Do the interns get Glocks?

So this post will be made up of pictures I had wanted to post previously, but hadn't been able to on account of firewalls and not having internet access at home. It's chronologically a mess, but you'll get the picture. We'll begin with my trip to...

OSOREH-ZAAAAAAAN (scary mountain)

Here's the cool little kanji sign posted at the door to the temple complex at the foot of this place:


What is Osore-zan? The buddhists believe that it's where souls go to have their fates decided, i.e. whether they'll go to heaven and hell. The cool part of this idea is that Osore-zan is a physical place, a mountain that is considered the actual gateway to the spiritual world. It's been the site of religious activity for over two thousand years as the sulfur deposits and geothermal activity is pretty wild looking.

Before we step inside the underworld, we'll have to cross the river of the dead, which is passable by this charming little bridge...


... and a two-lane highway. Here's the view from the bridge, looking towards the lake:


This picture was difficult to take because of the horrific smell of sulfur. You get used to it after a while, but your lungs start to burn a little if you spend too much time here. The lake is so full of sulphur etc. that it contain absolutely no marine life. Pretty cool place, if you ask me.


Here's the temple complex itself:


Inside that main temple, you (or a paid professional i.e. priest) can do ceremonies to help your deceased loved ones reach heaven. The alterior goal of coming to Osore-zan, it seems, is to help out everyone you know who is dead. This cna be done in many ways, by having a ceremony done in the temple or one of the many shrines that dot the area, heaping rocks on top of each other, etc. Here's one of the cooler shrines:
See? people have piled up rocks to help the spirits of their loved ones attain heaven. In the winter, oni or demons come and knock down the piles. You can burn incense, offer something to the small buddha statue, or leave money in the little box. On the pile of rocks itself, you'll notice little pinwheels and other trinkets. The trinkets (sandals, favorite objects, etc.) belong to the dead loved one, while the pinwheels are to encourage deceased children to reach heaven. The pinwheels are everywhere, it's a pretty tough tear-jerky to see how many there actually are here.

This picture is sweet:

And if sacrificing to the small buddhas isn't good enough, you can always upgrade:


Here's a view of that same shrine from a little ways off. It give syou a better idea of the weird landscape of this area.




For something a little happier, here are some pictures from my trip to Shiriyazaki, the northeastern penninsula near me. First, the wild (penned-in) horses:




Shrine on an island! Shrine on an island!


The lighthouse at the very end of the cape:


From near the lighthouse, where I climbed a little rock outcrop to get thsi picture of a small buddha statue/shrine and the extension of the cape.


Ok, now the pictures start to get a little out of order, fo' flippin' real. This is from my walk out to the lighthouse, the reverse of the picture you see above:



NEXT CATEGORY OF PICTURES

These are jsut snapshots I took during my daily commute. On my way to Shitsukari Elementary, I took this picture of a small village, which is actually what most every settlement in Higashidoori looks like, sans the ocean.


More local to me, there are lots of rice paddies:


Intersection of some kind. Don't remember what settlement this is.


This is pretty much the first thing I see every morning after leaving my house, as all my schools require me to drive along this road:


NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT WHERE I LIVE

First, a picture of the view from the back of my house. I took this a while ago (early september), so imagine this same thing, only colder...


One of my three non-kitchen rooms. Traditional tatami mats on the floor, traditional sliding doors, traditional lack of a blessed heating system...


Head-on view of my house. If it looks crappy, that's just it blending in...


...And my car! it's tiny, it drives on the left, and it's surprisingly comfortable. Can't wait to see how it handles the snow...


PS my interac boss came up today and took me out to sushi for dinner, which was cool, we talked about random stuff, and he mentioned that he went to a few of my schools today, one of which he said was wicked old. He described as being the sort of thing one sees in a movies about stuff that happened a long time ago... I'm going to try to start taking pictures of my schools and putting them up here, as they are very very different looking. One's a multimillion dollar modern luxury palace 'o larnin', while the other is a glorified log cabin with attached gym.

peace.