Ash Wednesday

For Lent this year I have decided to give up meat for the third consecutive year in a row. The decision to give up meat yet again is influenced largely by the fact that my brother and one of my sisters have become vegetarians and my other sister is a vegan. That and I don't really have all that many other things to give up. I don't gamble, smoke, drink, take drugs, or do much of anything that people generally give up. I could give up something easier than meat such as snacks or fast food but seeing as to how I do not eat snacks very often (of the junk food variety) or eat fast food often (usually eat at home and when I do eat out it generally is not fast food) that is not really a sacrifice (there are also many other reasons as to why it is good to give up meat and in general I don't eat a lot of meat - no where near the average amount for people in my country).

Even if you are not a Christian or a religious person it is good to occasionally at least attempt to give up a vice or get rid of a bad habit (a lot of people make New Years resolutions which is similar), even if it is only for a short time (to prove to yourself, if no one else, that you can -though it is better to not start up a bad habit or vice once you have given it up). It need not be a vice or something you consider a bad habit though; giving up something that consumes a lot of your time for a little while can be beneficial as well. If you spend four hours a day watching television or surfing the internet giving that up for awhile may open up new interests or increase communication with friends and family as you try to fill the time.

Besides giving something up for Lent it is customary to pray more often. I do not consider myself to be a very religious person and do not spend very much time praying at all. You don't really have to believe in God to benefit from prayer. Prayer is in many ways similar to meditation and has many of the same tangible advantages (reduces stress, opens blood vessels, lowers blood pressure, etc.). So if you are religious try praying more during Lent (and try combining it with breathing exercises of meditation), if you are not religious try meditating occasionally. Oh and by prayer I do not mean asking God for things like to win the lottery; God is not a genie.

Religion in Ranma ½

Whether or not you are a religious person, religion has affected you in some way. For example, if you live in a Christian country it is very likely that you have developed some Christian morals and/or habits. If nothing else you likely know of some religious holidays for example, Christmas and Easter.

Religion and myth appears in fiction often; most of the time it is not really noticed. The Ranma ½ manga has a lot of religious symbols and references that most people don't really notice unless someone points them out. In fact if you know Ranma ½ mostly through fan fiction, Ranma (the character) does not seem like a religious person at all.

While Ranma's religion is unknown, I find it most likely that his religion is a mix of Shinto and Buddhism given what is seen in the manga. Ranma can be seen praying in a few story arcs. Most visible example is his praying during the Koi-rod story line, though he can be seen praying on a few other occasions as well (praying at his family grave comes to mind). Ranma believes in both the Kami and in there being an after life. Though unlike most people his belief is not based solely on faith. He has seen the power of the Kami (Shinto wards have actual effects) and met the Kami (the Oni is a type of Kami and so was the divine horse - of the 8 million or so Kami animal types are the most common). He has met spirits and ghosts, seen the shores of Sanzu (the Buddhist river of the dead), and seen a ghost enter into heaven.

Some of the other religious imagery seen in the manga:
-Kasumi wears a crucifix.
-Nabiki wears a crucifix during the initial date in the ten yen date arc.
-The Tendo dojo has a Kamidana (small Shinto shrine that is hung on a wall).
-The Tendo's have a Butsudan (a Buddhist shrine for in the house).
-The person that waters her front yard, getting Ranma wet, is practicing a form of misogi - a Shinto purification ritual.
-Kodachi goes to a Catholic School.
-One of the competing plays during the Romeo and Juliet story arc was doing a play involving Jesus Christ.
-Shinto and Buddhist priests are seen several times in the manga, as well as Taoist Monks.
-Ranma goes to both Shinto and Buddhist Shrines.
-Religious holidays are shown in the manga for example, Christmas and New Years (New Years is a religious holiday because the 108 bell ring during the ghost cat storyline is a Buddhist celebration with each bell rings represent 108 elements of bonno, defilements, or Kilesa in Sanskrit, which is said people have in their mind).
-Volume 37 and 38 both show aspects of Shinto and Christian weddings (Akane is dressed in Shinto wedding garb and Christian style wedding dress respectively).
-The battle versus Herb takes place at and destroys Mount Horai which is a mythical mountain similar in nature to Mount Olympus of Greek Mythology.
-Akane in a dream sequence chases Happosai with a cross.
-Sanzu the Buddhist river to the afterlife shows up a few times (Noodles of strength arc, Herb arc, etc.)
-Rouge cursed form is a goddess/demoness in Buddhism, Shinto, Hindu.
-Tea Ceremony has origins involving Zen Buddhism and Confucianism.
-Martial arts has many ties with religion including: Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism and/or Shinto.
-Ikebana (Flower arranging) has roots in Shinto and Buddhism.
-et cetera

Two religion inspired things that deserve singling out:

The Orachi arc is a retelling of the Susano (high ranking Shinto wind god) battle versus the Orachi. The Ranma characters play the part of the god, the broom being used as a stand in for Kusanagi (legendary sword), and the cross dressing is used as the trick.

