Vikingess Voyages

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Ritsumeikan School Festival 学園祭 2011

Anette 11:16:00 PM

This weekend it was time for another school festival at Ritsumeikan University, more specifically at Kinugasa Campus, where I am studying. The campus had been nicely decorated for the occasion, and the whole place was filled with people. And not just students; there was a lot of kids, and what seemed to be parents or grandparents too. Clearly the festival was popular among all generations.

Ritsumeikan's east school gate decorated for the festival

Some more decorations on campus

Me, Yuki, Asami and Yuji at the school festival

The Rits Fes, the name of this festival, is one of the biggest events at school, especially for people who are active in interest circles (サークル) or or clubs (クラブ). This is the chance for them to show off what they have been practicing the last year or semester, and also a chance for them to earn some money by selling different types of food.

Stands where members of the different activity clubs and circles are selling food

On the Kinugasa Campus there was small stands everywhere with people selling anything from typical Japanese food such as oden, yakisoba and takoyaki, to more western food such as sausages.

They do also have small flee markets spread around campus, where one for instance can support volunteering groups by buying second-hand products. Some of the volunteer circles also sold products that had been made by locals in countries like Cambodia or the Philippines.

A volunteer circle selling second-hand products

Another special thing about the school festival is all the performances; every thing from live music to various styles of dancing, people who has specialized in jump rope entertainment. The clubs and circles have been practicing really hard for this festival, and it is quite impressive to see them in action.

Traditional Japanese music being performed

On campus you could hear not only traditional Japanese music, but also a vide range of Western music.

Dancers having a show at the main stage

Live wrestling show

..with quite some action..

New of this year was that people had found more creative ways of getting the visitors to use money. One could pay to get a massage, or to play a game of the Chinese board game Mahjong. And with tattoos still being a bit taboo in Japan, it might have seen nice to many of the Japanese to get a henna tattoo instead since it can be easily removed..

Those interested could try a quick game of Mahjong

Or just have a relaxing foot massage.

An overview of the west side of campus

The only bad this about the school festival is that it makes it quite hard to concentrate when you are in the library or the research room to study, because there are so much noise outside! Haha.. Since it was in the weekend I guess it still was a nice excuse to take a brake in the studies though.

I actually went to this festival last year as well, and I wrote about it on this page.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Ritsumeikan

Field Trip to Kameoka

Anette 9:41:00 PM

Hi everyone! Here in Kyoto life at Ritsumeikan is going on as usual. I must admit that I did intend to write about my class-trip to Kameoka earlier, but these days I'm just too busy to write anything unrelated to school-work.. Unfortunately.. Anyhow, better late then never, right?..

My Regional Sustainable Development class

I guess I'll start off with a little bit of background information. One of the classes I take this semester is about Regional Sustainable Development. Quite luckily our teacher decided to take us on a class trip to Kameoka in the end of October. Here he wanted to let us take a look at how they try to develop the community in order for them to be able to withstand a depopulation of the area through various measures. As you might already know, Japan is facing a problem when it comes to the aging society combined with a declining birthrate, which makes it even more important for small towns and cities to keep the area attractive if they want to make sure that it will remain sustainable also in the future.

At a local farmers market our teacher told us about strategies for growing better crops in Kameoka

And, as you might have guessed, Kameoka (亀岡市) is also such a city. It is situated just outside Kyoto City, and it has a population at around 93,000 people. The area has actually been used for farming for centuries, and is known for good quality. However, even though Kameoka seems to have a good reputation when it comes to their agricultural products there are still reasons to worry about the sustainability of the city in the future.

Our sensei has been cooperating with the local farmers on different project in this area for more than 20 years, and is really engaged in the project of developing different ways to keep the city alive.

In the future they are planning to develop the area even more, and with the combination of eco-friendly activities they are going to make it into a tourist attraction.

