Fish Love Money

For our second stop this week, another take on the Japanese theme. Our host wasn't able to join us on the Isle of Nara, so the crew had to put up with some factoids from me, much like the time when we went to Yana Dakota's Tahiti sim and she had a power outage. The Safarians bore the burden with great stoicism.

Thirza Ember: This is a Japanese style GOR region owned by Shinji Takahashi. We are on CounterEarth grid. This is a Gorean community that moved to Opensim in the very early days, and was first located on OSGrid. Some may remember the sim Sardar Fair which was still exists, back in the day it was one of the few good shopping places in opensim. Some of the founding members of CounterEarth are content creators and offer their stuff for free in opensim, while selling it in  Second Life. We thank them for their generosity over the years!

Star Ravenhurst: I have been excited to visit! I am sorry they're not here though.

The 30+ Gor books that inspired the CounterEarth grid were written by John Norman, aka Professor John Lange of NYC University, beginning in the 1960's - the most recent in the series was published in 2024.  CounterEarth is a planet still in a sort of medieval/classical world, with warrior lords, wizards, slaves, submissive women, and big battles. 

Thirza Ember: if you walk to the end following the arrows you can get down to the ground, the stuff here is all exquisite but as you can see quite heavy on the graphics card at least to begin with

James Atlloud: beautiful

Thirza Ember: In the roleplay here, the sim owner Shinji Takahashi has a mate, Mameka Amano, who rp's a Pani girl who ended up being presented to Shinji by her father,,,there are other women who belong to Shinji too. A guy with more than one woman - should he be envied or pitied? You tell me.

Star Ravenhurst: If they are women like me, pitied. He would serve me, not me him. :)

Nara in Japan is a real place, It is a city on Honshu, Japan's main island. It's about 6 hours west of Tokyo. and close to Kyoto and Osaka. Nara was Japan's first permanent capital city back in about 700 - at that time it was called Heijo. It was always a big Buddhist center also, and in fact it was for that reason that the capital later moved first to Kyoto and then of course to Tokyo.

Real life Nara has 8 important temple and shrine complexes, it includes  Yakushiji built in the 700's, one of Japan's oldest temples, and on the sim you will see buildings inspired by many real life temples and monastery architecture. In RL, the town is inland, and laid out in a grid pattern, the Gorean Isle of Nara is all about islands and waterways.

Thirza Ember: ok next up is the Pani house... who's first to sit on the throne I wonder..  Oh! all hail Empress Star! - please look at the walls if they have rezzed for you.  

One of the most attractive elements on this build is the authenticity - for example, the blue and yellow wall decorations in this hall are Chinese  - by a young artist called Wang Ximeng, around the end of the 11th century. It's called One Thousand Li ( or miles) of Rivers and Mountains... the artist died before his 20th birthday, so it's beautiful and tragic at the same time. 

Thirza Ember: This region is a place with both Japanese and Chinese features a bit like Yana's sim but... would you say less atmospheric? Definitely less weather. Maybe they haven't gotten to that part yet

Star Ravenhurst: It is beautiful. All of that takes time. Just putting in sounds takes so much time to do.

Sun Tzu: Much more spacious

We moved on to the big square with lion statues at each end and explored a building with a few domestic features - a fire, some china ware, and indoor plumbing plus some magnificent landscapes on the walls.

 I snapped Mal looking at this picture - could he be planning a fashion makeover for the next episode of Inworld Review? Intriguing idea!

Thirza Ember: so here's a thing only Japanese people know i guess, us Westerners are maybe less familiar with. The Hina doll is part of a Shinto festival called 'Doll's Day' or 'Girls' day, Hinamatsuri - every March 3.  It's a festival to celebrate the health and happiness of young girls and women.

Petlove Petshop: cool!

Thirza Ember: The idea is to set up a number of these little seated figures, male and female, as if they're all present at a royal wedding, so you have bride groom and all the guests, courtiers, musicians etc., the really old Hina dolls cost thousands of dollars. A bit like a Christmas Nativity scene, it's also a way for households to show off their wealth in the quality and antiquity of their doll collection.

Star Ravenhurst: Fascinating.

James Atlloud: lovely

Mal Burns: who needs dolls? these days we have avatars

Thirza Ember: these ones are unbreakable, in my house they would last about a week

Forest Azure: /me wonders who throws stuff in Thrirza's house

Thirza Ember: ok and then there's the rest of the market, I'm thinking the mesh makers here are really into detail, the parasol and fan shops are lovely, and the screens too  lots of authentic textures... we can walk straight down here, and go to the big tower.

There's an awful lot more to see on the Isle of Nara, like the covered bridge, the boat building, and all the little residential homes, but we ended at the most prominent building on the sim. Big hexagonal pagoda is an echo of many of the pagodas in Nara. This kind of structure is called rokkaku-dō. This one is open to the sea at the bottom, rather like a Venetian garage.Which was kind of puzzling...

Forest Azure: but the water?

Thirza Ember: wait, Forest are you asking me what water is?

James Atlloud: yes, i wonder too

Forest.Azure: lol, why there is water in a pagoda

Thirza Ember: i guess you can throw people in and see if they sink

Forest Azure: ah .. gor witches?

We'll have to come back when the sim is active to find out.

The Buddhists back in the 700's seem to have been pretty fighty type people because after a while the kings moved out and went to Kyoto, leaving RL Nara as a religious center of international historical importance. This one's not a replica, but it definitely has hints of buildings from the place, adapted to Gorean needs, and the proportions of inworld life, of course.

Thirza Ember: OK you can climb to the top on the ladder... or tp up to the carpeted viewing platform... this is our final tp and the view should be pretty good by now if the sim has rezzed for you. 

Star Ravenhurst: Oh this is lovely!

James Atlloud: Love this ceiling

Thirza Ember: the ceiling, this kind of art is common in Chinese temples, but also all over the Islamic world. From up here you can see the whole range of buildings set in this big lake.

James Atlloud: The view is magnificent

Thirza Ember:  don't miss the giant Thai Buddha. Why is it red? In buddhism, red is considered both lucky and also the color of perception. So it's meant to make meditation easier.... so that's why all Yana's temples are so full of red, I guess.  

Forest Azure: the big orange in the lake james .. is a fish :)

Thirza Ember: OK my final factoid... the giant golden carp -  a big statue, you may have to walk around, or cam, to see it. Did you know that in Chinese, the word for 'fish' and the word for 'money' sound very similar, so that's why carp are considered lucky?

James Atlloud: oh so interesting. I didn't know that!

Thirza Ember: The Japanese have always associated these fish with abundance,  Carp, or Koi - or even Nishikigoi, that's the Japanese name - were a hugely important source of food for centuries, they were cultivated by the nobility because of their beauty too. Did you know that the "Koi " also means "love" in Japanese?

Petlove Petshop: that wasn't in the video!

James Atlloud: Fish love money - it's my new song.  hehehe

HG Address: jand.dyndns.biz:7002:Isle of Nara