Todd: Now, Carla you have your own website.
托德：卡拉，你拥有自己的网站。
Todd: Now, Carla you have your own website.
托德：卡拉，你拥有自己的网站。
Carla: Yes I, when I first came to Japan, I didn’t learn languages because actually I’m quite terrible at learning languages. But I’m very interested in culture, and Japanese traditional culture is fantastic. So, little by little I got interested in butsudan. Now butsudan are Buddhist family alters which the Japanese use in two ways. They pray to Buddha by kneeling in front of them, but they also keep family memorabilia. That’s like, wedding certificates, or graduation certificates, photographs, post cards from interesting places. They keep all these in the butsudan and they communicate with the ancestors this way. So they have a kind of dual purpose. And, but truthfully, I’m not particularly interested in Buddhism, and I’m not interested in the furnished butsudan because it’s a little bit garish, and not at all the way I imagined the understatement of Japanese culture. But, the making of them is fantastic and the traditional old-fashioned ways of craftsmanship are going out because Japanese craftsmanship is very expensive. And it can be made in China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea much cheaper than they can be made in Japan. So, a lot of the traditional craftsman are just not finding the work anymore. No new apprentices are training for the job, and it’s difficult to find butsudan that are made in a traditional way. The traditionally made butsudan could cost as much as twenty to thirty million yen. A butsudan made in China and imported into Japan and sold here could be, could sell for about three million yen. That just gives a ratio of the relative price. So, there is, there are three wood working crafts, two metal working crafts, and two lacquering crafts that go into the making of the butsudan. So, my aim really, is to document the traditional craftsmanship before it’s completely gone. And no one has ever done this in English before. And it’s hardly been done by the Japanese because it’s one of these things that Japanese craftsman really don’t talk about amongst themselves. So it’s all kind of, it’s not as if it’s secret it’s just that they have different vocabulary for the same thing.
卡拉：是的，我第一次来日本的时候并没有学习语言，因为我的语言学习能力非常差。不过我对文化很感兴趣，而日本传统文化非常吸引人。我逐渐对佛坛产生了兴趣。现在佛坛对日本佛教家庭来说有两个用处。他们跪在佛祖面前祈祷，同样那里也保存着家庭纪念品。比如结婚证书、毕业证书、照片或是风景名胜的明信片等等。他们会把所有这些纪念品存放在佛坛，用这种方法和祖先交流。所以佛坛有这两种用途。不过说实话，我对佛教不太感兴趣，我对装饰过的佛坛也不感兴趣，因为那有些过分装饰了，并不是我所想象的那种含蓄的日本文化。建造佛坛太不可思议了，不过传统、古老的技艺即将消失，因为日本技艺的花费非常高。在中国、越南、台湾和韩国建造的花费要比日本便宜的多。所以许多传统工匠都找不到工作。没有新学徒为这种工作进行培训，所以很难找到以传统方法建造的佛坛。传统佛坛要花费两三千万日元。而在中国制造的佛坛，进口到日本只需要三百万日元。由此可以看到相对价格的对比。建造佛坛需要三种木制加工工艺、两种加工工艺和两种涂漆工艺。我想在传统技艺失传之前把它记录下来。此前没有英国人做过这件事。而且日本人也很难完成，因为这是日本工匠之间不会谈论的事情之一。并不是说这是秘密，只是因为他们会用不同的词汇来解释同一件事。