Burning Down The House

Welcome to a land without central heating and no insulation, because that's what Japan is! Get used to being able to see your breath in your living room during winter. Don't worry about your refrigerator being tiny because your entire apartment is a refrigerator now!

Now, make no mistake, I like winter a lot. I don't like winter inside my living room, though. Where I live in the US gets pretty cold; even without wind chill we get below freezing easily. Our Halloween costumes are made to fit over snowsuits. We don't have snow days because if we got days off every time it snowed a lot then we wouldn't have school between November and March. Compared to that weather Japan should be easy. It barely gets below freezing here on the island and it rarely snows. Then again, thanks to the complete lack of insulation in the average Japanese building even low temperatures are too much.


Japan has four major types of heating: the kotatsu (heated table), the space heater, the kerosene heater, and air conditioner being a heater. Each has good points and bad points.

The kotatsu is my favorite. It's about the size of a coffee table, and it has a small space heater in it. You put a blanket, or kotatsu futon, over it, turn it on, and roast your legs. It's the most economical in that most of the heat stays under the heavy blanket. The drawback is that it only really heats your lower half and tricks everything from the waist up into thinking it's being warmed. This means that if you fall asleep under your kotatsu you'll get the mother of all colds. Don't fall asleep under your kotatsu!

Next up is the space heater. Expensive to run, but very powerful. They aren't as economical as kotatsu since the heat is all escaping into the open air, but they're indispensable for when you can't type because your fingers have frozen.

The kerosene heater is the standby of every school and many ALTs. They terrify me. If you don't keep a window open then the fumes will kill you. It's like Darwin's heating device!

Last is the air conditioner acting as a heater. This is a good way to heat an entire room instead of just a certain part of the room. Some people say that it's more economically sound to fill a barrel with 1000 yen notes and burn that in the center of your room. Very safe, but expensive.

There are other ways to make the winter bearable. I take a really hot shower before bed to get my body temperature high enough to fall asleep before the cold kicks in. There are heated packs that you can keep in your pockets to warm up your fingers. Most people have lap blankets that they take to work. Gloves with the fingers cut out help you type without your fingers snapping off from frostbite. Basically, it just makes you really grateful for the humid Japanese summer that tries to melt you into goo.

At the end of the day there’s another day dawning

Every year all JETs gather for either a Mid-Year Seminar for Assistant Language Teachers or a Mid-Year Conference for Coordinators of International Relations. Every MYS is different as it is planned independently in every prefecture. I've been to three MYS now, and each has been dramatically different.

    I arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to my first MYS, motivated to get more specific training than I had received from the Tokyo Orientation (be happy!) and the Prefectural Orientation (you don't have to know Japanese to live in Japan). Unfortunately, I was disappointed. There were long speeches covering material that had already been covered in the previous two orientations and the workshops devolved into venting and anecdotes. On the last day, we were given an incredibly condescending scare lecture about drinking and driving where we, grown adults living in a foreign country, were treated like naughty teenagers who had to be scolded preemptively because some JETs in a different prefecture had broken the law. I left determined to do research on my own and learn from my Japanese coworkers since I apparently wasn't going to get professional support from MYS.

    Last year's seminar was a pleasant surprise. The number of workshops had been halved, from 15 to 8, and there were more workshops being led by Japanese Teachers of English. The workshops focused more on specifics, such as how to teach better classes, how to raise certain skill levels, how to communicate with Japanese Teachers of English even if you aren't fluent in Japanese and they aren't fluent in English, and more. When workshops started to go off-track things were quickly brought back on topic. The previous year's never-ending stream of anecdotes was dammed, and concrete discussion of ideas and solutions flourished. The speeches lacked the characteristic tone of condescension that the previous year's speeches had held. I left that seminar with pages and pages of notes, and when I got back to the island I immediately began sharing the new activities and ideas around. I couldn't wait for the next MYS.

