This is one of my favorite shots ever, and wouldn’t you know it… it was taken with the crappy 2MP camera of my iPhone 3G. Not the ideal camera to capture such a scene, but you make do with what you have (or as as [Chase Jarvis][] puts it, “The best camera is the one that’s with you”)
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the post, please share it with your buddies on the web. A few options below. Thank you so much :)
Small shrines along the road are extremely common in Japan, especially in older areas. Here is one I stumbled across the other day as I was biking around the city. Pray to the Bodhisattvas (Buddhist saints) for good luck.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the post, please share it with your buddies on the web. A few options below. Thank you so much :)
I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure this is a temple for so called Mizuko (水子), that is Water Children. These are children who have been aborted, were stillborn, or died in miscarriage. Some Buddhist Temples offer a service called mizuko kuyo to help parents come to peace with this tragedy. Often as part of this service, the grieving parents buy a Jizo statue and dress it in their child’s clothes.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the post, please share it with your buddies on the web. A few options below. Thank you so much :)
These six guys are camping out at a small temple near the river. I forget the temple name, but rest assured, it has some connection to [Tokugawa Ieyasu][] (as just about every place in Okazaki claims).
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the post, please share it with your buddies on the web. A few options below. Thank you so much :)
Today’s photo is a vicious looking gang of monks.
No, wait, it’s a group of Jizo! You remember Jizo, don’t you? He’s the Buddhism Saint who protects children in this life and the next.
Most of these monks appear quite serious in their meditations, except for the guy I focused on in the middle with the purple bib and bit of an overweight face. Maybe it’s just how his bib is blown at the moment, or maybe it is that someone didn’t put his cap on straight, but he looks fast asleep to me. Must be some deep meditation.
Click on the photo for a larger version, and go grab the original at flickr. It is completely free: Download it, share it with your friends, do whatever you want with it, just please give me credit and link back to this page.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the post, please share it with your buddies on the web. A few options below. Thank you so much :)
Today’s photo is a shot of Jizo (gee-zoe), the guardian deity of children in Japan. It’s very common for them to sport bibs like this. Stylish.
More commonly called O-jizo-sama out of respect, he is just about the most beloved figure in Buddhism in Japan. His statues are everywhere. I do mean everywhere. They are very common along most roads, in hillsides, along random paths, in graveyards, and on and on.
Jizo is seen as the guardian of children, especially children who have died before their parents. In Japanese mythology, he helps children cross the river Sanzu (think of this as the river Styx in Greek mythology) on their way to the afterlife, which they are unable to do by themselves.
Jizo is usually dressed with a bib to show this connection with saving children. Smaller jizo statues in graveyards are dressed in baby clothes, often with toys nearby. The clothes and toys are from grieving parents who donate their child’s things as a way to thank Jizo for watching over their child in the afterlife.
He’s not exclusively prayed to for children, however. People might commonly stop at one of his statues on the roadside, bow and say a simple prayer of thanks for life. In Buddhism, he is a bodhisattva. Think of that as someone who has achieved enlightenment and out of compassion has sworn to help everyone else achieve the same.
There are all variety of statues, some depicting Jizo as a baby, some as an adult, and some like the above.
Comments/questions? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
Click on the photo for a larger version, and go grab the original at flickr. It is completely free: Download it, share it with your friends, do whatever you want with it, just please give me credit and link back to this page.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the post, please share it with your buddies on the web. A few options below. Thank you so much :)
The iPhone camera is a pretty crappy deal. My 3G model only has 2mp of resolution, no focus, not very good dynamic range, and a bad lens. Despite this, iPhone photography is amazingly popular. Some pro photographers have even published books of nothing but iPhone photos. Part of the reason for this popularity is the screen. It’s amazing how much easier and more fun taking photos becomes when you have such a big (relatively speaking) screen in front of you to compose your photo on. The other reasons is apps. The iPhone has a huge selection of photo apps which do a great many things. At the basic level, they do photoshop type edits very quickly and easily.
Anyways, enough of that. Here are some of the better photos I took this past week with my iPhone. Descriptions follow each photo and be sure to click on them for a larger size.
Wisteria (fuji in Japanese.. sorry, still can’t get characters to show up on the website. Working on it.) are in full bloom right now. This is from the wisteria festival that’s going on this week.