The second thing that deserves singling out is Saffron. Mainly whether he is a god or not. Going by a monotheistic religion such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; no Saffron is not a god. Going by polytheistic religions such as Shinto, Voodoo, and ancient religions (Greek, Roman, etc.); then yes Saffron could count as a god. So really it is entirely up to the readers interpretation and can be taken either way, though by Shinto, the predominate religion of Japan, he would be considered a Kami. Saffron's comments are about ascension and rebirth which is what happens when a being transcends from mortality to either demi or full blown godhood and his pagoda has symbols of divinity on it. Though Saffron more resembles the western phoenix than he does the Japanese type.

Statcounter and my blog

I've got a statcounter counter on this blog. I occasionally check it to see who came here from where and the like. I do not get all that many hits but 80% of keyword searches that find my blog, according to statcounter, are from people looking for Ranma hentai. I barely mention Ranma hentai since that is not why I'm interested in Ranma. A lot of hentai disturbs me. I mainly like Ranma for the characters. I do not want to see things like Ranma with a guy, or rape, or anything like that. I do like webcomics and dōjinshi; I don't really like hentai ones. Sadly the majority of Ranma dōjinshi seem to be hentai. Non-hentai dōjinshi are much harder to find, at least for Ranma. I have found that it is much easier to find non-hentai for some other series such as Slayers (I've read more than 20 non-hentai Slayers dōjinshis).

I do not believe that statcounter is the best counter available but it is adequate for my usage. I know it doesn't count every person who looks at this blog since it is fairly easy to prevent statcounter from detecting you. You can prevent its cookies or block it via ad blocking software such as the adblockplus add-on to Firefox and some anti-spyware programs delete its cookie or prevent it from detecting you. Statcounter offers both a free and a pay version; I use the free version that is limited to giving detailed information on only the last five hundred pageloads. It is also possible that people are viewing my blog via an RSS feed and since I do not have the statcounter on the feed I can not tell how many people are reading it through that means (I am aware that it is possible to add the statcounter script to the RSS feed but do not care enough to add it on).

The best thing about a counter is not the counting of the number of people that come to the blog but what search terms are used to find the blog. Quite often the term indicates a question, the answer of which is often times on this blog. The thing is the search engine often directs the person to the wrong posts. I am going to answer, in this post, some of the questions that directed people to this blog, but to the wrong posts. I will start with the Ranma ½ questions and then the one not related to Ranma ½.

Which city does Ranma live in?
He lives in Tokyo, Japan. In the ward of Nerima to be more specific. Nerima lies at the northwestern edge of the 23 special wards of Tokyo.

Does Jusenkyo exist?
Jusenkyo is a group of fictional pools in Ranma ½. It does not exist in real life.

Where is Jusenkyo located?
Nowhere since it doesn't exist but in the manga it is located in the Bayankala (Bayan Har Shan) mountain range, south of Mount Kensei, in Qinghai Province, China.

What order should I watch Ranma anime episodes?
Any order you want. If you want to watch them in the original Japanese order here is the order:

Ranma ½ Episodes 1-16
Ranma ½ Nettohen Episodes 7-9
Ranma ½ Episodes 17-18
Ranma ½ Nettohen Episodes 1-6
Ranma ½ Nettohen Episodes 10-100
Ranma ½ Movie 1
Ranma ½ Nettohen Episodes 101-135
Ranma ½ Movie 2
Ranma ½ Nettohen Episodes 136-143
Ranma ½ OAVs 1-8 (first 8 OAVS)
Ranma ½ Movie 3 (which is the last OAV in the US release)
Ranma ½ Super OAVs 1-3 (OAVS 9-11)

Here is the OAV's by US title in Japanese released order:
OVA 1: "The Curse of the Contrary Jewel".
OVA 2: " "Tendö Family Christmas Scramble"
OVA 3: "I'll be the One to Inherit Mother's Recipes".
OVA 4:"Stormy Weather Comes to School! Growing up with Miss Hinako".
OVA 5-6: "The One to Carry On" parts 1 and 2.
OVA Special 1-2: "Reawakening memories" parts 1 and 2.
Movie 3: "One Flew Over the Kunö's Nest"
Super OVA 1:" Cursed Love Destroying Cave".
Super OVA 2: "The Wicked Demon".
Super OVA 3: "The Revenge Doll".

