Kyoto: Departure

Anagnorisis (n.): a moment of critical discovery. (Ancient Greek)

So! I know you were all dying to find out, yes--I did make it into a proper Japanese conservation studio in the end! Shortly before I left Kyoto I had the distinct pleasure of visiting Oka Bokkodo, one of the most prestigious conservation studios in the city. There I was fortunate enough to meet with conservators and generally synthesize what I learned during my various escapades in Japan. Are you ready for a geekfest? Here we go!

Some context: since the end of Word War II, Japan's national government has selected objects of cultural value and titled them “Important Cultural Properties.” Each year National Treasures are chosen from these objects, and they are put on the fast-track for conservation, restoration, and exhibition within Japan. The studios that work on these objects, therefore, have to be incredibly well-qualified; there are only twelve in the country that are allowed to work on National Treasures, and only one that has existed since the inception of the National Treasures program: Oka Bokkodo.

Since the government controls which pieces are worked on and by whom, there is often miscommunication and overlap among conservators working on National Treasures; for instance, the studio working on the wall paintings of a National Treasure building will be different from the studio working on the walls themselves, making for overcomplicated treatments and inefficient distribution of manpower. Likewise there are rules and restrictions placed on conservation studios and how much restoration they can actually do on damaged artworks—inpainting, the post-facto restoration of lost pigment by a conservator and a particularly controversial facet of paintings restoration, has been banned in all conservation studios treating National Treasures because of the potential for inaccurate restoration and the resulting outrage from academics and the public.

These regulations become especially complicated where sacred objects are concerned; sometimes the damaged part of an object can impact its sacredness or worship potential, rendering it corrupted or even useless within a sacred context. For instance, there have been several cases of ancient sacred mandalas with pigment loss that affect their utility in meditation practices. However, when monks bring these works to be restored by the conservation workshops they are turned away—the inpainting that would restore the mandalas to their original sacredness is forbidden by the regulations that the government has imposed. Likewise there have been statues of deities that have lost their eyes or body parts due to material deterioration over time, but these pieces must be forever taken out of commission because their restoration goes against government policy.

I found this conundrum particularly fascinating because I have always been in the pro-conservation camp rather than pro-restoration, believing that stabilization was most important and that restoration would be unfaithful to the history of an object—a similar stance to that of the Japanese government. However, it seems that this stance must be reevaluated case by case for sacred objects, because the difference between conservation and restoration is the difference between death and life for many sacred objects. There is a record of a statue in Kyoto prefecture that, through the materials analysis of conservators, was found to have a head that did not match the rest of its body. The academic community flew into an uproar, and the head was removed and swapped out with a replacement to passify the malcontents. The result was the destruction of the central worship figure for a congregation of thousands, effectively ruining hundreds of years of tradition and terminating a massive source of traffic and income for the temple—but at least the statue was right, wasn't it?

Which brings me to a bit of reflection. I am continually surprised by how broad the reach of this project has turned out to be; it's about art and religion, sure, but it's also about chemistry, anthropology, and economics, and politics. It seems a bit obvious, if I step back and look at the big picture; conservation is essentially the process of preserving culture, carrying on ideas and values in their material form. How could that process not cast a wide net? And religion is so often a point of cultural contention that I don't know how I could think its material manifestation to be without broader consequence. And who knows what I'll find in the next six months? It seems that everywhere I go, I explain my project and the response is “Oh, you've come to the right place—we really need that here.”

I had expected to feel exhausted at this point in the year, having traveled alone for six months and anticipating six more. And I do--I'm tired, and I miss my home and my family, but I also feel inspired and invigorated by the thought of what's still to come. So here's to the next six months--the pitfalls and victories, the long nights in airports and early mornings on mountaintops. I'm so glad to have you along for the ride!

Kyoto: December

Vellichor (n.): the strange wistfulness of a used bookstore, filled with the unknowable passage of time. (English, obsolete)

I'm writing from my flat in Phibsborough, Dublin. Kyoto and I parted ways just before Christmas and I spent the holidays here in Ireland. No snow, but rather a lot of rain--we got the full force of Storm Frank (the most ominous storm name ever) and there was glorious hail and gale-force winds and oodles of water flying sideways. Happy new year, by the way! The first of the year marked the first day of the second half of my Watson, which is more than a little staggering to contemplate.