Azalea (tsutsuji) are starting to bloom too. They are literally everywhere. I think just about every street in Okazaki is lined on both sizes with them.
Not sure what this flower is, but it was nice.
Local shrine. I love the torii gate.
Rice fields near my apartment. They are overgrown with grass and weeds at the moment, but farmers will be clearing them off to plant rice soon.
Fallen petals from the cherry trees (sakura). Most of the blossoms are several weeks gone, but a few remain, mostly on the ground.
O-jizo-sama, deep in meditation. These are from a small temple I just discovered the other day.
If you liked these, you can see more on my iPhone photos website or on flickr. I’ll try to do a “best of” post like this more often.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed the post, please share it with your buddies on the web. A few options below. Thank you so much :)
(Originally posted 7/2008. Updated 11/20101. )
One thing I’ve been doing to help improve my Japanese is reading. This really helps get a feel for a language, so even if you don’t know the grammar sometimes, you know when a sentence just feels right. Not only is this good language practice, but it is also introducing me to different aspects of Japanese culture that I may not have otherwise been exposed to. Like folk tales. Here’s one I rather like that shows some of the Japanese love for Jizo, called Ojizo-sama for respect (O is added to words for politeness and –sama is the very polite form of –san).
Before we start, there is one thing here that is I don’t think we have a word for in English. A Kasa is a hat farmers and monks wear that is cone shaped to allow rain to run off of it so they can be outside in rain storms. We probably typically think of Vietnam when we see these. Here’s a pic:
Anyways, so here’s the story, called “Kasa-Jizo”
A long time ago there was an old man and an old woman living alone together. They didn’t have any money, but were happy. One day, on the last day of the year, the old woman told the old man, “Grandpa, tomorrow is New Years Day! I want something good to eat!”
“Is that so?” He replied. “Then lets make some kasa, grandma, and I’ll sell them in town to make us money for food.”
She agreed with his idea and so they made 5 kasa for him to sell. As soon as they finished, he put on his own kasa and set out for town. On the way there, he passed six stone Jizo statues. He paused and offered a brief prayer – “Ojizo-sama, thank you for everything!” – then continued on his way to town.
It was very busy in town. There were many, many stalls selling everything one might imagine. And there were tons of people, most of them drunk on sake, celebrating the New Year early. The old man called out, “Kasa! Kasa for sale! Does anyone want to buy a kasa!” He called out for a long time, but no one wanted to buy one.
That evening, as he returned home, a snow storm started. There was very strong, cold wind, and tons of snow. The wind was very powerful and the old man had a hard time walking through the snow. But he pushed on.
He soon came to the six stone Jizo statues he had passed eariler on his way to town. Again, he stopped to offer a prayer of thanks, but first seeing that they were covered in snow, went to clean them. Wiping the snow from their heads, he noticed how cold they were. Remembering his five unsold kasa, he decided to use them to cover the Jizos’ heads. But there were six Jizo and only five kasa. He thought about this problem for a moment, then decided to donate his own kasa to the sixth Jizo.
“There you go,” he explained to them. “These kasa will keep you warm.”
He then offered a small prayer of thanks and continues home.
When he got home, his wife exclaimed. “My, you are covered in snow! You must be cold.”
“No one wanted to buy any kasa,” he told her. “We won’t be able to have a good New Years meal.”
“Then, what happened to all the kasa you had?”
“The 6 Jizo statues near here were covered with snow, so I gave them the kasa we made.”
“Ah, that was good.” She decided after suppressing her disappointment. “Well, then let’s go to bed.”
Around midnight they were awoken by a loud sound, like something being dragged through the snow outside.
“What’s that? Is someone outside?” The old man and woman asked each other.
They listened closer and then heard singing. “The old man is so kind and nice. Thank you for the kasa, grandpa.”
The voices were coming from in front of their house. The old man and old woman crept out of their beds and went to their bedroom door. As they approached it, there was a large sound, like something big hitting the ground. After a few minutes, they carefully opened the door. The ground was covered with food!
They quickly ran outside and off in the distance they could see 6 Jizo with 6 kasa on their heads walking away. “Thank you very very much” They called. Then they went in and had a great meal. It was a very good New Years.
Nice story, eh?
Nothing much new, just fixed some misspellings and added the drop-caps. ↩