If you want to look at more of the changes made when Viz adapted the anime for release in America see: Ranma ½ Editing Report

Nabiki one of the biggest expenses for the Tendo's example?
Volume 34 page 10: Tadaimaa, kore zenbu uchino tsukede kacchattaa! (Hi I'm home, and I brought all this on our family's credit!).
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NON-Ranma - find these to actually be more interesting then the Ranma ones though this time there weren't very many.

What is the confidential nature of confessions?
Confessions in the catholic church are very confidential. A priest is bound not to break the sacramental seal by thought, sign, word, or deed; to do so he would incur the highest clerical penalty. More can be found at newadvent.org.

All the other keywords were actually directed directly to posts that gave the answer. In the past I have gotten some really interesting keyword searches to my blog and fairly strange ones completely unrelated to anything I have discussed.

Honor and Sacrifice of Isaac

I often see people confusing honor for morals, in part I think this is because one definition for honor is honest, another definition of honor is respect (i.e. honor your parents). The definition I use though is a complex system of standards of what is due to one's self and to others (others being society, family, or religion).

In the Bible, Genesis chapter 22, God tested Abraham by telling him to sacrifice his son Isaac. This is a test of faith and a test of honor. God was testing how strong Abraham's honor was. Abraham passed God's test. It was not a moral thing. What God asked Abraham was not moral. Morals require a father to love his son, not kill him. Abraham was put into a position where he had to chose honor (duty to God) or morals. He made the choice that honor is more important than his morals or his love for his child.

Abraham's choice was easier than many people's when it comes to honor vs morals or honor vs love. Abraham had absolute faith in God. God being God could raise the dead or do anything he wants anyways. Death is not absolute when God is involved. Abraham also trusted that God would not make him do anything evil, that even though Abraham may not see why God would ask this, it is for the greater good. This did not make his decision easy though.

Why would God ask Abraham to kill his only son when God is against child sacrifice (Deuteronomy 12:31, Isaiah 57:4-5)? It was a test and God had no intention of making Abraham actually go through with it. God being God would already know that Abraham has faith and would obey Gods commands right. So the test most probably was not for Abraham but instead to show future generations that Abraham would obey God above all else.

Teacher arrested over Teddy

I generally prefer to not talk about religion since it is such a controversial subject, but I feel like talking about it now.

A British teacher in Sudan was found guilty of insulting Islam because she allowed her seven year old students to name the class bear Muhammad. Personally I don't view her guilty of anything except being ignorant of Muslim ways. Her punishment is 15 days jail and deportation. I don't think she should have been punished because she didn't mean any insult, but really the entire thing with her doesn't overly bother me she should have known more about Muslim ways considering the area she was living in and while I think her punishment is worse than she deserves, she could have had a much worse punishment under the laws of the area. What does bother me is how the Muslims always get upset when they perceive some insult to Muhammad but don't get upset when other prophets of theirs are insulted. Many Muslims appear to be treating Muhammad like he was a deity when he is not, he is a great prophet but not God. The Christians who do believe Jesus their greatest prophet to actually be God do not get upset as the Muslims do (in general, some do of course). The Muslims should be just as upset when someone insults Jesus, Moses, and Isaac seeing how they too are prophets in Muslim religion and yet they don't. I find this to be some what hypocritical, particularly those Muslims who insult Jesus (two reasons Muslims consider him to be a great prophet as well and them not seeing how it is obviously wrong to expect others to not insult their greatest prophet when they insult the other religions greatest prophet).

While I am not Muslim and can't speak for the Muslim people, I am pretty sure the vast majority of Muslims really are not upset about this mistake brought on by ignorance (she didn't know that people see naming a toy or animal after Muhammad is considered an insult) the teacher made. I'm pretty sure the reason so much noise is being made over this misunderstanding is political in nature and not being brought about because of religious upset.

BTW I'm not Muslim, I'm Catholic.

edit: She was pardoned and sent back to her home country.