The Girl in 6C

The Cold

2011-06-20T10:45:00.000+09:00

A couple of weeks ago I had a cold. It started out, as most colds seem to, with the mild impression that something was not right, and by the end of the first day had progressed to the point where I *knew* that something was not right and that it probably was responsible for the pounding headache and the increasingly sore throat. Unfortunately I spent the first evening out with a friend and didn’t get back to my place until late, at which point I felt like death. The next morning being my day off and also, coincidentally, the flea market at Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto that I used to frequent on study abroad, I had made plans to meet my host mother and spend the afternoon with her. Instead of canceling and staying in bed I, of course, decided I felt markedly better and went out anyway. I still felt sick but I had a lovely day with my host mother and got home at a decent hour very much ready to sleep. The cold was, naturally, just getting warmed up.

There are few things more frustrating and lonely than being sick and alone in a foreign country. On the frustrating front there is attempting to find and purchase cold medicine, disinfectant wipes and throat lozenges when it takes a long time just to read the package and make sure that you’re not accidentally buying diet pills, candy and shoe polish. On the lonely front there is trying to cook and clean up after yourself when all you want to do is sleep, all with the burning suspicion that if you were to be suddenly bedridden it would take the school a little while to realize you were missing.

On the 5th day of my cold I started coughing even when not trying to go to sleep and was thus forced to adopt a measure seen on Japanese people of all ages during cold season: the mask. I have perhaps mentioned them here before, but face masks are worn by sick people in Japan to keep from spreading germs from coughing etc. They are not technically compulsory or anything, but social pressure is a law unto itself. Heeding advice from J I made sure to buy a men’s mask (apparently the women’s ones are very small) and wore it for a whole day at school. It was awful. I hadn’t been able to put my contacts in that morning and so every time I breathed into my mask it fogged up my glasses, and my nose was still running, making the inside of the damned thing feel like some sort of germ incubator. It was like wearing a steam room on my face. Every once in awhile I would have to pull down the mask, blow my nose, disinfect my hands and then replace the mask, which was of course damp inside and thus felt wet and cold by the time I got it back in place.

I downed grapefruit juice, went through all of my Theraflu, half a bottle of what turned out to be entirely ineffectual children’s cough syrup and used up more packets of tissues then I want to think about but in the end the only thing that worked was spending the entirety of Sunday in bed. Afterwards I was still a little sniffly and still coughed at night, but the worst was over.

Next time I’m just going to stay in.

But what does she eat?

2011-06-05T16:21:00.000+09:00

“What do you eat?” is a question that I get from friends both American and Japanese, so I figured I’d give a go at explaining a little bit about the culinary aspect of my life.

Because I live alone and on a budget I cook most of my meals at my apartment in my kitchen. I knew that this would be the case when I was looking for a place to live, so it is no coincidence that I chose an apartment with a decent-sized kitchen with three gas burners (several places I looked at had only a single, rather corroded-looking electric burner) and some counter space.
Breakfast:

The most important meal of the day to be sure, but usually also the simplest and most boring. Outside of the occasional natto (fermented soybeans) on leftover white rice breakfast tends to be unremarkable, often bread with jam. When I first moved here I attempted to use the gas fish griller installed just below my stove as a toaster. I found that while it would toast bread if tended extremely carefully, it would also light bread on fire if left to its own devices for the barest moment. I no longer use it as a toaster and content myself with uncooked bread.
Lunch:

I bring my lunch to school every day, sometimes even on half-days where I don’t have class until 1:30. Lunch is leftovers from dinner, unless I accidentally don’t cook enough and then I have cup o’ noodle ramen, sometimes augmented with a hardboiled egg brought from home.
Dinner:

So, what do I cook myself? I have a rotation of about 6 dishes, though every once in awhile I think of something original (original is not always good, however, so some things never make it into the rotation). I strive to cook things that use very few ingredients, most of them cheap, and always like to have white onion, mushrooms, rice, pasta, miso, soy sauce and mirin on-hand. The thing about cooking in a foreign country is that some things you are used to finding cheap are expensive or limited in variety, such as balsamic vinegar or French bread, and some things that you are used to finding simply aren’t there at all, such as tortillas or peanut butter. I make a lot of Japanese-style dishes simply because the ingredients are available and relatively inexpensive compared to imports.

Most of what I cook falls into one of three categories: fresh rice dishes (Such as curry over rice), leftover rice dishes (Such as omelet rice, see below), and pasta dishes (Such as tomato pasta with chicken), all of which I eat with a side salad of whatever lettuce is cheap and sliced apple with sesame seed dressing.

Now, for a bit of fun, I’ll give you my recipe for Kimchi Omelet Rice:

Ingredients:

½ white onion

1 handful enoki mushrooms

Sliced ham

Kimchi (Korean spicy pickled cabbage)

1 cup day-old white rice

1 egg

Mirin

Soy sauce

Scramble the egg in a bowl with a drop of soy sauce and some mirin. Pour the egg into a pre-heated non-stick frying pan, tilting the pan until the egg forms an even layer over the bottom. Cook until the top starts to solidify, then remove from pan carefully with a spatula and set aside.

Chop up the onion and kimchi and brown together in a pan, adding the ham and mushrooms after. Simmer with soy sauce and mirin before adding rice. Stir over medium heat until rice is seasoned and warm with the same basic texture as fried rice. Scoop the rice mixture into the egg omelet and serve. If it turns out a little dry you can drizzle ketchup over top, though it is not usually necessary.

I have this for dinner almost once a week. If you find you’re interested in any other extremely simple recipes then let me know! Some can be more easily replicated in the ‘States than others though…

The Osaka Exhibition Park

2011-05-29T12:58:00.000+09:00

Goodness but it’s been a long time since I last posted! Let’s see, what was I going to write about…

On Saturday, May 7th we had a school trip to the site of the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka. After the fair ended most of the pavilions etc. were demolished to make space for an extensive and very nice park with a couple museums and other attractions which is now called the ‘Osaka Exhibition Memorial Park’. I accidentally called it the ‘Osaka Explosion Park’ once and was quickly corrected.

I had never been on a fieldtrip like this before, but while we were required to come our only obligation was that we had to show up for the class picture at the end of the day. This left us all about 5 hours to wander around the park grounds and museums at our leisure, so luckily the weather was nice. The park has several areas dedicated to specific types of plants, such as a lavender field, a hill covered in hydrangeas (which were sadly not in bloom) and a camellia garden, as well as wading pools, a suspended walkway over a forest-like area and large open areas for games or picnics.

One thing we discovered pretty quickly was that all of the museums required an entry fee in addition to the park entry fee, which was a little annoying, but after wandering through several gardens in the full heat of our clear, sunny Saturday afternoon we decided to just choose one of them to kill some time and get into some air conditioning. We ended up paying student admission to the Osaka Museum of Ethnology, which turned out to be extremely interesting. The interior of the museum was divided up by geographical region, starting in the Americas and ending up in Japan, and contained a wide variety of national costumes, artwork, religious items and even a fully-furnished yurt. It was *really* cool, and my only regret is that I didn’t realize that it was okay to take pictures until about halfway through. One thing that I found especially interesting was that the Japan section dedicated significant space to the Ainu, a people native to Japan but not considered racially ‘Japanese’. I guess their aim was to show a piece of Japan’s ethnological makeup that would be unfamiliar to most visitors, but I’m certainly no expert on the subject.

By the time we assembled for our class picture we were tired and very ready to go home, and I at least was sweaty and footsore. As soon as we were dismissed the whole group headed for the exit, saying goodbye to ‘Tarou’, the sun tower that stands near the gates (I think it looks like a chicken or maybe like one of the gods from ‘Princess Mononoke’) and hopped back on the monorail for home.