    This year's seminar was quite different. First of all, it had a much narrower focus, specifically on lesson planning, with only three workshops. Now, for those reading who are not ALTs (Assistant Language Teacher), let me make this clear; the average Junior High School or Elementary School ALT never plans lessons. An ALT may be able to suggest activities or have some say in a class, but it's not the rule by any means. As one of my JTEs said, "You go to too many schools! If you were here every day then I'd ask you to plan lessons, but you're only here four days a month if we're lucky." The lesson plan focus got tighter and tighter to the point of excluding lesson planning outside of the school. As I was the leader of a workshop I asked the organizer of the MYS if I could do my workshop on lesson planning for eikaiwa classes, the English conversation classes that most ALTs do outside of working hours. I was told that I must stay within the Junior High School textbook, and as the organizer had had to plan an elective English course in JHS once in three years I had to do a workshop based on planning lessons in Junior High School.

    The seminar was, as expected, disappointing. Only one speech was actually geared towards all ALTs as opposed to the Senior High School ALTs and JTEs exclusively. The materials I had requested for my workshop over a month before (an overhead projector and a CD player) were not provided. The organizer interrupted me after my workshop had already started to tell me this and foist the blame onto third parties without offering any solutions or taking responsibility. Throughout the seminar the organizer continued to behave in an unprofessional manner. The most notable example was when he made the L for Loser gesture to his forehead when another JET was making a speech and got slightly muddled.

The thing is, I've always been happy to be placed where I am. This is a prefecture filled to the brim with talented ALTs who strive to be professional, represent their countries in a positive way, and help our students learn and enjoy English. I am disappointed that our one chance a year to take advantage of all the ideas that that community can offer was strangled by this restrictive Lesson Plan focus. Mostly, I feel sorry for the first year ALTs. The only experience they've had with MYS is one of unprofessional behavior, misinformation, and lack of clear communication. Instead of raising the bar it left the bar in the back room by accident. I sincerely hope that next year brings the return of the "good" variety of seminar, where we can take away more than we brought with us.

Don’t Come Around Here No More

My BOE has a fairly unique way of dealing with ALTs; we're taxi-d to school everyday. We've got a lot of theories regarding why they've decided that taxis are the way to go. One theory is that it keeps the various taxi companies afloat. The island needs a larger than usual number of taxis because there's a larger than usual number of elderly, non-driving citizens out here. Unfortunately, 600 yen (US 7$) fares to and from the supermarket probably aren't enough to maintain numbers. The 14,000 yen (US 170$) round-trip fares to get us ALTs to and from schools on the other end of the island really help keep things running smoothly. Another theory is that there's some scandal in the past where an ALT was either chronically late all the time or got in a car accident, thus motivating the BOE to have us taxi-d instead of responsible for our own transportation.

    In a lot of ways it's a really nice system. I've got relationships with an entire group of people that I wouldn't have any connection with otherwise, and there are some pretty interesting characters driving taxis on this little island. One taxi driver is a former magazine editor from Tokyo. He's a major conspiracy theorist who is convinced that he knows who assassinated President Kennedy. The last time I rode with him he ranted to me about how 90% of Japanese crimes go unsolved because Japanese people don't report suspicious behavior because it's "not their business." Another driver is really into photography and always brings his latest photos with him. I love seeing his shots, but I kind of wish he wouldn't show them to me while he's driving. A third driver is absolutely obsessed with what I make for dinner and asks me every time we ride together what I'm going to make that night. Usually it's a really nice, friendly atmosphere.

    Unfortunately, not all of the drivers are as fun to ride with. Sometimes drivers can cross the line. There was one company that we had to stop using because the main driver would give us cakes and candy no matter how many times we refused, and ask us what we were doing that weekend, where were we going, what time, creepy mccreeperson and so on. Lately, some of the drivers have been crossing other lines. A couple of drivers show up ten minutes early and start banging on our doors, honking repeatedly, or standing outside of our apartments yelling "good morning" at the top of their lungs. Just the other day a taxi driver stood on the stairs outside of my apartment yelling "sumimasen" until I came out to find out what the problem was. He then told me to hurry up! He was early, and he was telling me to hurry up. There's a baby living upstairs, I don't want her woken up because the taxi driver has decided that I'm messing up his schedule! I also don't want my neighbors to think that it's my fault and that I need to get up and out earlier when it's the driver who is showing up early and not waiting.

