GION MATSURI FESTIVAL : Japanese Festival

GION MATSURI FESTIVAL

It is said that the summer of Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, begins with the Gion Matsuri. It's an annual festival of Yasaka Shrine which begins on July 1 and continues through July 31 every year. During this period, a series of Shinto rituals and various events take place at Yasaka Shrine and others locations in Kyoto-city. Yasaka Shrine was originally named Gion-sha and is the head shrine of the thousands of Gion-sha shrines in Japan. The Gion Matsuri is one of the three largest festivals in Kyoto, alongside the Aoi Matsuri and the Jidai Matsuri.

This festival originated as part of a purification ritual to appease the gods thought to cause fire, floods and earthquakes. In 869 AD, the people were suffering from plague and pestilence which was attributed to the rampaging deity Gozu Tennō . Emperor Seiwa ordered that the people pray to the god of the Yasaka Shrine, Susanoo-no-mikoto. Sixty-six stylized and decorated halberds, one for each province in old Japan, were prepared and erected at Shinsen-en, a garden, along with the portable shrines (mikoshi) from Yasaka Shrine. This practice was repeated wherever an outbreak occurred. In 970 AD, it was decreed an annual event and has since seldom been broken. Over time the increasingly powerful and influential merchant class made the festival more elaborate and, by the Edo period (1603–1868), used the parade to brandish their wealth. In 1533, the Ashikaga shogunate halted all religious events, but the people protested, stating that they could do without the rituals, but not the procession. This marks the progression into the festival's current form. Smaller floats that were lost or damaged over the centuries have been restored, and the weavers of the Nishijin area offer new tapestries to replace destroyed ones. When not in use, the floats and regalia are kept in special storehouses throughout the central merchant district of Kyoto in the care of the local people.

                                                                                                                                                                    

The highlights of the Gion Matsuri are Yoi-yama (the night before Yamahoko-junko) on the 16th and Yamahoko-junko on the 17th. Yamahoko-junko is the procession of colorful floats through downtown Kyoto. The floats are pulled through the streets by teams of men dressed in traditional costumes. Each of the large floats carries musicians. The floats are decorated with tapestries or fabrics from Nishijin, Kyoto. Many of them were imported from India, Belgium, Persia, Turkey and other countries in the 15th century. The procession usually starts around 9 a.m. from the Shijo-Karasuma. There are two kinds of floats: yama and hook and are collectively called Yamaboko (or Yamahoko). Yama are smaller floats (weight: 1.2 ton - 1.6 ton, height: about 6m) and carried by people on their shoulders. Hoko are giant floats (weight: 4.8 ton - 12 ton, height: about 25m) on large wooden wheels and pulled by people. There are 32 floats in the procession: 25 yama floats and 7 hoko floats. The most interesting thing to see during Yamahoko-junko is the turns of big floats called tsujimawashi take place in intersections. Men pulling the floats chant loudly, "yoi, yoi, yoi to sei" accompanied with traditional Japanese music played by people who are on the floats. There are 9 of the larger Hoko (long pole or halberd) which represent the 66 spears used in the original purification ritual, and 23 of the smaller Yama which carry life-size figures of famous and important people. All the floats are decorated with beautiful tapestries both from Nishijin (the finest in all of Japan) and imported from all over the world. In addition to the art, there are many traditional musicians and artists sitting in the floats.

The streets are lined with night stalls selling food such as yakitori (barbecued chicken skewers), taiyaki, takoyaki, okonomiyaki, traditional Japanese sweets, and many other culinary delights. Many girls dressed in yukata (summer kimono) walk around the area, carrying with them traditional purses and paper fans. Festival vendors line the streets and traditional Japanese festival music (matsuri-bayashi) is played all over. During the yoiyama evenings leading up to the parade, some private houses in the old kimono merchant district open their entryways to the public, exhibiting valuable family heirlooms, in a custom known as the Byōbu Matsuri, or Folding Screen Festival. This is a precious opportunity to visit and observe traditional Japanese residences of Kyoto.

*Information Source-www.wikipedia.org, www.gojapan.about.com.

Nerd Liberation Movement : Must read

 I came across this funny, but yet serious; article on internet and would like to share with you. The original link to the article is http://www.perkel.com/nerd/nlm.htm

All copyright is acknowledged to the author.

