Japan Lite: Latest Columns

By Amy Chavez

On July 2, at the lowest tide of the year, my neighbors and I prayed to the goddess of the sea. The islanders call her Benten (also known as Benzaiten), and she lives on her own special island, just off the coast of Shiraishi Island. Here she convenes with the sea and brings us luck, prosperity (well, most of the time) and protects us from evil.

It is at this time every year that Benten extends an invitation to us to come and worship her in her own little festival. This very low tide exposes a sandbar that connects her island with ours, and serves as a walkway adorned by a stone lantern that appears to be floating when the tide is high. On normal days, even at low tide you have to trudge out in knee-deep water to get to Benten Island. Perhaps this is to keep out the paparazzi. Goddesses are pretty hot stuff after all.

Nature gods and goddesses are numerous in Japan and reflect a mix of Buddhism and Japan's folk religion of Shinto. And when you live on a small island in the Seto Inland Sea vulnerable to typhoons and high seas, some of your best friends are gods. We rely on them to protect us.

It is said there are over 9 million gods in Japan, and I can count at least 171 gods living on Shiraishi Island. And those are just the ones with physical representations of stone effigies or those housed in shrines and temples. Every step you take on this island is likely to put you in the path of some stone deity. Makes you wonder if there might be a niche market here. For sunscreen, for example? Or how about selling "godgets": gadgets for the gods. Things like lotus leaf pedestals, the occasional staff, and cans of vermilion paint for the torii gates.

When we hear about lifetime employment in Japan, it seems like a good thing. But it depends entirely on how long your life is. The gods in Japan have been working for thousands of years — lifetime employment to the extreme. It's not easy being a god in Japan.

Yet they continue to protect us, and we continue to pay them protection money in the form of these festivals and offerings of fish, sake, vegetables and money.

The gods probably have a nice tidy retirement package and their own fund manager. Should they ever get the chance to retire, that is.

And so during the Benten Festival, we worship, pray and throw money to the goddess of the sea. Benten is also the goddess of the arts and music (and a few other things), but the islanders here mainly pray to her for good fortune, especially for their businesses on the beachfront.

The Benten Festival is the only day of the year the doors of her small shrine are open allowing her to look out and us to look in.

I took this opportunity to look in and ask her some questions I've always had about Benten.

I poked my head into the opening:

"There are so many Bentens in Japan. How can you be in so many places at once?"

"My family has been in Japan since the sixth century, so I have many sisters," she explained. "We all have the same name, but we differ in certain ways. Some of my sisters have eight arms like I do, but others have only two and play the lute."

"And you all have your own islands?"

"My family has always been into real estate so we chose to live in beautiful spots on the sea."

"I notice you have many godgets in your hands. Could you explain them?"

"I have eight hands and each holds a weapon to protect: A bow, an arrow, a sword, an ax, a spear, a long pestle, an iron wheel, and a rope."

"Wow, that should cover you in almost any circumstance. Have you ever had to use them?"

Not yet, she said.

Noticing a bit of impatience with my silly gaijin questions, I thanked her for her time and left as quickly as possible.

After all, for a goddess, she is well armed.

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By Amy Chavez

I recently took a group of tourists on a sail through the Seto Inland Sea for three days. Our destination was Miyajima, home of the Great Torii Gate and Itsukushima Shrine (built in A.D. 593), a World Heritage site since 1996.

After a beautiful three days of sailing and stopping at islands along the way, we arrived at Miyajima, where our guests disembarked and we bid them farewell. I have done this sailing route many times, but until this last trip, I had never climbed Mount Misen, the mountain on Miyajima.

Finding ourselves with a few hours free while waiting for the tides to turn in our favor, my husband and I decided to hike Mount Misen. Another thing that prompted our mission was a new map titled "Miyajima Mount Misen Guide Map" in excellent English "ranslation" available at the Tourist Information Center. It outlined the different routes to the top of the mountain.

On Mount Misen you may encounter monkeys, deer and tengu goblins. Yes, goblins! Mount Misen is where all the tengu goblins of Japan gather. I don't know when the last goblin census in Japan was, but having seen so many renditions of goblins on my journeys throughout the country, I have no doubt that if all Japan's goblins were to gather on Mount Misen, it would be goblins galore.

Tengu goblins are supernatural creatures that happen to be very deft with a sword. It is also said that on Mount Misen, you can hear them clapping pieces of wood together at night. Perhaps the tengu are trying to communicate with us. Could the clapping together of wood be an aural version of smoke signals?

So if you've ever wondered if there are alternative life forms out there, the answer is yes, and they have swords.