    I asked my coworkers, and this isn't a Japanese custom where taxi drivers are allowed to yell at you because they showed up early. They aren't even supposed to yell at you if you're late! My coworkers were horrified that someone was being so unprofessional and rude.

    It's very frustrating because I don't really know how to fix it. I've tried getting out earlier, but that's damaging relations with the other sane taxi drivers because they think that they've kept me waiting. Also, I don't want to encourage this rude behavior. It feels like if they treat me like a child and bang on my door to make sure I'm awake and I respond by getting out even earlier than their earliness then I'm signing off on their methods. I don't even understand why these two drivers are acting like this, because it's only two out the entire group. I overslept once two years ago when my alarm didn't go off, and it made me 15 minutes late. At the time I owned up to it, apologized, and listened to my teacher's advice about getting a second alarm clock so if the first one doesn't go off the second one will anyway. End of story. Every other day I've been on time, and I've been here for two and a half years.

    The thing is, even if I was late every single day it's still inappropriate to be knocking on my door or yelling at me especially when it's happening before the scheduled time. It would be my BOE's job to scold me and make sure I was getting to school on time, not the taxi driver's. This isn't a carpool or bus situation where other customers or coworkers would be inconvenienced if I were even a little bit late. This is a service that the BOE pays for. After doing some subtle asking around it's pretty clear that these two drivers aren't acting like this towards any of their Japanese customers. There is no excuse for targeting foreigners, treating us rudely for your own mistakes, and trying to rush us so you can get back and watch some more sumo. Sometimes it becomes very clear that this isn't actually the land of politeness.

I was working in the lab late one night Part 4

I am so close to being done with this thing I can taste it. I'm working on the baby vampire's little sidekick, a ghost. I'm using white and light blue for shadow. I'm decided to scrap the idea of the moon in the background because I think the baby vampire is popping well enough on his own. This also means there don't need to be bats on the back, so I'm thinking of doing a little orange pumpkin, just to draw the eye.

The ghost is based off of this drawing and his expression cracks me up every single time, especially since he's peeking out from behind the baby vampire in my design. He's outlined in Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch and will be filled using the outline stitch. The outline stitch sits very close together, so I think it will work well. His eyes and mouth will be done using the padded satin stitch.

In terms of timing, this isn't ideal. There's an artist's trip this Saturday, and I'm going to be sketching up a new project to embroider. I don't want to have more than one project going at a time, but I doubt I'll be able to finish this piece just in time to start the new one. More likely I'll end up with a few projects going at once since going to the mainland involves ferries, and ferry time is ideal sewing time.

The blog will be going on a brief hiatus until next Tuesday, the 23^rd. Before the art trip is the yearly ALT training seminar. Since I'm going to be on the mainland without net access there won't be any updates. Once I'm back expect pictures of the finished vampire bag, details of the new project(s), and tales of mainland exploits. Yay!

Some posts to look forward to: taxis in Japan, walking everywhere, and heating in Japan i.e. they're trying to kill us all with kerosene fumes or how I learned to stop worrying and love my non-insulated apartment. Enjoy!

Anyway you want it

Transitioning to living in Japan can be pretty difficult. Japan is a land of unspoken rules and customs stretching back hundreds of years. If you do something wrong either no one will tell you about it for six months, at which point you'll find out they've been whispering about it behind your back the whole time, or someone will make a huge scene over how horrified they are that you're doing such and such. My coworkers and I once waited in the local gym's entrance for a taxi and I accidentally put my toes, encased in my outdoor shoes, on the carpet in the shoe changing area. The gym employee immediately charged at me from 15 feet away and my coworkers freaked out because about one square inch of outdoor shoe had touched the carpet you stand on for changing your shoes to go to the changing room where you change your shoes again before using any of the machines. Japan is very serious about purity and impurity.