But, we have some catching up to do! December was another busy month (although now that I think about it, all of my months have been busy) during which I did a bunch of travelling (to Nara, and Tokyo!!) and applied to NYU, and said goodbye to what might now be my favorite city in the world. I'll do my Japan wrap-up in two parts, with this being my review of my travels and the second a reflection on what I learned about conservation in Japan, and my thoughts about moving forward. So, without further ado--

Nara is only about an hour from Kyoto by local train, and is a city best known for its deer. Yes, you read that correctly--deer! Nara is home to a massive, open-air deer park; it's said that the deer are sacred, messengers of local gods, so the animals roam free and are treated with the utmost respect. They're everywhere, though it's surprisingly hard to get a good selfie--I lost a perfectly good map to a deer with the munchies attempting it--but the deer are an excellent cure for frowns. Unless you're fond of maps.

Once one progresses past the incredibly distracting deer, there are several gorgeous and impressive temples, shrines and museums to visit inside the park. I went first to Kofuku-ji, a temple known for its two pagodas and scenic vistas on the outer edge of Nara Park. As it would so happen, I couldn't get in to visit the main temple hall--it's being restored. Ah, sweet irony! I guess I'll have to come back in 2018. But I could get to the National Treasure Museum, which is always a good sign. (This project has done nothing to curb my obsession with treasure. Am I conservator or pirate? That's the real question.)

The fascinating thing about Kofuku-ji's museum is that it's set up very much like a temple; silence is to be kept throughout the premises, and an appropriate level of reverence is to be observed. The museum was established by the Japanese government to protect and display cultural objects on the site where they were once revered before they were destroyed due to anti-Buddhist sentiment in 1874. All of the objects on display are sacred, and the more prominent devotional statues have altars and saisen-bako in front of them. I was one in a long line of people waiting to pray and make offerings in front of a statue of a Kannon, a many-armed Buddhist deity that takes a place of prominence within the museum. The museum's purpose seems to be to conserve and stabilize the objects, rather than restore them to any former shiny glory, but it works; the air is contemplative and respectful, with signage and docents to help any intrepid academic wandering the halls. It also helps along the museum's didactic focus, showing the evolution of Kofuku-ji as both a place of worship and a place of history. In short, A+, would definitely visit again.

Next on my list was Todai-ji, a massive temple that happens to be the largest wooden building in the world. In all seriousness, there is no photo I took that could convey the sheer enormity of this place--and that's nothing compared to the statues within. Among others, Todai-ji houses the world's largest statue of the Daibutsu (Buddha Vairocana), sitting pretty at 15 meters tall and weighing 500 tonnes. And to top it off, it's been around since its casting in 752 CE. If that doesn't make you flip out I don't know what will.

The temple is a huge tourist attraction, of course, and consequently it felt a bit like barely-controlled chaos inside. There were of course saisen-bako in front of each devotional statue, and an area for contemplation and lighting candles, but there were also plenty of tour groups mulling about, shouting and posing for pictures, and a gift shop. (It's really common for temples and shrines to have a shop of some sort on the premises, to sell charms and the like, but they're never in the main hall, and they sell chachkies just as often.) It was odd, and a bit disconcerting; certainly a different feeling from the National Treasure Museum, which just goes to show that context can have just as big an impact on the sense of an object's sacredness as its physical state.

I made a trip back to Nara later in the week to visit the Nara National Museum because it's closed on Mondays. Side rant--if I could just get rid of Sundays and Mondays, it would greatly streamline my project. Of course I value days spent in my pajamas just like anyone else, but seriously! Sundays are what seem to be a universal day off (in Spain you couldn't even go to the supermarket), and then Mondays are no-museum day. The number of times I have showed up at a museum on a Monday all fired up and ready to go and gone home grumpy is absurd. Although perhaps this has more to do with my learning curve and stubbornness than anything else. Anyway.

The museum is host to an impressive collection of Buddhist art and is well-worth a visit if you're ever in the area. Unlike the National Treasure Museum at Kofuku-ji, the environment is secular and most sacred objects are displayed as historical, archaeological, or ethnographic objects. It's also undergoing renovation in its Buddhist Sculpture Hall (damn!) but it had a temporary exhibition on the Nara matsuri, an annual festival involving almost every religious establishment in the city. Huge parades, portable shrines, and massive rituals all over Nara--just my cup of tea.

