Buddha and His Teachings

I am currently reading The Buddha and His Teachings.

I am reading it to learn a little about the basics of the Buddha's teachings.

I have also previously read Buddha of Infinite Light by D.T. Suzuki, Tariki: Embracing Despair, Discovering Peace, and Living and Dying in Zazen by Arthur Braverman.

Haikyo - Exploring Japanese Ruins

Haikyo is the name for exploring Japanese ruins or abandoned buidlings. I found some websites on this subject and the photos are pretty amazing. Whether it is due to the economic problems or the declining population, I think both, aparantly there are alot of abandoned places in Japan.

What is really weird is that alot of them seem like the people just left everything where it was and disappeared. In the U.S, if a business or whatever goes out of business, usually the contents such as furniture, etc. are sold. Maybe Japanese people do not prefer used furniture or other items.

Also in the U.S., these items would have been carted off by looters. I've seen some pictures of abandoned theme parks where there are still displays of samurai armor and other interesting and cool stuff. Why hasn't someone snagged that stuff?

Another crazy, crazy thing are the photos of abandoned medical clinics or hospitals. In some of the photos you can see what appear to be people's medical records as well as syringes, medical devices and chemicals. I can't believe they were just left there.

Below are some photos from this really amazing Japanese website on Haikyo. They are photos from an abandoned hospital. Some pretty creepy pictures.






Here is the outside of the hospital.






Here's what looks to me to be some sort of medical record. Crazy.






Looks like a dentist chair. Ouch.






An examination table. Whoa.








You can see from this picture that there is an active neighborhood right across the street from this hazard.






Another examination room.






More medical equipment.

U.S. Marine suspected of raping schoolgirl in Okinawa

The Japan Times reported that a U.S. marine has been accused of raping a Japanese school girl. Since this has happened several times in the past with Marines in Okinawa, I have a solution.

Maybe the Marines in Okinawa should be permanently confined to their base since they seem to not be able to control themselves around Japanese women.

Geisha Documentary

If you are interested in the traditional world of the Geisha, I recommend a documentary called Hanari Geisha Modern that is currently showing at the Shibuya Uplink X, Tokyo through February 15th.

I saw this documentary here in Los Angeles about a year ago and it was very interesting (previous blog post). It is narrated in english and brings you into the world of the Geisha in Kyoto. According to the documentary website, it is the first time that all Geisha districts in Kyoto were filmed.

What was incredible was that one of the Geisha featured in the film also attended the Los Angeles screening and answered questions after the film.

Here is the link to the page on the current screenings in Shibuya.