Honmonji Temple Matsuri

Kyou no Nihongo no Kotoba (今日の日本語の言葉): jibun (自分) - myself

This word is brought to you by the fact that I spent most of the day and night wandering and getting around by myself. It was refreshing, and it was quite nice to know that I can still get food in Japanese. Yumm!

I apologize for the lateness of this blog post! I got home pretty late yesterday, and I was really tired, so I went straight to bed. And today, I've been at Ryosuke's undokai (more on that in the next post tonight), so I haven't had much time to write until now! But at last! Here I am! I know I've done this before, and most likely I'll do it again, and in case you missed it, since it was two posts in one day, last time I missed a post was for the day I spent in Harajuku. It was a Wednesday, I think: http://maggieinjapan.blogspot.jp/2012/10/a-day-off-in-harajuku.html

Yesterday was a very full day! I wanted to go shopping in the morning, then head to school (getting lunch on the way), then finish and head to Honmonji temple for the festival. It didn't seem like it was going to be a full day, or a day that would end up with 98 pictures taken, but yet, here it is. Very full indeed.

Breakfast was a wonderful affair. I had more curry rice (hooray for leftovers!), discovered really cute furikake bags (pictured below), which are in individual portions. Furikake is rice seasoning. And it's so delicious! Sorry if I'm zooming by breakfast, but there are bigger and better things to talk about!

After breakfast, I took a shower and then headed to Loft, off of Yurakuchou station on the Yamanote line. Luckily, it's included in my commuter pass, so going there was free (a commuter pass here is something that you pay a set amount for to go between two stops for a duration of time, and anywhere between those two stops is just included. So I can go as much as I want to Yurakuchou and not cost me a dim—I mean, a one yen coin!).

I was sad that I didn't have much time to explore Loft, but I will be back. I was pressed because I needed to get to school to meet Ian and Julien. They have so many cute things, though, like kitchenware, umbrellas, headphone jack decorative pieces, boxes, Halloween decor, etc. I didn't even wander into half of the store yet either, in my time there. In fact, I had only covered about... a fifth of it. And then there's even Muji in the floor above. I must wander there more later!

My main target was to get a bento box so that I wouldn't have to eat out for lunch every day. It was a successful mission (though a very tough choice, since there were so many cute ones), and I also got a furoshiki (the cloth with which one wraps the bento box), chopsticks, sauce holders, and a furikake dispenser. They were just too cute to pass up!

These a coasters that fold to look like a bud for storage. 

After I finished shopping, I rushed off to Akihabara (a few stops away on the Yamanote line) to meet Ian and Julien for lunch. Ian had already ate, and Julien ate a big breakfast, so lunch was mostly me. I wanted some katsu or kara age (as I always do. I will never get tired of that stuff), so we went up to the eighth floor of Yodobashi Akiba (the place with the cute bookstore from yesterday, and the okonomiyaki from last week) and picked a nice looking place. It ended up being a very delicious set meal, for a reasonable price indeed (around $10).

My new bento 

On my way to school, we stopped by this stationery store (the place I got that folder with the bicyclists) for Julien to get a notebook, and I saw all of this stationery and these other cute folders. GAH Japan is awesome. America should learn a lesson or two on cute things, as I said last post. They would probably have more revenue.

Then I went to school, which was easy as usual. So I've switched my energies more to communicating with others and making new friends. A lot of them are Thai people who don't really speak English well,  so Japanese is probably our only means of communication (which hopefully will get better as time goes on). I got closer to the people sitting next to me, and I think that with my energies focused on friends, I should be less bored in school (because the content is easy).

From school, I went straight to Honmonji (which is about five minutes away from my house) to check out my first matsuri! There isn't a national day in Japan when temples hold matsuris, and thus they tend to be harder to find unless you already know about it. So I'm very lucky that I just happened to get here when this temple held its matsuri. I don't think every temple does either.

The matsuri was very cool and very crowded! I ate tons of food, all of which I wil list and explain below, so that if I do mention it again, you shall know what I'm talking about:

• yakitori: meat on skewers. Deliciously marinated and grilled to perfection
• kara age: deep fried chicken (I usually like kara age don, which includes rice ("don" means rice bowl)
• mizuame: basically liquid sugar that hardens on ice. Very sweet, and tastes like sugar candy or rock candy, but it's different because, as a treat, it usually at least has fruit in the middle or something else to balance out the taste. It can also be used as just a sweetener, like honey
• yakisoba: pan fried noodles, which many of you might know already
• ramen burger: even my host family has never heard of this before. I definitely haven't heard of it before. It's literally ramen patties (stuck together by egg), with meat in the middle. 
• okonomiyaki: I mentioned this already in an earlier post when I was eating it at a restaurant, but it's basically a lettuce... pancake. Held together by egg. It can half cheese, meat, other veggies, etc. And then it's cooked all together on a griddle.