Next, I made my way to Tokyo! For those of you foolish enough to think that Tokyo and Kyoto are close to each other (read: me), think again. It took a ten hour overnight bus ride to get to Tokyo, and whether it was the sleep deprivation or the sheer enormity of the city, I was completely overwhelmed. I really do hope I get back to do Tokyo its due diligence, since I spent two days in a city I could have spent two years exploring; even as someone who's spending a year abroad visiting new places, my "must-visit" list seems only to be getting longer.

My first stop was the Tokyo National Museum which was very large and also under renovation (did they hear I was coming??) but super cool to visit because they have an entire exhibition dedicated to museum conservation and the maintenance of the permanent collection. It was especially interesting to hear about preventative conservation aimed at earthquake protection--it's not something we really have to worry about back home, but they do it so well (and on such a huge scale!) at the National Museum.

Then things got political, as I moved on to Meiji-jinja, the shrine best known for its connection to Japan's imperial history. The shrine is dedicated to the deified Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken, and is situated within a massive forest in the heart of Tokyo. It's very beautiful and surprisingly quiet for the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world, and I made a beeline for their Treasure Museum. To my surprise it wasn't the statues and relics I've come to expect from treasure museums on shrine/temple/church/synagogue grounds, but rather a small room filled with the personal effects of the Emperor and his wife. Treasure is really an all-inclusive term, I guess! Although at a shrine dedicated to an Emperor and Empress, it makes perfect sense--like keeping the belongings of a patron saint in a church, for pilgrims to visit. Very neat stuff!

My final destination in Tokyo was Yasukuni-jinja, which is known internationally and shrouded in controversy. It's a beautiful shrine, eerily silent and bare, and houses a museum on the grounds, which naturally I couldn't resist. However this is no ordinary museum, for Yasukuni-jinja houses the enshrined spirits of the Japanese war dead serving from 1867 to 1951, and over a thousand convicted war criminals. I was greeted in the foyer of the museum by a perfectly preserved Model 96 15cm Howitzer from 1936, there enshrined "to comfort the noble souls of the war dead." I knew then I was out of my depth, but that I had to go deeper.

There are a few routes one can take through the museum, and unfortunately I only had time for the shortest tour of an hour. I was led through countless rooms lined with infographics and war memorabilia, essentially a history museum explaining the war from the point of view of the Japanese, which needless to say was a new experience. It was overwhelming, to say the least, and I was not mentally prepared to face all this tension on the grounds of a shrine. As I have since discovered, Yasukuni-jinja is still a very controversial site within Japan and the rest of Asia, and it has been continually criticized for its nationalist sentiments since its creation. But as I wandered through the halls, looking at the endless photographs of the war dead, their personal effects, their last letters home, I felt myself completely unable to form a coherent thought, much less cast judgement.

There are conservators who work on those objects, and maintain the museum's collection--what do they think, as they hold the pocket watch of a dead soldier? What is a conserved machine gun's place in a shrine? And how does a restored bomber comfort the souls of the dead? I hope one day to go back and spend more time on the grounds, to read all the signs on the walls and look at the photograph of every soldier. I'll let you form your own opinions about Yasukuni-jinja; honestly, I'm still processing it. But can I just ask that you visit before making any judgement? There are some things that are just too complicated to feel at a distance.

So, that about wraps up my travels in Japan. I know I ended on a rather heavy note, but I also hope it gets you thinking the way it did for me. Hopefully I'll be back someday, to continue the journey I started rather abruptly in October, and one that will stay in my mind for a long time. As it is, I've got just a bit more Japan left for you in the next entry--some Kyoto-specific conservation nerding out, just for you! Until then!

