Paradoxal

...I've actually done this quite a few times, though not always at a bus stop. Never had it devolve into fights either, but it doesn't always change opinions for anyone involved, so it's kinda neutral. Nonetheless, I do come away with at least a slightly better understanding of the other party, so it's worth it for me!

Very respectable! My own Sifu followed a similar path, though his started with Shorinjiryu Kenyukai, then Tao Chuan Po, then Wing Chun. He still teaches all three of them, though WC has become his main due to the insistence of the GM of our lineage. I find myself very fortunate to be his student.

So sorry for the late reply! Life has been a bit too busy for me to give a well thought-out reply, so I waited a bit! Very true! Also, it's a huge honor to be the example dummy, as that usually means the teacher trusts you. At Sifu's dojo, I remember complaining when I was used for it, but a few years in someone gracefully explained to me how valuable the experience is. Because I've been hit with all these different meridian shots, I not only know exactly where they are and what they do, but also how to mitigate damage after the fact. The same can be said for dim mak and fajin, as if I hadn't been hit with them so many times in a controlled situation, I doubt I'd be able to get where I am now! A very helpful point and explanation overall! Coming from TWC, where the basic idea is NOT to shift balance to one leg or the over where we can help it (it still happens during steps, kicks, strikes, etc though!), this is a huge difference between the basic philosophy of arts. Nonetheless, the concept can and certainly will apply across arts, and drives home the importance of the one-legged stance as you mentioned. This whipping of the limbs using the hips is something that I was taught as the basics of Goju ryu, but hadn't seen elsewhere before. That said, I've only done it with straight shots, not round. Thanks to your post, I've started experimenting with adding it to my round kicks as well! To clarify, by 'inside reverse roundhouse kick', are we talking a hook kick with the front leg? A roundhouse done with the back leg to an inside target? What exactly is this referring to? Additionally, in TWC, we also hugely prioritize balance, but we do it through standing on medicine balls rather than logs. We even do some of our forms while standing on medicine balls. I imagine this use of medicine ball as opposed to log is a product of our environment, however! Basic. Wing chun. Stance. I love seeing this stuff explained, and I agree with every word you said on this! It was done that way because it worked well in the situations folks found themselves in! While there are plenty of other perfectly valid and usable positions to hold the hands in, having both in front and usable just gives so much of an advantage that it's a waste not to do it at longer ranges. Definitely! (As a side note, Jesse Enkamp is a great ambassador of martial arts! Love his content!) I would actually go much further than Kevin Lee did in this though. I was taught that every move in a form has at least 24 different applications, and they do not have to be 1-to-1 compared to the form. Having studied in Okinawa, particularly under some high level folks, I would 100% argue that applications of the kata are not lost, but rather, so numberous and flexible that it's pointless to try to memorize em. Ya gotta understand how they're used and the nuances, then the whole thing opens up for you. Likewise, as he and I hail from different lineages, I'd like to point out that, at least in the lineage I'm from, we DO train for all ranges of fights, not specifically short range, and we DO learn to back up as well, in the right situation (lol). Also, in the same vein, contrary to popular opinion, we DO train in all kicks (front, side, round, hook, back, axe, and jumping/spinning variations too), but most of these are hidden in forms and need to be pointed out if the student is not observant enough. The reason I was taught for this, and am tempted to believe because of what I see other lineages do, is that supposedly ours is the original and the others are a modified version, that was originally taught to an outsider who was caught spying during practice to ensure he couldn't actually use whatever he saw. The modifications included removal of major footwork (swivel step replaces circle step in modified), removal of much flexible handwork (lots of circular moves are removed), and a neutering of the energetic aspects (which is why modified versions often incorporate some outside form of the yijin jing to compensate). Now, this is *fiercely* political and not a thing that any one side can decisively prove (imagine being told something you trained your whole life in was modified to suck, cause your originator tried to steal it) and I have seen folks from modified that are plenty scary. ...but I digress. As for the single-legged stance, I will start including it more in my own training! I've noticed my footwork is my weakest part and have been doing training to fix it for the last few years, so I think this'll be very useful!

Just give it a try! I've been doing rooting practice through basic stances (neutral, horse, cat, and sided stances) while on the train in Tokyo, and while it does look a bit weird, noone gives me trouble for it. It's been doing wonders for my practice too, as I've been averaging about 2 hours a day on the train lately.

I was just waiting for you to continue! Please, do go on!