A Donut of a Different Colour

2011-05-05T23:27:00.001+09:00

Well! For all my promises of upcoming updates I certainly have kept you all waiting! Since moving into my apartment I have slowly but surely added to my furniture collection, and am by now pretty much squared away. J has been staying with me almost every weekend and it is nice to have someone to speak English to. Together we have seen two shows at the Takarazuka Grand Theatre and one at a theatre in Osaka. One of the shows that we went to see in Takarazuka was what they call a ‘Shinjin Kouen’, a sort of understudy performance where the actresses who have been in the troupe for 6 years or fewer fill all the roles in a one-act version of the troupe’s current play. I had never been to one before, so it was an exciting opportunity. While the actresses were necessarily less skilled than their main-performance counterparts, every person onstage was bursting with enthusiasm, clearly giving every line and dance move their all. The energy was contagious and more than made up for the occasional mistake or sour note.

The reason that I could go to a play in the middle of the week was that this was what they call “Golden Week”, a 7-day period where several national holidays converge. Because there are so many holidays some schools and even businesses shut their doors for the whole week, which makes it a very popular time to travel. I, unfortunately, only had the actual holidays themselves off, which meant that I had last Friday, my usual Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off with class as usual on Saturday and Monday. On Wednesday J and I dressed up in kimono and hakama and met a friend of J’s at a park in Tenouji, which was quite beautiful even if it was a little hot out. Afterwards we had lunch in a nice café near the station and then J and I went in search of a special donut shop in Shinsaibashi. Lately Krispy Kreme has opened several locations in Japan, including one in Shinsaibashi, but the donut shop that J and I set out to find was far more special. Instead of being fried, these donuts are steamed and use traditional Japanese ingredients to make Japanese-style donuts. After some wandering around and fighting with J’s iPhone we finally found the place and calmly waited in line for about half an hour before ordering at the counter and getting our donuts. I had a cherry-blossom flavoured donut with glutinous rice and walnuts in it topped with black sesame seeds, a steamed strawberry cake filled with strawberry cream, and a roasted green tea iced latte. J had a cherry-blossom flavoured one like mine only with actual cherry blossoms on top as well as an Okinawan brown sugar donut with candied citron peel in it topped with apple. They were beautiful and delicious, absolutely worth the wait and even worth the 200yen apiece. I think what I liked best about them, and about Japanese sweets in general, was that they were not really very sweet at all; the flavours were subtle and would have been eclipsed by too much sugar.

After looking around a couple of the stores in the area we headed back to my apartment where I made a simple dinner (a post about cooking will follow) before getting some much-needed rest. Tomorrow I have class again, and starting next week it will be back to business as usual.

Ohisashiburi! It's been awhile!

2011-04-27T15:26:00.001+09:00

Well! It looks as though it has been almost exactly one year less one month since I left Kyoto and stopped updating this blog! I am back in Japan (Osaka this time) and am planning to start posting again. Below are a couple entries that I wrote when I first arrived, so read and enjoy! I promise more current entries soon!

Eating the Meatballs

2011-04-08T16:09:00.003+09:00

On Tuesday…I honestly can’t remember what I did on Tuesday. I think that I went through Yodobashi Camera (a large electronics/appliances store in Umeda) and priced appliances after making a list of everything I could think of that I might need for my new apartment. There was probably a good amount of wandering around punctuated by eating.
Wednesday, however, was all about the apartment. In the morning I checked out of my hotel, stowed my luggage and headed to the rental agency, where they briefed me on what was going to go down with the lease-signing and collected the money that would be given to the company that owned the unit. Oh! First we had to stop off and pick up the official seal that they had ordered for me. You see, in the US we use our signature to represent ourselves on paper, in Japan they use little stamps, I think almost always with the characters of one’s last name. Well, in order to go forward with the lease I needed to have one so they ordered one for me with my first name, actually, written out in katakana phonetic script. When I called the finished stamp ‘cute’ they looked at me strangely, probably because it’s something very official, so ‘cute’ isn’t really what they were going for.

We went over the lease with a person from the company line by line, and then after what seemed like forever they gave me a key and the guy from the rental agency dropped me back off at the station. I went straight back to my hotel and hired a cab to my new apartment –there was no other way to get my three giant suitcases there.

As soon as I’d managed to get everything in the door I got to work measuring with a tape measure I now remember that I spent most of Tuesday afternoon hunting down. I did my best to draw up a floor plan of the apartment with measurements, and though the finished product wasn’t exactly great I think it did the job. I had thought about going to Ikea, but since I had to wait for the man from Osaka Gas to come and turn everything on I decided to leave it until the following day. By the time the gasman left I was pretty hungry, so I set out in search of a supermarket, and then maybe also a store where I could buy something to sleep on, since I had just committed myself to living in an apartment that had zero furniture and no appliances in it yet. Luckily, I found both a supermarket and a home goods store one after the other, and so was able to get dinner, 3 days worth of breakfast, a heavy coverlet to sleep on, some towels, toilet paper and other necessities. Sadly, I failed to find an alarm clock and so spent the whole night waking up in a panic that I was late for my appointment to go get my visa changed.
Thursday was a terribly busy day! I miraculously woke up exactly when I wanted to, found my nearest subway station, and was early to meet up with the man from my school. Talking to the visa people was scary, but apparently I did well and so before too long things should be sorted out. I went pretty much straight from the immigrations office to Nanba, where the free shuttle to Ikea is located. I had never been to an Ikea before, but I really had not expected to be herded in one continuous curve from entrance to exit like a cow at a slaughterhouse. I don’t mean that it was a bad experience or anything, but clearly you are meant to spend your entire day in there slowly accumulating more and more items until you have so much that the only way to get it home is to ship it. Luckily, I’m extremely cheap, so I spent most of my time vacillating between the two-or-three cheapest items on my list, with almost no time left over by the end to buy too much extra stuff. I ate the meatballs, which were tasty but not exceptional, and a cinnamon roll, and bought pretty much exactly what I went in there for (primarily a bed and a little sofa). I had naively thought that I would be sleeping on my new bed within 24 hours, so I was a little put out when they told me that the earliest they could deliver would be Sunday. Only 3 more nights of sleeping on the floor!

From Ikea I went back to Nanba hoping to find a 100yen shop and lo and behold! There was a nice big one just inside the JR Nanba OCAT terminal! I bought dishes and other needful items…and then proceeded to carry them for what felt like an eternity. I had told myself that I would price the items that I had already seen at Yodobashi Camera at the Bic Camera store in Nanba, so even though I was tired I dragged myself (and my bags full of 105yen dishes and sundries) all the way there. The prices proved to be better at Bic than at Yodobashi, so I made up my mind to buy my household appliances there, thinking that at least if I wouldn’t have a bed I could have a tea kettle, or maybe even a refrigerator! Again, naïve. The electric tea kettle, microwave and rice cooker will arrive on Saturday evening, the refrigerator and the washing machine come on Wednesday evening. But! In the (really long) process of buying all this I managed to sign up for internet! I thought to myself, if I can’t have a hot cup of tea, buy groceries or sleep in a bed, maybe by tomorrow evening I can skype with my family! Need I say it again? Naïve. That one isn’t coming until the 17th. Sigh. At least signing up right there saved me 20,000 JPY on my appliances. Exhausted, bought myself a teriyaki chicken sandwich at the McDonald’s on the 2nd floor of Bic Camera and trudged home.
Okay, so Ikea:

-Everything is in Japanese, English AND Swedish. This means that I would stare at a word in katakana for a full minute before realizing that it was just the Swedish name for the thing spelled phonetically.

-Free refills on drinks. I love this. I had about four cups of different soft drinks.

-The almond cake had no marzipan in it. I was TERRIBLY disappointed.

-Okay, so the meatballs are just meatballs in a light gravy, not spiced, with a side of boiled potatoes and lingonberry jam, am I right?

-This has got to be the single largest store I have ever seen in Japan. It’s like a Super WalMart, only the people aren’t as scary and everything’s in Swedish.

-That heart thing with the arms, creepy or cute? I’m leaning towards creepy.