Kyoto: November

Phalerate (adj.): made beautiful; ornate, ostentatiously adorned or decorated. (English, now obsolete)

November has been a busy month! I really love it here, and it's unbelievable to think that I've already been away for five months. Kyoto in the fall is magnificent, and I've spent a great deal of time walking through the city and visiting surrounding areas to make the best of the beautiful weather. Here are some highlights, to give you an idea of what I've been up to:

Arashiyama. Arashiyama is a little district to the west of Kyoto, and extremely popular with tourists, couples, and school groups. It's best known for the enormous scenic bamboo forest (10/10, would definitely recommend) and its scenic river vistas, but I went for the Urushi Lacquer Festival at Kokuzo Hourin-ji temple. The temple is on top of a hill which is surprisingly hard to find (though to be fair I went without a map like a fool,) and hosts the festival that is a yearly event for lacquer artists in the area to make offerings and pray for success in the coming year. It started with a Noh performance inside the temple followed by ceremonies throughout the day--it was such a treat to visit. I spent the rest of the day wandering through bamboo groves and visiting temples like Tenryū-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple with gorgeous gardens.

Sekizanzen-in Temple. I made my way to northern Kyoto for the Juzu Buddhist Rosary Ceremony. It's the first festival I went to where I was clearly the only Western tourist in attendance. The festival was enormous, and it served as a memorial service for old juzu (Buddhist rosaries.) It was absolutely packed with people who came to have their juzu blessed, as well as vendors and food sellers.

Kiyomizu-dera. This temple was the first that truly reminded me of the dzongs I visited in Bhutan. It is perched on the top of a hill and about a fifteen minute walk from my house, and is an absolutely massive temple complex. There are several temple buildings under construction at Kiyomizu-dera, although the main temple hall is fully operational. I bought omamori (charms or talismans) at the temple office which are one of my favorite genres of sacred objects in Japan. Omamori can be employed for a variety of uses, like protection or good luck--I bought two, one for safe travel and one for academic success--and often take the form of a small, colorful cloth pouch with a piece of paper or wood inside (though they never should be opened, to preserve their power.) There is some debate about the quality of factory-made vs handmade omamori as it relates to their effectiveness, which I find fascinating; over and over during this project I have been encountering the theme of intention and power, and how the process of making an object has a direct impact on its sacredness.

Mt. Kurama. Reportedly the site with one of the highest spiritual energies in Japan, Mt. Kurama is perhaps my favorite place I have visited in Japan. It is a place of intense quiet (and intense walking, but that comes with most mountains) and the further up you go, the deeper the contemplation gets. There are many shrines on the way up, and the air is saturated with energy and cold and quiet. The main temple hall is almost at the top, a temple dedicated to a trinity deity. The summit itself is a cedar grove with exposed roots and a slight wind blowing through the trees; it is believed that this is the founding site of Reiki. I'll definitely be going back again before I leave--it's too special to just go once.

Summit of Fushimi Inari. I decided to revisit Fushimi Inari, the enormous Shinto shrine in southern Kyoto, and make my way to the top of the mountain. The number of times I looked at my map and nearly cried during this hike was astronomical. But the views on the way up were worth it!
(very important side note: there is a Neko Cafe right near Fushimi Inari Station, where you can drink tea and hang out with cats. 100000/10, would definitely recommend)

Uji. Aside from being the green tea capital of Japan, Uji is home to Byōdō-in, a Buddhist temple that has been in operation since 998 CE. It's an enormously popular place to visit being both a Japanese National Treasure and a UNESCO World Heritage Site to boot.  Its most popular feature is the Phoenix Hall, the main temple hall that houses a massive statue of Amida Buddha and a host of flying Bodhisattva carvings. The draw of the site for me, however, was in the on-site Hoshokan Museum, which houses most of the site's treasures and is responsible for their preservation and display (read: drooool.) The museum includes archaeological finds displayed alongside Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, as well as the original bronze phoenixes that give the main hall its name. The conservation efforts on the site are focused on stabilizing the site's treasures while performing technical analysis to study technique and materials, so that the museum can create honest reproductions to put on display in the functioning parts of the temple complex. Their current project is the creation of reproduction doors for Phoenix Hall, a massive undertaking that involves a lot of research into wood and metal. So. Neat.

So! I have about two weeks left in Kyoto, and then I head to Ireland. I'll be sad to leave, but I have a feeling in my gut that I'll be back. Hopefully next time I'll be armed with more Japanese. And Cheetos.

