Where the Gods go to gossip

Moving away from the theme of fish for a while, this is a post I've been wanting to do for months. Only now do I realise that it's quite fitting that I have delayed writing it until October.

This post is about the biggest and oldest shrine in Japan -Izumo Taisha- located in Shimane prefecture. As you start traveling around Japan, the one temple/shrine/castle begins to look like the previous one, and the next one.. But Izumo Taisha is the kind of shrine that will appear in dreams, that people will do pilgrimages to, that can change lives.



The most most significant things about this temple is that it's the official gathering place for the Gods, and a source of love.
Legend goes that, every October, the 8 million Shinto Gods of Japan gather inside this temple to catch up on the year's happenings, and discuss the potential matches of their yet unmarried worshippers. The old Japanese calendar even referred to October as "kannazuki" or "the month with no Gods". This name was used in 46 of the 47 prefectures - but in Shimane prefecture, home to Izumo Taisha - October was known as "kamiarizuki": The month of Gods.



The current Izumo Taisha, the one I visited, has been in exsistence since 1744. About 500 years before that, it looked different, but had the same basic shape as the "modern" temple. Before 1248 though, the temple stood 48 meters into the air, connected to the ground by an enormous flight of stairs, giant logs tied together in clumps of threes serving as pillars, and surely providing breakthtaking views over the forest sunrises and seaside sunsets.

Today, people go to Izumo Taisha to pray for finding love and keeping love. The prayers tied onto the trees repeated messages such as "suteki na hito aitai" - I want to meet a nice guy/girl. I swallowed my pride and clapped my hands together, wishing for the same. A newly wed couple posed for photos - probably the most prosperous location for wedding reception. Love was all around us, in the crunch of the hot, white gravel and in the mossy shade of the forests. There is some magic at Izumo.

Tsuri

So, the majority of my Japanese friends might share their birthdates with my parents, but they sure know how to take you out for a totally satisfying day. Those kind of days seem few and far between once you start working. As a kid, a Saturday would be.. - rise early, meet your friends, climb trees, spend a few hours splashing in a pool, eat watermelon and hotdogs for lunch, mission around the back streets poking things with sticks, ride around on bikes, and before you know it, the sun is setting and you have to go home, because darkness is your natural curfew. And you return grudingly, but with the full satisfaction of having had A DAY.









Saturday was like that. I woke up after yet again not having slept enough. Hiro picked us up in his big, white, legendary van and we made the 2-hour drive to Yonago with fishing rods in the back, me chattering away with the mindlessness of the sleep-deprived. We stopped in Yonago for an early lunch at a fish market, where I ate a plate of the most amazing raw sea creatures - raw octopus, squid, three kinds of fish, sazae (turban shell) and a vicious-looking soup with half a pregnant crab clawing it's way out. We washed it down with one-cup sake from Kyoto, while being pleasantly harrased by a strange little man with tiny hands and long, yellow nails who was telling us about Jusco stores and Korean massages in toothless, incomprehensible Japanese. And stalked us all the way to the toilet to give us a complimentary bag of tiny mikans (citrus fruit).


A beautiful drive up a typical Japanese mountain road (as wide as one small car and winding madly between bamboo forests and moss-covered trees), and we reached our destination - a tiny seaside town with 20 houses, a deserted pier, and tiny squid fishing boats with names in kanji characters written on the sides. Hiro started setting up the three fishing rods, which I looked at incredulously, but after trying it for myself, I was squealing in delight and talking to the fish I caught, apologising as I ripped the hooks out of their bony mouths.


There was this game we played at birthday parties as a kid, right after vroteier and before pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. I forget the intricacies of the game, but it involved a makeshift fishing rod with a magnet at the end, and a school of paper fish on the floor with paperclips attached. Fishing for aji (spanish mackerel) was like that - you literally dip your six-hook fishing line with shrimp-bait-bag at the end into the water, and pull it up seconds later with a tiny fish (or two or three or four) hooked and struggling. Hippies, don't fret - as Kurt Cobain said: "it's okay to eat fish, cause they don't have any feelings".



We did this, struggling against a wind that reminded me of Cape Town's fiercest south-east, laughing like children, and packed up as the sun started its descent. We stopped at the peninsula and had coffee at a lighthouse, watching clouds over the grey water (which would influence my dreams later on, as I dreamt an apocalypse where the clouds came crashing down into the ocean).

