Tokyo Wednesday

The weather forecast said 100% chance of rain but it is not raining. It is overcast.

John went out to the little quick shop early this morning and bought us some coffee with cream. We are waking up around 4 or 4:30 am each day. The sun is coming out about then.

Now it is late afternoon. The sun came out and it was a pleasant day.

Our tour guide told us some about families in Japan. Because housing is so expensive, unmarried young adults often live with their parents. They have a word for them here. Parasites. I think they pronounced it something like parentsites.

Our tour guide left us with a thought for the day. Ichgo Ichie It means we ive each moment only once and then it is gone forever . The message is to make the most of each moment. She talked a lot about celebrating and enjoying life.

We started our tour at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Observertory. The building has beautiful statues and artwork on the bottom floor. There was a huge decorative rake on the wall with all kins of pretty things on it like flowers, fruit, animals, and more. A rake is good luck because you rake good things toward you. The objects are for good luck with those things so that good things will come to you.

Tokyo is very conservation minded. The rain water that runs off the patio is collected in trenches and used to flush toilets in the building. Shintoism is very concerned with nature so conservation and taking care of nature is an extension of that faith practice.

We rode n elevator to the 45th floor of the building and looked out over Tokyo. Even with the fog, we could see a long way and it was impressive.

In the toy store they were selling cute little Hello Kitty's. It's a little cat with it's paw up waving. This is good luck symbol in Japan. A Hello Kitty with it's right paw up brings good luck with money. If the left paw is up, it brings good luck with family and friends.

Next stop was the Imperial Palace East Garden. It was surrounded partially with a real moat that is 12 meters deep. Koi fish and swans swim in the moat. There is a high stone wall on the other side of the moat. We went over a path to high wooden doors that were open. A few feet inside was a statue of a fish. The fish has been there for many years for good luck and protection of the palace. On top of the second gate is trim that looks like waves of water on the roof. The wave looking trim is for good luck to protect the building from fire. Many buildings have this trim on them. It is nothing more than a decoration put up for good luck.

Inside we saw the guard houses, the foundation of an old palace, a palace built by an emperor for his wife with many good luck symbols on it, and beautiful gardens, There were hundreds of pines trees, trimmed in a bonsai fashion so they were not as tall as pines in the US. The trees were trimed in such a manner that branches and pine needles went up only. That is for good luck. It would bring bad luck if any go down.

We had lunch at the Ryogoku restaurant. It is next to the stadium where sumu wrestlers compete. Sumu wrestlers eat there and there is even a platform where they can wrestle as people eat as entertainment. This place was also filled with good luck symbols. The decoration that looks like clouds with lightening bolts coming down is for success and good luck. Those are all over Tokyo.

Our meal was an event. We each had a pot in front of us that was boiling and had flames coming up underneath it. In it were chunks of chicken, and many vegetables including chinese cabbage, mushrooms, leeks, carrot and tofu. The food was raw,but cooked as we sat there. We also had a bowl of rice, a raw egg, a plate of many kinds of vegetables like okra,carrot, burdock, peppers, and radish, a big fried shrimp, a small piece of fried fish, a small amount of beef, some imitation fish, some raw tuna, some raw mackerel, seaweed, two kinds of Japanese pickles, wasabi, a scallop,tofu, Japanese scrambled egg and more.

It was a real Japanese meal. After we ate the contents of the pot, they again lit the fires under them to reheat the broth. We then added some of the rice we had and cracked and scrambled the egg, and dropped it in the boiling broth for a soup. We had ta or water with the meal and almost all of us ate the majority of the meal with chopsticks. I'm pretty good at it.

Sumu wrestlers came into being as a part of the Shinto religion. In the beginning,the wrestlers wrestled naked and the outcome was a way of foretelling the future. Our guide did not explain all the details on this but, they knew certain outcomes meant certain things. A lot of the ritual Sumu wrestlers do s still a part of the Shinto beliefs even though it is considered entertainment now. Much of what they do has to do with good luck and keeping away evil spirits.

From there we went to the Asakusa Kannon Temple. This is a large Buddhist temple. Our guide told us a lot about the practices. At the entrance to the temple there is a Shinto shrine. It is unusual to have them together in the same location. At the entrance to the Shinto shrine, there is an arch ]I=. It has a top curved piece (up of course for good luck), a middle straight bar and two side bars holding it up, similar to a football goal post. It is good luck to walk under it. Shinto shrines always have these arches at their entrances.