In Kameoka they do not want to rely on chemicals to make their vegetables grow

This has resulted in their so-called COOL vegetables-project, where they aim at growing vegetables in an environmental friendly way-

As we got to see, the projects here focuses a lot on the concept of eco-friendlyness, and this is combined with original ideas to make the project economically sustainable as well. For instance I can mention their use of Bio Char, which both is easy and cheap, and at the same time can be used to facilitate a reduction of green house gases.

Our teacher in front of a poster with information about one of their projects

A windmill and a small shrine

The timing of our field trip couldn’t have been better, because on the 23-25^th of October they were having a local festival here as well. Lanterns nicely decorated the streets, and there were also a lot of stands where they sold food like takoyaki and other typical festival food. Not to mention the huge mikoshi (portable shrines)!

A lantern in Kameoka City

The street was so cozy!

There were also some samurai armors for display in some of the small houses

Samurai armor closeup!

One of the huge Mikoshi

The front of the mikoshi

The main street of the festival, where they were selling many types of typical Japanese food.

After a trip through the festival area all of the class ended up in a nice Japanese restaurant where our teacher had done a reservation for us. We had a great dinner (or perhaps we could call it a nabe (鍋) / hot-pot party) before heading back to Ritsumeikan University in the evening.

We ended the day with a great dinner!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Ritsumeikan

Halloween Party 2011!

Anette 9:41:00 PM

It was time for another Halloween, and me and Yuma had actually been preparing for this one quite some time. We had decided to go as Popeye and Olive, which seemed like costumes that wouldn't be too hard to make ourselves.

So some weeks ago we went to a second-hand store and bought a top for him, and a sweater and skirt for me. In total it costed us +/- 2000 yen, and that became the base of our costumes.

One of the things I like about Japan, is that they are having so-called hyaku-en stores (百円ショップ) all over the country, where you can buy stuff for.. Yeah, exactly: 100 yen. We went to one of them, and got felt, silk ribbons and buttons, and from there all we had to do was to go home and do the stitching.

Our Popeye and Olive-costumes:)

The result was, if I must say, quite good! A lot of people were actually quite surprised when they heard that we hadn't bought our costumes finished. It is also quite a lot more fun to make your own costumes, instead of buying clothes you only use once. Well, at least I can use the clothes I bought if I just remove the felt and the silk ribbon. I guess it's worse for Yuma's top though, since it is a girl's top anyway. Haha.. And I think it has probably stretched a lot since he used it, so it is not like it is going to look that nice on me either.

Anyway, the Halloween party was really fun. After the party at Ritsumeikan was finished, we just dragged a bunch of people back with us to Yuma's apartment to continue the fiesta, and I think that we might have been close to 30 people in the tiny apartment at most. Quite impressive, huh? It was epic:)

You have to use all the space you've got when you're partying in a Japanese apartment. Haha..

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Shrine

Jidai matsuri - 時代祭 - The Festival of Ages

Anette 5:41:00 PM

This Saturday was supposed to be the day for the famous Jidai Matsuri (時代祭り), which annually takes place in Kyoto on the 22. October. However, this year was an exception; because of the bad weather conditions it was prospered to Sunday the 23rd.. Apparently the cleaning-prosses of the traditional clothing is quite expensive if the costumes happen to get wet, so no wonder they decided to postpone it.

Jidai Matsuri at Heian Jingu

So for those of you who haven't heard of Jidai Matsuri before I can tell you that it is, along with Aoi Matsuri and Gion Matsuri, actually one of the largest festivals in the city.
The parade itself is a display of various traditional Japanese costumes, from 794 when Kyoto became the Japanese capital, ending in 1868 with the Heian period after which the capital was moved to Tokyo (formerly know as Edo - 江戸). The festival is a celebration of Kyoto's many years as Japan's capital, and one can say that this also is why it is called Jidai Matsuri, or the Festival of Ages.

