A Highly Cultured Weekend

The whole second half of this week sort of shaded into the weekend as events got gradually less academic. Tuesday and Wednesday definitely still had work, with first the Japanese midterm and then a programming assignment that Fah and I were kicked out of first the Stanford Center at 10pm, then Kanbaikan at 10:30, but still before we'd totally finished. After getting that done, though, there wasn't too much to do for the rest of the week. Thursday we had a field trip to Aoi Matsuri instead of Japanese class. Not the most exciting festival ever. The concept is that people dress up in Heian costumes and walk from the Imperial Palace to Kamigamo Shrine, passing through Shimogamo on the way. The particularly famous part is the "princess," who I couldn't understand the full description of, but is chosen through some sort of special process, and unmarried women and girls who, again for reasons I didn't understand, walk behind her. In the rest of the parade, though, pretty much only the people holding swords looked happy to be there. Everyone else seemed to be unclear on why they'd signed up for the job, especially the people trying to lead uncooperative horses and oxen. The costumes were very pretty, though, and our assignment there -- to interview people about where they were from and whether they'd been to the festival before -- was interesting. Harrison and I actually got four interviews, instead of the required three, but only three were in Japanese. The fourth, we got from a German couple from München. My German was never very good to begin with, and Japanese was interfering to the point that I would just have to stop talking and stare at the sidewalk for many seconds at a time while sorting out the German phrases from the Japanese ones, but I did mostly manage to come up with the sentences I needed. So that was cool. After that, we stopped by a cafe with a cool library/sitting room upstairs, then I returned to the center for Scenes lecture and 108B homework in the afternoon.

Friday was mostly the same as ever, with the small variation of having an exchange event in the afternoon with the Kinki (?) University branch of IEEE. Originally, I think the intention was to have us give presentations as well, but us all being undergrads and them being grad students, it ended up just being three of theirs. The first was in Japanese, concerning something about slots in electromagnetic shielding. I get the sense I wouldn't have understood much even if it had been in English. The second was in English, but I still didn't have much to contribute. It was on determining the material composition of comets based on the light they radiate. The CS kids among us had a little to say about the modelling strategies that they were using, but that was about all we could come up with in the way of intelligent questions. The final presentation was back in Japanese, but the topic was slightly more familiar -- synchronization and transmission of binocular video. I couldn't quite tell if they were doing it automatically or just providing an interface for the user to do it manually, but at any rate there were enough English borrowings that I could understand the basic concepts. Also, the slides for all three presentations were in English, which helped a lot. Afterwards, the representatives from IEEE wanted to go drinking together, but we had all committed already to go with DESA (Doshisha Exchange Student Association, if I haven't already defined it) for snacks and fireworks after school, so we exchanged contact information and said we'd reschedule, though that hasn't happened yet. Fireworks were exciting. I'd been sure to bring my lighter from Beppu, and Melinda had matches from the same, so we grabbed one of the bigger bags and walked (or maybe skipped... not sure) to the park where the Kyoto natives had told us it would be okay to set off the fireworks. Everyone was going for sparklers, but after lighting a few of those we wanted to break into the bigger stuff. We lit a few fountains, then a spinny-popper. Unfortunately, we were told that the noise-making ones shouldn't be lit in the park and were going to be saved for a barbeque later. Disappointing, but we still got to light the wobblers, flowery-sparkle-climbers, and most of the fountains. So worth it. After that, we went to the river briefly with everyone else, but around when they were getting to their second drinks, a few of us headed off for the nearest arcade. After a few games of DDR, guitar-and-drums, and ball-throwing, it was last train time for everyone but me, so we ran off in various directions. I made it, of course, since I've got trains for an hour after everyone else's stop, but Harrison made his by only a minute and Melinda and Fah both missed theirs and had hour-plus walks home.

