michael lambe

Back in the spring of 1998, the Board of Education in Koriyama city sent me to Koriyama Senior High School on Thursdays and Fridays to fill in for a teacher who had suddenly decided to go home (”family problems”). I was only there for one term but I have some very happy memories of working there, chiefly because everyone was so nice and the students were very sweet. I think my three favorite students were in the first year; Hirotsugu, Asami and Yuri. Every breaktime they would come skipping into my office for a bit of a chat and tomfoolery.Well, Yuri got in touch with me the other day to say she was coming to Maizuru (not too far from Kyoto) to visit her grandma and would I be free for lunch on Wednesday? Of course I was. This is she and and me:

It’s very nice when your old students keep in touch with you. However, as in my mind she is still a wee Senior High first year, I find it hard to accept she’s 24…

One of Kyoto’s most famous events is the 五山の火送り (gozan-hi-okuri or “five mountain fire send-off”), held every year on the 16th of August. The Obon festival, is the time when people visit their family graves to pay respect to their ancestors and various Buddhist services are held for the repose of the dead… And the idea is THE DEAD COME BACK. So when the festival ends, fires are lit on the mountains around Kyoto to guide the spirits back to… whereever it is they go back to… This is the one night in the year all the eateries and stores around Kyoto turn off their neon lights and you can actually see STARS. Everybody, is trying to find the perfect place to see the kanji 大（dai or “big”) on Daimonjiyama, and Hidaridaimonji, the 妙法 (myouhou or “buddhist teaching”), and the pictographs of a ship (yes it really looks like a ship!) and a tori gate (like you see at the entrance of shrines here). This year I was very lucky, because from my girlfriend’s roof you can pretty much see all of them and it’s really close to Daimonji, so close in fact you can make out the individual fires that make up the 大. It was a really nice atmosphere. All the locals were pointing out the fires to me and explaining their meaning as they appeared one by one and you could see lots of similar parties on the roofs of all the buildings around. This is the sort of thing I love about Japan. Anyway, here’s my picture: Next year I use a tripod! And here’s the map to Cafe Oishii I promised to post a couple of days ago. If you can’t read it then you are either: a) not in Japan so it doesn’t matter, b) in Japan so you can ask somebody Japanese.

Cheerio!