"You can forget your lunch but never your umbrella." ~A Fukui saying

Thursday, 12 February 2009

Setsubun, Risshin & Formatting Updates

Greetings all!
Sorry I haven't updated in a couple weeks. I've still got some things to share from my experience in Taiwan, and I recently spent the evening at Eiheiji learning zazen (meditation).

In the meantime, I've made some changes to the format of this blog. You'll notice along the left hand side that links to other blogs have changed, and you now can see a list of labels. I added that for easy archiving purposes. Now, if you want to see anything I've written about something like temples or festivals, all you have to do is click on the label for temples or festivals. I also inserted a translation service at the bottom of the page.

While looking through the archives I noticed that some pictures seemed to have disappeared. I checked my storage limit, and I really don't know why this has happened. While looking up the storage limit, however, I found out that all the pictures I post here automatically get sent to an online photo storage service. If I ever organize that, I'll post a link.

Now, on to some updates:

This is a photograph I took in January shortly after returning from my travels. We had a decent amount of snow for probably less than two weeks in Fukui City. Then, it warmed up just enough to change to rain, and all the snow disappeared.

I noticed something with the snowfall this year that I don't recall from last year - THUNDER. Turns out that Western Japan is one of three places in the world where it can thunder while snowing.
February 3rd was setsubun this year. (click here for old post on setsubun). It's the end of winter on the lunar calendar, and people celebrate by tossing beans to ward off demons. I decided to check out events at a local shrine but heard the wrong starting time and showed up just as it ended.The day after setsubun is called risshin. This is the first day of spring on the lunar calendar. I believe it snowed on this day last year.

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