Firewalking at Miyajima; karaoke & yakiniku; HJU Ayame Matsuri

This past Tuesday was 文化の日, “Culture Day” holiday, so no school! While I enjoy my job, I also enjoy the many official holidays scattered throughout the Japanese calendar: I’ve seen statistics citing how overworked Americans are, versus other countries’ vacation schedules, and although Japan is nowhere near having France’s level of free time, it’s still quite nice. (Additionally, it helps dent the stereotype of the obsessive-compulsive Japanese work ethic – though there’s plenty of overtime, exam crunch, and ‘death from overwork’ stories to go around, people here love to play, too, and consider it important on a societal level.)

As it was “Culture Day,” there were a lot of appropriately cultural things going on. Many museums have free admission on this day, and a number of festivals were taking place. My pick was a revisit to Miyajima, the famous shrine island, and perhaps the popular definition of “culture” here in Hiroshima. The autumn weather has been lovely all through these past couple of weeks, so I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to see the place in daylight (last time I went at night and could only see Itsukushima Shrine.) Also, I heard that a Fudo Myoo Buddhist ritual would be taking place in the afternoon, featuring fire-walking at the end (appropriately enough, given Fudo Myoo’s typical depiction as a fierce godlet surrounded by flames.) While I tried to round up some other people at the last minute, in the end only myself and Ayaka Matsuda, a fourth-year HJU student friend, ended up going – but we had a great time! You can see Ayaka in about four of the Miyajima shots further down.

Miyajima can only be reached by ferry, and the ferry landing is in the far south of the city. Previously, I wrote the Hiroden tram line from Hiroshima Station to get to Ujina Port, but this time we hopped the JR train. Potential sightseers take note: turns out it’s much, much faster on the JR, plus you can get ferry fare included when you first buy your rail ticket. Upon emerging from the station, you’ll be immediately confronted with the water, the beginnings of a welter of souvenir shops, and signs pointing down the street a little ways to the boats.

The ferries themselves run with extreme frequency all day, though I always advise checking when the last one to the mainland leaves… just common sense. Amusing anecdote: right after I took the picture below, a police car rolled up to the dock with sirens howling and drove into the hold of our boat. It made Ayaka and I wonder if they don’t have any native police cars on the island? Probably not, there are really few cars there… and when we saw the police station later in the day, it only had a bicycle parked in the parking lot, hahaha.

The weather turned out to be truly astonishing this day. There were clouds rolling swiftly between big patches of bright, dazzling fall sunlight; looking back at the city from the harbor, you could see the shadows drifting distinctly, and the patchwork gave the island ahead a mysterious air, too. I don’t think I’ve ever caught such a blue sky on film before. The short crossing was truly beautiful, so I took a lot of pictures.

We were greeted by the island’s semi-tame sacred deer, first thing off the boat. Though I have to say that I agree with my guidebook: these guys are better mannered than the Nara set.

Luxurious hotels and exuberant souvenir shops front onto the main road to Itsukushima Shrine. The souvenir stores are pretty cool once you dig past the really gimmicky things… actually, it reminds me of my hometown Sitka quite a bit! Obviously the town caters to tourists, but it has a sweet charm all the same. I’m so glad I’ve gotten to see it when everything is open and bustling now – quite a contrast with the silent, almost ghostly streets after dark.

And… well, yes, I have an ulterior motive for mentioning how much I liked the souvenir shops. Ayaka turned me on to the joys of deep-fried momiji manju (“age momiji”) – that’s “custard-filled cake dumplings shaped like maple leaves,” to the uninitiated. Crunchy tempura batter on the outside, spongy cake and hot gooey frosting/pudding on the inside. On a stick. Also available filled with an paste, which is sweet bean mash! But really, the custard ones are ludicrously delicious… I’m tempted to make a comparison to deep-fried Twinkies, even though I’ve never been brave enough to try those back at home. We ate age momiji twice, once on the way in and once on the way out…

We got to the island around noon, which turned out to be perfect timing – the tide was still just high enough that there were boatmen offering rides out into the bay, punting around the much-famed Ootori (big red floating shrine gate). Ayaka said she’d actually never done this herself, so after a little bit of debate (we’re poor, and the price was 800 yen) we decided we should just go for it. I’m so glad we did, being out on the water on a day like this was so lovely. Also, the Ootori truly deserves its reputation as “one of the country’s Three Great Views/possibly most photographed object in Japan,” for reasons I hope are obvious in the following pictures.

After the boat ride, we skirted around the crowds inside Itsukushima Shrine itself, and headed up the hill to where I thought the Fudo Myoo ritual was supposed to be. Daisho-in Temple is a stunningly elaborate example of Buddhist architecture and statuary, with some of the most varied and intricate buildings and monuments I’ve ever seen. The garden sort of rambles through everything, sheltering literally hundreds of small, child-like Jizo along with the other, bigger stone and bronze inhabitants. Chanting, bell ringing and lit candles were the order of the day, and the (again, famous) Miyajima maple leaves were just beginning to turn inside the grounds, too. My first momiji of the season, in an appropriately dramatic setting! Aside from Kiyomizu-dera I almost have to say that this is the most impressive temple I’ve been to in Japan… that I can remember lately anyway, haha. Incidentally they also had a superbly informative English brochure, much better than is typical.