Boats in the Night

2011-04-06T16:07:00.001+09:00

On Monday J didn’t have Irimachi (The opposite of Demachi, at Irimachi you accompany the actress to the stage door) until after 11am, and I was certain that I had things to get done, so after a quick breakfast at Vie France we went our separate ways. Fortunately or unfortunately the busy day that I had envisioned was not to be, so I ran a couple quick errands and headed to Takarazuka to meet up with J. The sakura were even more beautiful with a blue sky for their backdrop, though it was still windy and cold as before. When we met back up J’s fan club offered me a ticket to the special event that was that evening, so J and I started to plan a day around the idea of hanging around all afternoon and then having dinner together after the show. It was, sadly, not to be. J got an email from my school asking to have me call them and I found out that I was supposed to meet the Real Estate people at the school that afternoon at 4:30. I thought about trying to make it there and back in time for the show but since I had no idea how long it was going to take I opted to decline the ticket instead. Instead we hung around for a little bit, took print club photos, ate some hanami dango (flower-viewing dumplings) under the sakura and then parted ways at the station with a promise to have dinner after J was back from the show.
As it turned out, I had misunderstood the woman on the phone, so when I arrived at the school at 4:30 I was just told by the Real Estate person that I was going to need an official name stamp and 200,000 JPY by the 6th at the latest or else I’d loose the apartment. We made an appointment for the 6th and I left a little annoyed that I had cancelled my other plans for something that could have been done over the phone. What I learned only the following day, however, was that I was supposed to be there at 4pm so that I could go to their office and start squaring things away and meet all the necessary parties. Oops. I went back to my hotel, sent off the necessary account information and read/dozed/practiced pointe in the deserted hallway for awhile. J was back late, but luckily FaKin is open until very late so we grabbed some burger sets, chatted a bit and then fell fast asleep back in our hotel beds.

Takarazuka and Environs

2011-04-05T16:05:00.003+09:00

It has been a little while since I wrote anything down, but that has been because I’ve been more than a little busy, though not always in the way that I would prefer. After about 4 hours of driving around from one place to the next I found an apartment that I liked a great deal on Saturday the 2nd. Unfortunately, in order to rent an apartment one needs to pony up the cash for the security deposit, first month’s rent and a variety of other fees. This meant that until I had about 200,000 JPY in-hand I could not move in. This in and of itself is not a huge problem, it only becomes complicated when you don’t have a Japanese bank account to wire money into, and that without a Foreigner Registration Card you cannot open a bank account. It was very lucky indeed, then, that my contact at the school had offered to work some magic for me and set up a provisional account so that I could receive enough money to cover the apartment and tuition until such time as I could open an account of my own. After apartment hunting I decided to send off an email update from the internet connection in the hotel’s lobby, only to find it currently in-use. I waited for a little while, went out for some dinner, came back and the same guy was still there, hunched over the public computer. Frustrated, I asked the front desk for directions to an internet café, which I actually managed to find only to be turned away because, you guessed it! No Foreigner Registration card. I cannot for the life of me understand why I should need proof that I’m a legal foreign resident in order to USE THE INTERNET, but what could I do? I trudged back to the hotel, where I used my best assertive polite language to scare away the little man who had been monopolizing the internet connection for the last several hours.
A list of things that one cannot do without a Foreigner Registration Card (non-exhaustive):

-Open a bank account

-Buy a cell phone

-Use an internet cafe
My good friend J was going to be in Takarazuka on Sunday and Monday, so I tried on Sunday morning to figure out if I was supposed to do anything. Since the school was closed I just sent an email to my contact that I would be available on J’s phone and headed for the Mister Donuts (abbreviated “MisuDo”) in Takarazuka City. I just missed her and so waited on the Hana no Michi until she was done with her fan club activities, pretending not to hear the people talking about me while watching the sakura blossoms blow in the wind. We went back to MisuDo and sampled their new line of fruit and vegetable-flavoured donuts (I had pumpkin, she had apple and mixed berry) with cups of coffee. I was *very* excited to learn that if you eat in the store at MisuDo they will refill your coffee for free. Very few things in Japan have free refills, and this is the first time I’ve ever gotten a free refill on a café au lait. By now more than a little wired we walked around a bit and then headed for the big shopping mall in Nishinomiya Gardens. It was very nice with a pretty good food court where we both got fried rice with steak and a glass of ginger soda. Very tasty. We walked and walked and walked some more before heading back to Takarazuka, where we had dinner at Mai, my favourite okonomiyaki place. Afterwards we engaged in the fan ritual know as Demachi. Because J’s club is small and very friendly I was able to tag along. Had everything gone through according to plan we would have waited in Lotteria (a fast food restaurant) until we received a call that the actress was about to leave the theatre for the day, at which point we would have run back to the theatre, lined up, and then seen the actress off, handing her letters of encouragement and maybe exchanging a few words. Sadly, this was not to be. We stayed in Lotteria until it closed, at which point we huddled in a little enclosure near some vending machines. We moved from there into a line near the stage doors, where we waited until they turned off the lights –the theatre staff’s way of telling the fans that it’s time to go home. Demachi cancelled J and I trudged back to the hotel, exhausted and chilled through by the persistent wind that had lashed us all day.

Some abbreviations:

-McDonald’s = Mac (Eastern Japan), MacuDo (Western Japan)

-Mister Donuts =MisuDo

-First Kitchen = FaKin (say it 5 times fast and you’ll see why I find it the funniest one)

-Family Mart = FaaMaa

Arriving in Osaka

2011-04-02T16:00:00.000+09:00

Greetings to readers both gentle and otherwise! It has been almost a full three years since I last updated this blog and in that time, naturally, a great deal has changed. I have graduated from college, worked for a time and now I make my triumphant return to Japan as a design student at a school in Osaka. At the moment I am sitting in my hotel room sipping some free green tea and listening to the sounds of the large construction project going on outside my window. In a few hours I go apartment hunting (!), wish me luck!

Getting here was about as tiring as usual, though it did have a few extra difficulties thrown in at the last minute, clearly to keep me from growing complacent. Problem One was learning on the Wednesday afternoon before my Thursday flight that United had changed the weight allocations for international flights, so that instead of being allowed two 70lb bags without charge (140lbs of total luggage for those too lazy/tired to do the math) I was allotted only two 50lb bags (100lbs total luggage), which really does make a great deal of difference, especially when one is moving to a foreign country. We made that work out by reconciling ourselves to paying $200 fee for an extra bag and carefully weighing each piece.

The travel itself all went pretty well until I got to customs at Kansai International, at which point I ran into Problem Two. You see, my student visa had not yet come through, so I was going to enter the country on a tourist visa and then change it once I got to Japan. Stupidly thinking that the truth was the right way to go on my landing documents I won myself a trip to the back room at customs. Even after I explained exactly what the situation was they went away with my passport for what seemed like forever but was probably closer to 20 minutes. I filled the time by giving dirty looks to the security camera. In the end they looked a little suspicious but at least they gave me back my passport and let me go out to meet the people that the school had sent to pick me up.

I will admit that soon after arriving in Osaka I started to feel some panic. I mean, what the hell was I playing at? Getting an apartment, a bank account, a cell phone, and all without the help of my family? I started thinking about how easy it would be to just tell the school ‘Thanks but no thanks’ and turn right back around and go home. Luckily I did neither of these things. Instead I bought some dinner, got into bed at a decent hour (8pm) and told myself that I’d find my courage by light of day.

Thankfully, it seems to have worked.

The Last Day

2008-05-11T15:01:00.000+09:00

My last evening in town my host mother made a wonderful dinner. All matter of tasty things, from special foods like sashimi to foods that, while not technically meant for special occasions, were things that I had grown fond of, such as ochazuke (hot tea poured over a pickled plum and some rice). I broke out a bottle of wine that I had forgotten about, and overall it was just a great night, even though it was sad to think that I’d be leaving soon after lunch the following day.
I had already pretty much finished packing by Sunday morning, so when my host mother remembered that there was a special exhibit going on nearby I was able to jump on the chance. My host mother, host sister, and I hopped in the car and drove down to the temple that sits alongside Doushisha University. The exhibit was of the work of a 105-year-old master weaver, who had woven select chapters from the Tale of Genji into long scrolls with sections of text and illustrations. The scrolls were extremely beautiful. One of the most striking things about them was the fact that, while the style was still very traditional and in many ways resembled other illustrations for the Tale of Genji, if one looked closely, the use of perspective was flawless, making things seem 3d where usually such drawings would be very flat. After we had seen the scrolls, we headed back to the house, with a brief stop at the local bakery for some sandwiches and breads to have for lunch. The shuttle to the airport arrived not long after I finished eating. Before I knew it, I was on my way home.

