brave enough to use that one, but the ryokan where we stayed had 4 different baths to chose from and even though we stayed only one night, we managed to try them all. The food was incredible and the service the best I’ve ever experienced. And in Japan, that’s saying something.
One thing that did rather surprise us in Kurashiki was this small museum on the edge of the old part of town, for some reason, models of the iconic HMV dog, Nipper covered the roof outside! It was rather surreal to see them all with their heads tipped at the same angle without the gramophone…
Next door was a slightly crazy-looking fish shop with hand-written notices pasted throughout the interior (in-store graphics we’d call these in the design world I suppose). The messages were are a bit bizarre, including the one marking the smoked fish, ‘these all sold-out earlier so we’ve just made these fresh’. Hmmm, fishy… There were also a lot more signs than necessary leading the customer to the bell outside for service. We didn’t dare press it.
最近たくさん紹介している日本の写真を見ながら、わたしにとって日本は単なる母国以上のものになっているような気がします。１０代の終わりから海外暮らしを続け、途中２年間東京で働いたものの、やっぱり私にとっての日本は少し特別で複雑な存在だと言えると思う。勿論、実家はいつも「home」だし、日本食好きで温泉ファンなのには変わりないのだけど、「日本」をひとくくりに考えようとするとどうしてもハッキリとしたイメージにならない。「自分が誰か」という問いと「自分はどこからきたか」という問いは、必ずしも同じ疑問ではない、ということなのかもしれません。
これについてはもう少し考えるという事にして。。。２国を「home」と呼べるのは本当に素晴らしいし、ラッキーな事です。
だるま好きである。ロンドンの我が家には現在５つのだるまが、願い事を内に秘めて点在している。中には願い事がかなったものもあり、両目でジッと私達の毎日を守ってくれている。
そもそも、だるまは中国禅宗、菩提達磨（サンスクリット語Bodhi-dharma）の座禅姿を模して張り子で作られたものであり、その名dharmaの音写から「だるま」となったとされるのが通説。今や宗教を超えて「七転び八起き」の縁起物ともいえるだるまは、世界中で愛されている。
何よりあの風貌と自信たっぷりな存在感、色彩が家にあると何だか心強い。願い事のしまい場所としては頼りになる容姿である上に、厄よけにもなりそうな気がする。倉敷の阿智神社で小さな「だるま神社」に遭遇した時には、思わず「あっ」と声が出てしまったくらい感激した。願い事が叶った何十体のだるまが、両目を開けて訪問者を迎えてくれる。
願い事、叶いますように。
Proof yet again that each temple or shrine has a completely different character or atmosphere, at Achi-jinja in Kurashiki, we discovered a tiny shrine entirely dedicated to Daruma. I have long had a quiet obsession with Daruma and we have several in our house so this was a really exciting surprise.
Its good to know that people’s dreams do come true.
Part of our trip with Atsuko’s sister took us to the historic town of Kurashiki, a river port lined with distinctive black and white tiled kura structures. In residential building, a kura can be referred to as a ‘treasure house’ but in simple terms it means store or warehouse. These converted warehouses are now shops and cafes and the canals are used only for the gentle tour-boats.
We walked along the rivers, between the tiny narrow streets and climbed up to Achi-jinja, the large shrine overlooking the town where we found an extremely old Noh stage. On the way down from the shrine, we noticed something we missed on the way up, a relatively modern tradition similar to the coin throwing at Izumo. Its not uncommon to see people toss small stones up onto temple gates because they consider it good fortune if theirs remains balanced among the others. Atsuko feels though that in the process, dislodging other people’s stones could have an equally negative effect.
The final two images show a simple blackboard outside a financial office that presented handwritten information regarding the global stock market. Read from right to left and top to bottom, the characters were so perfectly formed that we had a hard time believing they were written in simple chalk, which they were of course.
We had seen a great many of Koinobori, Children’s Day fish kites, on our travels but as we left Yakumo village, we passed through a real stop-the-car scene… Not only were the numbers of fish overwhelming but the reflections in the rice fields were incredible also.
This is my entry to J-Festa’s May submissions.
The thing I love the most about travelling and Japan in particular is that everything, no matter how ordinary it might seem to the people that live there, appears fascinating to my foreign eyes and camera… These photos are all taken in a very small area around the old part of Matsue, Atsuko’s home town.
Decorative roof tiles of houses and temples, a simple election poster, a rickshaw* driver, the man sitting in the sweltering heat with helmet counting traffic numbers, Mei-mei-an the ancient tea-house, festival outfits… and wherever you are in Matsue the castle Matsue-jo is always above you.
* Interestingly, the word rickshaw is broken down as follows – (jinrikisha)
人力車 _ 人 jin – human, 力 riki – power, 車 sha – vehicle
We went on a little road-trip with Atsuko’s sister, to stay in a very beautiful onsen ryokan. On our travels we passed through Tachikue Gorge and stopped for a brief walk; across the river and climbed steps into the mountain. Not knowing what to expect at all, what appeared out of the greenery came as a complete surprise. In the undergrowth, slowly becoming enveloped in the nature, row upon row of stone statuettes stood gazing out towards us.
We realised that while some of these are jizo-sama (small deities that watch over small children), some are actually rakan which we actually explained in detail in a post a couple of years ago (click here to track back). In general, but not always, the statuettes with red bonnets and bibs are the jizo-sama silently protecting children spirits. These figures extended deep into the forest, and high into the cliffs and we think have been added by different people over a period of many many years, some of the older ones may have been carved into rocks in place. You can see moss and grass growing from the knitted bonnets of some of the older statues. Even now, back in London, I often find myself daydreaming about this forest full of faces…
