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Mar. 9th, 2004 10:38 pmOne of the study abroad students was killed here last night. She was on her bike and got hit by a car. I didn't know her, although she lived in my seminar house, but it's so weird to think about. What poor guy had to call her parents? "What time is it in Australia? 3am? Ouch. Um, but we thought you should know, about your daughter... she's not coming home."
It's weird really.
Different note: Today I went to Nara. The reasons for my going are perhaps best summed up in the following conversation --
SavinSilk: [I'm] running away to watch crazy people not burn down an ancient wooden temple in Nara by running through it with trees that are on fire.
Fnorder42: Uh.
Fnorder42: Uh.
Fnorder42: You'll have to explain later. ^^
The temple is the Toudaiji Temple, which is the largest wooden building in the world, housing the largest Buddha in Japan. (It's quite gratuituously big.) For every night during the first two weeks of March, every year, the monks perform the o-taimatsu ritual: they take huge bamboo sticks, with little miniature evergreen bush things stuck on the end, and light the evergreens on fire. Then they parade out onto the huge veranda of the temple, and the gathered hundreds of people below them ooh and aah as they hang the flaming bushes over the edge, and then shriek with glee as the monks shake their branches and embers rain down on their heads, because all of these people are retarded. (It's supposed to be good luck to catch a spark. Or something.) Then the monks go racing past at top speed -- have I mentioned that these monks are very strong? -- with the flaming embers exploding all over the wooden veranda around them and in their wake.
Then janitors rush in invisibly in their wake, and make sure the temple doesn't catch fire by stamping out the smoldering pieces. I'm told the temple burns down less often than you'd think, considering.
It was so cool. I only fear that I did not get very good pictures, because it was dark and crowded and I was incompetent. But my sensei took us, so we got onto the veranda itself somehow (!!!) and I got to watch all the monks rush past instead of shrieking as my hair caught fire from down below. Koyama-sensei gave us each bentou full of sandwiches and white wine, which was very thoughtful of her, but wine is nasty stuff, so I just wound up carrying my cup around awkwardly and spilling it on myself. But we were right there on the veranda, watching the monks carrying crude eight-feet torches past us, getting smoke and ash in our eyes.
It was a religious experience, full of stair-climbing and things burning. I think it's the best religious experience I've ever had.
To wrap up this already-overlong-I'm-sure entry, I present to you wonderful quotes from Prof. Hanagan, who teaches Ethics here:
As a prelude to discussing the relativity of "good" versus "bad" --
I had a good kid and a bad kid. The good kid followed my rules; the bad kid didn't. I'd go in to tuck him in at night, he'd already snuck out the window, he was downtown drinking, he was only six!
Regarding how not to teach:
I assume my best John Wayne stance and I say, "Any questions?" And a student tosses out a plate of questions, and I whip out my six-guns of an answer and I blast it! Then we all leave, shards of broken questions crunching under our boots, thinking we've done something significant.
It's weird really.
Different note: Today I went to Nara. The reasons for my going are perhaps best summed up in the following conversation --
SavinSilk: [I'm] running away to watch crazy people not burn down an ancient wooden temple in Nara by running through it with trees that are on fire.
Fnorder42: Uh.
Fnorder42: Uh.
Fnorder42: You'll have to explain later. ^^
The temple is the Toudaiji Temple, which is the largest wooden building in the world, housing the largest Buddha in Japan. (It's quite gratuituously big.) For every night during the first two weeks of March, every year, the monks perform the o-taimatsu ritual: they take huge bamboo sticks, with little miniature evergreen bush things stuck on the end, and light the evergreens on fire. Then they parade out onto the huge veranda of the temple, and the gathered hundreds of people below them ooh and aah as they hang the flaming bushes over the edge, and then shriek with glee as the monks shake their branches and embers rain down on their heads, because all of these people are retarded. (It's supposed to be good luck to catch a spark. Or something.) Then the monks go racing past at top speed -- have I mentioned that these monks are very strong? -- with the flaming embers exploding all over the wooden veranda around them and in their wake.
Then janitors rush in invisibly in their wake, and make sure the temple doesn't catch fire by stamping out the smoldering pieces. I'm told the temple burns down less often than you'd think, considering.
It was so cool. I only fear that I did not get very good pictures, because it was dark and crowded and I was incompetent. But my sensei took us, so we got onto the veranda itself somehow (!!!) and I got to watch all the monks rush past instead of shrieking as my hair caught fire from down below. Koyama-sensei gave us each bentou full of sandwiches and white wine, which was very thoughtful of her, but wine is nasty stuff, so I just wound up carrying my cup around awkwardly and spilling it on myself. But we were right there on the veranda, watching the monks carrying crude eight-feet torches past us, getting smoke and ash in our eyes.
It was a religious experience, full of stair-climbing and things burning. I think it's the best religious experience I've ever had.
To wrap up this already-overlong-I'm-sure entry, I present to you wonderful quotes from Prof. Hanagan, who teaches Ethics here:
As a prelude to discussing the relativity of "good" versus "bad" --
I had a good kid and a bad kid. The good kid followed my rules; the bad kid didn't. I'd go in to tuck him in at night, he'd already snuck out the window, he was downtown drinking, he was only six!
Regarding how not to teach:
I assume my best John Wayne stance and I say, "Any questions?" And a student tosses out a plate of questions, and I whip out my six-guns of an answer and I blast it! Then we all leave, shards of broken questions crunching under our boots, thinking we've done something significant.