The last show

2008-05-09T14:57:00.001+09:00

May 9th was a day that really brought home my imminent departure from Kyoto: my last Takarazuka show of the trip. My friends and I had decided that we had to finish out our study abroad experience by seeing the last of the 5 Takarazuka troupes perform in the Grand Theatre, and the only way to do so was to go to the opening performance of ‘Love and Death in Arabia’. This performance was not only the first day of the show, but also the first Grand Theatre performance for the new Top Star of Flower Troupe, which made it extra special. Since this was probably our last chance to do so, my friend and I wore hakama, which attracted a decent amount of positive attention. The show itself was interesting, especially since the entire thing took place in Egypt. The opening number belonged in Vegas: gold silk stretched across the stage to suggest sand, a full cast in gold-bordered robes, and a large glittery pyramid in the centre of the stage, which opened to reveal the top star herself, who was wearing a headdress meant to suggest Horus. The plot was a little hard for me to follow, but had to do with a Scottish man named Thomas being drafted to help fight for Egypt’s independence because of his perfect marksmanship. I don’t think that this show would have gone over well in the more politically-correct circles in the US. It was full of stereotypes, belly dancers and turbans, though the Japanese audience didn’t seem to mind overmuch. The revue part of the show was called ‘Red Hot Sea’, and was set underwater. It was a pretty interesting revue, though still not my favourite. The highlights included: a fight between men wielding sticks and men wielding whip-like ropes, an amusing piece about a ghost ship, and some very nice pin-striped suits. The more painful parts included: sequin-covered wing-like shoulder pads that haunt me still, and massive amounts of leg-ruffles on seemingly every member of the cast at one point. Overall it was a lot of fun. After the show itself, we decided to stay to watch the actresses leave the theatre, which takes awhile. Since this was such an important show, we watched large numbers of massive orchid plants and bouquets being taken out of the theatre, at times seeming to dwarf the women carrying them. None of the actresses seemed to notice us, which was fine, but they were all (as always) extremely well-dressed. At one point something very puzzling happened. A woman in a white blazer (I couldn’t see her very well) walked out and headed for (I believe) the parking lot. As soon as she was within sight, a line of women that had been waiting to one side RAN after her, which would have been strange enough if the woman had stopped at that point and gone through the usual fan-club ritual of receiving gifts and waving. However, while the line of women pursued her, she kept her head down and forged ahead. It looked as though she was being chased, which neither my friend nor I had ever seen before. After that we waited a while longer for the #2 star to come out. Her fan club was very large and had rather cute matching sweaters, and she just stood there as they filed past her with their cards and gifts. When the top star finally came out (we had been waiting for quite awhile by that point, and I was getting hungry), her fanclub (all wearing the girliest pink sweatshirts I have ever seen) recited a message to her about how they had been cheering her on from the audience etc. We had heard them practice their speech earlier, but since we hadn’t known what they were doing it sounded almost like they were praying or something. After she had received all of the gifts from her fanclub, the top star (Matobu Sei is her name) went over to say ‘hello’ to the #2 person’s fanclub and then drove off. By that time I was dying for some sort of dinner, but a lot of the restaurants were closed for the night. We managed to find a soba restaurant that was both open and delicious, which was very fortunate. After that we rode the train back, my last time on the Kyoto subway system.
-I’m really going to miss wearing kimono.
-I don’t shop well under pressure. Even knowing that it was my last chance to buy Takarazuka DVDs until my next trip to Japan (the shop doesn’t ship abroad) I was unable to decide on what I wanted to buy, and thus left virtually empty-handed.
-When you spend over 3000yen at the used goods shop you’re allowed to pick a program or magazine from the bin by the register. They won’t tell you this, you just have to know.
-When you are in a Takarazuka fan club, the club president chooses something for each performance that your chosen actress is in (such as a scarf, sweater, jacket, etc.) and as a member of the club you are *required* to purchase one for each show. You just hope, I guess, that your fan club president has good taste.

The last party

2008-05-08T14:30:00.000+09:00

The last couple of days in town were pretty much a blur of packing and last-minute shopping. On one of our last days in town, one of the students had arranged another all-you-can-eat beef night, which was fun, even if I was late for it. It was a different restaurant in the same chain as the last time that I went, which meant that the food was equally good, though the service was also rather slow. I think that the waiters dreaded stepping into our little party room, which contained about 30 Americans, half of which were male. After dinner, most everyone went out for karaoke, but my closest group of friends had opted to go wander around Shijo instead and so I went with them. We mostly looked around in various shops, talked, and then went home. My feet were a little worse for wear by then, but I had managed to pick up some last-minute gifts and spend some last-minute time with people.

Go Hanshin!!

2008-04-30T06:29:00.000+09:00

Thursday I finally got to see live what I’d been watching on TV ever since I got to Japan in the fall: a Hanshin Tigers home game. The Hanshin Tigers are the baseball team for the Kansai region, and have the most fanatical fans of any other team in Japan. I’ve heard them described before as the Red Sox of Japan, which seems to be a good comparison. The train to Koushien Park was absolutely packed with people in yellow and black (Tigers’ colours), all chattering excitedly in heavy Kansai accents. Outside the park itself were the souvenir and bentou (lunch-box) vendors and masses of people. Inside the park itself there weren’t really any areas to just walk around, which I was a little surprised by. It seems to me that most parks in the US that I’ve been to have had areas where you could walk around, buy food, and watch the game while standing, but at Koushien you could only watch the game from your seat, and the inside areas seemed reserved exclusively for the bathrooms and the masses of people taking smoke-breaks. One step inside and I was enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. The seats that we had were not very good, to be honest. We were seated behind centre field, which was one reason that it was so hard to get into the actual game action, the second being that it wasn’t a very exciting game. Almost every fan has a pair of little plastic bats, used in choreographed patterns that accompany each player’s personal song. When a player comes up to bat, the entire stadium sings that player’s song in unison, conducted in some sections by people wearing white gloves, and accompanied by trumpets and drums, which seem to be played by fans rather than stadium employees. The fans also, naturally, cheer at any good play or hit and have special songs for those as well, but since Hanshin only had one hit during the entire game, most of the cheering was done when the other team dropped a foul pop-up or walked someone. Behind where we were sitting were a couple American guys, who were annoying when the game began and became less charming as the night wore on. The main problem was that they were speaking loud, crude, English that they were counting on no one being able to understand. As one of the only people who *did* understand, I wanted to punch them before long. My friend and I were both getting pretty tired, but we made sure to stay for one of the big events in any Hanshin game: Luck 7th. Because I knew about this from watching it on the television several times, I bad purchased ahead of time a cheap package of balloons outside the park, which I distributed to my friends as the bottom of the 7th drew near. At a game at Koushien Park all of the Tigers’ fans blow up these long balloons during the break between the top and bottom of the 7th inning, sing the Tigers’ fight song, and then let them go all at once. It’s really cool to watch, though when they come back down one does get pelted with spent balloons. Apparently the shrine next to the park has real problems when it gets windy. After the 8th we decided that we were pretty much satisfied with our baseball experience and headed home. We were not the only ones, but as we had purchased our return tickets for the train when we had arrived at Koushien we were able to just pack into the train and head back to Osaka. Maybe one day I’ll make it to a more eventful game and see the Hanshin fans at their best.
-My friend’s host parents had told her that the best place to get dinner for the game is actually the Hanshin Department store in Osaka right before you board the train for the ballpark. There was a great variety of good, cheap prepared food that I wouldn’t have known about otherwise.
-There is a special train for Hanshin games that is easy to find and easy to use.
-Just like at any American ballpark, you are not allowed to bring bottles or cans into Koushien. Unlike any American ballpark, however, the staff at the door will pour any bottle or can of drink that you bring with you into a big plastic cup so that you can enjoy it at your seat.
-It seemed as though more than half of the seats in the park were benches, which were a little lacking in the comfort department and very densely packed.
-There is almost no food to be had in the park itself, as far as I could tell, and what food stands there are close well before the end of the game.
-Since I have always associated the Hanshin Tigers with Osaka, I was surprised to learn that Koushien Park is actually in Kobe.

