When Rabbits are Worshipped

There are lots of shrines in Japan, which dedicated to the Gods (Kamisama) they worship. Each shrine has a purpose. For example, we have heard about the Goddess of Food/Rice (Inari Kamisama) which is associated with foxes and statued as “Kitsune” (Japanese fox) at the Inari Shrine. Then we also know about the famous God of Delivery who is believed will protect the mothers and their babies along the delivery process, which associated with shiba dogs at the Suitengu Shrine. But I’ll talk about them at another time. I’m specially interested with one of the most unlikely shrine I’ve ever known, Tsuki Shrine.

TSUKI SHRINE

Tsuki Shrine is a shrine for Moon God. Moon God is a brother of the Sun Goddess. They don’t talk to each other – hence day and night. The Japanese believes that rabbit is a messenger of Moon God which “brings happiness”. And so the shrine has statues of Rabbits within it

TO GO VISIT THE TSUKI SHRINE

It’s located at Urawa-shuku, Saitama prefecture, Japan. To reach it, alight at Urawa Station, take exit at the West Gate and then walk about 10 minutes.

Additionally, there is a flea market that takes place on the fourth Saturday of every month in Urawa-shuku’s Tsuki Shrine (wikipedia.com). It looks like they sell various of products. There even has kimonos sold with a very bargain price! (see below pictures) I certainly want to go there once I have a chance! ^^

Sources:

http://www.wikipedia.com
http://www.h6.dion.ne.jp/~yuebing/040330/
http://raphael.doxos.com/2007/09/20/tsuki-shrine/
http://www.gojyaku.com/kimono/kottouiti/urawa/urawa.htm

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fukusuke-pon 福助ぽん (≥v≤) love love~~

I have fall in love with this guy!! *(≥v≤)*

~fukusuke-pon 福助ぽん wearing cute sweater~

~ tampopo paradise, pon ぽん: “i’m in heaven….!” ~

~ fukusuke-pon 福助ぽんhugging its mama? X3 ~

-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=~-=

ahhhhhhhhh such an angelllll!! *>v<*~~luv luv luv luv

Those pictures are just a few of beautiful series of fukusuke-pon 福助ぽん pictures taken by its owner and shared at flickr.com. We can see the adventurous story of pon ぽん being told by the beautiful shots, which photographed very professionally. Moreover, each of the pictures always has a note or a story or a description of the picture. You can see the live of fukusuke-pon 福助ぽん and his owner (yes, it’s a buck! A male rabbit! ;D). It is like reading a story telling book! It’s truly a living story of Sentaro–a manga telling stories about the daily live of a manga author and his hiper-active ultra-cute mini rabbit!

I’m very thankful to my friend, Lisa, for telling me about him! TvT! I truly have met an angel! Go to flickr.com and search by the name of fukusuke-pon 福助ぽん to watch more of its stories! OR just click here to go directly to the page of fukusuke-pon 福助ぽん photo albums .

Have a wonderful adorabunny-day ^.-!

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MOBILE FILM FESTIVAL-The Next Generation of Film Industry

I saw a TV show about what’s going on in Europe in this month of celebration of Christmas. In one of the overviews, I was attracted to one interesting event took place in Germany, a “mobile phone festival”.

Yes, I just realized how it is such a great concept! Looking at the rapidly developing mobile technology, from the mobile with only basic features of text messaging and making phone calls to picture messaging, voice messaging, camera and video, multimedia comprising messaging, Internet access, video call and even a GPS mobile that could guide you to the place you are going to. Just as quoted at one of articles about the mobile technology, “These changes are redefining people’s lifestyle and are opening up new frontiers, also in film making”.

In 2005, a mobile phone film festival debuted in France, and has expanding globally to Taiwan (1st Mobile Film Festival in Asia Pacific in 2005), Germany (EDiT Mobile Film Festival), and Japan (1st Pocket Film Festival in 2007 at Yokohama).

 

Part of the appeal of this type of work is that it is generated by one person or a small group of people working with inexpensive equipment and editing tools. MobileCrunch reported earlier this month that in the future you will control 25% of entertainment by 2012. Mobile phone entertainment generated by peer groups is predicted to become part of daily life. A film festival honoring this type of artwork is a well founded concept.

“The cell phone is an extremely personal tool. It’s almost part of your body,” said Jean-Louis Boissier, a French media artist and professor at University of Paris 8. “Half the world’s population owns a cell phone,” he said. “Art that comes from such numbers holds potential for historic change.”

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Mobile Technology in Japan

There is no doubt that Japanese are very fond of mobile phones, they literally CAN NOT LIVE without it. You can see Japanese typing text messages all over the place. Not to mention the teenagers, they actually decorate their mobiles with lots of gems’ stickers and unbelievably lots of accessories 🙂

Therefore, it is no surprise that the technology of the Japan’s mobile phone is now being used on every aspects of the Japanese’s life.

This is one of very interesting technology utilized by Japan’s Glasses Merchant, “Megane Top” :

The Megane Top Superstore has opened a new online service that allows users to try on glasses in the comfort of their own homes via their mobile phones. The new technology enables users to “virtually” try on glasses via their cell phones. All they have to do is take a snapshot of themselves and combine it with images of glasses downloaded from the merchant’s mobile website. Unfortunately, they currently has not planning to expand it outside the Japan Market yet. Just hope they will 🙂

And some other advanced uses of the mobile phone technology in Japan :

NUTRITION COUNT AND MORE

Quebec-based Myca already has a hit with a service called MyFoodPhone, which lets users snap photos of their daily meals and send them to the company’s nutritional analysts. CNN Money

“Now it’s set to release Doctorphone and Babyphone, two services that offer patients and parents instant videoconferences with physicians via cell phone.

Doctorphone and Babyphone, both still in development will let subscribers conference with Myca’s network of freelance nurses and doctors. Heart rate and temperature data can be transmitted to a patient’s electronic medical-record file, and doctor-patient conversations are archived for future reference.

The fee for these services will likely be billed by the minute. In return, Myca will handle billing with insurance companies – at least for the 10 percent of U.S. health-care plans that reimburse physicians for video visits.”

SOFTBANK helps drunks find missing cellphones, moms locate kids

Here in Japan, Softbank Mobile – the brand Vodafone Japan transformed into last year – is about to launch a service that will surely appeal to the nation’s legendary drunken Friday-night salarymen who seem to have a habit of leaving their phones anywhere but their pockets.

The company’s new ‘Ichi Navi’ service uses the GPS chips embedded in many Softbank phones to trace missing handsets online via a PC interface. Phones have to be registered in advance and there’s a ¥210 ($1.70) monthly charge plus ¥5.25 (4c) per search, but this is bound to be a life saver many times over for the typical corporate warrior on a bender.

Search results yield either a Yahoo Map location result so the phone can be retrieved, or a message saying whatever the Japanese is for “We think it’s in the toilet, pal.”

More prosaically, Softbank is also soft selling Ichi Navi as a way for concerned parents to keep track of their kids at all times. (digitalworldtokyo.com)

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