Notes From The Tiger’s Cave

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The BBC’s Julian May has produced an excellent - I want to say “beautiful” - radio programme for the Heart and Soul series about the bronze temple bells - bonshou - of Japan. The programme captures the physical and symbolic power of these bells and I strongly recommend that you listen to it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p006dg47/Heart_And_Soul_Japans_Buddhist_temple_bells/

David about to strike the bonsho, Nagasaki, Summer 2007

A bonsho bell differs from English church bells in several important respects. Firstly, a bonsho has no clapper. It is suspended from a wooden frame struck directly by a “ramrod” tree trunk that is swung on a couple of chains by the bell ringer.

Some of the biggest bonsho weigh more than thirty tons, and the biggest bell in Japan, the Rengein Tanjyoji Temple’s Flying Dragon bell - hiryu no kane - on the southern coast of Kyushu, weighs 37500kg or 82000 lbs. On a clear day it can be heard on an island 30 miles across the sea.

The Flying Dragon bell was cast in Kyoto in 1977, but the oldest bell mentioned in the programme was cast 1,225 years before, in the year 752, so temple bells can be expected to have a long life.

However, during the Second World War most of Japan’s temple bells were taken by the government and melted down for war materiel. Only 500 bells remained in place by the end of the war, but a few thousand of those which had been impounded had not yet been destroyed and some of them were returned to their temples. Since the end of the war bell makers have been busy casting bells for temples all over Japan. It must have been a terrible thing in war-ravaged Japan to have no opportunity to hear the sound of a temple bell.

The sound of a bonsho has three components. The impact sound - daoon. The great reverberation set up - oshi. The final tailing resonance - ookuri. There are also overtones as the form of the sound waves expand and contract - baion.

For those who are willing to listen, the tone of a bonsho changes with age and the season, and with the spirit of those who strike it. Sadly, however, many people fail to appreciate the beauty of the bronze temple bells. Nowadays, some people think the best thing to do is to strike them as hard as they can, and the resounding tone rings out the sound of their egotism. Then there are others who complain about the “noise” of the bells. As one Japanese monk observed on the Heart and Soul programme, “Those people must be a bit strange because the bells have been there much longer than they have and will still be there long after they have gone.”

Casting a large bell in bronze is a risky operation with a 50/50 chance of success or failure. In the Heart and Soul programme Ikko Iwasawa who runs the foundry which cast the Flying Dragon bell explains the process as a new bell is being cast and Buddhist monks pray for its success. Their recitation of the sutras is considered to directly contribute to the successful casting of a bronze temple bell, and after listening to this programme you may come to believe that too.

Spring twilight gathers in the mountain village,

arriving there to find, as the vesper bell booms,

scattering cherry petals.

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 When I set up this (somewhat neglected of late) blog I chose the name “Notes From The Tigers Cave” as a reference to the Japanese proverb

Koketsu ni irazunba koji wo ezu.

Literally: If you don’t enter the tiger’s cave, you won’t catch its cub.

I happened to come across this extract from Awakening To The Tao by Liu I-Ming as today’s reading in Andrew Harvey and Anne Baring’s book, The Mystic Vision: Daily Encounters With the Divine:

“The Tao is as deep as can be - who is willing to pursue it closely? If you don’t go into the tiger’s lair, how can you catch its cub? If you don’t wash out the stone and sand, how can you pick out the gold?

“…carefully seek the heart of heaven and earth with firm determination. Suddenly you will see the original thing; everywhere you meet the source, all is a forest of jewels.”

David Hurley

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The Book Of Five Rings was written by the samurai sword master Miyamoto Musashi while living in a mountain cave shortly before his death in 1645. The book book is essentially a guide for those who want to learn how to use a sword, but it can also be used, in Musashi’s words, as “a guide for men who want to learn strategy”.

Musashi’s Book Of Five Rings quickly became one of the most important books for students of kendo (the way of the sword), but because of its double-edged quality, it has also found its way onto the bookshelves of leading Japanese businessmen who applied its teachings to business strategy.

So, who was Miyamoto Musashi, and what is the unique appeal of his book?

Musashi was born in 1584, towards the end of the Warring States period. The Tokugawa Shogunate was established by Tokugawa Hideyoshi in 1603 when Musashi was just nine years old. The Tokugawa Shogunate ushered in a new period of stability in Japan and the disbanding of provincial armies. A lot of samurai, including the young Musashi, found themselves out of work and those who lacked land holdings wandered Japan as “ronin” or “masterless samurai”.