...well, considering I had a vision of Kannon when I was there last, that particular ship has likely sailed. I'm rather more interested in the properties of the area, as I'm pretty sure it isn't just a gut feeling for me. Rather, it seems that most people are just not sensitive enough to notice, at least, if the story about something there not being for human eyes is true. If an area has that sort of "Don't record me" vibe to it, what could cause it? Why? I want to hear more experienced opinions on this from a Buddhist perspective, as I am not well versed enough to analyze this on my own.

This might seem a bit odd, but I've had some experiences at Sensoji that I wanted some more experienced (or perhaps, well-read) opinions on. I've been to it twice (I stayed there in 2019 for a week, and only visited it again today), but every time I'm near the temple complex, I get this feeling that taking pictures of it is profane. Again, this is sort of hard to explain clearly, but it feels like the area itself is asking me not to take pictures. According to the signs at the temple proper, a certain monk in the past decided that Kannon was not for human eyes to see and locked the statue up inside the temple, away from people. I wonder if this might be related? Either way, what baffles me is that it seems like noone else senses this, as tourists come and take pictures of literally everything there. Additionally, the grounds themselves are exceptionally charged with energy that feels *very* holy, divine, or what have you. Again, according to signs at the temple, a bone fragment of Buddha is enshrined at the top of the five story pagoda there, so I wonder if that might be the reason? Any ideas what might be going on? Any canonical explanations that I'm unaware of?

Respectfully, I have a bit of a differing opinion here, though as to who's "right" (or if it really matters lol) I cannot say. From what I've seen, meditation can be rather dangerous for the psyche and has quite a few common pitfalls; a teacher can help avoid those pitfalls and avert damage. Without a teacher, you'd end up having to struggle through on your own, which is definitely harder for very little benefit. Therefore, I'd argue that rather than it being smug, which it very well might be, the importance of the argument is safety first. I certainly think that I would have had a much easier time of it if I had a meditation teacher, though that's in hindsight!

Unfortunately, I don't! All of this was explained to me in Japanese, but my Japanese is still somewhat weak, so there are parts I missed. I can, however, offer a video or two I took of Eisa recently: Thank you for this correction! It's been a bit since I did my studies, so I must have mis-remembered! "No one" is a strong way to say it. I know for a fact that I'm busting my ass constantly to learn and preserve as many of these smaller traditions as I can, though I am only one person so there's only so much I can do. I'm sure there must be others like me out there though, who are motivated and willing to put in the work; it's just a matter of when fate brings them your way. Old knowledge, old ways, these always have exceptional value in the right hands, but many "new" people fail to see that value. That just seems to be how the world works, at least, from what I've seen. That, precisely, is what I'm working to develop on my own. For example, Wing Chun has many magical elements to it that aren't taught by the masters I've learned from, though they are definitely there and can definitely be developed further. I see these present in Motobu Udundi, as well as the more common forms passed down in karate lineages, but as most people practicing lack the awareness of the magical side of things, they never delve into it. That said, if someone were trying to advertise that they were *teaching* a magic/martial art system, I'd prolly look at it with skepticism too. These 'magical martial arts' seem too good to be true, after all. Even if I spend my whole life on developing one, I'm personally not sure if I'd teach it publicly *because* of the way it looks to outsiders or the uninitiated. Despite this, however, I still think there's a *lot* of value in preserving this sort of information, so I keep digital notes and will probably put em out to the internet if I have time before I die. That way, if someone goes searching however many years into the future, they'll at least have a reference point rather than having to start from scratch. Unfortunately, times change and information fragments and gets lost, but as long as we pass on what we can, it'll stay around that much longer and have a chance to be completed again later. That Motobu is a different Motobu. Motobu ryu, founded by Motobu Choki, is a form of karate which is *not* based on the royal arts. Saru no Motobu, or Motobu the Monkey, was third-in-line and was thus *not* taught the family martial arts (though he did absorb some from exposure, of course). He learned karate from outside the Motobu family and polished it in street fights to an extraordinarily high level. The bout with Gichin Funakoshi was fought by Motobu Choki using Motobu Ryu, not Motobu Udundi. Sorry for the long wait for the reply, I just couldn't get YouTube uploads to work for some reason!

