An old shrine and temple complex Part1/2

We have a number of historical monuments around here. Most of them are not so famous as those in Kyoto or Nara. There are only very few visitors there. Nevertheless, it is always refreshing to visit and stay there for some time.

 

As Bob W6CYX has requested me to upload photos showing around here, I thought it is not bad to visit one of those cultural monuments around here. That is the Tsuna Shrine and Jizoin Temple in a town named Mashiko, which has been renowned for its pottery products. There is no definite reason why I described the name of those monuments as a complex. But these are located next door each other.

 

At first, I should excuse for my ignorance of these structures from historical point of view. All I know is that both are estimated to have been built in the 12th century. The temple was established for the clan Ustsunomiya, the leader of this area, those days. It was an era when the sovereignty by Shogun was not stably established. Many people, high or low, relied on Buddhism, I believe. Either is believed to have been transfered here in a later era. A shrine is for Shinto, our native religion, while a temple is for Buddhism. It could mean the close relationship between Shinto and Buddhism in their histories, I guess. But no evidence for that at all.

 

Anyway, in a hot and muggy afernoon, I left my home on a small car with 1200cc engine. Getting through the downtown of Mohka, our town, I came into a countryside. Many rice paddies looking like green carpets all around. In some 30 minutes, there was a range of hills appearing in the direction I was heading to. There are a few ranges running from north to south. They are not very high all the way but are originating from the mountain areas in Fukushima. I bet this ranges have spared our area from contamination by the radioactive plume due to the nuclear power plant accident. The plume has flown westward to the city of Fukushima and to the coast area southward. The range was the obstacle to our area located southwestward from the nuclear site. I don't know if we could be pleased at it or not.

 

This is a view from the range over the plain area. Among lower hills, there are houses and rice paddies. My home is 10 or 15 km away from this point.

 

 

 

The road is a steep slope. Very little traffic. My tiny car was almost suffocating all the way. Again, I remembered driving here with my children and old mother 20 years or so ago. On the other side of this range, there is a valley, where the destination is located. Not so far from this point.

 

 

The shrine/temple complex was on a low hill in the valley. Many cedar trees in the property. There was a couple of signs explaining these shrine/temple. One in Japanese, while the other even in English. It was hard to believe that there had been tourists from overseas. There were a couple of guys being engaged in the repair there. No tourists at all.

 

This is the gate for the shrine named Tsuna, which means a thick rope. This gate seems pretty new. I believe there would be some people in this area come to pray in the new year days as they do in the other shrines all over Japan.  It is not a religious behaviour but just a tradition. Exactly speaking, I doubt there is a true native religion in Japan. They just come here to pray for their good luck in the new year. A kind of greeting. 

 

 

 

The entrance way to the shrine.

 

 

A long way of steps up to the shrine.

 

 

The main building of the shrine. A thick straw roof is remarkable. Old but still well cared for.

 

 

The ehickness of the roof is noted in this shot. Evidently, no nail is used in constructing this wooden structure. A statue of god may be placed inside. A box before the building is the offertory box. Those coming for the hew year's pray will send coins into this box.

 

 

The other building. Smaller one.

 

 

I am proud that our ancestors have built those structures and have kept them intact for so long time. In Shinto, so far as I know, every natural things could be gods for them. It is just for the profits in the present world. No idea of a God with a character. I won't evaluate which is superior to the other etc. It may reflect that our country has not been attacked by foreigners or has never been conquered by any other nations in the past. And we have been blessed with the mild climate suitable for rice farming etc. It has not given us a chance to take religious ideas seriously, I guess. At least, this Shinto monument is still intact here but Shinto is already dead.

 

It is enough to discuss about religion in my own way. It is getting too late tonight. The 2nd part will follow soon.

Our recent garden

A few snaps of our garden. The heat wave has damaged the lawn along the drive way. Honestly speaking, the other parts of the garden has kept me too busy to care for this pretty large lawn. It has made the trouble shown here. There is a small farm in the foreground not shown on this photo. A number of water melons were grown up. But, without much care, they have become like a jungle! Luckily, that jungle has yielded a few juicy water melons. Now another kind of vegetable is growing neatly this time.   

