Selected quotes from Atheism for Lent 2018 study
8 years ago
I've been meaning to sort out the photos on this site for a few months now as I felt the format they were in was a bit off. So with some re-tagging and a lot of shuffling I have reorganised my photos into a format that should make it easier to find the newest ones. The simpler layout also means its easier for me to copy the photos to the Laptop so I should get round to updating them more (fingers crossed). Some of the new photos of note are a Snowman and some deer. Enjoy.
I went to Nara this weekend past, just for a day really, and so had the chance to wander around this Japanese City rich in History and large impressive old buildings. But instead of doing that I decided to try find the Nara City Museum of Photography, because it seemed more interesting.
My starting point on this quest was Nara Park. From there I managed to follow numerous park maps out of the Park area and into a more residential area. Undeterred by a few misled detours I finally came upon a sign that seemed to point the way to the building I desired. I followed this one deep into the aforementioned residential area and just as I was about to quit found a similar sign. Realising I was on the right track I followed this sign, and the next, until finally (about 30 minutes walk from Nara Park) I reached the odd modern/ traditional building that is the Museum.
The museum was essentially formed when the prominent photographer Taikichi Irie donated a ton of his work to Nara. So they built a museum to put it all in. Most of his subject are Buddhist ceremonies so I spent maybe 30 minutes to an hour browsing over some obscure customs and generally pretty photos. Unfortunately google image search didn't really find a great deal of his work so you'll have to take my word for it that it was pretty interesting (or at least I found it a nice change). As an added bonus the museum also had a guest exhibits for the Nara branch of the Japanese Photography Society or some such. Which meant I didn't have to just look at Buddhists and over sized tea cups the entire time and could instead look at dogs with bubbles and a picture of family planting vegetables (which I was informed was to show that they wanted the plant to grow up strong, and their kid to grow up strong).
I really enjoyed getting away from the main hubbub and finding a different thing to gawk at. I seem to be making a habit of finding these weird places to see as opposed to more museums filled with pots.
No more photos today as they are a bit of a mess at the moment and I haven't got round to fixing them yet. Arg.
Japanese society is still quite a bit more chauvinistic in its tendencies. More than I am used to anyway. The woman's place is still primarily considered to be in the home and discrimination for jobs and such is less frowned upon. But this fact is no more apparent in my mind than in the Japanese adoption of Valentines day.
As you might have guessed, Valentines day in Japan has been taken over in order to favour men. It is a day where women give chocolates to the men in their life. This not only includes loved ones but also work colleagues. The later of which is termed “duty chocolates”. February 14th is not a good day to be female.
Technically its not really a one sided exchange. Japanese women get their rewards (more chocolates) on March 14th, so called “White Day”. But I think this is beside the point, the actual day is February 14th, Japanese just twisted it to suit them and added an extra day on the end to keep their other halves happy. There inventiveness never seizes to surprise me.
Anyway, enough of this, I have chocolates to eat......
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