Comments on: On Ruins | 城跡

By: 41 Things I Like About Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

41 Things I Like About Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:01:43 +0000

[…] games like the Legend of Zelda: Wander around and you’ll find some kind of healing shrine or ruin, or sacred rock or tree. The woods and cities are full of things accumulated and built around and […]

By: On Nature in Japan, or: On Getting Killed By a Wild Goat in America | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:02:17 +0000

[...] know my relationship with nature has changed. I can peg it to a specific moment, where I wandered around my apartment for the first time and stumbled upon a shrine hidden in what I thought was a forest. I started [...]

By: On Like Totally Living in the Now in Japan, You Know? | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:52:16 +0000

[...] cooler, and the air is filled with the sound of insects and cat-sized ravens. At the end of that path is a simple [...]

By: Earthquake, Tsunami Warnings in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:14:51 +0000

[...] On Ruins: Japan’s strange relationship with sacred debris. (Written pre-Earthquake). [...]

By: On Japanese Funerals | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

On Japanese Funerals | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 07:33:28 +0000

[...] about dying every time they change the sheets. My guess is it started as a taboo and now helps keep life and death psychologically separated – a typically Shinto [...]

By: On the Ephemeral Nature of the Starbucks Sakura Latte | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:58:49 +0000

[...] kind of beauty; it’s here and it passes. I’ve documented Japan’s relationship with ruins here before, but cherry blossom viewing touches that same spot in the Japanese heart: Watching [...]

By: On Heating an Apartment in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

On Heating an Apartment in Japan | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 11:14:49 +0000

[...] in a blanket. This ties into the Japanese love of seasons and respect for the constant presence of nature in every drafty corner of their [...]

By: On Abandoned Ski Resorts in Japan | 逃散 | This Japanese Life. | 生命を外面九天です

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 19:26:37 +0000

[...] read: “On Ruins,” for more about the abandoned and neglected buildings of [...]

By: Brett

Brett — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:34:49 +0000

For whatever reason, this post made me very sad. Perhaps it’s my recent coming to grips with my mortality, or maybe there is just something inherently melancholy about objects that I look at having some form of permanence (stone/mortar) and even they fall into disrepair and, eventually, die. I guess it makes me think, “What chance can I possibly have?” Maybe that’s why we don’t let things “dissolve” in the US: We can’t have people walking around, being sad all the time. Also, it’s probably unsafe, and we must think of the children.

Anyway, very insightful, Eryk. Thanks.