User:IppikiOokami
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I started out as an academic and then became a copywriter and translator. After living in Tokyo for 15 years, I got tired of the rat-race, and for five years, till 2004, my wife and I lived in a resort area known as Shonan (湘南), south of Yokohama on the very edge of the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area. The area has a wonderful climate and the air is cleaner than Tokyo's. Some days the sunlight has a clear Mediterranean quality, although the climate is not dry like the Mediterranean's.
More recently, my wife and I moved to Malaysia and have been fortunate enough to find an excellent location. Our neighbors are warm-hearted, honest people. As a matter of fact, the wonderful people of Malaysia are one of the country's attractions.
For the past several years, I've been studying a history of the shrines on the island of Enoshima (江の島) in Japan. It is dedicated to a beautiful goddess named Benzaiten (辯才天). In the history, she is one of the main figures in a story about a destructive water-dragon that plagued the local people with floods for a thousand years, up to the middle of the sixth century. At that time, the goddess, seeing the suffering of the people, caused the island of Enoshima to emerge to serve as her abode. Then she descended onto the island, amidst a spectacular display of terrestrial and aerial phenomena. The destructive dragon fell in love with her. As the goddess of eloquent persuasion, she made the dragon understand its wrong-doing. Ashamed, the dragon turned itself into a hill facing the sacred island.
The story is usually considered a myth; however, it appears to be closer to being history than a myth-story. Many of the story's details check out, and the dragon appears to be a metaphor for water. You can read all about it at
- http://homepage.mac.com/bartraj2/goddesspublic/goddesspublic.html
- http://www2.gol.com/users/bartraj/goddessindex-1.html
Other interests
- Jazz, primarily the intensely creative period from Charlie Parker through John Coltrane
- Daoism
- Investment strategy
- Body-boarding
- Catastrophism (also known as neo-catastrophism or scientific catastrophism).
- Martin Luther