Shoe rules are pretty easy to get a handle on. You get used to bowing when everyone else bows. It starts to feel weird if you don't clap your hands together before a meal. It doesn't strike you as odd that everyone backs into parking spaces here or that there are sixteen different cloths for cleaning, one for the floor, one for desks, one for your hands, one for your hands after you wash the dishes, one for the dishes, one for the glasses, one for the pots, etc. I'm not exaggerating that, by the way, there really are that many cloths at some of my schools. There's one set of rules that almost every foreigner has trouble with:

The Trash System. (dun dun duuuuuun)

You see, in Japan, throwing something away is pretty close to quantum physics. It is so complicated! First of all, the trash is divided into many different sections. Burnable trash, non-burnable trash, various recyclables, large trash, and large electric trash (like TVs) are just a few of the categories. The categories depend on where you live and what kind of trash processing is available. Since I live on an island we don't have as many categories as the places on the mainland, but we still have seven different categories. Some places have over twenty categories. This means that throwing things away is ridiculously complicated. Usually there's a nice color-coded pictographic chart that gives you the basics, but you will inevitably have something you need to throw away that isn't on the chart, and nothing is more fun than having to ask your coworkers how to throw away a dead battery. It took me three tries to get that answer (non-burnable) because the first two people I asked just offered to take my dead batteries and throw them away for me. You have to know what category everything goes into, and where or when to throw it away.

You see, Japan doesn't have one trash day; it has a million color-coded trash days. Burnable garbage is picked up maybe twice a week, recyclables are twice a month, large trash is once a month, you have to drop Styrofoam off at a specific part of the supermarket, milk cartons are every Monday, and so on. Some people get so intimidated by the entire system that they end up inadvertently hoarding recyclables because they're afraid they're going to put them out on the wrong day or in the wrong place. It can get really frustrating if you happen to be out of town the one day a month that a specific day of trash is picked up. I don't want to plan my life around trash pickup!

There are two upsides, though. Once you master the system you feel like a genius, and when you return to your home country it's actually relaxing to take the trash out because you only have to do it once a week.

What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

The role of ALTs is constantly changing, just as Japan as a country is changing. ALTs are often based at more than one school. Since ALTs must then travel between multiple schools depending on the number of schools it may be impossible for the ALTs to become deeply involved in school life, or make a deep impression on the respective schools. Being a good ALT is almost always dependent on being the kind of ALT your BOE or base school wants. For a long time that meant being deeply involved with your school. However, I believe that the role of the ALT is broadening beyond the school and moving further out into the community itself.

If an ALT works at a base school then the ALT can get involved at that school beyond class activities. Even if there are other school visits, the ALT's primary obligation is to the base school largely due to the majority of his/her time being spent at that specific school. The ALT can have an English board. He/She can start an English club. He/She can join in with club activities and help around the school. Some things can still be accomplished among many schools, such as helping kids practice for speech contests or prepare for the Eiken, a national exam that tests English level. Unfortunately, anything beyond that is often difficult to accomplish.

If an ALT works at many different schools then their in-school options for being a better ALT are more limited. When I first started work as an ALT I worked at six junior high schools and eleven elementary schools. I had to be very careful to balance all of the schools equally. Unless I could start an English club at every school it would look as if I were favoring some schools over others. Requesting and maintaining English boards would have been the same. 17 different boards would have been almost impossible to manage, especially taking into account the different resources of each school. Some schools are bigger than other and have more bulletin boards; others are smaller. Would I be squeezing another teacher or subject out by requesting my own board? School A has a color printer but School B doesn't; why does School A get a fancy English board with color pictures and School B only has pixel-y printed or hand drawn illustrations? ALTs go to School C every week, but they only go to School D once every two months; why is School D's English board always so out-of-date?

Now, I wasn't worried about the teachers or students complaining; I was worried about the parents. Although this is slowly changing, Japan is still a very tracked society. Where someone goes to high school is usually instrumental in tracking where they go to university, or if they go at all. To get into high school and college all children must pass entrance exams. Parents are naturally very invested in their children's futures, so they focus quite strongly on schoolwork. The two subjects that children get the lowest scores in are currently Math and English, so there is a lot of pressure on these departments. Subsequently, there's a lot of pressure on ALTs to be more effective. Giving one school more English instruction than another could very well start a revolt as parents see their sons and daughters being given short shrift.

