pshhh... you don't need to read kanji...

koizumi
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Koizumi says, "you don't need to be able to read kanji to be the prime minister of Japan!" which is a joke aimed at current PM Aso, who has made some mistakes while reading kanji...

Ohh Mondays...

School was, as per the usual, awesome yesterday. We have a new teacher who is there to support the Spanish and Portuguese speaking students & their parents (of which there are a handful at my schools). I got to speak some Spanish with her (albeit I am very rusty) which was really cool! Sometimes I feel like it's fate. I majored in Japanese - so I get to live & work in Japan. I minored in Spanish - I get to speak Spanish w/ some of my students & a coworker. How cool is that?! You're damn right it's cool!

So... I come home and I opened my fridge to find... basically nothing for dinner. So I decided to hit up Fressay - my local supermarket. As I was browsing the fish cases... I came across this.
鯨（くじら）= Whale.
Please note the little cartoon whale on the label.
So... I didn't really know what to do. I've never been very keen on the whole idea of killing whales, especially since they are so endangered. I knew that this happened in Japan... but it just never hit me until I saw the meat neatly packaged up with a shiso leaf in my grocery store fish aisle...
It made me kind of sad.
There is the added fact that the whole whaling industry that occurs in the waters surrounding Japan is controversial. Who knows what disputed waters that whale might have been swimming in? Poor guy. The political controversy just makes me feel even worse.
It's very similar to how I feel about eating Basashi (raw horsemeat). Sometimes Basashi will come from protected Mustangs who are caught in the United States, sold to the highest bidder, and slaughtered for thier meat. There was a protected species act for wild Mustangs in the U.S. that had been lifted (I'm not sure what its current status is) but people were violating it all the time with the sale of these poached horses. Whats worse is that people in Japan were willing to pay for the meat of these questionably acquired animals.
It isn't a question of what type of animal and whether or not it's cute and/or endagered, it's really the dirty politics behind getting the meat is that is upsetting to me.
So I came home sans whale meat (thank goodness) to another lovely surprise waiting for me in the bathroom:









Augh. This asshole (who unfortnately is NOT on the endangered species list) was just chilling out on my wall next to the toilet. We battled it out for a good ten minutes. I ended up squashing him and taking his paper-towel wrapped corpse out to the parking lot where it received another good squash. Just to be sure.
It scared the hell out of me when I went in the bathroom. I must have screamed bloody murder when I saw that two-inch cockroach relaxing on the wall. My neighbors must think I'm crazy.
Oh well. Maybe I am.

鑁阿寺

I actually went to Bannaji Temple (or dainichi-sama... which is apparently what people call it) for the first time on my way home from school one day. I also visited the same day that I went to Ashikaga Gakko - since it was Showa day there was a whole lot more going on. They had this crazy puppet fortune teller that was cool. It gave me my love fortune... which turned out to be not spectacular, but not terrible, either. I tried to take a video of it w/ my cell phone, but I hadn't quite figured out how to take better-quality videos, so please excuse the poor quality:




There were a ton of people hanging around the temple, so I found it a little difficult to get some good shots sans...human beings.
There is a small pagoda on the grounds, whose form is very similar to the Indian stupa, not a big ol' pagoda like your stereotypical one at Toji in Kyoto.
There is a koi pond & garden which was nice, but there were these junior high school boys who were in my photos. Oh well, I guess they just added to the ambiance. Bordering the garden is an interesting belltower that has these sides that curve upwards toward a interlocking tie beam roof structure that surrounds the actual bell.
Next to the main hall there's another big hall that has red beams and white clay walls. Behind it are a storehouse, a tiny shinto shrine, and bigger shrine (to what, I don't know) which was painted a bright red (looks like its fading now).
So.. according to the brochure Bannaji temple was founded by Ashikaga Yoshikane about 400 years ago, which would be the Kamakura Period, AKA the Ashikaga period, which was when the Ashikaga bakufu ran the show. There's a nice little family tree at the end of the brochure that shows you the Ashikaga clan.







































I love that that dude just decided to take a nap on that bench.
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