Friday, May 30, 2008

Tokyo and Surrounding

Second Posting; Awesome Japan;
2008 Japan Travel
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After the lecture, I had free time for walking around Tokyo and took some pictures. Nishida and me visited some shrines and temples. His best friend, Ikuma, performed a worshipping dance in the temple and I was so glad to have the moment to come to see the performance.




Prof Someya, an Indonesia Expert Special on Yogyakarta (Borobudur Temple) after his presentation supported by Mishop.



Walking Around


A Bench in light raining spring



River around a temple


In a good weather, people enjoy paddling around the river.


Bicycle. Always wonderful...!

The performance











Ikuma..

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Awesome Japan

First Posting over 2008 Japan Travel
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It's been months and i'm starting for posting to my blog again.
It's just been so wonderful here in Japan and it's inspiring. Capturing every interesting moments time by time makes me so full occupied by all that things until I realized that no single posting I make yet.:)

Japan is always amazing and again inspiring. So many interesting points when you find the melting between human, its culture, history and the advance of technology united (imbedded) in a what so called modern Japan Society.

Take an example of the crowd every morning and evening in the train back and forth for work. No matter how crowd it is, you'll never see someone push others or in any way try to harm you. Also, you do not need to worry too much if your pocket is safe enough in that kind of situation. Things were safe man..

I arrived on 7 May in Japan and stayed for two nights at Sakura City at Nishida's parents' house. The town was so peaceful. Once I arrived there, it was like I did not go anywhere but just staying there. My room was on the second floor in which I could breath fresh air any time :) I like the place. His parents were so kind too. They took me to some places; City Gardens, Library and Nishida lead the city tour visiting interesting places such as temple and shrines. Something is clear, shrine is very identical with forest and almost every shrine I visited, they were sorrounded by the trees; small forest. A combination between respecting the nature and faith (shinto).

On 9, I and Nishida took the train. It was on the way to ICU (International Christian University) in Mitaka City. I was giving a lecture about the experiences over the humanitarian responses on tsunami and earthquake. The train was from Sakura City to Mitaka City passing Tokyo Downtown. And that was the story of the 'crowded train experience'. It was cool.

At ICU, I met the director of the Institute of Asian Cultural Study, Kenneth Robinson. He is also an associate professor of history of ICU. After talking, we were actually alumni of EWC-UH. So, it was quick to get along or perhaps very much because of himself who was so friendly and humorous. There was also Kawaguchi San, the professor of the class. Her class was attended by many students. I delivered my lecture for one hour and it was wonderful. I did enjoyed it as the students were smart. They had smart questions in which I feel it was cool to answer and the class became dynamic.





This is actually the old and mobile fire hydrant of Japanese with the wheels for easily mobilized. It was sort of an artifact of how people fighting fire in past times.




Bicycle. No matter how advanced the transportation means of Japan, bicycle is still the favorite one. It is so interesting! healthier and plus it doesn't need any fuel.




For me this kind of sign of local wisdom. It's just interesting



Japanese Female Buddhism God.