Unfortunately, it turned out I was rather off in thinking that the fire walking was going to happen on the temple grounds, though. When Ayaka and I happened to notice a huge cloud of smoke coming from somewhere down the hill, we had to scuttle off without having a chance to finish exploring Daisho-in. Definitely gotta go back there! But as Ayaka pointed out, the ritual was our “main event” for the day, so we’re lucky we caught sight of what was happening. Backtracking a couple of blocks toward the Ootori’s delta again, we came upon monks sending up burnt offerings from worshippers.

After all the wooden offering plaques had gone up in smoke, the monks began preparing the fire for the other half of the ritual. They smoothed out a path through the coals, threw some salt at the entrance and exit, and heaped on some quick-burning black sticks that I heard them refer to as being chopsticks (?! no idea what the significance was there, if anything.) Then the lead monk began chanting, and making esoteric Buddhist hand symbols over the fire – the same kind of mnemonic gestures as they use in anime like Naruto. Then he pulled out a katana sword, and charged right through the leaping flames! Four or five other monks followed suit, not even waiting for the fire to go down into coals. Super intense – I was actually really scared for them.

Even more amazingly though, once the fire did go down somewhat, they re-cleared the path and started letting ordinary people walk through too! Most of the crowd, judging by their chanting and prayers, were actually Buddhist believers, so this was an official part of the ritual as well. A really long line formed up, everyone barefooted, to stroll through the devotional coals. There were quite a few old people and young kids, too – Ayaka and I decided that by and large, the obaasans (old ladies) were the most impressive, because they walked the slowest and most calmly out of everyone. It was definitely hot enough to burn in there the whole time, we witnessed a couple people loosing their cool (hahaha sorry, bad pun) and hotfooting it out as quickly as they could (ahahah even worse pun.)

We headed back to the ferry at about four o’clock, since Ayaka had to get ready to teach a Japanese class to the exchange students the next day. It was a great trip, though, and I’m looking forward to future excursions – I really want to go up the cable car ropeway to the top of Mt. Misen next time!

Also, this weekend deserves honorable mention. On Saturday, Megan, Ashley, Ayaka, Azusa, Junko and I went out to karaoke and yakiniku all together! I had the best time, since I’ve been dying to do both things since I got back to Japan. We chose a big karaoke barn near Hiroshima Station, called “Billy the Kid,” for our four-hour sing-a-thon (we were waiting for Junko to finish at her part-time job before heading to dinner.) At Billy’s, up until 8 o’clock, a flat rate of 1280 yen each (1000 for students) will get your party a super-clean private room with an impressive array of songs; not just the UGA catalogue, but also three other companies’ extensive playlists as well. They also have genuinely drool-worthy french fries, and all-you-can-drink soda machines – really, the amenities and song selection kinda blew what I was used to in Osaka out of the water. Highly recommended!

Just down the street, we tried out a yakiniku place I spotted during previous ramblings to Bic Camera – it’s on the corner of the big Akebono-dori/Ozu-dori intersection, dead ahead if you’re walking toward BC from the station, across the street from the International House. Called Bucchi (which means “Alot” in Hiroshima dialect, if I recall correctly) they keep their establishment haze-free by hanging vacuum pipes dead-center over every grill. (Incidentally, I found out afterward that they’re part of a local chain, and I’ve seen some other establishments elsewhere in the city.) The suction wicks away smoke, and twists any flare-ups from the charcoal into little tornadoes of flame – super cool to look at, though be aware you can lose food too if you’re not paying attention.

The flyaway cabbage leaves and one strip of misplaced pork caused much hilarity to our party, though, and then Azusa chucked in a piece of lemon peel on purpose… Really, the novelty caused us all to get a bit silly, thinking up new potential uses for the invention. Was a great time – the food was inexpensive (particularly for this type of cuisine: party of six, about a dozen different dishes, 11,600 yen before discount) and delicious. The “negi kalubi,” tender beef rib-meat strips marinated with green onion paste, was particularly fantastic!

Sunday, Ashley, Megan and I went in-depth with the university’s school festival. (We actually visited Saturday afternoon, too, but only caught a few things before heading out, like Azusa’s choir concert.) This time around, we availed ourselves of the two dozen or so student-run food stalls, which were lining the campus streets and parking lots. School festivals are a well-established tradition in Japan, but while some other activities and guest speakers were featured here, our “Ayame-Festa” mostly centered on clubs raising money for themselves by selling all kinds of mouth-watering treats. I tried:

fresh mochi

hand-made boiled gyoza

deep-fried gyoza

pan-fried

yaki-gyoza

curry udon

french fries

hand-made cookies

fried pasta (cinnamon flavor… tasted like really tiny, crunchy churros)

yakitori

chijimi

I feel like I’m forgetting a few (if I left out your club’s treat, I’m sorry! Everything was so great, and I ate so much…) It was all in the range of 100 yen to 230 yen per serving, too, which really fits my budget at the moment. The exchange students and I were also invited to take part in a reception for the Speech Contest contestants, where there was yet MORE to chow down on, buffet-style, while we spoke with the high-schooler participants and their teachers. Also visited the second-hand goods market inside of our cafeteria and bought a couple of really cute stuffed animals for a whole 80 yen! Now that it’s over, I’m doubly sad that our school festival is only once a year…