While climbing the 535 meters to the top of Mount Misen, if we ran into any tengu I'd recognize them by their trademark long noses. How the Japanese distinguish them from gaijin holding swords, I don't know.

There are three established hiking routes to the top of Mount Misen: The Omoto Course, the Momijidani Course and the Daishoin Course. Right now, however, the Daishoin Course is closed. This is because every now and then the Seto Inland Sea experiences a particularly nasty typhoon, causing Mount Misen to get angry and heave itself onto the ground below in the form of landslides. A mountain belch, so to speak.

The biggest belch was in 1945, when Mount Misen sent down 20,000 cubic meters of earth and sand, burying the Itsukushima Shrine and grounds.

Most recently, parts of the Daishoin Course were washed away in a belch in 2005. But work is being done to restore the path bit by bit and hold it together with cement and other wonders of modern art.

Yes, modern art. You'd be forgiven for mistaking parts of the hiking course for an outdoor art exhibition because of the amount of sculptured nature. Nature rearranged to be balanced and pleasing to the eye. Having borrowed from the Bonsai method of tugging, pulling and coercing trees into specified directions, we learn that this same method can be applied to streams and hiking trails. But this is a different kind of control-erosion control.

In 1948, Hiroshima prefecture started re-defining nature to control the movement caused by the mountain belches. The result was erosion control methods hidden in a Japanese garden style.

Rocks were strategically placed in streams to encourage the water to flow in certain directions, creating scenes that look more like paintings than nature itself. The water from Momijidani stream flows perfectly down a manicured stream bed and shimmies over a stone wall. The stone wall has evenly spaced troughs of predetermined widths in it to create pleasing water flows. The basin below is full of fish — plump, round and smiling.

Like managed health care, this is a managed forestry retirement plan. After all, this primeval forest has been around a long time and needs some guidance if it wants to survive in our modern world.

We made it to the Mount Misen summit and back in three and a half hours, ascending via the Momijidani Course and descending via the more difficult and less maintained Omoto Course. It was still an exhausting hike and I was glad I only had to sit on a sailboat for the next three days wandering in and out of the islands of the Seto Inland Sea.

And for the record, on our hike we saw four people, three deer and no tengu goblins.

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Amy's Blog
http://www.dailymoooo.blogspot.com

By Amy Chavez

While the rest of the brave world is out fighting terrorism, on my island we are fighting a different kind of evil: age, sickness, and most recently, weeds.

It seems we are always being summoned at 7 a.m. to help fight off something. Last week we fought off cholera by praying to the Myoken-sama shrine in a special ancient Shinto ceremony.

This week we were summoned to fight weeds. Neighbors came armed with weapons: scythes, trowels, shovels, even motorized weed cutters. I was on the frontline with orders to mow down anything in my path. And people wonder why I want the U.S. to get out of Iraq. Isn't there enough fighting going on in daily lives?

To tell you the truth, I find weed power kind of creepy. You should not underestimate the destructive power of weeds. Weeds grow quickly and aggressively to camouflage their victims. They are territorial and will take over if not repressed.

There are some neglected houses on the island that are entirely covered in vines and weeds because the weeds have been allowed to encroach unabated. And you can't just cut them back. A weed never really leaves, unless you dig out the entire plant.

Truly, it's a jungle out there! Even as you read this article right now, all plants in the entire plant kingdom are trying to kill each other off. Weeds are taking part in aggressive takeovers and vines are strangling innocent victims. No wonder al-Qaida trains in the forest, among such ruthless plants: the roots of terrorism. But we'll really be in trouble if the terrorists learn how to harness weed power.

Recently, some men armed with pesticide tanks on their backs came to my house to tell me they were going up into the mountain behind my house to spray for matsukui, or pine bark beetles. Aha! Matsukui training camps!

The men further suggested I stay out of the forest for five days after they sprayed. Perhaps this is to give the matsukui time to form their plans for attack. I mean, how do I know they are really spraying pine bark beetles and not just smuggling dangerous chemicals into the forest?

With all the things we can't do and insects can, it would make sense for terrorists to outfit insects with M18s. And the way insects swarm and work in groups, this would be great technology.

It's enough to make you paranoid.

Which is why a flower garden is such a bastion of peace. A flower garden is a place we have prepared, cleaned up, and made a safe zone. There are barriers to keep out the foreign plants and soils. You, ruler of the garden, have forced out those you consider to be the bad guys and you've granted certain flowers amnesty with ample space to grow in. The beautiful race prevails.

