Last Updated: Mar 2, 2024
On #DonnyThings
An Impromptu Rant on Finding Happiness in Life
“Are you really interested in such things?” she asked me, blinking her eyes a few times in bewilderment at my inquiry. In my mind, the question had not been all that out of left field or anything. I mean, what traveler wouldn’t want to ask how the syncretic union of Shinto and Buddhism interplayed with the Suwa clan’s long honored Ohori tradition? What’s that you say? You have no idea what I am talking about? Well, so that we’re at least all on the same page, you should know that the locals would ritualistically evoke the spirit of their deity into the body of an eight year old boy who would then go on to serve as the Ohori (meaning high priest). To avoid going too far off on a tangent though, let’s just save explaining about the Ohori for another time and get back to talking about my query. After all, it wasn’t really all that odd, was it?
All joking aside though, I am very aware of the fact that I’m into some very weird topics considering I am a white male foreigner living in Japan. In fact, I regularly surprise many Japanese people with the types of topics I like to cover on this blog (and my close friends like to occasionally give me a good heckling for it too). Comrades who know me well, like Tourism Oita’s Yuko Yamasaki, are now numbed by…
