Setsubun!

The classes are over and I'm now on vacation. It's such a strange feeling... there is nothing I have to do. Nothing. This is amazing. I'm still going to spend here one month before returning home. Going to Okinawa next week, because I'm returning home before sakura blooms in Kyoto. Hoping to see it there...

Anyway, yesterday was Setsubun, the beginning of spring season. It's kind of a New Year's eve like celebration, as part of it is about getting rid of all evils of the past year. Which interestingly enough happens by throwing beans at the demons... and also by burning the old amulets of the past year at the shrines they were bought from.

I visited two shrines yesterday, first Kitano Tenmangu, which  is dedicated to Tenjin-sama (Heian age poet and courtier Sugawara no Michizane, who after an unhappy fate became the kami of scholarship and learning). This is an gorgeous place, but I'll probably write more about it later this month, when the Ume Matsuri takes place there. There are about 2000 plum trees there, as Michizane apparently loved them. In fact, they were just about to start blooming now:

There was a kyogen-like performance at the shrine, with both the demon and the kami appearing, and ending with the bean throwing. I arrived there a little late, just a few minutes before the beginning, so I couldn't get too close to the stage. Here's a vid of the end of it. Unfortunately I ended up cutting this video off right before the final "oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi" part (the demon outside, good luck inside)... but anyway, there's the oni, with the sword, facing the god. Right when I stopped filming they started throwing beans at the demon, and also at the audience.



Next, there were geisha dances:

Happened to spot them when they were leaving from the place...

At the end, they were throwing little bags of the beans for the audience. I was too far to catch any, though one did hit my ear at one point. xD (Personally I think that those who got them could have left and given others a chance too, but whatever. They did throw an awful lot of those things, I bet some got many...)

Then I headed to see what was going on at Yoshida shrine, near the university.

I knew from the day before there'd be an awful lot of food stands etc, and that they were also building the bonfire of the old amulets. I had been there the day before and spotted quite many tasty things. Also some demons...

From Friday:

They evolved somewhat overnight to something fancier and kinder that's actually giving blessings:



(Heh... once again a shaky end at the video.)

I also happened to be there just at the right time for this... I don't well know what it is all about, but for a few thousand yen you could take part in a special ceremony where you got two boxes of something (don't know what, didn't take part) and an arrow. These were being performed pretty much continuously for small groups of people. But then there came quite a special group (possibly actors of something that had been performed before?) who got an extra special ceremony, with a sword dance:

As it turned out the bonfire wouldn't be lit before 10 pm, I went to see some other places as I had time... not that there was much to see, really. Though very many girls in nice kimonos everywhere.


Also, got my first ever won at a crane game! xD

Btw, all this going back and forth (I'd also went home to the dorm at one point, and biked to Kitano Tenmangu twice from there) resulted in whopping 35 km of biking yesterday. O_o

Anyways, returned to Yoshida shrine later in the evening for the bonfire burning.

 (That would be the moon visible between the gate, in the case you couldn't tell. xD)

It was a long wait, but finally came the burning of the bonfire they had been building since Friday. (I'd been told it'd be burned at 10 pm, but it was closer to 10:45.)

It was quite a bonfire. It was downright scary at times. I was quite happy I wasn't as close as the people in the pic above. In fact, I would have been, on the other side, but they didn't let anyone stay there. So I ended up at its backside, and couldn't really follow all proceedings... but at least now I was in the front row. A bunch of videos of the process:






At this point it was becoming really hot. And yeah, a bit scary. The girls next to me stopped complaining about having to move so far from it. xD

One funny thing! They were selling these transparent balloons with led lights attached to them, and in the end, I couldn't resist those. (I was fine until it got dark, and they became so pretty......)  The funny part is that apparently there just was an article in a newspaper home in Finland that mentioned these things. Maybe they're going to be hot stuff in Finland soon. xD I'm for once ahead of my time,  top trendy! xD

This 'n that

I’ve had so many posts on my mind in the past couple of weeks, but somehow I haven’t had time to write them. Life’s been busy. 24 hours of classes/week is quite a lot... There have been some exams, one term paper outline (the deadline for which was today, and I swear it was harder to do that outline than it’ll be to do the essay), presentations and whatnot… but I think I’ll write a post about that stuff some other day. When I feel like it...

The weather has been turning colder. It’s positively chilly. People keep on saying stuff like “but you’re from Finland! You can’t be cold!”… well, yeah. Compared to Finland it’s not that cold here at all. But the Japanese cold is different from Finnish cold. Finnish cold is sharp and crisp, Japanese… this sneaky chillness that literally goes to the bone and marrow. Maybe it’s the humidity? Another thing is that it’s cold inside, too. My apartment is impossible to keep warm… or maybe that could be done if I kept the air-conditioners blowing all time, but I don’t want to see what kind electricity bills I’d get after that. 

Besides, I don’t like aircon. And it’s located right over the table where I have my laptop, so if I’m sitting there, as I’m right now, the air from the aircon is blowing straight at my head, which is unpleasant. (It is on now, by the way. And I’m hiding from it underneath a blanket. Am very warm at the moment. 🙂 )

…I’ve now twice got some random alert that the bath’s plumbing is freezing, or whatever. How? It’s not even below zero out there, and this is inside. >_>

This. It gave me heart attack yesterday morning, when this thing gave a loud alarm when I was right beside it, and suddenly a Japanese voice started talking something I didn’t quite understand. xD

Seriously.

Anyways. I’ve done also some fun stuff during this time, but here’s just a quick summary… 

First there was the Takatori samurai festival, which was an awful lot of fun. It took a couple of hours to go there by train. Went there with a friend, and we were basically the only foreigners there. xD People kept on trying to guess where we are from, but when one is from Finland and the other from Luxembourg, that wasn’t so easy. xD
(You get these tiny v ids full screen from the bottom corner, you know!)

A couple of vids more that I was going to post here but were too big (of the dancers - that adorable little girl in the first row! and of some fighting). I hope these links work...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qn246MnC_mP6lhmu4Ozcj6ZuOKF0PM0T/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q3UjtesFOPGCIqGuP7j_z-EsZgPTjAo_/view?usp=sharing

Then, the university festival…. Which I mostly missed. I had planned to go there during the weekend, but somehow didn’t have time. So I was there only for Thursday evening when it started. Saw at least the bonfire…

A big part of Saturday I spent at the flea market at Kitano Tenmangu shrine. They hold it every month on the 25^th. Awful place. xD Too much stuff. And places where you can get a plastic bag for 500 yen, and the fill it with used kimonos and stuff…

And then got invited on a river boat ride on Hozugawa. It was awesome.

And lastly, kind of off-topic (if there now is any topic), but before I again forget... Someone asked me a while ago about the name of my journal, so I thought I could say a few words about it. I’m awful at naming things. And making decisions. I kept on postponing making this journal because I couldn’t decide on the name. I wanted to have something about Kyoto, or maybe language, or both. At first I thought of something like kyokotoba, which is the term for the Kyoto dialect (kotoba = word, language), but it felt kind of off…  But kotoba actually gave me idea for this name: it consists of two kanji, 言 (say; word) and 葉 (leaf). So I though of words as kind of leaves of language, and as I’m here for autumn term, falling words felt kind of fitting. That name was taken, though, so I had to add something after it. Also the Kalevalan phrase “puheet putoelevat” came to my mind, literally something like “ the talks/words are falling” (from the mouth). So, here we go. What's in a name, anyway?