The Never-ending Bowl of Ramen

2008-04-29T06:22:00.000+09:00

Wednesday my friends and I went down to Kobe to meet a couple of other foreigners who are were in the area. One of them was a JET teaching English in Nagasaki, but touring the area around Kyoto (Kansai, which includes Osaka, Nara, Kobe and others) while the other is currently studying at Osaka University. Well, we had decided to go visit Kobe’s ‘Nanking Town’ in hopes of scoring some Dim Sum, my absolute favourite type of food. Well, Nanking Town is not very big, only a couple of blocks long with not many side streets, and very expensive, especially since I’m used to Boston or San Francisco Chinatown prices. 600yen for one (5-piece) order of shumai is ridiculous, especially when they aren’t even all that good. Well, the people selling from stands on the street were a little less expensive, but as it was terribly hot we resigned ourselves to eating in one of the restaurants, where we could at least get out of the sun. This is where I had the never-ending bowl of ramen. As part of a ‘set meal’ at the restaurant, I got a bowl of ramen. Now, ramen noodles tend to be tangled together in one dense mass when they first arrive, which means that you have to kind of work them free in order to eat them. Well, because of this, it seemed that the more of this ramen I ate, the more noodles were in my bowl. I just kept eating and eating (not very good) ramen until I couldn’t eat another bite, and yet my bowl was still full. It was like some sort of nightmare. Well, after our lunch adventure, we walked down an extremely long shopping arcade in the area. I didn’t know this before coming, but apparently Kobe is famous for its proliferation of shoe stores. I have never seen so many shoe stores in one location before. Sadly, my feet are too big for most all Japanese shoes, so I was not able to buy a souvenir pair of Kobe shoes, but I did buy an amazingly bright blue-green fedora. After our shopping half of the group went home and the rest of us decided to do an hour of karaoke, which was fun, and then head to Umeda in Osaka, because I needed to buy an external hard drive. With my new hard drive in-hand, we wandered around for awhile looking for a place to have dinner, though by this point I was exhausted. We found a really nice and reasonable Italian restaurant across from the Umeda Arts Theatre, which had very tasty garlic bread, but I was unfortunately faced for the second time that day a bowl of noodles that I simply could not finish. When I got home it was all I could do to get up the energy to take my shower before falling into bed.
-Kobe has traditionally had a lot of foreigners, so in addition to a Chinatown, it also has some old mansions that European traders used to own. I’ll have to look into them next time.
-I had thought that the vendors on the street were fairly cheap until I realized that I’d never pay almost a dollar for a single sesame ball in the states, and would definitely not pay $4 for a moon cake
-Afternoon karaoke is amazingly cheap: for an hour it was 220yen per person, whereas an hour in the evening can come to easily 1000yen per person.
-Most karaoke machines only have a small number of mostly older Takarazuka songs, but there is apparently one in Osaka that has tons of songs, including some from the shows that I’ve been to since being here. We’re going later next week.
-I never want to eat ramen again.
-Yodobashi Camera in Osaka Umeda has 320GB external hard drives for 10,090yen, which is just under $100.

Ann Karenina

2008-04-28T05:23:00.001+09:00

Monday was my second-to-last time going to Takarazuka on this trip, but I have to say it was a real winner. The play was ‘Anna Karenina’, based, naturally, on the book by Tolstoy and also, naturally, a musical. This was one of the shows in the smaller theatre, and of the three shows that I’ve seen there it was by far the best. The other two were amusing and had good acting and music and the like, but this one really pulled me in. The music was very good and had a suitably ‘epic’ feel to it. The actresses all seemed to throw everything that they had into their roles, which is perhaps a little easier when there are so very many passionate characters. I was also very impressed with the set and lighting this show. I am no expert in either of these categories, but I felt that they did a very good job creating an atmosphere for the piece. The set was extremely simplistic, really, consisting mainly of tall panels painted with bleak winter landscapes in such a way that they could either be construed as being painted interior walls or actual scenery. There were also other pieces that were dropped down to make specific locations like, for instance, a train station. All of the light was rather dim, which is unusual for Takarazuka, and they seemed to use some sort of smoke (I’m sure it wasn’t really smoke, steam? Fog? I don’t know) so that light came in beams instead of seeming ambient. Before the show itself, a couple friends and I wandered about the town, did some shopping and had some lunch. My one friend was going with a bunch of ‘first-timers’ from our program to see ‘Me and My Girl’ while the other friend, myself and one other person went to see ‘Anna Karenina’. After the first friend left for her show, the remaining friend and I sat down inside the theatre building to wait for our third person. While we were waiting, these two women sitting across from us seemed as though they were talking about us, but my usual policy is to ignore things like that. Well, finally one of the women got up, walked over to me and asked in English: “Pardon me, but are you Brooke Shields?”. I was a little surprised. I said ‘no’, and she apologized for being rude (I told her that I was flattered, but she still apologized) and she and her friend left. It was pretty amusing. People have told me that I look like Brooke Shields before, but this is the first time that I’ve actually been mistaken for her. After the show we did some more shopping, stopped in at a cafe for a cup of tea which we immediately followed with dinner at a place that had a “7 gyouza (potstickers) for 150yen” deal going on. I wasn’t hungry, and the gyouza weren’t that good, so I was feeling slightly ill as we left the restaurant. As we walked out, though, we saw these two very fashionable looking women, one of whom was quite tall and had short hair and I thought aloud ‘I bet that they’re Takarazuka actresses..’ to which my far more outgoing friend answered ‘we should ask!’ and bounded up the escalator after them, leaving me fluttering in consternation in her wake. I looked distressed enough that an older couple going up the escalator asked me if I needed help, to which I said that no, she’d be back soon enough. Not a minute later the same couple beckoned me upstairs to show me that my friend was coming back. She had met the two women, asked them if they were actresses, and they said yes. She came back with their names and, sure enough, when I got home and checked my program from ‘Me and My Girl’ there they were in the chorus section! I wish that I had the courage to chase after random people.
-This show answered a long-standing question of mine: with the shear number of shows that they do every year they need astronomical numbers of costumes, but do they actually re-use them? Well, in this show I clearly recognized two, and maybe even three, costume pieces from other shows. I knew that they couldn’t possibly make all-new costumes for every show, especially the smaller ones, but it was nice to have this visually confirmed.
-The new school year at the Takarazuka Music School just started, which meant that we saw several students in their uniforms. I adore the uniforms, mainly because it appears that they haven’t changed at all since the ‘60’s. They even have little hats.
-When I thought a little more about what time I was actually seeing these students, it occurred to me that they were leaving school at about 6pm. That’s really late, and if they were first years they were going to have to be back at ridiculously early o’clock to clean the school top-to-bottom. Pretty strict.
-Just because gyouza are 7 for 150yen does not mean that they are a good deal.

