Kamakura, Ikego

So two week ends ago we went to Kamakura. A girl from the ward babysat for personal progress and so we were kid free. We got off at the north Kamakura station and wandered around. We found a couple little temples and a tunnel. The area is very hilly, but the rock is soft, so there were lots of cliffs and caves and tunnels. We found someone with a map and got some advice. The temple in the picture is Engaku-ji, which is a large temple complex with a bunch of temples, some really old and some new ones. Saw a few more temples, which were smaller but had nice graveyards/gardens in the back. Including the God of Happiness in a cave. You "walk this way" through the tunnel in the picture to another cave where you find the very happy guy pointing at you. The we hiked over to the big Buddha and took a detour to the money washing shrine on the way. To get in you go through a tunnel into a little valley. In the valley is a spring in a cave where you can wash money to make it double. Most people were washing change, but we tried a hundred, just in case. We met some girls from Hawaii. They are in med school at UH and knew Matt Taylor from Laie. Saw the great Buddha, wandered through some antique stores. Went to the beach and watched surfers on ankle high waves. Then we had dinner at a California/surf themed restaurant. The decor was like random garage sale mix. Old license plates, a wooden sled, and a huge smurfette doll in the bathroom. The main appeal was a great view of the water. The food was also pretty good, but the girls at the table near us were smoking.
This weekend I went to a camporee at camp Ikego, on the US navy base near Kamakura. I wasn't sure what to expect, but the campsite was in a little valley, so you couldn't see anything but trees. It was pouring all morning, but by the time we left that night, it was just drizzling. Brother Mason made peach cobbler in a big dutch oven for dessert. The next day I helped run the frisbee toss and then went over to archery and translated and helped teach it. It was BSA, Japan Scouts camporee, so each patrol was made up of half American and half Japanese scouts. At night we had a potluck with one of the Japanese patrols. We had a pot of gyozas and fried rice and dessert, but they had two long table filled with food, plus a a huge pot of udon. We stayed for the camp fire and elaborate order of the arrow ceremony, and sang the special closing song. (So many scout traditions and ceremonies that I had no idea existed.) When I finally got dropped off at home it was almost 11.

Not much happening

Okay, so I missed posting last week, and can't think of anything to post this week. We had youth conference last week. This weekend we went to the Tokyo National Museum at Ueno park. The park was packed with people there to see the cherry blossoms, but the museum was not too crowded. The most surprising thing about the museum was the trash cans outside and the benches everywhere. It felt like they were making an extra effort for the foreign visitors. The stuff inside was cool too. My favorite was probably the early Chinese stuff bronzes, and the Thai bronze age drums. Did you know that Thailand had a bronze age culture that no one knows a lot about? The samurai armor and weapons were pretty cool too. Miriam liked the exquisite traditional doll set, with lots of tiny lacquered boxes, a minuscule tea set and writing box, furniture, picture books, etc, and the kimonos.
The architecture throughout was very nice. Dissertation is coming along, but I am so easily distracted. I am feeling pretty uninspired and its not like I can just put in hours and it will get done. I have to actually engage and think and process or its pretty meaningless. I kind of wish I had something else to do that was less taxing to balance it out, but I don't really. But since I do want it all to be over at some point I had better get a bit more motivated soon.

Storm surfing

So I finally went surfing, for the first time in four months or so. We went to Chiba. It was stormy with rain and 30 mph winds, but we drove all the way down to Onjuku, where it was offshore and actually pretty hollow and nice. The waves were still kind of all over place, since it was sandbar, and there was a current, so it was hard to line up and catch anything. After an hour or so, my hands were so numb that I could barely duckdive. Mostly I just caught close out waves with a few close out barrels. Still it was really fun to go surfing. Hopefully, it won't be four more months before our next session. Btw, Christian, the 4/3 and booties are plenty warm. I didn't even use the hood.

Do Not Mail Campaign

I don't believe in forwarding e-mails to friends, but I think you all should sign this campaign, so I'm putting it here, since this is voluntary. It is to create a Do Not Mail registry like the Do Not Call registry, enabling you to eliminate all your junk mail once and for all. Here is the url. http://donotmail.org.
There are some pretty appalling statistics. US junk mail accounts for 1/3 of all mail sent in the world. Ouch. You can also fill out a form that they will use to help you reduce your junk mail now. There have been other articles about this, but they actually send the letters for you, so it is extra simple.

zotero

I have been working on putting in footnotes for these chapters and have finally gotten around to actually using this program I downloaded a while ago. It is basically a free firefox extension that enables you to get bibliographic information of the web very easily. Most library sites, amazon, jstor, projectmuse, etc, are all supported. It also organizes your bibliographies and you can attach files and notes. Anyway, if you need this kind of a tool, it is very, very nice. Download at http://www.zotero.org/ and enjoy.

Sport Utility Bicycle, aka. Extracycle

I found out about this while wasting time on grist, a new favorite way to waste time and not feel like it is a complete waste of time, because I find cool stuff. Anyway, I was so stoked about it, it is generating a mid week post. I know that these are a little pricey, but think of it in comparison to a car. Plus, you'd probably make it all back in saved gas over a couple years. This pict is not impressive, but you can haul surfboards, kayaks, camping gear, groceries, two kids, and more comfortably. Check out their website. Based in North San Juan (by Roger and Yakshi).

Dissertation

Sometimes people ask how work is going. . . So, do you want the long answer or the short answer. The short answer is, "fine." The long answer is maybe fifty pages, single-spaced, plus lots of notes. If you want that, let me know, since I'm always looking for comments. But to fill out the short answer a little, it's a bit hard to stay focused and I get sidetracked on all this stuff I really need to know, but really isn't going to make it in the dissertation. Already, the two chapters I have written have spawned another chapter each. Or rather, after writing half what I had planned, it was already too long, and I could see how the remaining half could be it's own chapter. Which is fine, except that my current time schedule doesn't really allow for a five hundred page monster. Anyway, these kind of meaningless logistical problems aside, is anyone beside me interested in Ennin's Record of Pilgrimage to the Tang in Search of the Law? Or its place in the journal tradition of East Asi? How it speaks to the question of the Japanese appropriation of Tang culture in the early Heian period? It seems like I already have a vision of the whole thing, and although that shifts slightly as I fill in the details, the actual dissertation writing is much more the sometimes interesting, sometimes tedious job of filling in all of the details. But there are so many details I don't have time to go after, so many questions I can't answer, so many things I should look up, but don't seem to have time to. Even if I do, I can hardly keep them straight in my mind. Anyway, let me know if you are interested in any more than this, and like I said, I can e-mail it to you.