Again, my disclaimer on YouTube videos on Udundi! That said, yeah, almost all of Okinawa's traditional dances with any history behind them have martial uses. It was explained to me that this comes directly from one of the kings, who wished his people were able to defend themselves despite Satsuma domination. As a solution, he used his knowledge of martial arts (Motobu Udundi is the style of the royal family) to create 'dances' used both in daily life and to honor ancestors, which could then be quickly re-made into war arts if needed. Eisa, another traditional dance, also teaches sword, shield, and spear fighting specialized for uneven terrain if you know where to look. Really cool stuff in my opinion! One of my seniors actually did something similar to this in the cage. We have very basic drills that everyone starts with in our dojo (pak sao, step to the blind side, rolling punch, as an example), that are really used to get people used to the ideals we strive for rather than as a static response to combat, which is NOT static. He went through everyone in the class, having full contact bouts (1 and a half minute rounds, 3 rounds. If an opponent can't fight anymore, they lose) without a break in between, beating us all with these simple drills. Usually it ended in TKOs. Had former wrestlers, an active bouncer, and a few others mixed in too! Really impressive stuff in my opinion. He got me with a single shot to the solar plexus, after which I couldn't get any power cause it shut off my breathing. Can't praise him enough for that! It was an Okinawan, Gichin Funakoshi who did that. He purposely removed all the dangerous or complex movements from the original forms for that purpose (he stated this himself in his memoir, "My Karate-Do"), which did definitely neuter the art for a lot of people. As a martial artist, I definitely don't agree with it. However, and very importantly, this action singlehandedly brought karate from being a small, local art, to being something practiced worldwide. For all of our lamenting dying arts, he did a damn good job at saving his! Plus, even without the maiming moves, it does retain some spiritual value to practice, and the sportified version even works to sharpen some martial skills, if used in conjunction with traditional training. It definitely cut the path that normal karateka can travel short, but it got that many more people to get at least some benefit from it, and they can always dig deeper to uncover more. All in all, very double edged sword. My two cents: Take videos of you doing all the forms while you still can! Multiple angles, multiple takes, and record the names at least! That can save at least the skeleton of the system, which if passed into the right hands, can be rebuilt. We're lucky we have this sort of technology now, so we gotta use it before this stuff is completely lost! Ya don't have to release em publicly, but at least have it so that records remain somewhere!

My Sifu always forced us to master one 'classic technique' before moving onto the next. Some people thought that 'mastering' it meant simply looking pretty while doing it on a cooperative opponent, but what he wanted (and would not move you on until you managed) was for you to be able to use that specific sequence of movements in a live fight against an unwilling opponent at your will. Coming from that kind of environment, it baffles me to see how certain schools train nowadays, but I suppose they get out of it what they put in. In other news, since my last post, I made it back to Okinawa for a week! I got to learn the basics of a sai form from Motobu Udundi, as well as talked with my sensei for a bit longer. Apparently, I was one of three people in the entirety of Okinawa who learned that aforementioned naginata/bo form! The other two were my sensei and his elder. It was really worrying to hear that, though, as it means the art is that close to dying. I also got to attend a seminar with Hokama Tetsuhiro-sensei of Goju ryu, which was quite fun!

Within the last two thousand years, the West has repeatedly proven itself to be 'self-focused,' so I would argue that this is nothing new. However, what is new is the visibility and influence of the self-centered western European culture on the rest of the world. While colonialism and empire have been a thing for many centuries, even in the East, with the shortening of distances via improved technology (20 hour flight across the world now, which would have been a month-long journey even a century ago) and the development of communications technology, that self-centeredness is now on full display. There is also a trend of nations following American example recently, as can be seen by the spread of fashion and politics, to name only two examples. This is certainly not benign, as American 'ideals' are selfish to the extreme; the very nature of pushing individual 'freedom' to its limits is the destruction of the group. I would argue that when it comes to capitalism, it doesn't have to be self-centered, but American capitalism is; thus, because of America's current influence on world trends, capitalism becomes self-centered in its implementation. Of course, there are other factors at play here too (as Globalization is a huge field of study for a reason!), but if you examine the recent trends, I would say that a lot of it is American export.