Uji

2008-04-26T17:02:00.000+09:00

Saturday my host mother and sister took me to a place outside of Kyoto called Uji. Uji figures prominently in the last ten chapters of the ‘Tale of Genji’ and is also famous for its tea. Our first stop was at a temple called Byodoin, a Buddhist temple that dates to the 11th century AD, and is a designated World Heritage Site. It’s also on the 10-yen coin. Because we were going to have to wait a full hour to walk through the building itself, we contented ourselves with looking at the outside of it, and then the museum, which has replicas and originals of several national treasures associated with the temple, including a host of bodhisattvas on clouds, each one playing a different instrument. After this we took a leisurely walk along the Uji River, bought the best green-tea ice cream that I’ve ever had, sampled some teas and looked into some tea stores. After that we caught a bus to another temple called Mimurotoji, which is famous for its flowers. The temple itself was up some very steep stairs to the back of the compound, but the focus everywhere was clearly on nature. The courtyard of the temple building was filled with urns of water, which I was told would all have blooming lotuses in them before long. The hillside by next to the temple was entirely covered in flowering bushes. The azaleas where almost all in bloom, though it was a bit early for them, and I was told that the hydrangeas that came next would also be extremely beautiful. We stopped at the little tea-stand in the middle of the garden to have some green-tea gelatine with red bean and whipped cream before heading back to the station. Unfortunately on the train ride back my host sister started to feel ill, so we stopped in at the station office for awhile to rest. The people there were really nice and attentive. We made it back in one piece and my host sister went straight to bed. On the train back I had the …opportunity? To speak English with a retired professor who spoke fluently but rather inside my comfort bubble. He seemed nice enough, I guess, but I was still glad to get off the train.
-Uji is very nice and very peaceful, which is apparently why a number of old aristocrats had summer houses there.
-Byodoin is actually famous for its wisteria, but a sign outside of the temple apologized that the wisteria this year was not up to par. It seemed fine to me, but I’m no wisteria expert.
-If I could retire from the world and spend my time thinking about profound things, Mimurotoji Temple would be a good choice of retreat.
-The station attendants take their jobs very seriously. When they heard that my host sister was ill they got one person to check out the situation, and then three people came with a wheel chair to convey her to the station office.
-I believe that I washed my hands with mouthwash at the station office. The bottle was by next to the sink, and was mostly soap-bottle shaped, but it had a distinct minty-freshness that I don’t usually find in hand soap.

The Farewell Party

2008-04-25T16:56:00.000+09:00

Friday was a VERY long day, but a good one. The first order of business was to thank the god of Shimogamo shrine for a good year. I don’t know if you remember, but one of our first outings of the program was to ask the god of Shimogamo shrine for a good year, and since the year was pretty wonderful we needed to show our appreciation. It was pretty much the same process as in September. We all filed into a small room where a priest chanted something while we bowed, then we moved into the bigger room in front of the central shrine building. The priestess danced, one of the students offered a branch, there was more chanting and more bowing, then a small bowl of sake for everyone. We got party favours, which included food for our host family’s house-dieties, a little wooden plaque which you can theoretically write a wish on and then hang up at the shrine for it to be granted (I’m keeping mine, because it’s really cute), a small arrow talisman, and a protection charm. After this, my friend and I hurried over to Kitano Tenmangu. The 25th marked my last Kitano market this trip to Kyoto, which was a little sad, but I made the best of it. We only had a couple of hours before we had to start heading in the direction of the next event, the farewell party, but we still made great progress. My friend bought some necessary kimono accessories and some hakama of her own, while I bought a new kimono that caught my eye. It was because I found this kimono so late in the afternoon that I was late for everything that came afterward: if I’d found it earlier I would have had time to find an obi to match, but as it was I found myself slowing down at every stand that sold obi on my way to the bus. I was very late for meeting people at the party, but it turned out alright. For the party I was in two different acts, the first being Japanese dance with the other people I took the class with, and the second a scene from Takarazuka that I was doing with a friend of mine. For the party itself, before the entertainment began, I wore a kimono of my host family’s, which was extremely beautiful: pale, lime-y green with large, hand-painted pink-red peonies on the hem and sleeves. I wish that I would have had more time to wear it, but after dinner and the dance performance, I had to rush down and change into my costume for the Takarazuka bit. My friend and I were performing the ‘confession scene’ from ‘Rose of Versailles’, which is probably one of the most famous scenes in Takarazuka. I was playing Oscar (actually a female character who was raised as a man to carry on in her father’s footsteps as a general), while my friend played Andre, Oscar’s childhood friend. I wore the costume that I’d bought in Harajuku that had caught the notice of the Snow Troupe #2 actress, which is, I think, part of the reason that people liked our skit so much. After the act we had every host parent coming up to us telling us how much they liked our act, and after everything was finished everyone wanted their picture taken with us. There was even an adorable little girl who apparently kept asking her mother ‘Where’s the prince?’ referring to myself, but was almost too shy to have her picture taken with me. I was a little worried about how my dance teacher would react to the whole thing, as we hadn’t had much time to practice our Japanese dance before the performance, but she seemed to be in a good mood when she came over to say ‘hi’ to me afterward. Our teacher was Senrei Nishikawa, a world-renowned dancer who oozes elegance, so I’m always a little nervous around her. Now, after most everyone had left we were all pretty tired, but my host family offered to carry home my (considerable) luggage if I wanted to go out, so a group of us did. We left the hotel with 8 people, had three people back out at Kyoto station, managed to get to Shijo station before two more people called it a night, and finally reached the karaoke place with 3 people. We only sang for an hour, but we made the most of it. Did I mention that I was still wearing my costume? We got a lot of interesting stares, and when we left the karaoke box a group of salarymen stopped dead. I pretended not to notice them. Or the other people staring and pointing.
-The actual words to the scene are pretty ridiculously cheesy, even in Japanese. Consider the following:
Andre: Ah! My unfulfilled dream! I wish that I could freeze forever this moment in a sepia-toned fossil!
Oscar: Andre!
Andre: Oh, how wonderful that I was able to live to see this day!
Also, about half of the dialog consists of them saying each other’s names.
-I am more popular with the older women of this country than ever.
-If you ask the women helping people with kimono if your collar looks alright, they will completely rearrange your kimono. If you ask one of them to tighten something for you, they will proceed to entirely tie your obi for you. They are very helpful.
-They have Handel’s Messiah in the karaoke machine at Karaoke Kan. My first thought was ‘who comes to karaoke to sing something like that?’ but as my second one was ‘Let’s give it a shot!’, I guess that I had my answer.
-A Japanese-style parfait at Karaoke Kan is the usual green tea ice cream, red bean, cornflakes, mochi, some fruit…and is about half whipped cream. On the bottom. I was a little surprised.

Finals are done!

2008-04-23T16:52:00.000+09:00

Wednesday was, coincidentally, both our last day of exams and my friend’s birthday. To celebrate both we went out for Indian food and then to karaoke. It was a real blast. We sang all sorts of songs, drank some *very* watered-down sake and caught the last train home. The Indian restaurant that we went to was one I’d been to a couple of times before, and every time I go I think that I won’t have enough food, only to barely finish what I’ve ordered. We all got free lassi with our meals, which I think must have been compliments of the owner, because he was very nice to us and I saw no mention of any such special on the menu. They were pretty tasty, but I think that drinking both mine and my friend’s was a bad idea. At karaoke we got something called ‘nomi hodai’ or ‘all you can drink’, which does not only refer to alcohol, you can order anything off of a limited menu, which includes tea and soda and the like. I tried their sake, but it was not particularly good and came in a ridiculously small glass. Clearly the way that they make money on this is that the drinks are small, and people get distracted by their karaoke or just don’t feel like calling down every four minutes. It was nice to have hot tea available, though. The room itself was pretty amazing. The walls lit-up with a big outer space-themed ‘painting’, there was a little stage-like thing in the corner with its own karaoke readout, and flashing lights overall. Also, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to read the karaoke book in the dark room, but there was a black light or something that made the pages glow enough to read them. It was pretty cool.
-‘all you can drink’ karaoke is really not worth the money.
-Just because you’ve heard a song once does not mean that you can sing it.
-From the song ‘Me and My Girl’ I only know the words ‘Me and my girl’ and ‘happy’.
-The karaoke machine at karaoke kan has a small-scale production from 2000, but nothing recent.
-‘Where in the World?’ from Phantom is a LOT faster than I thought it was. I wound up basically just mumbling melodically.