Then you further separate the plants by color. You may even separate them by religion: The lotus plants go near the Buddha statue. Other plants get preferential treatment: the bonsai get display benches, the botan tree peonies get their own little umbrellas to protect them from too much sun. You do your best to keep the immigrant weeds out because if you give 'em an inch, they'll take the whole yard.

Then there are always a few undercover weeds that act like flowers. They do everything to blend in and look desirable so no one will suspect them of being weeds. They engage in tactics such as growing faster at night while no one is looking.

Then one day you look out into your garden and see a long, spindly weed working its way around the necks of the tulips, going for the jugular. You rush out and yank that weed out of your garden because it doesn't belong there.

It's enough to make you ponder: Is it any wonder humans can't get along with each other?

By Amy Chavez

Aspersa: Nothing like a nice slither in the rain. That dry concrete is so hard on the foot.

Helix: I get more mileage in the rain. Two millimeters per second rather than the usual one per second on dry pavement.

Aspersa: I love the rainy season in Japan!

Helix: I think I'll stop off at this hydrangea and rest for a while.

Aspersa: But Helix, we must go visit Grandma Gerty now while the pavement is still wet.

Helix: You go ahead, Mom. I'll follow your slime trail and catch up with you later.

Aspersa: C'mon son! A snail like you will get eaten alive in no time sitting out there like that in full view.

Helix: Mom, stop worrying. I'm almost 2 years old now, nearly an adult! I can take care of myself.

Aspersa: I'm tuning my antennas into the weather forecast right now. More rain. Lovely! Remember, Grandma Gerty is 5 years old and hasn't got much time left. I do hope you come along as soon as possible.

Helix: I will, Mom. Besides, I noticed an art class around this area yesterday. I think they'd like to draw me sitting on this hydrangea leaf.

Aspersa: Helix, you're so vain!

Helix: What, Mom? I can't hear you.

Aspersa: What is that stuck in your ears?!

Helix: The new gPod. All my gastroPod friends have them. You can listen to music, gastropodcasts, and even watch videos.

Aspersa: Well, when I was your age, we had soft shell music. Not this fast, hard shell banging music. You kids are losing your morals.

Helix: Our what? Sorry, Mom, you'll have to speak up. I'm listening to The Hermaphrodites.

Aspersa: The Hermaphrodites?

Helix: They're a cool new hip hop group, second only to the Giant African Snails.

Aspersa: Well, don't be long. And be sure to eat plenty of healthy leaves, fungi and other organic debris along the way.

Helix: No worries, Mom. Us young snails can eat anything. Even dead animals.

Aspersa: Helix, don't act so "antiherbivorous!"

Helix: Sorry, Mom, it was just a "sluggestion." Now be on your way, here comes the art class!

Student 1: Wow, look, there's a snail on this hydrangea leaf! Kawaii!

Student 2: Hey, he's dancing!

Student 3: Quick, get out your paintbrushes!

And so Helix had the audience he had always hoped for. He danced and gyrated and did all his hip-hop moves on the leaf while listening to The Hermaphrodites. The students drew his every move, fascinated with this dancing snail. He was famous.

Helix had so much fun that by the time the art students left, he was feeling very exhausted and fell fast asleep on the hydrangea leaf.

He woke up a few days later and realized he didn't have enough time to get to Gerty's house. Even at 2 millimeters per second, it would take him two days to travel the 300 meters to Gerty's cabbage patch.

When he spotted a passing tanuki raccoon dog wearing a bottle of sake around his waist, he got an idea. "Hey, tanuki! I bet you can't win a race against me." The tanuki laughed at him, took a swig of sake and accepted the challenge to race the snail to Gerty's cabbage patch.

While the tanuki took off toward the cabbage patch, Helix secretly hitched a ride on his tail.

The tanuki arrived at Gerty's in no time. When he heard the snail's voice behind him, he turned around to face him but the snail wasn't there. "Over here!" yelled Helix after having jumped off the tanuki's tail when he had turned around. Helix had landed right in front of Gerty's cabbage. "See? I won!"

Aspersa and Grandma Gerty were waiting for Helix under Gerty's cabbage. They all had a good feast on the cabbage and Helix told of his 15 minutes of fame with the art students while the rain pitter-pattered above. Asperba and Helix stayed the entire rainy season.

In mid-July, Grandma Gerty passed away. They covered her with dirt and started their long slither back home. Luckily, Helix had brought along an extra pair of headphones so he and his mother could listen to some of those old, soft shell music tunes on his gPod which Helix had found when searching the Decayed Matter Gastropodcast archives.