I walked around gathering food until I got pretty full, and then decided to head into the actual temple area. Those lanterns with the white fluffy things around them are so pretty! Pictures on an iPhone definitely cannot capture their essence. I have rarely ever seen things so beautiful before!

I walked up the stairs, following the throng of people, and though they told us not to stop and take pictures, I managed to snag a few anyways. The dedication I have to this blog and to you guys astounds me sometimes! I defied temple officials! :D

Once I got to the top, I wandered around for a bit, following the throng of people. I didn't go pray, mostly because I didn't know how to, and I didn't want to pull something sacrilegious on such an important day for the temple. However, I did waft incense toward me for cleansing, and then further purified by washing my hands with temple water.

I wandered around the stalls for a little bit and saw the fishing game, where you fish for real fish (though they probably die within a few days, sadly). There was also the game where there are a bunch of strings connected to various prizes all bunched up together, and you pick one, and you get the prize. There was some crazy stuff, like an Xbox 360 (which is surprisingly cheap to buy in Japan), and a Nintendo 3DS, though I suspect those were tied to strings that never quite made it to the end where you got to pick them.

The temple itself is very beautiful, with all of the gold and the carefully measured and placed trimmings. Everything is all in place, very set and square (just like all things Japanese), and even though there are tons of people, there is no litter. This is like Singapore with it's illegal gum law. It's great! The Japanese are so considerate. =]

I decided I would actually go inside the main temple building, which is where all the drumming and droning was coming from. I was curious to see what was inside, and on the way, I was stopped by another procession (there were many processions happening that day, all over the temple). Another lantern structure appeared, and it was just as beautiful as the last. There is no describing just how breathtaking one of these lanterns is. I want one so badly!

The inside of the temple is so golden and gilded. There's a guy playing a drum in the middle, and tons of people beating their own little instruments or praying alongside. You're allowed to go in there, but I didn't want to stand there and gawk in such a sacred place as people prayed and observed the matsuri's more religious side. It felt weird. Nevertheless, I did observe it more, but took no more pictures up closer.

Then, back outside, I went down the infinite staircase of lanterns (what I like to call it, since I couldn't read the kanji above the stairs which probably told me what it was or what it led to). There were lanterns everywhere, detailing every possible path down which we could go. I passed by one of the many cemeteries in the area, and am always struck by just how beautiful it is with the tall granite stones surrounded by the thin wooden planks with words written all over them. It's probably well wishes, prayers, and other statements of respect for the dead.

Down those stairs was this other area, once again surrounded by lanterns. There's this littler temple, I guess, and many more stands. Some of them were even selling raw fish, like at the supermarket, which you don't eat, but take home to cook. I really love the lanterns, which you already know. I've talked a lot about them, and I probably wills say more. It's like another world. You would have no idea that this place was right next to a big busy street. Despite the large amount of people, there's still a respectful quietness that made the whole thing magical. I wish they had more of these places all over the world. I so want to watch Spirited Away again, now that I understand. Miyazaki took on a whole damn lot trying to capture this stuff in animated film. He did a very good job, but it's one of these things were you have to see for yourself to really understand.

After the festival, I went back home. I hadn't called my host family yet because my phone was dead. Yoshiko-san was supposed to call me at 6:30, which I later discovered that she did five times, but I couldn't get it because my phone was dead. They had said that they would be home by 7:30, probably, so I went home then, hoping that they were there. They weren't, and my best bet would be to wait. So I sat outside, ate some yakisoba, and kept the nice and friendly spiders and mosquitoes company. They got home at around 8:20. Luckily, sitting right outside the house enabled me to have internet, which tided me over quite well. I barely noticed the passing time (except for the occasional mosquito bites). Thank humanity for the internet!

I ate some more yakisoba and ramen burger with the family, and then showed Yoshiko-san my bento collection I got from Loft. She fell in love, and thought it was quite adorable. I agreed wholeheartedly. I usually don't go for green, but in this instance, green was definitely the best color. The blues were just... ugly shades of blue. And for a blue lover like me, ugly shades are hard to find, yet I found them anyways. I'm happy with what I got, and I think it's really cute. The three animal faces up top are sauce containers, and the panda thing with the spoon down below is a furikake (rice seasoning) and other dry goods (like chili?) dispenser.

At last, I shall leave you with an image of my ramen burger. It really was weird. I think that it had too strong of an onion-y taste, which I wasn't expecting, but it wasn't bad. I think I could do better though, and I'll definitely try my own hand at this sometime. =]

Thanks for reading,
Maggie