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Japan: A Thoughtful Travelogue by Cecilia Brainard in Positively Filipino

August 16, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

 

Please vis­it this link to read my arti­cle, “Japan: A Thought­ful Trav­el­ogue”, pub­lished by Pos­i­tive­ly Fil­ipino.  I’m past­ing the first part of the article.

“My Fil­ipino friends have raved about their trips to Japan. Avail­ing of Philip­pine Air­lines’ or Cebu Pacific’s dis­count­ed fares, they use Osa­ka as their base from which to vis­it oth­er parts of the coun­try. Even though they assured me that Japan is tourist-friend­ly, I was nev­er tempt­ed to vis­it it until my hus­band declared he want­ed to go there. Recent­ly he booked a nine-day tour start­ing in Osa­ka, on to Koy­asan, Hiroshi­ma, Kyoto, Hakone, and end­ing in Tokyo.

I went, some­what reluc­tant­ly. My par­ents had been in the guer­ril­la move­ment in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II and had told me count­less sto­ries of Japan­ese atroc­i­ties and the suf­fer­ings of the Fil­ipinos dur­ing that war. In fact, my first nov­el, When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept, inte­grates many of my par­ents’ sto­ries of sur­vival in Mindanao.

I was there­fore a biased observ­er in Japan. I did try to keep an open mind, and I did see what my friends saw in Japan, its beau­ty for instance.

Japan Is Beautiful

The moun­tain­top place of Koy­asan with its ancient cedar groves and Bud­dhist tem­ples felt oth­er-world­ly and mys­ti­cal. Koy­asan, a UNESCO site, pre­serves Shin­gon Bud­dhism, a sect began in 805 by Kobo Daishi. The town only has Bud­dhist tem­ples for hous­ing, and we stayed at Ekoin Tem­ple, where we slept on tata­mi mats, ate veg­an food pre­pared by the monks, and wit­nessed their med­i­ta­tion, chant­i­ng, and a morn­ing prayer rit­u­al that involved burn­ing wood­en sticks with peti­tions. We had a won­der­ful walk through the Okunoin ceme­tery with graves and mau­soleums of shoguns and emper­ors. This ancient ceme­tery also has many small stone stat­ues tucked here and there, near impos­ing grave mark­ers and enor­mous cedar tree roots. The fig­ures have knit­ted head cov­er­ings and red aprons; these small Bud­dha fig­ures rep­re­sent dead babies and indi­cate that infant mor­tal­i­ty was high and that fam­i­lies griev­ed for their dead babies …

(Con­tin­ue read­ing by click­ing on this link:

http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/japan-a-thoughtful-travelogue?fbclid=IwAR1bQkCWnYgeO3iEFirgPoT0U229C9vutWRkakpedR3DXiMPUUyUh_5KNUo

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Welcome!

I am a daugh­ter of the Philip­pines and an adopt­ed daugh­ter of Amer­i­ca. I have also trav­eled to many places so I am also a daugh­ter of the Earth. My expe­ri­ences have found their way into my sto­ries, which try to depict char­ac­ters caught in impor­tant moments in their lives, sit­u­a­tions that force them to act, make deci­sions, change. I try to see the world from my own point of view, not the dom­i­nant West­ern one, thus my inter­est in his­to­ry, cul­ture, and set­ting. But my char­ac­ters car­ry my sto­ries; they are the most impor­tant in my sto­ry-telling. I have to dive deep into them to under­stand their human­i­ty – their good­ness as well as their bad­ness, their beau­ty as well as their ugli­ness. Just like us. Just like each of us. I need to know where they came from, where they are now, so I under­stand where they are going. Just like us.

Please read my full biog­ra­phy here

 

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