Many of these redundant samurai gave up the sword and became artisans, but Musashi and others devoted themselves to the study of kendo and set up fencing schools, often sponsored by local lords as places where their sons and retainers could train.

Musashi, however, chose to wander Japan devoting himself to the perfection of his sword technique. Perfection of technique was his sole obsession; he did not marry, did not take any care over his appearance, seldom took a bath so as to avoid being surprised without his sword.

Musashi fought on the losing side in the Battle of Sekigahara against the Tokugawa Shogunate and evaded the victors who hunted down and killed any survivors they could find. He then went on to win more than sixty duels and became a legend in his own time before he had reached the age of thirty.

Musashi was renowned for his “two sword” technique in which he trained himself to fight with a common short sword in one hand and a samurai long sword in the other. So powerful was his technique that in his prime he fought his duels with a wooden sword and still came out victorious.

Musashi’s prowess was not limited to sword-fighting, however. He also applied his technique to painting in accordance with his teaching, “Study the Way of all professions” and achieved some striking results that survive to this day.

In The Book Of Five Rings, Musashi divides his teaching into five “books” (actually, they are more like short chapters), which reflect the “Five Great Things” of Buddhism: earth, water, fire, wind, void. The teachings are written in a direct style, which can be understood on several different levels and therefore appeal to all ranks of kendo students.

Also, Musashi explains that his teaching can be applied to individual cases and also to grand strategy because “The strategies makes small things into big things, like building a great Buddha from a small model”.

In The Wind Book Musashi criticizes those kendo schools that fix upon one aspect of sword-fighting, such as using a long sword. It is not that he is against long-swords, but he is against the rigidity of basing your whole strategy around the length of a sword, for example, because each case requires its own particular solution or response. It is this flexible quality of the book along with its direct style that has made it so uniquely appealing to modern Japanese businessmen and to anybody else seeking to master all aspects of their profession.

Musashi’s The Book Of Five Rings is therefore a classic book of kendo sword-fighting, of grand-strategy, and also an excellent manual for success in the cut-throat world of modern business.

David Hurley
Best Internet Marketing Strategies

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Back in February I took my daughter on holiday to England. I call it a holiday, but I spent the first couple of days clearing my books and accumulated clutter. I wrapped and packed 21 large cardboard boxes and asked a shipping company to ship them to Japan.

I found the shipping company on the Internet at http://www.shipit.co.uk/ . They offered a collection service and charged just under 800 quid to ship the boxes plus a William Morris carpet from mother’s house in Yorkshire to Kobe Port.

It was up to me to get the boxes (and carpet) from the warehouse in Kobe port to my house in Hiroshima.

 I chose shipit.co.uk on the strength of their claims to take good care of packing, and also on the strength of the testimonials.

The lorry arrived in good time - always a bonus in England - and was gone in less than 10 minutes.

 We then went away on our holidays to Blore Hall in the Peak District and I forgot about my boxes - after all, they were not due to arrive in Japan until the end of April or beginning of May…

One month later, back in Japan, I received notification that my boxes were still in England and that I would shortly have to pay warehouse charges. It turned out that I had missed an e-mail advising me that I had requested insurance but not paid for it.

When I saw that I would have to itemize every single packed item I decided not to bother with insurance at all since I had not written down a comprehensive packing list.

All that remained was for me to pay by credit card and, one month late, the goods were on their way. Meanwhile, there was a lot of news on BBC World about Somali pirates so I would not have been surprised had I never seen my goods.

Then, at the beginning of the month, I got a fax in Japanese informing me that my goods had been unloaded at Kobe and that I had a week in which to remove the said goods from the said port. There was also some disagreement between the authorities at Kobe and Shipit.co.uk as to whether or not I needed to present a Bill of Lading. Getting that sorted out took a few days.

The next problem was finding a shipping company to pick up and deliver the goods, oh but before that could be done there was a customs check, and also I had to pay 12,000+ unloading fee. But who to pay it to? I spent the best part of three mornings on the phone trying to organize everything, and the Mrs was assisting on the phone and Internet in the evening.

A week later someone put me onto a friendly chap called Mr Kurihara who seemed to know all about my case (I guess I was getting quite well known in his office as the private individual who was bringing 21 boxes of BOOKS for personal use through Kobe Port, which is used almost exclusively for the import and export business…).

Mr Kurihara laid out a plan of action in which he would estimate the cost of dealing with my case and would then go ahead subject to my approval. He turned out to be totally reliable and a few days later I paid the landing fee and the boxes passed through customs, onto a delivery truck and arrived at our house on Saturday morning, several hours ahead of schedule, for a total cost of 95,000 yen (I was expecting the cost to go as high as 150,000).

