🎉Akemashite Omedetou 🎉 & Joya no Kane/Temple Bell Soundscape (Patreon)

Happy New Year!! 

I hope everyone had a perfectly lovely end of last year and an even better bursting into 2023🎉.

Below is a photo of the temple bell at my favorite local otera, Rinsouin. Link here. I first started visiting here about 25 or so years ago when I took Julyan (toddler) to a nearby pool and saw a monk there with a whole bunch of kids. 

I was new to the town and shyly asked him what temple he was from and could I visit. He said of course and wrote the kanji down for me. He mentioned he often brought the neighborhood kids to the pool in the summer, just in case I was thinking all 20 of those were his kids or something. 😂

Anyway, I'm working on another little video with photos and short clips I took of New Year's Eve (above temple) and New Year's Day (Yaizu beach) here. Unfortunately, the place where the dancers and flag wavers hang out on January 1st was closed for construction (they're really trying to shore things up because: tsunami). But the part of the beach we visited was cool, so I captured the first sunrise of 2023 along with Mount Fuji blushing pink with the first day of the New Year. I'll get that video done this week and post it here. 

But before that I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year and share the binaural sounds of the New Year's Eve temple bell ringing. Joya no Kane /除夜の鐘. Each ring of the bell symbolizes ringing out one of the 108 human sins or desires. Think of it as a purification ritual. 

I find it lovely that when I asked the head abbot years go who counts the tolling of the bell, as anyone who lines up is allowed to ring it once (along with a prayer), and when they get to 108 is the next person in line told to go home? He said no one counts and everyone is allowed to ring the bell. Lovely. 😊🔔This past December 31st, Richard was kind enough to wear the recording contraption while I stood in line and made our wishes and rang the bell. I believe the recording is about seventeen minutes and you can hear the fire crackling and people chatting and of course, the big ol' temple bell a-ringing. 

OH! And at about three minutes in, at exactly midnight, you can hear the fireworks going off in the city below. Soon after the head monk wishes everyone a Happy New Year and it's hard to hear but he tells us all that they have prepared amazake to drink, the first time in three years. He said that he's had so many people say they don't feel they can officially start a new year without the temple's amazake. 

So with this lucky (I'm deeming it so), purification recording, I'm wishing every one of you an outrageously wonderful 2023 with peace and health, good fun and success! 

Thank you for sticking with me, supporting the show, and being all around awesome. I really hope to get more interesting and unique content to you in the coming year. 

XOXO,

t

Below is the the entrance to ringing the bell. There's a ladder in there you climb. Now they have it lit up but for many years the only light they had was a plastic goose lamp on an extinction cord. That was fun, too.