 

 

 

A hedge along the drive way from the street. This requires me some more care as well. Some ivy is on it. Four ginko trees are growing along this hedge as well. The other hedge is set along the street. It is composed of two layers of a kind of azalae with a small lot between them and the street.

 

 

 

One of the flower beds we have made this spring. This belongs to my wife as for its care. Some of them are getting worn out with the sun ray.

 

 

My lovely basil germinated from a seed.  I was going to use the leaves for cooking.

 

 

A rose tree. It belongs to my wife. But I often pour water in the morning. It was first planted by my father years ago.

 

 

My wife has planted these. The names unknown to me! Again, I often water them.

 

 

A magnolia tree. The branches were cut in a bizzare shape by professional gardeners this spring. But it has revived in this way. The power of a life amazes me a lot. This tree comes into numerous white flowers in spring, which my mother used to love. It is a sign of spring's arrival.

 

 

A "wild" tomato. Maybe, it has been germinated from a fruit fallen on the ground last year.

 

 

A zelkova tree south of the small home our parents had lived. It was planted to avoid the strong sunray. It used to be a small tree and has grown up to over 10 meters or so. I have ventilated the home yesterday. Even though I know no one would live there.  

 

So that is a small round trip in our garden. A little bit more east and south of our house. Some parts are getting too messy to take photos. Maybe, in several weeks, I will clear jungle-like vegetables and tidy it up. Then I could publish it! This is the place where I am spending most of my days here. It makes me feel settled down and cosy so much.

A contradiction

In a closed mailing list, someone sarcastically kidded me saying that I was a heavy user of the reverse beacon network:RBN. Really, I had often used the RBN to know if a band was open or not. Not rarely, we experience the band opens well even though we won't get any takers to our CQ. Yes, it is the subject I have repeatedly talked in this blog. The overall inactivity on CW on any band seems to me very conspicuous nowadays. I am using the RBN reluctantly for there is no other way for me to know of opening on a particular band. I am not willing to use the RBN. That cynic won't understand what a contradiction I feel myself using that high tech skimmer.

Fewer takers to my CQ has annoyed me for a while. Has my operating style or talk bored my friends? Or all of them have lost interests in chatting generally? Is the relatively poor condition the reason why they won't show up? Maybe, all of these guesses are partially right. There may be personal reasons for everyone. Anyway, it is beyond my speculation and is not my business.

One more guess is that some of them won't watch the bands any longer but they just watch the RBN on the display. When they knew the band was not in the shape they wished, they may start something else like net surfing or doing chores etc. The RBN is a convenient tool, I know. It is more efficient and sparing out time than our watching the band by ourselves. But, I guess, its convenience and efficiency might have deprived us of the pleasure finding a friend by chance. The skimmer could watch the whole band at any given time. No happenings nor accidents.  Seeing a friend after sweeping a band makes us feel more pleasant, doesn't it?

I still hate this high tech thing even more now. But I could not know if a band is open or not without it. What a contradiction! I should not have set a PC in the shack, as Pete K4EWG has told me. Being a Luddite may be the solution to this question. 

Hit rate

Approximate hit rate:

Takers to my CQ      20%

Those able to converse on CW        30%

Those experienced CW operators sharing interests with me         10%

Consequently, the probability I could meet, when calling CQ, a good CW operator with the same interest is 0.6%.

I am afraid this probability is continuously decreasing now.

The observation stated above is just based on my personal experience. Only an objective finding. No real statistics.

The ham world is still undergoing a drastic change now. No complaint. Just accepting it.

A drive up to a volcano

On the other day, a photo showing a beautiful scenary in a resort north of here uploaded by a friend of mine in facebook has tempted me to go there. It took me an hour and a half to drive up there. Since it was a plain week day despite of being in the mid of summer holiday season, there were less tourists visiting there than I expected. It was a route less people drive to the mountain. A straight road surrounded with woods, where the sunray was coming through the leaves.

 

 

I recalled that I used to stay a whole summer at my sister's home near here. My brother in law was working as a vet doctor in this area. There used to be a large number of cattle being raised here. It is still an area of dairy farming there. I was studying for the entrance exams for med university those days. This scenary clearly reminded me of those days. I was walking around their home alone in morning and evening.