I am a relatively young man, as I've not yet hit thirty, so I tend to think about what I may have to do in the future and prepare for it. I don't want to ever have to go to war, to kill other humans, but when I look at the current trend, I realize I may be dragged into it no matter what I do. Thus, I prepare, in the hopes that it may save my life and the lives of those around me. This preparation comes in the form of extremely serious martial arts practice, personal study of modern medical knowledge, and most importantly, general self-betterment; it's incredible how helpful knowing how to keep calm and talk through a situation can be, but so many people ignore cultivating this. In my (subjective) view, my martial practice has saved my life from a particularly bad car crash, which I managed to walk away from with only serious spinal injuries. My medical studies, while I am not a doctor, have saved my life recently when I managed to cut an artery in a kitchen accident; because I had practiced wrapping bandages and had them on hand, I managed to stall the bleeding to get to an ER (though, I still lost about half a liter of blood in less than a minute). Most importantly, the social skills I've cultivated (and still work on every day) have allowed me to get jobs, have enabled relationships that let me live my life and help me help others. While this may not sound like much, to me, these simple social skills are what needs to be cultivated to avert conflict.

As a non-Christian, I would love to agree with this requirement; if even *half* of proclaimed Christians attempted to follow his example, our world would be a wonderful place! Unfortunately, at least within the American versions of Christianity, I see many people systematically following the exact inverse of everything Jesus stood for. I'd really like to hear other opinions on why it has developed this way over history; why do you think this has happened?

Ahaha yeah... I wrote it as part of a class on academic Japanese writing, but since the library there just had so many really cool books on karate and the local martial arts/history, I couldn't help including it as a topic. Google translate is apparently decently accurate for the meanings, though I won't give it 100%. Could just be "Martial Arts History" instead to be inclusive? On the rainy day, I totally get that; I'm so active right now because I managed to sever the nerve for my right thumb and can't really practice or write anything substantial, so this is a fun way to pass the time while I wait for the cast to come off. I too, have this habit; it caused my professors no end of chagrin, as the noise was apparently very distracting and I often did it unconsciously. 100% agreed; that's why I threw everything I could into learning it while I was there. Wing Chun and Goju Ryu won't be forgotten at this point, but Motobu Udundi might. In my eyes, it's a massive cultural treasure trove that people just seem to have forgotten about! My Sifu has a similar story, except it's from when he got disqualified from a 'full contact' tournament for going full contact after confirming with the organizers that they wanted to see people knocked out. He knocked out the 'top ranked' person in their local ranking system (who was basically seeded to win) in one clean punch to the chest and got D/Q'd for it. I actually got to confirm the story a few years back when we ran into the organizer from the tournament after the annual hall of fame banquet and, in the organizer's words, "We thought we were ready and knew full contact, but we didn't. We shouldn't have DQ'd you." He remembered it over 20 years after it happened. Some is, some isn't. I've had some stuff explained to me behind closed doors, which I would classify as 'secret teachings,' but usually it's stuff that's included in the curriculum; you just don't end up seeing its value until it's pointed out.

If my own business ever gets off the ground, this is how I want to run it too! Such an inspiration in these dreary times, in my eyes. I don't know enough to comment on Zoroastrianism specifically, but this does sound a lot nicer than other systems out there; they still take over places though, which rubs me a bit wrong. I suppose just like the victims, war and conquest never grow old...

There's a lot in modern Japanese where the 'do' and 'jutsu' implies completely different things. When describing what I practiced, I always used 'bujutsu' rather than 'budo' because I feel that you only get shallow spiritual accomplishments if you only shallowly study the martial, which I find arts that use 'do' tend to fall into; they become sport rather than life or death, which is good in some ways but loses a lot of meaning elsewhere. I find that sort of thing within a fighting arts instructor to be a huge red flag. My Sifu incentivizes us to land attacks on him or dodge his attacks (we can get out of conditioning if any one of us manages to block a punch), which both serves to keep him sharp and motivate us; I've only ever seen one student block a punch (and only that once) during these, though. He always tells us that to teach, you need to be far better at what you're teaching than your students. We can always seem to mop other schools up whenever we compete, but even 3v1 I've never seen Sifu take a loss. To me, that's what a martial arts instructor needs to be like (in addition to the spiritual wisdom, of course). I admit that I practice iron palm, fist, shin, and shirt, so I do place a fair amount of importance on conditioning, just because it lets me have the option to end things faster. That said, the bruises and swelling that you see on some people are the result of mistakes in conditioning rather than proper conditioning according to what I've been taught. The idea is to slowly condition yourself upwards so you don't end up causing permanent damage. Nonetheless, even without much conditioning, I'd agree that if ya know where to hit, the body's a fatal targetboard. This is the essence of martial practice in my opinion as well! Chinese hand, Tou di, or 唐手 as it's spelled in Japanese, was indeed the name of karate before it was introduced to Japan. They switched to the character for "empty," which coincidentally could have the same sound as 唐 in Japanese (kara), as a way to distance the art from China when trying to sell it to the Japanese mainaldn. I wrote an essay in Japanese on that transition while studying abroad, though I can't comment on how good my Japanese actually is in it (https://themartialdao.com/?p=97). As for the dance, my sensei was kind enough to bring me to a traditional dance performance and tested to see if I could find the martial influences; indeed, all of the traditional dances made use of martial arts footwork and hand movements so as to obscure their true meaning from the public eye. Some of the more flashy stuff that folks do now such as Eisa actually takes entire chunks of karate katas and inserts em into the dances, which is a bit of a departure from how they were initially done but still very cool. The naginata form I was taught also functioned as a bo, jo, sai, tenbe, katana, dao, and nunchaku form with slight alterations from what I was told, but I was only directly shown the naginata, bo, and katana variants. Really efficient system from what I saw. As for the public info and the art dying out... I think that there might be some internal debate as to how public the art should be. My sensei refused to be filmed doing the kata for memory's sake and while he didn't outright ban me from showing others, he *did* discourage it (which I took to be a ban). As it was initially an art only for the royalty and was privately passed down as late as World War II, there's probably some reservations about showing it to the world; thus, they severely limit what's shown in the demos and online. I was never told this mind you, just my own speculation based on what I saw while there...