All in all, we do what we can. Every ALT has a different base school or BOE and a different community. Some are able to start up English clubs or maintain English boards. My coworker and I do adult eikaiwa (English Conversation) classes twice a week. We often stay after hours to help students study or help teachers with fiddly grammar points. I hope it makes a difference.

I was working in the lab late one night part 3

Oh, baby vampire, I love you so. I especially love that I've accidentally sewed you a pimp cloak. You're so cool.

So yes, I've been working on the Long and Short Stitch Shading (L&SSS) for the past few days. It is remarkably relaxing. I was so worried at first, since this is my first time using it and all the examples I've seen of it are much smaller. The baby vampire's cape is about three inches long, but all the examples I've seen have been only an inch long. I think that L&SSS would have been an impossible obstacle for my anxiety if I wasn't treating it, for a couple of reasons. First, the aforementioned length problem. I can feel my brain trying to cripple me. It's screaming that the L&SSS should only be used for small areas and that no matter what I do I'm going to fail because I'm doing it wrong. Since I'm treating it I can use logic to shut that up. The videos I've watched and books I've read are tutorials; there's no reason that a tutorial would involve eight square inches of fabric. Since I'm treating the disorder I can actually use that to ignore the voice. Before, no matter how much logic I used the voice would win.

The second reason my disorder would be crippling me here is because I'm using it in a way the tutorials don't show. Instead of going from dark to light and stopping I'm repeating the pattern over and over again because the cape is so long. I chose to do this, but I can still hear that voice telling me that I'm violating some rule of L&SSS and therefore everyone will point and laugh at my poor baby vampire. I very well might be violating some rule of the stitch, but at this point I can put that to the side. I'm still learning and it's natural to make mistakes. I love that I can tell myself that and actually believe it as opposed to it not sticking at all.

I am happy the way it's turning out. L&SSS is probably the most challenging and time-consuming stitch I've done, if only because I have to switch thread so often. Keeping the stitches straight and the tension uniform is also a challenge. If things aren't consistent it starts to look a bit like a sneeze, which is not the effect I'm going for. I've had to start over a section or two because things were just going wonky, but that's life.

I like how the stitch looks. Compared to the padded Satin Stitch, L&SSS looks almost painted on since it lies flush against the fabric. So far it also looks great with the Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch outline where the outline looks like fur edging or something. I like how relaxing it is to sew this stitch. It's very slow, so it's easy to get into a rhythm and just go with it. I also like how the multiple colors really pop next to the monochromatic baby vampire. I also like how it make the padded Satin Stitch look more luxurious. All in all, I'm glad with the way this is going.


Even if my baby vampire ends up with a pimp cloak.

Don’t Speak

It's really weird looking back and filtering everything through this new lens I've got titled "hey dummy, you have anxiety." I thought that everyone thought the way I did, so it blows my mind to look back and gradually realize how much the anxiety shaped even the most basic parts of my life.

One of the things I've never been able to wrap my head around is anything that damages intangible qualities, like integrity or trust. When I was in junior high school I did something to lose my parents' trust. I don't remember what it was, but I clearly remember how it felt to hear my dad tell me that I'd damaged their trust in me: it felt like a cannonball. At the time I thought that my extreme reaction was due to my "good girl" character, but looking back I see how much anxiety exacerbated my reaction. My anxiety disorder was telling me that there was no way I could ever earn back my parents' trust. I had damaged it irreparably, and anything I did to prove myself as trustworthy wouldn't be enough. Anything I did would be seen as insincere pandering, but more importantly whatever I had done to damage their trust could never be erased or forgotten. I felt like I was stuck in the trash compactor from Star Wars with both walls inexorably closing in, slowly but surely.