At the shrine,there are good luck charms and symbols. Shintoes worship nature and have many, many gods. Everything in nature can be a god. They also worship their ancestors. At various times of year, they put food out for their dead ancestors as part of a celebration.

In order to pray at a Shinto shrine, you put money in a box, you clap two times, you fold your hands (I think) then you clap again. Shinto shrines are for happy occasions. The people of Japan go there to get married and when they are happy and want to celebrate. When babies are a month old,they take them to the shrine to be prayed over. The baby is dressed beautifully for this time of celebration. The mom hits the baby so it will cry so the gods will know it is there and bless it. For the first month of life, a baby is dressed ugly in the hopes that the evil spirits will not see it and kill it.

Children are dressed up and taken to the shrines at age 3, 5, 7 and 15, which is considered a very good age. They also go at age 20 when they are officially an adult.

Japanese people practice both religions at the same time. While they do not consider themselves religious, their practices are very religious.

The Buddhist temples are for the bad times in life. Funerals take place there. Outside of the temple,here was a very large pot of incense burning continuously. People were standing around it trying to get some of the smoke on themselves. If you have a pain, such as a headache, you try to direct the smoke toward that to help get better. If you need good luck you use your hands to encourage the smoke to come toward you and cover you,depending on your wish. You can buy extra incense to burn if you feel you have a very big need.

There is a fountain outside of the temple with a statue in the middle of it. People pour the water on their hands and touch it to their faces for good luck. People were coming in waves,person after person dipping in the water. Some even seemed to be drinking it.

We went up steep steps to the inside of the temple. There was a screen that you could see through that had the temple furnishings on the other side an included statues and many worship objects. Only those who belonged to that temple were allowed to go into the part behind the screen.

In front of the screen was a large raised grate in the floor about 12 feet wide. People were throwing money into the grate. Our guide told us aht they were doing. They throw money into the grate, then fold their hands in prayer and wish for what they want. The bigger the wish, the more money you should throw in the grate. They aren't praying to anyone in particular, just wishing. The place was full of people who just kept coming and throwing their money in.

The Buddhist temple was not a small building. On the wall of the temple was a cabinet of many, many drawers. For 100 yen, about $1, you could shake a small stick with number on it out of a box. The number corresponded to one of the numbered drawers. In the drawer is a piece of paper with a fortune on it. If their fortune is good,they are happy.If their fortune is bad, there is a place to tie it and do somethings so maybe the gods will not give you a bad fortune after all. There are also many good luck charms for sale to counteract bad fortunes and/or to give people good luck.

As we walked around, many Japanese people were doing all of these things.There was more that our guide did not explain going on. We know that a person could pay and light a candle for prayer.Our guide seemed to think that was a Christian practice and said very little about it except it was way the temple gets money. It is a Catholic practice and we as protestants do not do that.

Near the temple and shrine were blocks of small booths selling all kinds of things from clothing to food to good luck charms to touristy items.

Outside the Buddhist temple, in garden areas, there were statues of Buddha. There are things the people are supposed to do in front of the statues that they are told will bring them good luck.

Numbers are good or bad. Lucky numbers are 3,5,7,and 15. The number 4 is very unlucky.

We learned that,when wearing a kimono, lap the left side over the right and not the opposite, Right over left is only done on bodies at funerals and is very bad luck.

In this culture, blue is for males and red is for females. Colors bring luck too.

This is a very superstitious culture with some very beautiful spots to visit. Almost everything seems to have some kind of meaning. The Chinese symbols stand for things.

It was interesting to note that our guide's name today, Maoko, means honest girl. The symbol for honest is a right angle line at the bottom then, with a bit of white space between, three boxes stacked up vertically and,on top of that a cross. Interesting. She had no idea.

It is easy to see that this culture could be only .1% Christian. This is a people without real hope. They wish in their prayers. There is no personal God who loves them,who cares about the things they care about and will intervene in their lives. They are wishing instead of praying to the one and only God, who answers prayer. This culture is materialistic and hard working but that nleve them feeling empty and tired after a while. They like to celebrate.

This culture is very resistant to Christianity. Many missionaries have been here and many missions have started here. The work has been a failure in many ways,even though a few have been won. What is the reason for the failure? What is it we are missing about the culture that we need to consider?

We know that it is high context culture and more is communicated nonverbally than verbally. We know that it is a conforming culture. The emphasis is on the group not the individual. How much difference do those things make?