NATIONAL TREASURES IN THE ODDEST PLACES

FRIDAY 30 APRIL

Yesterday I learned that when in Kyoto, you can stumble across national treasures while shopping. We had class and went down to Kyoto Station or around there to go look for a camera for me and to eat lunch. We were on our way to an all you can eat sushi bar when we looked to the side of the road and saw a historic marker in front of a seven eleven. We all thought that was weird so we went over to it and looked and sure enough a really famous government official had been assassinated there…who knew. He had been one of the main reformers of the Tokugawa shogunate (wanting to change to a more modern style of government, but alas died there in the street.) I thought it was rather funny that the property had been bought by seven eleven and his memory is now commemorated with the sound of Irashaimase! (The welcome everyone and anyone gets with entering a convenient store in Japan) If the story ended there it would still be good, but wait, there’s more! Sushi was amazing, on a little track system that circled the room so you can pick whatever you want from the conveyor belt. You don't even have to order! It just comes to you! …and yes we ate until our hearts content. Afterwards we looked around and saw many stores so we window shopped for awhile. I came across a couple of Japanese rock shops (selling guitars basses etc not rock collections) so naturally I went inside of a bit. This one had four floors to it but was really narrow so it was about the size of a medium range guitar shop. They had it all though. Mesa Boogie, Orange, Fender, Gibson, It was fun to go there. It was a lot more expensive there then back at home. Anyways after spending a couple of minutes in that store we kept moving on. In Kyoto there are historical temples and shrines everywhere intertwined with modern-day shops and the like. I just happened to walk into Honno-ji, the temple where in 1582 Oda Nobunaga, the first of the three great unifiers of Japan was burned alive by one of his own Akechi Mitsuhide. He is still there, there is a grave and everything on the property along with a museum dedicated to his memory and a ton of artifacts from that time period. This may not be significant to most of you, however when I took Hist 343 ancient to pre-modern Japanese, my thesis for the end of the semester 10 pages paper was how if Nobunaga had not come to power, the very unification of Japan may not have been possible. I then went on to explain how it took someone of his strength to get the ball rolling and once it was moving his successors Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa were able to complete it. So I had done a lot of research on this guy and there he literally was…ashes and all in front of me. As murphy’s law would have it, I didn't have a camera yet, but you better believe I am going back to take pictures and go through the museum.