Kyoto: October

Gezelligheid (n.): loosely translated, the "warm and fuzzies"; a feeling of belonging and contentment. (Dutch)

Believe it or not, I've been in Kyoto for just over a month now. It certainly doesn't feel that long to me, although I think I'm still in week-to-week mode from my time in Spain. I'm living in a share house in Higashiyama-ku, a central ward of Kyoto that's in the Eastern, older part of the city. The streets are often tiny and cobblestone, and the shops are filled with kimonos and pottery and about five thousand different types of green-tea (matcha) flavored treats. Going to the supermarket is much more of an adventure here than it was in Spain, with the added excitement that I have literally zero idea what I'm buying. I go a lot by pictures and educated guessing, though I have found a couple of essentials in my neighborhood super (namely Super Chunky Skippy peanut butter and Frosted Flakes) that I recognize from home. Omnipresent convenience stores (called konbini) are also excellent providers of a variety of Japanese foods and cup noodles, and I have become a huge fan of 7-Eleven chocolate eclairs.

I really love this city, and I'm oddly glad that I had to switch my plans and come to Kyoto instead of Istanbul. Fall is absolutely gorgeous here, although a good deal warmer than I'm used to my Falls being--during my first weeks here it got up into the 80s pretty regularly. Now the leaves are finally changing and the mornings are crisp, and there are several festivals centered around the changing of the seasons that I'm looking forward to. I have a bicycle that I use to get around the city (riding along the river that runs through the center of Kyoto is my personal favorite route) and it's the perfect city for living as a pedestrian, which suits me just fine.

Kyoto feels so completely different from Spain, and yet I'm encountering a lot of similar themes here that had been established in the first three months of my project. For instance, there is the involvement of the government in the conservation of religious objects and spaces. In Japan, most of the significant religious objects that would be in need of conservation are considered National Treasures (not the Nic Cage kind) and are therefore under the protection of the government. Only a few conservation workshops in the country are allowed to treat them, and these workshops are very protective of their work. It's incredibly hard to get in to see their projects, especially if you don't speak Japanese (TL;DR, I'm working on it).

I've spent most of my time in Shinto shrines, although I have visited many Buddhist temples and even a couple Christian churches. Only this past Sunday I went to the Ohitaki Fire Festival at Fushimi Inari shrine, which was incredible and more than a little overwhelming. It was pouring rain that day, and the shrine (which is the most popular tourist attraction in Kyoto) was packed with tourists and worshipers alike. It is important to note that Japan is an umbrella culture--not a raincoat culture--so on rainy days navigating through crowds becomes about eighty times more dangerous and a thousand times more awkward as you try not to poke out anyone's eye while you maneuver with a three-foot radius... So. The Ohitaki Fire Festival consists of an entire day's worth of ceremonies, rituals, and dances, which I saw some of (before my near-beheading by a pink umbrella). A major part of the ceremonies is the burning of tens of thousands of wooden prayer sticks offered by worshipers (I put one in!) and dance offerings for the shrine deity. It was magnificent, if a bit wet.

It seems that most of the physically interactive sacred objects in a Shinto shrine are kept very well maintained, like the pulls for suzu (ritual bells,) and saisen-bako (offerings boxes,) which are objects that are actually touched during shrine visits and would be expected to show the wear and tear of thousands of visits. Even the grounds of the shrines are immaculate, although many long-term offerings, like torii (the fantastic red gates that offerings to the temple) are left to nature, and some show the weathering more than others. There are also statues where kami are invited to reside, but these are often kept out of sight within the inner parts of the temple. They are usually better preserved than outdoor statues, though they are exposed to the damage that indoor worship can impose, like soot buildup from candle smoke. There are also many statues that are preserved on display in museums, and it's not uncommon for visitors to the museum to pray inside--something that almost certainly would not happen in Spain.

So! The conservation culture here is completely new, and exciting to navigate. It's a bit more work in that I also spend a lot more time at the library researching religion here than I did in Spain. I definitely took my background knowledge of Christianity for granted when I was in Spain and in Bulgaria, since I already had a grasp of iconography and worship practices. Here I have to do more legwork, but it's giving me much more time to reflect on what I study. I'm finding all sorts of new sources for my project, like Noh theater, which has an entire sub-genre which portrays deities. It is believed that when the actor puts on the mask of a kami, his words are transformed into the words of the god and the god may spread its divinity through the performance.