Definitely let's! I'm very interested in hearing more!

Exactly! Thank you for unpacking that haha! Part of the issue in the modern (popular) versions of these religions is also the demonization of other divinities, which causes undue social friction. They acknowledge other gods as mere 'demons,' which is a huge insult to anyone who worships those gods. Basically makes it impossible to retain cordial relations between cultures of different faiths.

As soon as I learned what I was being shown, I thought the same thing; unfortunately, I seemed to be the only one at the local karate club to think so. Everyone else (mostly late teens to early 20s) wanted to focus on purely sports karate and saw no use for what they called "old kobudo" (very rough translation here). That said, I felt everything I was shown was very practical for use in live battlefield combat (of an era before ours, anyway); it included work in combat while running, switching between various weapons, throwing weapons, and half-swording: stuff I rarely see in traditional martial arts. Much of the barehanded techniques that were focused on were designed to be used without having to condition the hands/feet and could be transitioned directly into weapons techniques; the barehanded blocks were explained in terms of sword strikes, for instance. There was also a lot of training for appearance, to make one look "royal," which included work on posture, walking/running methods, etc. In terms of the energetics, the forms I was taught felt more like kung fu than karate and had a qigong aspect to them. They were long and fancy compared to what I'm used to, including spinning moves, but seemed to be stylized like a dance. I was told that there were over 30 forms included in the style, but I only learned 3 (4 if we break the weapons form I learned down into a naginata form and a katana form). Also, to preempt, I've seen some demonstrations of the style on YouTube that look very little like what I learned; I don't know enough to comment on them, but I haven't seen any videos online that look anything like what I was taught, despite searching intensely.

Even the idea that zen's goal is to "smother the passions" is mistaken; this is known as "dead tree zen" and is a mistake in practice, rather than a goal. Likewise, equating "Christ" to something a person can have a "level" of ignores the very definition of Christ. I mean no offense to you by this, but I would highly recommend at least reading the source material before presenting a logical argument on it; otherwise, it brings into question everything you say. I will not argue this further with someone who has not even read the book that he or she claims to have "deep understanding" of. I will, however, agree with you that there do indeed exist sects within each religion that have valuable esoteric practices in place and that people do benefit from these practices.

I am not claiming that's a marker for the original value, rather, to me it appears the entire religion is structured around control rather than spirituality. Just as a good lie always contains a little truth, so too does a good scam.