The next morning, we all met for the Kansai Stanford Club's welcome party. The club is made up of Japanese people living in the Kansai area who went to Stanford, mostly for graduate school or post-doctoral work. After a brief mingling time, they took us to a Noh theater nearby, where one of their wives knew the wife of the owner. The owner, a semi-famous Noh actor, then took time to carefully explain the movements, sounds, costumes, and masks of Noh, demonstrating each in several styles appropriate to different characters. Noh is one of those things with deep subtleties -- unfortunately rather boring if you don't know the subtleties -- so if I ever do get around to seeing a Noh play, which I hope to, I'm sure his explanations will contribute hugely to my appreciation of it. From there, we went back to Amherst Guest House at Doshisha, where we had lots of delicious food provided by the club members. After eating, we went outside for a group photo and then each of us was called up individually to give a brief self-introduction (the omnipresent jiko-shokai) and answer a question pulled from a box. Mine was "If you were a cat, what kind of cat would you be?" I had been called up first and was caught totally off guard, so I answered in English "One without a tail," and left it at that. In general, we separated ourselves pretty clearly based on year of Japanese. There really is a huge gulf between first-year, second-year, and third-year in college language classes. After we had all gone, the members of the club introduced themselves. One was a linguist, whose name I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten, and had been at Stanford relatively recently, working with Tom Wasow on HPSG's (Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammars), which if I understand correctly he is now applying to Japanese. Obviously, the latter is not something that he mentioned in his introduction. I hunted him down afterwards and we talked until the conversation got awkward and other students started leaving.

From there, I had been planning to go with Fah to Myoshinji for an overnight Zazen meditation. We convinced Harrison and Melinda to come along as well, and after grabbing lunch in the cafeteria we all hopped on a bus and headed over. We were late -- very much in character for most of us -- but the monks were friendly about it. We were taken into a room with some Japanese people who had also never been before and given detailed instructions on how to behave and the correct ways to perform the various rituals. Unfortunately, these all being in fast and humble Japanese, we understood almost none of it and spent most of the weekend relying on our Japanese counterparts to lead the way. From there, we were led into the meditation room, where meditation started shortly after we had all found seats. The whole weekend is sort of fuzzy for me, since I'd taken off my watch and was operating under some assumptions that later turned out to be false -- mostly that, of the 30-ish people meditating, all of the 20-ish in robes were monks, rather than just the two with shaved heads -- but I'll give my account as well as I remember it. The room was arranged so that everyone had an empty space directly across from them, but the old man slightly to the right of across gave me very friendly corrections, to the effect that my sandals were supposed to be straight on the floor in front of me and, with somewhat more difficulty communicating, that my prayer book was supposed to be on the upper shelf behind me while I sat. The first meditation period, which was maybe about 30 minutes, I was still nervous from having been corrected repeatedly as I entered the room, found my seat, and sat down, so I wasn't able to breathe freely, much less clear my thoughts. It was also over rather more quickly than I anticipated. This was also the first time that the new Japanese guy next to me asked for the stick. That part of the instructions, I had understood. The monk walks by with the stick, you clasp your hands to ask to be hit. You bow to each other, then you hold your shoulders and bend over farther, he finds the correct part of your back and whacks you, once on each shoulder. You then bow to each other again and he walks away. Sure enough, from the second time the monk walked by, the new guy asked to be hit just about every time. Was kind of funny.

At any rate, after the first meditation period, we had a toilet break, then proceeded from the visitors' center type building where we had started and left our stuff in sleeping rooms to the temple proper, where we sat in front of the temple garden in the dusk and contemplated it as we meditated for what might have been an hour, with three switches of leg positions. This went a little better as far as concentration, since I'd sort of figured out what I was supposed to be doing. Also, there was a sort of mystical quality, since I had no idea what the shape or appearance of the garden would have been in the daylight. Eventually, though, the newness of sitting in one place for so long took over, and I started losing focus again. I was getting cold by the end, and had decided to ask to be hit next time the monk went by, but by the time I decided that, they had stopped passing, and before long we went back into the center. There, after some brief chanting in the tatami room that I couldn't find the page fast enough to follow along with, we went upstairs and were given tea and told (again in fast Japanese that we didn't understand) what we would be doing the next day. Men slept in the tatami room, women in smaller rooms upstairs. Melinda and I were put in a room with two elderly Japanese ladies. They were very friendly, helped us figure out the beds, and tried very hard to help us understand what we'd be doing in the morning, though still with limited success since we couldn't quite frame our questions properly and were never sure if they were answering the same thing we were asking. At any rate, we went to sleep very early, and I would have been relatively well-rested when we all woke up at 5:30 the next morning if I were at all capable of sleeping in a room with strangers.