I was out when the boxes (and carpet) were delivered. The wife told me that there was just one delivery man who unloaded everything and piled it up in our genkan. Here’s a photo of the scene:

I have since discovered that the Japanese shipping company Kuroneko (Black Cat) has an office in London and that they ship goods back to Japan for Japanese tourists, so I guess anybody in England wanting to ship goods to Japan should telephone them first… It might save you a lot of hassle with the Kobe Port Authorities.

If anybody has any legit stuff stuck in Kobe Port, drop me a line and I will put you in touch with Mr Kurihara!

David Hurley

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As spring unfolds in all her glorious panoply here in Japan, the sound of the Japanese bush warbler can be heard in the land.

Or, as far as I am concerned, the sound of chatter about bush warblers during English class can be heard in the community centres of Hiroshima.

For the callow warble of your common or garden bush warbler is as much a harbinger of spring in these parts as the sound of the first cuckoo is in the countryside around nether regions of Tunbridge Wells.

I wonder if retired Japanese Army (er, Self Defence Force, because “Japan does not have an army”) colonels inform the Asahi Shinbun that they heard the sound of the first uguisu of spring. I expect they would use a calligraphy brush and compose an elegant haiku, something like:

Uguiso ga

uchi no niwa ni wa,

uta no renshu

Which, being translated, is as much to say,

Regarding the bush

 warbler perched in my garden,

 it’s learning to sing.

Now, if I had been a bit cleverer I would have tossed in a blooming plum tree, because any early spring haiku worth its salt really needs to feature a bush warbler that has relinquished its bush in favour of a plum tree in blossom.

And another thing…

When talking about bush warblers in early spring, it is essential that you comment on how the callow hatchlings have not yet mastered the full bush warble and spend the early days of springtime practising, practising, practising and again, practising, just like Japanese tennis club members, who are all practice and no play.

To fully master the art of early spring Japanese conversation it is essential that you also master the sound of a bush-warbler’s warble, both in its fully formed perfection, and in its callow half-cocked sweetness.

As soon as early spring has passed and the plum blossom has fallen, all talk of the callow uguisu practising his song must be put away with the winter weeds and must not see light of day until next year.

David Hurley

http://grasp-the-nettle.com

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Want to spice up your boring tweets on twitter.com?? Stick a Japanese emoticon on the end! There are hundreds of these creative little character doodles and they are a lot of fun.

Here are a few to get you started:

(^_^)/ Hi!
(^0^)/ Hi there!
( ^^) smile
(^O^) glad!
(~o~) yawn
(^-^;) cold sweat
(-_^) wink
(`O`) sing a song
(@_@) What???
(~^~) I’m proud
m(__)m
(^_^)/~~ bye~~
(=^_^=) a cat
(o|o) Ultra-man

They’ll only take you so far. For more info about emoticons check out Paperdiaries.com, the site of a certain Ms. Aya, where I found the ones listed above:

http://paperdiaries.com/2008/09/guide-to-japanese-text-emoticons-and-chibi-facial-expressions/

Ms Aya’s blog is an enjoyable read in its own right (or “write”), and Ms Aya ain’t necessarily what you might suppose… but she is a cool Asian lady!

I found Ms Aya’s blog on Google when looking for a specific Japanese text icon to tag onto the end of a Valentine’s Day Tweet - see, http://twitter.com/hirohurl .

Twitter is a great little tool and every day more and more resources are appearing on the web.

Want to see how your Twitter following compares to your friends’ and rivals’ - see http://twittercounter.com/

If your graph is looking a bit “limp” you might be interested in this new free resource which will get you a whole bunch of new followers WITHOUT having to follow them first - http://tweetergetter.com/hirohurl .

You don’t even have to give up your email address, and it takes less than 30 seconds to sign up and go!

David Hurley
Internet Marketing Success Strategies

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Someone called Jimmy contacted me the other day about the Japanese mahjong sets available on http://japanese-mahjong.com to ask whether I could offer any sets of a similarly high quality with… Western numerals in the top right corner…

I explained that that was a big no-no as far as my site was concerned. Only genuine Japanese mahjong sets there, I’m afraid!

Anyway, I checked out the link in Jimmy’s signature and found out that he had made an interactive sudoku game:

http://www.sparkleinteractive.co.uk/sudoku/

“Sudoku” is a compound Japanese word that combines the characters for “number” (su) and “single” (doku). The sudoku puzzle was invented by an American architect called Howard Garns and was originally called “Number Place” when it was published in an American magazine in 1979.