New avenues for my project continue to surface and I'm very excited to pursue them; as stressful as my detour from Turkey was, I feel like it was a necessary change that liberated me to follow this project where it leads me. As far as my time in Japan goes, I'll be taking some shorter trips to nearby towns and cities in the coming weeks. The main reason I chose Kyoto as a home base is because the city and surrounding prefecture have the one of the highest concentrations of sacred sites and objects in the country. In the coming weeks I'll be heading to Uji, Nara, Hiroshima, and maybe even Tokyo. In any case--I'll keep following my nose and drinking lots of matcha, and I'll try not to eat my weight in sushi. Until next time!

Santiago de Compostela

物の哀れ (mono no aware) (n.): literally "the pathos of things"; the bittersweet awareness of life's passing beauty. (Japanese)

Even though I really didn't walk the Camino, I still felt a connection with the peregrinos that did. I paid my dues, following the iconic yellow arrows and seashells across northern Spain, hitting almost every cathedral on my modified bus-Camino route and finishing with an intense sense of accomplishment in Santiago de Compostela. SDC's weather is a bit of a downer, as it sees the same amount of sun as Seattle and it's high is usually in the upper teens (Celsius, people. I'm trying to fit in) so my arrival wasn't quite the sun-drenched march of victory that I had anticipated but rather a cold and wet treck to an apartment on the top of a steep hill. These little presents from the universe keep me humble.

The Cathedral of Santiago is fantastic, although it was a rather different experience than the quiet communion with space that I have come to love. Rather, as the end of the Camino, Santiago Cathedral is a mess of ponchos and hiking backpacks, filled to the brim with exhausted but exhilarated pilgrims babbling in every language you can imagine and snapping photo after photo with omnipresent selfie-sticks. I visited the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela first as a tourist--I made the obligatory circuit through the ambulatory, visiting all the chapels and oohing at the impressive baroque main altar with everyone else. The Cathedral there is enormously popular, as it marks the end of the Camino de Santiago, and it is filled with elated pilgrims and all their hiking gear. It gets kind of loud in the church (the crowds are hushed periodically by guards patrolling around the perimeter) but when I visited the hum made the church feel alive and exciting.

The second time I came, however, was on completely different terms and the experience was transformed. I had received word from home that my youngest sister would be undergoing surgery , and I wanted to visit the chapel of the Sacred Sacrament to meditate and pray for her safety and a speedy recovery (she's recovering well!) As I pushed my way through the walking sticks and ponchos, the hum of the crowd was no longer exciting. It was disconcerting. The camera flashes capturing the monstrance I knelt before were distracting--couldn’t the visitors see that I was engaging with the Sacrament? I felt like I was in a goldfish bowl, and that my interaction with the Sacrament and my time of quiet prayer was being interfered with. I had the chance to see both sides of the interaction with sacred objects that exists in places of worship, and it was disconcerting and more than a little unsettling, to say the least.

Admittedly, the barely controlled chaos of Santiago de Compostela’s Cathedral is something of an exception. In most places of worship, tourists and visitors are not even allowed inside the building during mass.As my flatmate pointed out, there are more churches in Santiago than people, so I had no shortage of places to visit in the endless drizzle. We even got two days of glorious sunshine, and I followed the sounds of singing and bagpipes to a massive circle of newly-arrived pilgrims dancing in the plaza next to the cathedral. Not too shabby at all.

Perhaps my own greatest sense of achievement derived from the day I visited Muxia, the second westernmost point on Spain's Costa de Muerte. I visited the Church of La Virgen de La Barca and reached the sea, finally collecting my own seashells to commemorate my pilgrimage to the ocean. Come to think of it, those shells are some of the most sacred things I own. I wonder if they'll ever make it into a museum someday.

Lugo

Fernweh (n.): a feeling of longing or homesickness for a place one has never been to. (German)

I'm all settled in Kyoto and still rather behind on posts, so to continue my retrospective journey:

Lugo is a bit of a forgotten stop on the Camino de Santiago. To be fair, I went in without a plan and winged it, which isn't really my strong point. I'm getting better at capitalizing on following my nose, but my spontaneity turn-on-a-dime factor is a bit low. Lugo has the immediate advantage of being a walled city, however, which makes up for an infinite number of sins. The Roman wall around Lugo is still very intact, and the intrepid tourist or Classics nerd (c'est moi) can make quite a day (or several) of it. I did get quite the sunburn, but (spoiler alert) IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT. I had the ability to look within the old city and pick out places to visit from the skyline, a luxury that tiny winding streets and tightly clustered city centers have prevented in most of the Spanish cities I've visited.