Tayuu Procession

2008-04-20T18:07:00.000+09:00

Today was mostly devoted to studying (and procrastinating) for my final exams, which start on Monday, but this morning my host mother took my host sister and I to see a procession of three Tayuu. I’ve doubtless mentioned before that Tayuu were Edo-period courtesans, and that while the ‘real thing’ doesn’t exist anymore there are a few women who dress up in the specifically Tayuu style of kimono, hair and makeup, and basically perform the same function as geisha do, which is to say going to parties and performing traditional music and dance. The Tayuu also, however, have a couple public appearances, which today was one example of. North of the main part of the city is a small temple, the main gate of which was donated by a famous Tayuu. This same Tayuu’s grave is inside the temple precincts, and it is for the purpose of paying respects to that grave that the three Tayuu this morning were out in public. Now, Tayuu of old used to parade down the main street of the pleasure quarter on their way to a party in a slow, stately fashion befitting a noble woman. They had a specific way of walking where they drag the side of their rather tall shoe in a figure 8 before placing it just barely in front of them, the result is that they move extremely slowly, but in an oddly snake-like manner. They were usually attended by several other courtesans, musicians, their house owner, servants, and an umbrella-bearer, which must have been quite a spectacle. Not that today wasn’t. There was a big crowd gathered the sides of the street, and the bus to the temple was ridiculously crowded. Policemen held a sort of roped enclosure around the Tayuu as they walked to keep the masses of people back, and it was very much a necessary measure. Each Tayuu was elaborately dressed and coiffed and attended by two child attendants and a man with an umbrella. The first one was, in my opinion, the most convincing in the way she walked and the way she stared straight ahead as if there was no one in front of her at all. The second woman was also pretty good, but the third one was talking to her umbrella guy, and broke out of the traditional walk when she wanted to catch up. It was very exciting to see actual people wearing these clothes, and to see an actual person do the walk that I’ve read about in several books. Tayuu are rarer by far than geisha or maiko, and as far as I know can only be found in Kyoto.
-My host mother confirmed that non-maiko dance students fill-out the ranks at the Miyako Odori.
-The Tayuu whose grave they were visiting actually married a wealthy Kyoto merchant. I thought that that sort of thing only happened in Kabuki plays.
-Crowded buses are their own sort of exercise.
-I really need to remember my sunglasses when I leave the house.

Dances at Kitano Shrine

2008-04-19T18:01:00.000+09:00

Saturday two friends and I had tickets for the Kitano Odori, the dance performance for the geisha and maiko of the Kamishichiken geisha district. Unlike the Miyako Odori, this show was in the evening. This time we had 1st-class tickets with the tea service included, which was very much worth the extra money. As we were walking to the theatre, we passed a group of maiko who were leaving. I believe that the maiko are split into batches, with one group performing the early show, one the afternoon show and the last group performing in the late show. This would make a lot of sense, especially since the maiko only had a couple dances in the program. Compared to the Gion theatre, the one in Kamishichiken was a lot more intimate, though it might have helped that we were seated on the first floor right at the entrance to the walkway that runs up the side of the theatre to the stage. Before we took our seats, however, we went to our tea service. We were seated in a room with benches and tables organized around a tatami platform which was laid-out with tea ceremony implements. We were shown to empty spaces and given a small Japanese tea cake on a nice plate and a cup of matcha. After a moment a very young maiko and a young geisha came out. The geisha set about doing a tea ceremony, while the maiko sat and was pretty. After we’d had our tea and taken our plate (which we wrapped in the paper that they had helpfully provided for us) we made our way slowly to the theatre itself, walking through the little garden in the courtyard on our way. The performance was made up of several short pieces based (I believe) on folktales. The first piece was about two women, a plum blossom spirit and a cherry blossom spirit, demanding that a young male wisteria spirit decide who was the most beautiful. They started off flirting with him, but soon started fighting with each other in earnest, which seemed to scare the male spirit, who ran off with the two women’s ladies-in-waiting. The next piece was about a young woodcutter who helped a swan by removing an arrow from her wing. In return, the swan wove the woodcutter fine fabric out of its feathers. This made the woodcutter greedy, however, and he demanded of her first more fabric, and then a famous bow that was in the bottom of the nearby lake, figuring that (because she was a water bird) she could get it for him. He bullied the swan into getting it for him, and then, once he had it, decided that he should shoot more swans down so that she could use their feathers to make more cloth. This made the swan (understandably, I feel) unhappy, so she threw herself in front of his arrow. The woodcutter, feeling pretty bad about this, pulled out the arrow, but the swan was extremely displeased and, wrapping the cloth that she’d woven around his neck, dragged him into the lake. The next piece was a comedic one about a fox spirit in the form of a lovely woman trying to trick a hapless traveller, and then, after intermission, was a dance by the maiko set to a song about the Kamishichiken district. Next was a dance piece that, I believe, was about a geisha and her progressively drunker customer enjoying Gion Matsuri, while the next one seemed to about a rabbit, a frog, a monkey and a fox having a good time, but the exact details were hard to understand. It was pretty funny, though. The final dance had all of the geisha and maiko in full formal dress against a backdrop of cherry blossoms, and ended with all of the performers throwing (I believe) handtowels to the audience. I didn’t catch one, which is probably okay. After the show we found some dinner at a lovely little restaurant not far from Kitano Tenmangu shrine. We were the only customers, but the owners were very nice, the food delicious, and the prices quite reasonable. After that it was time to go home, and after wearing kimono all evening it was pretty nice to get into some more comfortable clothes.
-Certain obi knots simply cannot be executed by oneself.
-It is hard to walk quickly in a kimono and zori (kimono shoes, kind of like formal flip-flops).
-I think that a couple of the Kamishichiken geisha are unusually tall. In the finale I saw one who was a good head and shoulders taller than the maiko standing by next to her. I think that she played one of the male roles.
-The kimono were, as expected, extremely beautiful, and I especially liked the hair ornaments for the senior maiko, which were butterflies made out of silver and hung all over in sparkly things.

Dances of the Capital

2008-04-17T17:59:00.000+09:00

My study abroad program was nice enough to buy 2nd-class tickets for the Miyako Odori on Thursday for anyone who wanted them, and so naturally I signed up. The truth is, I had wanted 1st-class tickets with the additional tea service, where you can be served matcha and mochi by a maiko on a special plate that you get to keep, but there were no tickets left when the program called, so I took what I could get. 2nd-class tickets have no assigned seat, and are located on the second floor of the Gion Theatre, which is partitioned into tatami-mat boxes, which are supposed to fit about 10 people each. The Miyako Odori is the annual dance program put on by the Gion geisha district, and originally started to revitalize Kyoto after the capital was moved to Tokyo in the mid-19th century. This is one of the only chances that the average person has to see the geisha and maiko of Gion perform live. The program this year was made up of pieces based on ‘The Tale of Genji’, as this is its 1000th anniversary. The program opened, with a dance by all of the maiko in the district in bright blue kimono arrayed along the two walkways on either side of the (1st floor) audience. The next piece was more like a mini-play than a dance, and was the story of the Genji chapter ‘Young Murasaki’. After that was ‘Yuugao’ which was a more dance-oriented piece with three geisha and four maiko, the Geisha with ‘yuugao’ (a flower that looks like a white morning glory, I’m not certain of the English name) patterned kimono, and the maiko with beautiful yuugao flower hair ornaments. The next piece was ‘The Lady Aoi’, one of the more famous chapters from Genji, that was also rather play-like, but suitably creepy. The story is basically that Genji’s wife (Lady Aoi) is attacked by the vengeful (living) spirit of one of his (many) mistresses, the Lady Rokujo. In the original story, Rokujo’s spirit kills Aoi, but in most all adaptations that I’ve seen for theatre, this one included, the spirit is scared away by Buddhist chanting. This piece had rather modern (in my opinion) lighting used to show Rokujo’s attacks, including coloured and strobe-y lights. I actually found this a little disconcerting, as every other part of the performance was very traditional. The next piece was another one with all of the maiko, this time against a beautiful backdrop of Kyoto in the autumn. After this came a dance piece about ‘Ukifune’, a winter scene, which set up the grand finale which had every dancer onstage, and all surrounded by cherry blossoms. It was a lot of fun, and I am very glad that I went. I’ve been reading about these performances for years, so to actually see one was extremely exciting.
-You can still see quite well from the second floor, only the very beginnings of the walkways are obscured.
-I was surprised at the number of maiko that performed, there are 30 listed in the program, which is quite a lot.
-Like in Kabuki, the stage that is used for geisha performances has several platforms that can be used for lifting set pieces and dancers to stage level from below.

