{"id":58,"date":"2007-11-13T23:23:03","date_gmt":"2007-11-13T14:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seanmisen.com\/?p=58&language=ja"},"modified":"2007-11-13T23:23:03","modified_gmt":"2007-11-13T14:23:03","slug":"the-real-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/japan\/the-real-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fall<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fall<\/a>My weekend was incredibly pleasant. I climbed a mountain called “nihonkoku<\/em>” (\u65e5\u672c\u56fd) which is interesting because it means “Japan.” It’s not “Japan Mountain” or “Mount Japan,” but just “Japan.” From what I understand, hundreds of years ago when the border of control by the shogun only extended to the north reaches of this prefecture, nihonkoku<\/em> and the ridgeline separating its northern and southern watersheds was the dividing line. Hence, the tribes to the north referred to the single mountain as a landmark representing Japan, and the name stuck. This is a great example of synecdoche!<\/p>\n

Anyway, intrigued by such an interesting name, I set out to climb it, taking another ALT in Murakami along with me. It’s only 555 meters tall, or about 1800 feet, so it only took us a little under two hours round trip (the mountain guide book I was using said 3 1\/2!). We got some great views of the Japan Sea and Awashima Island and the quickly fading red and yellow leaves. Plus, now I have something interesting to bring up during awkward silences in conversation with Japanese friends.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"with<\/a>
\nThis is to prove that I have touched a girl recently.<\/p>\n

\"shamisen<\/a>That night, I went to my first shamisen concert. Now, this blog is named in part after the famous three-stringed instrument, but I chose the name rather presumptuously, so tickled by the cleverness and availability of the domain name, that I didn’t consider whether or not I even liked shamisen music. Luckily, I found it very inspiring. The dude on the shamisen, was a seriously cool dude. His name was Fumiyoshi Kobayashi. He was fairly young, but was some sort of master apparently. I just thought he looked extremely badass. While I don’t understand the history of the instrument and music, I found it amazingly enjoyable, almost surprisingly so. It is intense and straightforward, with fast, exciting, well-defined rhythms and melodies. When accompanied by a female vocalist, it carries an amazingly evocative, stirring quality of sadness. The surroundings – the Watanabe-tei traditional samurai house in Sekikawa, where the big huge snake festival was held – added to the experience, including a blisteringly comfortable charcoal fire in the tatami sitting area that left the delicious smell of burning wood in my clothes. It was such a wonderful, nostalgic smell that I slept in the shirt that I wore.<\/p>\n

\"chris<\/a><\/p>\n

With Chris at the sweet shamisen fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My weekend was incredibly pleasant. I climbed a mountain called “nihonkoku” (\u65e5\u672c\u56fd) which is interesting because it means “Japan.” It’s not “Japan Mountain” or “Mount Japan,” but just “Japan.” From what I understand, hundreds of years ago when the border of control by the shogun only extended to the north reaches of this prefecture, nihonkoku […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}