 

Nerd Liberation Movement

~ Coming Out of the Back Room ~

Our Purpose

The Nerd Liberation Movement is dedicated to people who are smart and are not afraid to admit it. In today's society, smart people are persecuted. We learn to act stupid so that normal people are comfortable around us. Some of us are tired of hiding the fact that we are intelligent people. We want to be able to express our intellect without ridicule. We are tired listening to stupid ideas that if you are smart, then you must be deficient somewhere else. We are tired of being accused of bragging, when we are only thinking.

We in the Nerd Liberation Movement are "Coming out of the Back Room". This refers to the expression, "We have this Nerd, and we keep him locked up in the back room." We believe that the world would be better off if smart people were in charge. If you have something heavy to lift, you get the strong person to lift it. If you have something that is high up on a shelf, you get the tall person to reach for it. So therefore, if you need to make complex decisions, then why not let the smart person do it?

It is OK to be smart. It is OK to talk about being smart. Talking about being smart is not bragging about being smart. It's just stating a fact. If you can say, "I'm tall!" or "I'm strong!" then why not "I'm smart!"?

We are making some progress. Years ago, geniuses were burned at the stake for saying the world wasn't flat. (And there's still a lot of flat worlders out there.) But now we are at least not killed anymore for being smart. We have gained politically. The Vice President is a nerd. The first lady is a nerd. And the President is a nerd sympathizer!

It's Tough being Smart

Being smart in a dumb world is like being tall in a short world. A tall person doesn't look at himself as tall, he looks at everyone else as short. And he has to duck through doorways so as to not knock his head on things. Smart people have the same problems.

For example, the news media. These people drive smart people nuts because there are storieshat are beyond the mental bandwidth of the news media to report. For example, the major news centers are talking about air bags in cars. "Air bags in cars are dangerous.", they say. "Air bags have killed 30 children. Manufacturers should be required to put in a switch to turn the air bag off."

Then in you find out that air bags have saved the lives of 2000 people, 400 of which are children. So we turn off the air bags to save 30 kids and let 2000 die instead? Wow, that's brilliant! Doesn't anyone out there know how to add and subtract? Not I'm not against improving air bags to try to save the remaining 30 kids, but turning off the air bags is stupid beyond belief!

It's bad enough that you see stories reported this way, but then comes the shocker. You're in the 1% of the population who caught it. When you try to explain it to people, you realize that more than 50% of the population doesn't have the mental capacity to understand the argument. And these are the people who run this world. Smart people are a minority, and are rare indeed!

10% of your Brain

There's these myths going around about the way intelligence works. Myths that I would like to challenge. For as long as I can remember I have been hearing the average person uses only 10% of their brain. What does this mean? Can someone explain it to me?

Are we talking about 10% on a neuron level here. Like they count your brain cells?

 Total Neuron Count: 498,056,365,012,992
 Total Neurons Used:  50,429,655,502,023
 Total Neurons Free: 447,626,709,510,969

Is this what we are talking about? Or are we saying that we could be ten times as smart as we are and that for some reason we are ten times as dumb as we could be? What is it that these people really mean and it there any basis for this in fact? I think not!

Another popular myth is that I've always heard that your IQ stops changing when you are five years old. For anyone who has two brain cells to rub together, this is rediculus! Me thinks that the person who invented these ideas was really speaking for himself and should have said that,"I only use ten percent of my brain and because of that I assume that everyone is like me." Or perhaps his IQ hasn't changed since he was 5 years old.

Where does this garbage come from? Society creates myths about the mind because they are afraid of smart people. They are afraid to admit that some people are a hell of a lot smarter than other people. Some times people are born that way, but more often than not smart people are smart because they work at it. They keep their mind sharp because they use their brain rather than just let it rot in their head.

I view the mind to be more like a muscle. Use it or lose it. It needs to be exercised or it will atrophy. I think that the average person is capable of much more smarts that the are willing to put out. But thinking, like keeping in shape, takes effort. No pain, no gain. And it take work to keep sharp, but it's worth it.

What is Punctuality ?

Punctuality is a simple way to show courtesy and respect for others: your customers, your clients and your colleagues.  When you show up late for appointments, meetings or meals, you send a clear message to others that your time is more important than theirs.

Punctuality should not be viewed as  “the art of guessing how late the other fellow is going to be.”  Instead it should be valued as the heart and soul of good business.