Some Lugo highlights: sitting for a few hours in the main plaza with all the vecinos, until an old man came up to me and confronted me--surely I couldn't be from Lugo, girls as pretty as I only live in Valencia. Ahahaha *runs away*

Lugo Cathedral! Gorgeous! It's incredibly well maintained, although I think a lot of this is due to the fact that there are services held in almost every chapel and the nave at least once a day if not more frequently. It's not as big a tourist magnet as some of the other cathedrals on the Camino de Santiago, but this might be because tourist visits are not allowed when mass is underway, so tourists have maybe fifteen minutes a day in which to visit and tour. And, no gift shop.

Like most cathedrals and churches I've visited, there is a coffer next to the biggest entrance for visitors and worshippers to contribute to the cathedral's maintenance. I tried talking to the men who swooped in with brooms and polish in between services to clean the main altar, but they were quite short with me and refused to talk. In any case, Lugo Cathedral seems to be a well-visited (at least by Lugonians? Lugo-ites?) place of worship, although its objects have been removed as the cathedral has been modernized and replaced with modern pieces.

Which led me to my next major stop: the Museo Provincial de Lugo. Since Lugo has a very obvious and well-preserved connection to its Roman past surrounding its center, archaeology and ethnology are visibly and proudly preserved within the city limits. All Lugo's historical objects are condensed into this historical museum (which has an incredible collection of Roman mosaics, and I highly recommend a visit if you're ever in the area) and it makes for a rather mixed collection but endlessly entertaining visit. Interestingly enough, Lugo's museum keeps its religious artifacts (like monstrances, crucifixes, relics and altar pieces) seperate from the rest of the collection. In almost every other museum I have visited, there have been very concerted efforts to treat sacred art as unremarkable and only significant within its art historical boundaries.

The Museo Provincial, however, has a designated "Sala de Arte Sacro" which is the location in the museum where capital-s capital-a Sacred Art has its home. There is other art within the museum's collection that has sacred iconography, but I believe that this Sacred Art label is important (both in its inclusion and exclusion,) since it shows that the Museo has a fundemental understanding of what is and isn't sacred, plus a desire to hold the sacred seperate and make it distinct. Why the "Pieta" upstairs was deemed "Moderno" and not "Sacro" is another question. If I had control of the museum's collection, where would I put it? And what implication do those distinctions have for the objects themselves? Is there a gray-area term that can serve art-historical purposes and still preserve original sacred connotations? Maybe I need to invent one.

A Change of Plans

Bricoleur (n.): a person who builds from whatever is available, scrambling to gather the pieces as it all comes together. (French, English)

Hello hello! I know that there are some posts on Spain that are overdue, but I need to get this short post out first.

As most of you know, I designed my project to be spent in quarters; a year divided between Spain, Turkey, Japan and India. I spent three fantastic months traveling in Spain, and I then headed to Bulgaria (where I'm writing from) for a week as I prepared to head to Turkey. I planned and prepped and had housing and contacts all lined up, my flight to Istanbul was booked--

And now Turkey's not happening.

Don't panic! I promise, I did that already. And I have a plan. But to explain: one of the conditions of the Watson Fellowship is that Fellows are not permitted to travel in countries that have Travel Warnings issued by the U.S. Department of State. And, as I discovered last Wednesday, Turkey is on the list. Until the Travel Warning is lifted, I'm not permitted to visit Turkey and I have to restructure my year accordingly.

So, tomorrow I fly to Japan. This is all rather sudden, and I'm still a bit tense. However, I'm incredibly thankful to have the resources to turn on a dime and head off in a completely new direction, and I'm very excited to have Japan lined up. As of today the plan is to live in Kyoto for the next three months, and I can't wait to dig in!

This also means that I'll be returning to research and revisiting my previously rock-solid country list, just in case Turkey retains its Travel Warning. My plans for my travel are a bit more written in the sand from here on out than I had hoped for, but I'm told that's all part and parcel of the Watson deal. Who knows, maybe this will be a blessing in disguise. Fingers crossed! Next time I write, I'll be in Kyoto.