This attitude towards trust and integrity led to my being unable, on some fundamental level, to understand why people lie. My brain has always told me two things; if you lie you will always get caught, and once you're caught you will never be able to fix the damage done. Since my brain was giving these two things such insane weight I couldn't fathom why people would lie since they would inevitably get caught and reap the consequences. What could people possibly gain? I thought that everyone suffered the same psychological pain that I did when facing being caught in a lie. My brain was a very black and white place where if I made even one mistake my value as a friend, daughter, coworker, and human being went down to zero. This is what my brain was like:

I'm using the past tense because I'm moving beyond that now. I still don't really understand why people lie, but it's becoming a little clearer to me now that my brain isn't quite so crazy. I no longer live in a stress-filled mindscape where I have to quadruple-check all information and plan for every possible contingency and exception before asking a simple question. I still have trouble with it, but it's manageable now. I'm able to sort out what parts of my attitude towards truth is related to my brain chemistry and what part is related to my character.

Telling the truth is still very important to me. I can't handle friendships with people who lie constantly because even if the lies are harmless the act of lying sends messages. For me, telling the truth is respectful. It tells me that you respect me and whatever relationship we have, whether professional or personal. My supervisor always tells me the truth. One week she forgot to schedule the taxis that take my fellow ALT and me to school. She owned up to it and apologized. Contrast this with some taxi companies who have lied (and gotten caught) about her not having sent them the schedule. My supervisor respects me enough to own up to her mistakes; the taxi company doesn't care about my supervisor, the BOE, or me. If someone lies to me it sends a message that the person thinks one of three things about me: I'm too stupid to figure out I've been lied to, I'm too weak to challenge them on it even if I do figure it out, or I'm so unimportant to them that even if I do figure it out and challenge them it doesn't matter.

A speaker came to my University once and talked about how stupid it is to preach tolerance since tolerance at best is still barely civil. "Hello, I tolerate your existence" isn't a very warm sentiment; it's barely above ice! This speaker instead talked about respect. It may be clichéd, but it really resonated with me. I do my best to respect others and surround myself with people who respect me. That's me talking, not my anxiety, and I really enjoy being able to tell the difference.

Hey now, you’re an All Star

Living in a foreign country means that simple things can be difficult. Traveling, shopping, eating, even washing dishes is suddenly more complicated. The upside of this is that you get really, really excited whenever you complete one of these challenges. The downside is that if you brag about your ability to wash your dishes to people who don't live in that foreign country they aren't really going to get it. Washing your dishes involves many steps when you're operating in a different country. First, you must figure out how to turn on your hot water heater in a different language. Then, you go to the store to buy dish soap. You make a mistake and accidentally buy hand soap. Or floor cleaner. Or tatami cleaner. You must do research, recruit a friend, or take a picture of your school's dish soap and buy the exact same bottle. In any case, by that point being able to wash your dishes without them smelling like windex is a huge accomplishment! It's an exhilarating way to live, and that's how I felt when I ordered a kotatsu and kotatsu futons and chairs from a Japanese website the other day.

You see, I've been inspired by Orangepeeleater. I want to have a kotatsu in the US. It's space efficient, it's comfortable, it's easy to transport, and it's a part of Japanese life that I want to keep with me. So, I've been shopping around for awhile. My dad sent me links to places where I could buy a kotatsu in the US without having to ship it back, but they were either the cheapest kotatsu in existence or a hand-carved 600$ masterpiece. Also, even the cheap ones were more expensive than the ones I was looking at over here most likely due to less demand and import costs, so I decided to buy here and ship home. My supervisor had given me a magazine, Nissen, and it had really nice things, so I checked them out online at Nissen. Oh, my gosh. Never more have I regretted living on a year to year contract in another country. So much lovely, relatively inexpensive furniture! I can't wait to get home and start getting a life together that doesn't have to be packed up and shipped over an entire ocean.

I checked with a coworker to make sure that Nissen was decent quality before getting too attached to any of the kotatsu. I didn't want to get my heart set on something, pay a lot of money for it, pay more money to mail it back to the US, and then have it fall apart after ten minutes out or something. She vouched for it and I spent the next few days perusing the website. Now, the Nissen website is all in Japanese. That meant checking, double-checking, and triple-checking to make sure that what I was looking at was actually what I was ordering and that what I was ordering was in the right size. I had decided ahead of time on getting the rectangular kotatsu instead of the square one, and I didn't want to screw up the sizing on the futon. Some of the futons I really liked weren't in the rectangular size. I had to check the materials of each futon because I didn't want to get fleece covers that would feel nice, be soft, and then get all tatty and yucky after a single washing. All in all it was a lot of work.

