They live on Kobouyama. They are like mountain spirits. They get tired doing this pose every day and always look forward to the night time, when they can meet up with other weird and wonderful creatures. I met them when I was having a beer recently during the hanami time. I sat down near them. They looked over at me. I looked at them and we became friends.
Oh I love the rain. Or, I certainly did love the rain before events occurred to make it a suspicious substance falling on a vulnerable populace. Thanks to Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Station. We are living far from the place, but the wind blows and the rain carries dreaded radioactivity with it. And now we are entering the Rainy Season ! What a wonderful thing ! How many micro-sieverts do you have on your shoulders, on the caps of your shoes, on the bicycle you didn't quite cover, but will have to use this week? I'm not singing in the rain, and the rain is no longer just the rain.
Every year in May, we take the first year students to the Soujiji Temple complex next to Tsurumi University to spend one night and give them a taste of Buddhist training and principles. It's a big event, with about 90+ students attending and a handful of teachers and staff to take care of all things. The most difficult part is a toss up between sitting cross-legged for the best part of thirty minutes or staying up after midnight trying to make sure the boys on one floor and the girls on another don't mix. As it's a temple any such shenanigans would be seen as a black mark against the university and particularly against the department taking charge at that time. The monks already have plenty to be unhappy about, as this year, the students were so noisy, talking when they shouldn't have. This year one even sang as he walked down the corridors, and so many spoke as they ate it was embarrassing. myself and Sagara-sensei had to get up a few times to tell them to be quiet. There was retribution,however: during the zazen sessions the monks had them all silent, and used their canes very effectively and very enthusiastically, too, whacking the silent, seated figures. It was like the end of The Godfather.
Always have to speed up the pace a little as I get closer to the station. Then, a bit of a rush up the escalator, and through the station and down the stairs to the platform, breathing a little heavier than normal. So, when you get on the train itself, you reel a bit, from all the sudden exertion and even feel bit light-headed, a touch of elation, as you enjoy that the doors are closing and you are standing inside, not on the platform. Then there's the view: green, mountains, rivers ........
I wasn’t much of a reader when I was small. My memory doesn’t reach back to any very early days, but I know I wasn’t one of those natural read-from-three-years-old kids. Not by a long chalk. Before ten, there were a few (very minor) landmarks, but all books were pretty hard work, like little mountains, with nothing on top when you got to the end but a few bare trees. I remember spending weeks and weeks looking at page after page, half the time wondering what was supposed to be so entertaining about the story, and the other half why I had to do this. The slow pace and the lack of interest combined to make it clear to me that reading was not something I was going to excel at. From watching Star Trek or Time-Tunnel on TV, however, I knew I was going to be a scientist. Everything was taken care of –I was going to be an astronaut! That was before my mother informed me that scientists were all very good at mathematics. This was a shock. I was hopeless at anything mathematical, so, sadly, that dream ended right there. Thankfully, however, I had two older brothers. The significance of that was that they could do things I couldn’t. And among the many delights available to my middle-teenage brothers was the chance to see movies at the cinema –without the parents tagging along. How I longed to accompany them! The brother next to me in age, Jim, did his best to sneak me into a few cinemas showing films I wasn’t supposed to see at my age. The reception people were very strict. Often, I was caught on, and, due to being under-age, had to just leave. I took the bus home by myself, feeling left-out.
There was a way, however, I soon realized, a way to get into that dim-lit world of strange, alluring, even frightening vicarious experiences on the big screen: books. Books? Yes, books. The French Connection was not only a movie, it was a book. The Godfather was not only a movie, it was a book. Jaws was not only a movie, it was a book. ‘James Bond’ was not only a series of movies, it was a series of books. And the more I read them, the more I began to see the wonder of them. Each was crammed full of detail and incident and motivations I couldn’t fathom, but which, somehow, grabbed me, held me, fascinated me. A new world, complete with a variety of taboos that were acceptable because they were in a book, was opening up. Some of the books were specially written ‘tie-ins’, to coincide with the release of the film, and while exciting, were sometimes as flat as a pancake in terms of the language used to get the story across. Some, however, were books before they were movies, and were often quite challenging, or, when I ever did get to see the actual film, often possessed very different story elements indeed.
when I was small. My memory doesn’t reach back to any very early days, but I know I wasn’t one of those natural read-from-three-years-old kids. Not by a long chalk. Before ten, there were a few (very minor) landmarks, but all books were pretty hard work, like little mountains, with nothing on top when you got to the end but a few bare trees. I remember spending weeks and weeks looking at page after page, half the time wondering what was supposed to be so entertaining about the story, and the other half why I had to do this. The slow pace and the lack of interest combined to make it clear to me that reading was not something I was going to excel at. From watching Star Trek or Time-Tunnel on TV, however, I knew I was going to be a scientist. Everything was taken care of –I was going to be an astronaut! That was before my mother informed me that scientists were all very good at mathematics. This was a shock. I was hopeless at anything mathematical, so, sadly, that dream ended right there. Thankfully, however, I had two older brothers. The significance of that was that they could do things I couldn’t. And among the many delights available to my middle-teenage brothers was the chance to see movies at the cinema –without the parents tagging along. How I longed to accompany them! The brother next to me in age, Jim, did his best to sneak me into a few cinemas showing films I wasn’t supposed to see at my age. The reception people were very strict. Often, I was caught on, and, due to being under-age, had to just leave. I took the bus home by myself, feeling left-out.
