Shimenawa at Sea

Cape Manazuru, near Odawara. Rocky and incredibly windy, it's hardly the kind of beach you can play around in, but it's a beautiful sight.

Zoom in closer and you can see a rope tied between the length of the largest rocks. Called a shimenawa (enclosing rope), it's a Shinto practice that indicates a sacred space. (You may immediately associate shimenawa with shrines.) In this case, the shimenawa is used to pray for safety at sea and a good catch.

There were some small sea urchins in the water, and the unfortunate sight of a bottlecap.

Name that Fluffy Plant!

(Taken at the Odawara Hilton.)

The white fluffy blossoms (?) on this tree were every bit as feather-soft as they look. I wonder what they're called. They're probably a nightmare for anyone with hay fever.

The Monkey Show

 

Some more photos from the Kameido Tenjin Shrine saru mawashi (monkey show).

Walking on stilts.

Handstand.

Jumping great lengths.

Balancing on a narrow pole, high up.

Mugging for the cameras.

Except for this last bit, the whole routine, while fascinating to watch, can only be considered remarkable if you consider monkeys to be lesser humans. This was precisely the conceit of this show: the banter consisted of the monkey trainer saying, "This guy is so lazy and so dumb, you really have to cajole him to do this trick." (Cue the monkey pulling off the trick perfectly after much reluctance.) But if you look at the monkey as the animal that it is, his feats look less impressive -- he's just doing what a monkey does.

Wisteria Viewing at Kameido Tenjin Shrine

 From April 21 to May 5 is the Wisteria Festival at the Kameido Tenjin Shrine, an old-timey area in Tokyo. (Take a walk around and you'll be surprised to see all the older folk.) The Tokyo Sky Tree is very visible from the Shrine; whether it's a virtue or an eyesore is debatable.

The wisteria weren't in full bloom when I went, but they should be at their most beautiful right around now. It's such a pretty shrine, with red bridges and turtles and strategically placed trellises. You can see an ibis in the right corner of this photo.

I happened to catch the tail end of a saru mawashi, a monkey show. I have mixed feelings about the practice -- to be laughed at and fawned over for being able to perform tricks and looking eerily human! Here, the monkey seems to be having a forlorn moment.  

Photo op time. Those posing were told not to look at the monkey directly.

In Praise of Santoku

The Myogadani branch of Santoku, a supermarket chain. Owing to the fairly high foreign population in the area, their products are quite diverse -- they may sell twenty different kinds of miso, but they also have generally hard-to-find foreign food produts such as frozen turkey and cottage cheese. 

But I was most impressed when I saw the items in the photo above. Aloe vera is easy to find (just take a plant from someone's garden), but rhubarb is rarely eaten in Japan, and is not even particularly well-known. But Micro Tom tomatoes and zucchini flowers? I'd be surprised to see these in any supermarket in the world.