 

 

 

One of the peaks of Nasudake. Nasudake is an active volcano classified as a stratovolcano like Mt. Fuji. It has a cone shaped peaks with broadly sloped foothill. As soon as I got into this foothill, I could smell something like sulfar. Yes, there are many hot spas around this mountains.

A slope near to a peak. There was a rope way to the peak, which I did not take this time. The rope is seen faintly along the slope.

When I was watching around at an observation spot, a couple came to me telling there was a bear on the foothill. They have shown a photo of a bear in the bush. I took a walk around the parking lot close to the peak. There were a lot of small bushes there. I thought I could run across with some animal like bear. My guess could be right. They had seen that bear on this slope though he/she disappeared there by this time.

It was misty far away. They said there had been a thunderstorm down in the plain area. Cool and cosy at an observation platform on the way.

 

Much less crowded than expected as told. My car which ran fine despite of steep slope and many windings. On the way back home, I bought a cheese cake for my wife and some sausages for me. It turned out to be not much fun going such a place all alone. What left me was sore calves the day after. 

Like an apprenticeship

Looking back of my life as a doctor, I have been kindly taught by many senior doctors on private basis. One of such doctors was a neurologist named Kuwashima at the med school hospital where I served residency. She was around 40 years of age then. A lady of short stature always smiling. I can't remember exactly but might have asked her to teach me how to read EEG. Once a week, I was given a question record by her, which I was supposed to make a report on. I brought a draft of the report to a room in the outpatient ward after the outpatient was over. She has given me some instructions for the draft. I was supposed to make corrections according to her words. I have done that course of training for half a year or so. Eventually, even though I have not specialized in pediatric neurology, this training by her has made me confident in reading ordinary EEG if not perfect. Without her kind and continuous lessons, I won't be able to do with this basic technique.

I happened to know she had been an founder and its chief of a nursing facility for handicapped. The name of the facility and its principle seem to mean it was based on a faith in Catholic. Among the principles, the most remarkable one, which I thought most likely due to her character, was that everyone should call each other, not doctor etc, but only "San" after name, an equivalent to Mr. or Ms. in Japanese. I have never heard of her faith in Christianity but am sure she has believed in it since her young days. It seems she has not married until now. She might be just before 80 years of age.

In clinical medicine, we learn many things from senior doctors in person. The delivery of knowledge or technique is based on the human relationship with them. Once we could rely on a particular senior doctor for his knowledge and personality, we could really learn something of medical experience or technique from him or her. It is comparable to an apprenticeship in a sense.

In Japan, the officials of the government agency are trying to make a system to organize personnel affairs of doctors all over the country for their own profit. It was handled by the departments in medical schools in the past. however, I am sure the bureaucrats will fail in their trick. Because they are neglecting these personal relationship in medical training between doctors.

I would like to see her in person after decades of absence. Again, I would appreciate her for her kind tutoring in my resident days.

A performance of Takemitsu's Requiem

In the interview of Tohru Takemitsu with Seiji Ozawa in 1978 through 1979 published in 1981, Takemitsu often said to Ozawa that he had only limited time left for composing new works, even though he has lived about 15 years since then. If we are aware of his consciousness for the time left for his life, this music sounds more realistic to us.

I am deeply touched that NY Philharmonic has held such a concert immediately after the disaster in Tohoku. The conductor, Alan Gilbert, has made an impressive speech before performance. This convinces me again that sharing feelings and giving sympathy each other among people, irrespective of the nationality, could be a basis for the peace in the world. Our government seems to realize "collective self-defence" now. It is basically against the spirit of our constitution. They are violating the pacifism which has lead our country since WWII under the constitution. They insist that this drastic change is possible with an interpretation of the constitution. The concern and sympathy NY Philharmonic has expressed to us in the performance is opposite to the will to resort to the military force in order to solve international problems. The former is a basis for the peace in the world while the latter will yield vicious cycle of violence. I admit the international relationship won't be so simple but would confirm this principle for our life.

We will have the anniversary for the defeat of our country in WWII very soon. At this time, I would confirm that my time left in life is limited. And I should be strongly against any movements toward military force used to solve any conflicts with the other countries. Mutual understanding and sharing ideas and feelings should be the basic principle for our life.