And then the actual online ordering. That was an ordeal that made the choosing of the kotatsu look easy. It's all blurred together, but I'm pretty sure it was a 25 step process. It took over an hour to navigate through the entire process. I'm pretty sure it would have been impossible for anyone without a high Japanese level. A few steps I had to fix inputted information because the system only accepted katakana instead of hiragana or kanji, and it told me that through tiny, black, kanji-filled Japanese sprinkled with honorifics and extreme formality. It had special offers every other step in addition to the usual customer profile, address, payment method bits. When I finally made it to the end it was like climbing a mountain. I don't have anything to show for it yet, and it's going to take a few months for everything to get here since a couple of the items aren't currently in stock, but I'm still ridiculously proud of myself for being able to do it myself without having to call in a translator. It's one of the things I really enjoy about living in Japan. Online shopping isn't nearly as exciting back home.

Losing My Religion

Japan is a land of shrines and temples. They're everywhere you look. The corner of an intersection has a small shrine to Jizo for watching over babies who died in the womb. Hidden in the trees is a gate leading to a stone flight of stairs for a mountain shrine. Laws have actually been put into place to limit the number of shrines because in the past an area of 10 square kilometers had over 100 distinct, separate shrines. Japanese temples are known throughout the world; Kiyomizudera, the Clear Water Temple, was in the running to be one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. It's difficult if not impossible to be in Japan without going to shrines or temples. Most festivals happen at or are strongly connected to specific shrines or temples. They're beautiful buildings, architecturally, and they're also an amazing example of ancient Japan. Going to shrines involves following certain rules, and you really don't want to mess any of the rules up because whatever you're entering is sacred.

When entering a shrine do not enter from the center of the gate. That is reserved for the gods. Enter from either side. I didn't know this and have probably offended so many gods. Whoops. I've also been told that you're supposed to bow before you enter the main gate, but I don't recall ever seeing a Japanese person doing this, so I'll keep an eye on it. Bowing too much doesn't hurt, anyway, so from now on I'll be making a habit of this.

The first shrine I encountered was a small shrine near Go-Sho in Kyoto. I was studying abroad at the time, and my Japanese was not so good. Now, when you first enter a shrine/temple there will be a place for washing your hands. Usually you aren't supposed to drink this water. Apparently at this shrine you're not only allowed to but encouraged to because the water is famous for being delicious and pure. Some very nice elderly people were trying to tell us about the amazing water and how drinking it was ok. None of us could believe it, though, and we convinced ourselves that we'd misunderstood their Japanese. The reason you wash your hands is to cleanse yourself of impurity. This is also why you shouldn't go to a shrine when you are ill or in mourning, which are both states of impurity.

After you've washed your hands it's time to proceed to the main part of the shrine/temple. There's a place to pray. First, throw a coin into the offering box, but don't worry because the amount doesn't matter. If there is a bell or gong ring it once to get the attention of the gods. Bow twice, think of your wish or prayer, clap twice loudly, and bow one last time. This is almost universal, but occasionally you'll find different variations. For example, at Izumo Taisha, the oldest shrine in Japan and the original home of the gods, you should clap four times instead of twice.

You can also buy charms at shrines/temples that offer protection for various things, such as health care, family safety, traffic safety, business success, educational success, success in love, and more. You shouldn't ever open the charms. Not only will they not work anymore, but it's very disrespectful to the god associated with that particular charm.

I've made mistakes at almost every step, although I haven't opened a charm at least, and I've never been yelled at or kicked out of a shrine. People are usually very forgiving to foreigners. They know that we aren't Japanese and might not know the proper forms. As long as you are respectful everything should be fine. Personally, I don't usually pray at the shrines or temples I visit. Japanese people I've talked to have said that it doesn't matter what religion you are; the gods won't be offended. I feel uncomfortable because I'm going through the motions without really believing. I feel like I'm disrespecting the gods by asking them for things when I don't really worship or believe in them even though the Japanese say the gods don't care. I wonder what a good balance is?