When we woke up, we put our beds away and proceeded fairly quickly to the meditation room. This time, we went straight to the other temple, though we sat inside this time. I would guess that this was again half an hour, though again I'm very much not sure. I was rather sleepy, and decided to get myself sticked. Didn't hurt especially much, but I suspect that's because I was wearing my fleece. Melinda got hit with only a t-shirt on and maintains that it was painful. At any rate, we were only in the meditation room for the first half, since all of the newbies were taken out halfway through to be taught how to eat breakfast. Though the words were still not clear, the gestures were, and by combining those bits of our instructions with watching the people around us, we were more or less able to get by. That was good, since the man sitting next to me at breakfast, apparently the most senior of the meditators, was rather stricter than the friendly man who'd been across from me at first. He would not put up with my not following along in the prayer book, and looked rather frustrated as he looked up each chant for me. All through breakfast, he hissed instructions. Helped me do things close to right, but not exactly a calm, contemplative experience. On the other hand, I suppose I was sort of disturbing his experience as well, so I shouldn't complain. I was the last one to finish eating breakfast, due to some minor technical difficulties in eating the rice, but from there things went smoothly enough. There was some more chanting, and then we went back to the center, where we cleaned the areas we had stayed in and had tea again.

At tea, the new members were asked for jiko-shokai, our impressions of zazen, and any questions we might have. The jiko-shokai went smoothly enough, but we weren't really able to phrase any impressions beyond "it was interesting" or "I liked it." Questions, similarly, even if we could have put them together, we wouldn't have been able to understand the answers to. Probably came off as a little bit rude, but hopefully they got at least some idea of our linguistic shortcomings before that and weren't expecting too much. The Japanese people who came with us had much more detailed impressions, which I partly understood. Mostly to the effect of "It's not easy, but I will be able to use this discipline to do well in school." They also had a variety of questions, of which I only understood one. They asked about the significance of where we had placed the chopsticks every time we stopped eating -- to the right of the place setting, slightly off the edge of the table. The other meditators had been quite strict about this, and even some of the Japanese people got corrected on it. The monk's answer, which I found pretty entertaining, was to turn to the other monk and say, roughly translated and cutting out parts I didn't understand, "I think it's because it's easier to pick them up that way. Right?" After the questions, we were sent our separate ways with invitations, I don't know how sincere, to come back if we got the chance.

Since I'm writing in English now, I might as well form my full impressions. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to sit and think. It's something I do from time to time anyways, and the only significant differences were the rigid seating position and the people on either side of me. The former was fine... my legs only started to get sore at the very end of the longer meditation period. The latter, though, caused somewhat more problems, especially when I was under the impression that the man to my left was some sort of senior monk. Mostly for this reason, I didn't find the weekend nearly as calming or centering as I'd expected to. I suppose, with practice, I could probably get used to it, but I don't see any need. My own methods work for me, and I'm not planning to become a practicing Buddhist any time soon. It was certainly interesting to see the regularity with which other people meditate, and I did enjoy myself. The only regret I have is that they made us wear flip-flops when we went outside, and I never have been able to wear those comfortably or walk in them skillfully. But I left there with the thoroughly UU thought that, if this is most of what monks do, then their religion is certainly not for me. It's internally directed, and while I can see the value of contemplation for someone otherwise involved in the outside world, to devote oneself to it entirely seems like something of a waste. I forget it sometimes, but I really was raised to believe that religion, if it's to be useful, should make a positive difference in the lives of others. The religious figures I respect are the ones who make real changes in the world through religious inspiration. Buddhism had done good things, certainly, but I'd be surprised if they were accomplished simply by staring at walls, floors, and rock gardens. Meditation may be the (or a) path to enlightenment -- I certainly wouldn't be the one to say -- but for me at least, it's not the only requirement for a good life. As usual, I suspend judgment on others. I can only decide for myself. But any curiosity I might've had about cloistered life has been thoroughly satisfied.

After returning from the temple, the combination of waking up early and having little sleep before caught up with me fast. I slept like a log through lunch, and only barely managed to get out of bed and do some homework before finally opening the door of my room and emerging for dinner.