A lady dressed up like the famous authoress Murasaki Shikibu

The parade starts in the morning at the old Imperial Palace (Gosho 御所), and ends up at the Otenmon-gate at Heian Jingu shrine (平安神宮) more or less two hours later. Did you know that both Jidai Matsuri and Heian Jingu actually dates back to 1895? This is because Heian Jingu was built for the first Jidai festival, in honor of Emperor Kanmu.
I went to the Heian Jingu-shrine, which mentioned is the place where the parade ends, to watch the parade on Sunday. Here I met up with my friend Isabel, her husband and their friend Laura.
Since we were at Heian Jingu already at more or less 12:30 we were lucky, and could pick out some seats with a good view. The parade itself started at 12:00, but it took nearly two hours untill the parade ended up at Heian Jingu. It is still a good thing to be early though, cause trust me, at festivals like this it is essential to be in time; it will definitely get crowded..
Anyway, here are some of my pictures from the day:

Some fancy nobles

Apparently there are somewhere between 2000 and 3000 participants in the Jidai Matsuri..

...and there are definitely a lot of people in the audience as well..

Laura and Isabel :)

You can see all sorts of traditional clothing - and fancy hats - at Jidai Matsuri... :p

One of the Heian - ladies

Right in front of the Heian jingu shrine there was also held some performances during the festival

A mikoshi being carried through the gates of Heian Jingu

Related blogposts

All blogposts from Osaka

All blogposts from Kyoto

All blogposts about hotels

All blogposts from Japan

Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave me a comment or question below!
~Anette

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Shrine

Life in a Japanese village: Benten-san Matsuri 弁天さん祭り

adventuresofanette 1:17:00 PM

The great thing about living in a Japanese village is that you get to participate in a lot of activities that you wouldn't have the chance to if you lived in a big city. The reason for this is that my community really likes foreigners, and they let me participate in all their local activities. I guess foreigners are more rare when you get just a little bit outside the bigger cities (I actually live only a 30 minutes bike ride from Kyoto, so its really not that far)

Last weekend I joined my neighbors for the local sports day (運動会), and this weekend I got to participate in their Benten-san festival.

This festival is for the Japanese goddess Benten (more commonly known as Benzaiten), who is considered one of the seven Japanese Gods of Fortune.

Drummers in front of the local shrine

Preparation by the local Buddhist priest

After a meeting with other people from the community at the local shrine we took of with our mikoshis, one for the men, one for the women and some smaller ones for the kids to carry.

So what we did was basically carrying the mikoshi to different parts of the neighborhood, and when we got to a new area, we stopped and took a break. We were welcomed by the people there, and while the drummers were playing and some of the men danced around in dragon costumes we received food, drinks and snack from them.

The men carrying the otoko-mikoshi (男神輿)

The women's onna-mikoshi 女神輿

Me carrying the mikoshi

We also stopped by a couple of senior citizens' homes, and it seemed like the inhabitants thought it was nice with a little festival too.

A dragon entertaining an old lady at the senior citizens' home

I think we might have stopped by more than 10 different places during the day, and at all the different places we received warm welcomes from the people living there. Trust me, when the day was done I'm pretty sure i had gained some kilos.. I ate and drank way too much, haha..

Lunch break! For the 4th or 5th time that day.. :p

Also, we was really lucky with the weather! Both Friday and Sunday had been terrible, with rain poring down like in my hometown Bergen.. And actually it was supposed to rain on Sunday as well, but I guess we had good luck on our side. The weather was instead almost too hot, haha :)
Anyway, it was a really great day! I wish they had these types of festival more often.. I had so much fun! Not to mention that it is not often that foreigners get the chance to participate in festivals like that, so it was also kind of a unique experience. The people in the neighborhood was so welcoming, and some even invited me to come visiting them whenever I want.
Conclusion: Haradani might be situated in the middle of nowhere, but you can still have some nice experiences here:) Haha..

So, some final pictures from the matsuri: