Korea

Wow i have not written a blog in ages cos every time i get on the computer i seem to have so many emails to reply to! which is a very good thing- please continue to email me ^^



I got back from [South] Korea a few days ago. It was amazing! I needed to go there , as the nearest foreign country, for visa reasons, and I stayed with a Japanese/Korean Baha'i couple on the outskirts of Seoul. They were the most lovely people. Toyoko, the wife, took me to a traditional market on one day, then a typical Korean cafe, where she also explained Korean culture to me. Her explanation was incredible, and really interesting particularly as it was from a Japanese perspective. She explained that unlike Japan, where everything is fairly formal, you say itadakimasu before eating, gochisousama afterwards, women cant cross their legs......, Korean culture is fairly relaxed. As if to demonstrate, in the cafe we were in, a middle-aged woman sitting nearby suddenly started talking to us, asking what age we were (age difference dictates the level of language used in Korean), and asked whether Toyoko was Japanese (we were speaking in Japanese). Then she told Toyoko that the chef was really busy and told her "Why arent you up there helping her?" The directness was so unlike Japan- and not even in Australia would a customer offer to help a chef get food ready!



Although I didn't go into Seoul proper at all because both me and Toyoko dislike large cities, the area of Seoul we were in (right on the outskirts) was about the same density as the Sydney CBD and there was nothing bu apartments in sight. I shudder to think of what the Seoul CBD must be like.



I recently started reading a Baha'i book called 'The Dawn Breakers', a book that is probably the biggest book I've ever seen. It's about as thick as I can stretch my thumb and my second finger apart - just to demonstrate how massive it is! It was written by one of the first Baha'is, who was alive at the same time as Baha'u'llah, the Prophet Founder of the Baha'i Faith (Baha'u'llah lived 1817-1892 in Persia). The book is basically a history of the first years of the Baha'i Faith and it is amaaaazing. I'm not far into it yet, but the anecdotes it gives of what these people did for their beliefs are incredible- particularly given the persecution they received. The thing I like most about it is, because the author was alive at the time, and really "ablaze" with his beliefs, it sets an incredible, almost contagious, tone for the story.

A friend of mine was telling me the other day that she likes the quotes I put up on here in some of my earliest posts. I don't know whether I've put this one up yet, but its one of my favourite ones. I like it especially because it helps you to ensure that your love for others is genuine, at a thoughts level. And I think heaps of other qualities flow through from that... :

Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone, let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path

- Abdu'l Baha

We just received a copy of Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness, the second in the Moribito series which Cathy translated. I read the first one and loved it, I think I wrote about it in an earlier blog post of mine, but I'm really excited to get into it. As far as I'm aware, it hasn't been properly released in America or anything yet, so I'll probably be one of the first people to read it :) Looking forward to it!


Sonia

Art Tourism

hello again


Cathy's family are only gonna be here for another couple of days, but its been amazing having them here- they're all such lovely people. one thing their visit highlighted for me was the fantastic "Art tourism" available in Kagawa Prefecture (this one). Isamu Noguchi, a famous Japanese-American sculptor, spent a few months every year at a house near here for his sculpting because theres a special type of stone here that i dont thinks very common. Theres a gallery of George Nakashima, another Japanese-American, who was a furniture designer but had a background in architecture so the wooden furniture he designs was really revolutionary (its lovely).
Theres an island called Naoshima about an hour by ferry from Takamatsu, and on it there's 3 art sites. I haven't been there, but Cathys family were raving about it when they came back. They have lots of famous artists there, they even have Monet. Joan, whose really up with art, told me that it was definitely world class.

Theres lots of islands in the Inland Sea between mainland Japan and Shikoku, and on these islands theres lots of shrines and things that are no longer used. They were given to a number of artists to make into an art work, I guess kindof what Michelangelo did, and in 2010 next year theyre going to be opened as an exhibition, the "Art House Project".

They're visit though, obviously hasn't been great for my Japanese, cos I've been surrounded by English and also going out with Andrew & Angela (who can't speak Japanese as of yet but are studying it heaps hard). The other day, the 3 of us went to a park with Ando-san's English speaking group to have "English conversation" I was amazed at how good they were, particularly cos they all lived in Japan and were also of the age where learning foreign languages is said to be difficult. It was funny though, the teacher of the group, another Japanese lady, commented on how slowly I was speaking. It was pretty funny to have a Japanese person point something like that out- and it was true. Most of the English conversations I've been having have been with people who English is their 2nd language, and even people who seem really good at it I think would find it difficult to follow my usual speed of talking. When I first got here, speaking slow, simple English was as difficult as speaking in Japanese, but now its not a problem.

Yesterday Cathy's English group (a different one) went to Konpira-san, a shrine in a neighbouring town which is famous for the number of steps there are to reach it. They went for English conversation practice with Cathy's family. To get to the main shrine, you have to climb 785 steps and to get to the back shrine, its 1368 steps. The main reason we went was because there's an art gallery located a bit under the main shrine. The art gallery is famous in Japan as the best artist of every era was invited to live there and to paint a room. A lot of the works are only displayed every 120 years (Cathy tells me, but Ando-san says its 60 years) but however long, its a long time. That particular exhibit of course was not open though. Because Cathys parents can't climb up all those stairs, we had lunch at a restaurant on the same level as the art gallery which meant we could use their private car park.


Sonia

cathys family

hello


cathys parents and sister are staying with us at the moment for 2 weeks, they arrived a couple of days ago. its cathy and yuichis 25th wedding anniversary, her sisters 30th and their parents 60th so they designed it as a present for all of them. also, her dads 86 and mums 84 so its gonna be the last time they come to japan. so yeah its a pretty special time for all of them.

cathys sister, joan is the most amazing person- shes a psychiatric nurse who works at a childrens hospital, and is going back to uni next year to study art therapy. shes really thoughtful and spiritual and i really like her. she meditates for like an hour a day and reads heaps of self-improvement books, like shes trying to get us to read a book called "non-violent communication" which at first i thought meant like not bashing people up haha but its all about how to phrase what you say in a loving way and the impact words can have on people. the author apparently often goes to dangerous situations, like a room full of Israelis and Palestinians, or warring African tribes and uses his methods to defuse the situation. i really want to read it.

the day before last i got interviewed by the Yomiuri Shinbun, a national Japanese newspaper which has different local branches. I was interviewed by the Shikoku branch. Anyway, it was the same journalist who interviewed Cathy when she won the Mildred Batcheldor Award for translating Moribito- and she wanted to interview a foreigner who had recently arrived in Japan to contribute to a feature they were doing on "New Lives".

I was so scared- ive never been interviewed in English let alone in Japanese, so i asked Reina (who came again for 2 days to see her grandparents) to sit in in case i got stuck. I ended up getting onto the topic of Indigenous nutrition, and she asked me why they often have poorer nutrition than other Australians. Talk about a hard question to answer!! Particularly when i was trying really hard not to show any sort of political opinion about it since the whole thing can get pretty controversial in Australia. but i think it went ok cos i said it in English to ensure i could be as tactful as possible. when it gets published ill try to get it from their website or something so people can see it.

its so funny being surrounded by Canadians after being around Japanese people- its been a great opportunity to see how many Japanese people may feel when they live in the West. japanese people speak fairly slowly and are more comfortable with periods of silence then Westerners tend to be, and everything they say is very indirect and "delicate" (i think that sums it up well). Cathys mum is really direct and loud and it was so funny the first day she was here, it was a bit of a shock to my system haha.
for example, Japanese people tend to compliment you for really small things (eg if you just say konnichiwa, even if its the worst accent imaginable). cathys mum on the first day she was here asked me what "maple-viewing festival" was called, and ignorant me didnt even know there were maples outside canada, so i definitely didnt know the japanese word for the festival. when i told her this, she said "you dont know???" which after getting used to delicate Japanese culture was a bit of ashock to say the least haha. but now its ok.

i mentioned before the books cathy has translated, and i would encourage all of you to look for them- Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and Dragon Sword and Wind Child. theyre both fantasy books but its fascinating to read fantasy from a japanese cultural background- theyre set in a medieval background like western fantasy but of course medieval Japan was not knights on horses going on quests. very interesting.


Sonia