We arrived in Niimi in the dark, where Hiro sliced our catch into sashimi (raw fish slices) and decapitated and de-gutted the rest, fried it in batter, and served with rice and miso soup (thanks Tara). Nothing quite beats eating something that you caught yourself.

Satisfied in so many ways, I walked down to my apartment, feeling that I had.. A Day.

Bachelor dinner, Japan style

After wearing a cartoon cloud over my head the entire day, and franctically researching articles about crime in SA the entire day, I decided to give in it a rest. If life in Paranoia Land makes you old before your time, I wil start my own fight by eating all the fish I can in Japan. Even from a can. And so starts a new chapter of arbitrary blog topics. Amen, and itadakimasu.

Dwindling patriotism

It is only after I moved out of South Africa, that I started having issues with my beautiful disastrous country. It's about getting perspective - you can't see the forest while walking next to the trees. But once you remove yourself from your daily situation, you unconsciously start creating an alternate viewpoint.

Fun Fact about South Africa: Per capita, it has the most rapes, assults and murders with firearms. Crime has become a business, and it's supported by the government.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/sf-south-africa/cri-crime

This is the most over-discussed topic in the country, I don't want to go off an a tangent about it. I just want to show you this article by David Bullard. I read it somewhere during this week, and was hit by a real depression afterwards. And since, my doubt in SA has been growing by the day. I realise that a country is not it's political system, but do I really want to live somewhere where paranoia and tragedy is so common that it just becomes the norm?

Anyways. Read.

Earlier this year, a few weeks before I was shot, I wrote in this column that the ANC had ‘‘effectively become the largest organised crime syndicate in the country”.




At the time of my shooting I dismissed suggestions that it could have had anything to do with the content of this column over the years. Now I am not so sure.

Thabo Mbeki’s complex web of evil is gradually being exposed by a fearless media, and I now believe anything is possible. Reading respected commentators such as Xolela Mangcu in The Weekender, I cannot avoid the conclusion that if we don’t do something soon, South Africa will self-destruct and go the way of other basket cases.

In the past I have flippantly accused the government of state-sponsored anarchy, but suddenly things are beginning to make sense. Our violent crime figures make us one of the most dangerous places to live in the world, including countries at war. The mere act of daily survival distracts us from the monstrous scale of theft and incompetence that has occurred under Mbeki’s presidency.

It helps explain his affection for Mad Bob Mugabe, and it maybe even gives some credence to a conspiracy theory currently doing the rounds: that the ludicrous level of violent crime is of no real concern to the government because the people dying are regarded as dispensable. A few weeks ago I would have snorted with cynical derision at this. Now I find it believable.

Mangcu wrote last week that “I have never been as depressed by this country’s politics as I am this point. Not even under apartheid was I ever this depressed.”

That’s quite a statement, particularly for one who suffered under apartheid. Fortunately, I don’t feel quite as despondent as Mangcu, but maybe my sunny optimism is misplaced. I believe there is still hope, precisely because of people like Mangcu, Financial Mail editor Barney Mthombothi, The Times columnist Justice Malala, Mail & Guardian editor Ferial Haffajee and this newspaper’s gutsy editorial staff. I’m a white boy who never suffered under apartheid and my criticism can easily be dismissed as post-colonial whining; not so for the aforementioned, who all have genuine struggle credentials and integrity measured by the ton.

I also desperately want to believe that not everyone in the ANC has been sucked into Mbeki’s web of evil. I really hope that there are some senior politicians who are reeling in shock at the daily revelations.

It’s a pity they haven’t the guts to speak out, but the ANC is run along the lines of a charismatic religion, and independence of thought is not encouraged. That doesn’t necessarily make those who remain silent guilty, but it is still disappointing. Several articles have asked rhetorically what Nelson Mandela makes of this sacrifice of the South African dream. Well, why doesn’t somebody ask him — or is he, too, not allowed to break the sacred law of omert€?

Under Mbeki this country has become a quagmire of corruption and vice. The media is often accused by politicians of stooping to offensive racist stereotypes, but when your country is run by offensive stereotypes, what choice do you have? If the allegations against Mbeki are even half true, then the word “impeachment“ should be in common usage before too long.