I would argue (and anger a lot of people in doing so) that Christianity, and extending to all Abrahamic religion, is "weird" because it was not designed in its surviving form to be a belief system nor to be a spiritual path, though it does retain some use as both of those. Rather, these religions were tailor-made for taking over and destroying existing culture. I argue this on three main points: Monotheism itself is war-like in nature, because it inherently rejects all "outside" belief systems as they are not the "one true god." This means that for any monotheistic religion to work, it needs to subjugate and reject all competition, rather than coexist. Abrahamic religions take stories and parables out of context and attempt to claim them as their own, and continue to do so even as new belief systems pop up. For some examples of this, the story of the Tower of Babel and the great flood were both historically sourced from polytheistic Mesopotamian belief systems, while more recently, you get people trying to claim that the Abrahamic god is the universe (or the astral) itself to appeal to the new age crowd and bring them into the fold. Historic evidence further proves the above two points, as the primary way Abrahamic religion has spread is through empire and war. Most recently, of course, there's ISIS and the middle east spreading Islam through force, but even the heavy South Korean Christian denominations were created after the US destroyed their local culture while "freeing" them from communism; we, the Americans, swooped in after destroying them to offer a "savior" in Christianity. Historically, this seems to have been the favored method of spreading Abrahamic religion (though, Judaism has not done this much in recent years due to Christian suppression, we can see it happening actively in Israel right now which weakens the argument that they are somehow different). Now, this is not to say that there is not value in Abrahamic religion, as I personally know many people whose lives it has enriched. It certainly contains grains of spiritual truth, and many of the parables have profound lessons that still hold up today. Crucially, however, empire and colonization also held benefits for some people; this did not make those systems a net gain for the world either. If Abrahamic religion were willing to acknowledge that there were other gods and belief systems out there that could stand on equal ground with it, it would be perfectly fine; again, however, it seems tailor-made to *not* do that, so I don't expect it to happen.

Images from the Japanese Navy HQ: (Below is a room where a Japanese soldier committed suicide by grenade near the end of the war) In contrast, the below images were taken from the site where the majority of the Tokashiki Islanders were forced into suicide: Unlike the HQ, there's a shrine dedicated to placating the spirits of the dead nearby in a secluded and restricted area: As for graves, I have pictures of two that I can share, both within Urasoe Gusuku. The first site, I unfortunately do not know whose tomb it is and cannot read the kanji well enough to identify, so apologies; if anyone can, I'd love to have a name. The second site is the hallowed tomb of King Sho Nei, often cited as the "tragic king" of the Ryukyus due to the Satsuma treatment of him during their takeover. People still come and pray for him in front of his tomb, over four hundred years after his death. Unfortunately, I don't know of a connection, but I don't claim to know everything either, soo.... I do know that Okinawans, moreso than Japanese, worship nature itself which may play a part? Yeah, it does. According to The Auto Ethnographer, "The island is 0.6% of the Japanese land mass, and home to 75% of U.S. military facilities in Japan" (https://theautoethnographer.com/life-in-okinawa-under-the-american-military/), which lines up very well with what I was taught while I was there. The bases choke the infrastructure of the island and make transport/industry difficult, if not impossible in many areas, in addition to heavily polluting the island and destroying natural wonders. I can't read the whole sign due to a combination of my own lack of kanji and the pixelization of the image, but I can make out "Shorin Ryu" at the top. I'm familiar with the name Nishihira, as I've actually done quite a bit of research into the origins of Karate while I was over there! If I'm understanding correctly, you're the student of his student, thus in his lineage, basically? Very impressive.

It was undergrad level stuff; Japanese language/culture and Okinawan culture and history. I got to visit a good number of gusuku (old Ryukyu kingdom-era castles), as well as a few historically significant sites, including the Japanese navy command bunker/tunnels and the site of the first massacre of the Battle of Okinawa on Tokashiki Island, where the Japanese military rounded up all the island's civilians and forced them to commit suicide with grenades before the US troops arrived; I understand the bodies were left to rot for the rest of the war. If ya wanna talk "feel" of a place, both locations were still very definitely haunted when I visited. Interestingly, though, the spot on Tokashiki felt much more at peace than the places in the bunker, perhaps because it was on a mountaintop, or perhaps due to the shrines erected after the war for the victims. As for graves and shrines... the shrines, known as Utaki locally, are a fairly distinct tradition as compared to what I've seen and read of in that area of the world. From what I was taught, the structure of an Utaki focuses on a sacred tree, which is then surrounded by some sort of wall to seclude it; this is seen as the "home" of the local deity, much like Shinto shrines, and only the priestess-like figures called Yuta (also really interesting imo, but focusing on land here, so...) are allowed in or out of one. I didn't study the tombs too much comparatively, but I recall that they were shaped like wombs to evoke the image of returning to the womb upon death. I've got a ton of pictures relating to all this, but need to sort through em to find the right ones to post. Afaik, the 'bad side' is around the US military base, as they have a habit of dumping carcinogens into the water supply (they had another big spill right as I arrived, for example). What was your teacher a teacher of, if I may ask?