In 1986 it was published in a Japanese puzzle magazine under the name “Sudoku”. Subsequently, the game was reimported into America and Europe and the Japanese name stuck, doubtless giving the puzzle an air of oriental mystery.

Funnily enough, in Japan the puzzle has been renamed “Nanpure”, pronounced “nan-poo-ray”. This is a good example of the way modern Japanese takes foreign words, mashes them together to form a new “Japanese” word. In this case, the words are “number” and “play” (or perhaps “place” from the original name of the game)…

Number = “Nanbaa” = “Nan”

Play = “Pure”
“Nan” + “Pure” = Nanpure!

So you could say that “Sudoku” is the English word for Japanese “number play”, or vice versa!

Now we have sorted that out, here’s a game for you to play!

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Ah, it must be spring in Japan - it is freezing cold outside, and boxes of dried soybeans with demon-mask covers on them are flying off the shelves of Madam Joy, our local supermarket.

It is Setsubun today, the day when winter officially turns into spring just in time for the coldest few weeks of the year to set in.

Now the chief superstitious practice of the natives of these islands upon this occasion is called Oni-yarai, or kicking the demons out of the homestead. According to the ancient rites of this ceremony, the father of the house is supposed to assume the role of the demon and put on the demon-mask while the rest of the family members hurl dried beans at him while yelling,

Demons out! Good luck in!

Why it should be thought that hurling dried beans at a demon-masked patriarch should effect the expulsion of vice and the import of luck is a mystery that has been veiled by the mists of antiquity.

I hear that death by choking on dried soy beans is the chief cause of geriatric mortality in these parts at this time of year. The reason for this is attributed to the fact that after the beans have been liberally tossed in the direction of the demon each member of the family eats as many of them as the years of his mortal existence.

I suppose the moral of the story in these recessionary times might be that if we had all taken a little more care in counting our beans we would not have been confronted by the demon of debt and depression.

Or perhaps the pantomime of hurling beans at demons while chanting that wickedness should be expelled and luck brought in is a crude dramatization of the prodigality of human folly and the absurd and presumptuous vanity of supposing that the mere and oft repeated assertion that something should be is the same as its actually being so.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

And so they are!

Let us cast away this foolish mummery of masks and beans, this idle chatter about demons and luck.

Let us grasp the nettle and go forward in the knowledge that it is not what we say, nor external conditions, evil fortune or good luck, but the quality of our thoughts and actions that make us or mar us.

David Hurley

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Greetings, and a Happy New Year from The Land of the Rising Sun! Or, as they say around here,

This greeting is best said in the early hours of New Years Day after hauling your booze-addled carcass up to the top of Mount Misen on the Holy Island of Miyajima in good time to greet Dawn’s first crack of the year. A few rousing choruses of “BANZAI!” to wake up the monkeys are also customary practice - but please, no fixed bayonets!

New Year’s Day, 2009, Miyajima, Japan

This year, my resolution is to help Japanese students learn how to make better goals and “succeed in English” by introducing Success University to Japan. I will be updating my rather neglected Succeed-in-English.com website and offering students both in Japan and all over the world a nice low-priced package in which they can study “the secrets of success” in “English” using all the materials provided by Success University, plus free online tuition and coaching with the materials by myself, via the website, email and skype.

Students living in the Hiroshima area of Japan will also have an option of personal, face-to-face tuition.

Keep your eyes peeled for further information!

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Have you been working flat out trying to build an Internet based business and seen no sign of growth yet?

Have you thought about quitting in frustration?

Before you do, consider the bamboo groves of the orient, how the trees thereof devote most of their energy to developing their roots. You cannot speed up the process; a bamboo tree needs TIME to establish it’s roots. To the casual observer, nothing seems to be happening, but all the work is going on underground…

Then, in the spring, new shoots emerge and grow at a rate that is faster than any other tree or plant species. The new growth that occurs in each successive spring is larger in diameter than the previous year’s growth until the bamboo has reached maturity. This is due to the increase in the underground system of roots.

So you see, if you are working diligently on your Internet marketing business (or any other project) and seem to be getting nowhere, consider the merits of the bamboo, which first establishes itself underground and hardly grows at all during this period, then enters into a rapid growth cycle and expands from year to year…

This is the method I recommend for putting down roots and accelerating the growth of your Internet marketing business.

David Hurley
http://grasp-the-nettle.com

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