Spring River Poems

2008-04-13T17:46:00.000+09:00

Most of this weekend I spent in my room finishing up a big project for one of my classes, but on Sunday morning I managed to get out of the house. A relative of my host family’s was in town for a waka performance at Kamigamo shrine, and so we all went down to see her there. The relative is part of the same waka singing group as my host mother is, which meets at the house of an aristocratic Kyoto family but also performs here and there. I’m not certain that I’ve explained here what waka are and why one would sing them, so I guess that I’ll explain now. Waka are poems that have been written from before 900 AD until the present, with syllables in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern. These poems were written in vast numbers by the Heian period aristocracy, and are still written (though naturally not as frequently) but people today. These poems were not only read, but also chanted to music, which is what my host mother and her niece do. The morning of the performance I dressed in my hakama and we all three went down to Kamigamo shrine, a major shrine in Kyoto on the upper Kamo river. It was a beautiful day, and all around the massive cherry tree in front of the shrine people had spread out blankets and were enjoying the nice weather. We walked past the festival-like atmosphere towards the side of the shrine, where there is a beautiful moss garden with a stream down the middle. It would have been very peaceful if there hadn’t been masses of people pressed up to the bamboo-fenced enclosure and cameramen everywhere. The main players came in soon after we found decent places to stand: The Kamigamo priestess, the two girls there to help her, a group of young children in Heian page-boy costumes, a group of costumed musicians, the waka group, and five waka masters, also in full Heian costume. The five waka writers took their places along the calculatedly meandering stream under umbrellas, and everyone else took their places over to the side. The Priestess gave the theme that the poems for the day were supposed to follow: The river in spring. With the theme announced, all of the masters went to work grinding their ink, and a little wooden raft with a single cup of sake on it was let loose at the top of the stream to be guided down to the bottom by children using bamboo poles. When the sake reached the bottom, it was retrieved and brought to one of the writers. This was all accompanied by ‘mood music’ from the musicians on the side. Theoretically, the writers in a gathering like this have until the sake cup meant for them reaches the bottom to write a poem, the idea being that they have to trade the waka for their sake. In this gathering, however, at what appeared to be a designated span of time a couple of men with a lacquered tray came by and collected the poems, bringing them to the master of ceremonies. Here the waka singers came in, positioned themselves around the waka, and sang it out for everyone to hear. Each writer stood when his or her poem was being sung. In this manner we heard five waka, and every writer received at least one cup of sake before everyone paraded out again. There was only one obvious mishap, which was inevitable. At one point the sake raft met with some sort of trouble, causing it to sink or fall over, at which point the kid pushing it along tried to go in after it, which caused some consternation among the priests running things. One minute there were two puzzled looking kids, the next there were two kids and three priests crowded around a single manicured bend in the stream. The day was all a lot of fun for me, as I’ve read about gatherings like this in ‘The Tale of Genji’ and my various history texts. After it was over we took some pictures, and then went to feed the shrine’s horse, which is supposed to be for the shrine’s god. He was a very ill-mannered horse, but a handsome one.
-I learned afterward from my host sister that the poem that each writer was going to show had been decided upon beforehand so that the singers would have time to practice, which makes sense.
-The Kamigamo (“upper-kamo river”) shrine is a sort of ‘sister-shrine’ to Shimogamo (“lower-kamo river”) shrine. The famous Aoi Matsuri (one of the ‘three great festivals of Kyoto’) held in late May moves the shrines’ god between the two shrines.
-Traditional Japanese music with drums and flute is very nice. When not amplified. In my opinion everyone would have been able to hear just fine without the microphones (okay, they might have had to use on for the koto) as it was really not that big of a space. The amplified flute was extremely shrill.
-There is some sort of famous cake from Kamigamo shrine, but it sells out quickly. We didn’t move quickly enough.

Beer, Dance, and Red Bean Jelly

2008-04-06T14:13:00.001+09:00

Sunday was a very long, very tiring day. The reason for this was that Sunday was the final recital for my Japanese dance class, which I have been taking all school year. The performance was on an actual Noh stage, and for the occasion all six of us exchange students were dressed in beautiful kimono that we were able to rent for free from a bridal company with which our teacher has a long-standing relationship. Mine was bright red with a rose pattern, and my obi was gold and dark brown. Everyone looked amazing. The only thing is, once we were dressed, we could not eat or slouch or use the bathroom. For almost six hours. The first piece that I danced was called ‘Takasago’, which was the dance that we’d all learned during the spring semester. Five of us learned it, but we were split into two groups, one with two people (my group) and the other with three. The most difficult part was staying the same relative distance away from my dance partner the whole time, especially because I had about four inches on her in height. The second piece that I was in was ‘Sakura’, which we’d learned during the fall semester, and which also went very well. In between the two dances, and then between ‘sakura’ and the end of the program, there was a very long time spent sitting still in full view of the audience, on a bench, where we were supposed to wait. That was the hard part. After a couple of hours, my back got very sick of being held stiffly in one place, and my legs hurt from trying to sit without crossing them at all. I only realized that I was ravenously hungry when we finally got undressed because the obi was extremely tight. I don’t believe that I’ve mentioned here my beer saga. Because we were able to rent our kimono free of charge, we were told by our dance teacher that we were to get a gift of Asahi beer, the price to be split between all six of us. The gift was supposed to come from a nice department store, where they would wrap it nicely and put a special sort of paper on it called a ‘noshi’ that would have all of our names on it. I volunteered to find this beer, and for the week leading up to the performance I went to every major department store that I could looking for a packaged Asahi beer gift of the correct price, to no avail: everywhere I went was sold out. Finally, I asked my dance teacher if the gift could come from the somewhat less than glamorous Liquor Mountain, which I knew would have a decent stock, and might even deliver the beer (it was going to be a significant amount, about two cases) to the theatre itself so that I would not have to attempt to carry it myself. This was okay, so I went there, bought the beer, told them to wrap it nicely and have it delivered. Well, when it arrived at the theatre I was shocked: in a country where wrapping things is quite culturally important, the two plain cases of beer had been wrapped in hideous paper that didn’t even cover the whole box. The stickers from the delivery service were prominently stuck onto the top of it, and I could tell from looking through the wrapping that they had only put *my* name on the noshi paper. After the performance, I brought the beer down to show to our dance teacher, so that I could apologize for its hideousness. My teacher looked at it and said ‘Ah, you bought the actual beer? Not a beer ticket?’ I wanted to cry. We took off the paper, everyone wrote their names on the noshi, and then, because our teacher said that it was too heavy for her to take to the kimono rental place herself, she asked us to get it there instead. Now, the rental place is within easy walking distance of the theatre…if you aren’t carrying two cases of beer. I volunteered. I got about two blocks before my friend said that I should just call a cab. By the time I got home my whole body ached and I was positively starving. My host family had been kind enough to come see me dance ‘Takasago’, and even gave me a congratulatory gift when I got home. It was a learning experience, but I’m glad that it’s over.
-Make sure that you completely understand your instructions before attempting to carry them out.
-A case of beer is very heavy. Two cases of beer together are much *too* heavy.
-Liquor Mountain wraps things like a frat boy, do not buy gifts there.
-‘Toraya’ (a famous Japanese sweets store, most famous for its red bean jelly) has service that makes you feel like someone very important, but don’t go there in a hurry, as it seems to take the entire staff to ring up and wrap two gifts.
-When in doubt, buy food at the convenience store.

On the Flower Road

2008-04-05T14:04:00.004+09:00

On Saturday I went to Takarazuka (“Again?!!” yes, again) to see another grand theatre performance, this one called ‘Me and My Girl.’ The show itself is based off of a British one with, I believe, the same name, about an aristocratic English house that discovers the only heir available is an illegitimate son of the former patriarch who has grown up in the wrong part of London. He comes complete with no sense of how to act in polite society, a cockney accent (approximated in Japanese as a very informal sort of dialect, I believe) and a girlfriend from the same part of town. The show is only nominally about trying to reform the future heir, choosing to focus more on his relationship with his girlfriend, Sally, who is not deemed a fit companion for a future Count of Hereford. Before the show, my friend and I decided to enjoy the cherry blossom trees that line the ‘hana no michi’ or ‘flower road’ that leads from the train station to the theatre. They were all in full bloom, and since we had lovely weather we sat awhile underneath them and ate ‘hanami dango’ or ‘flower-viewing dumplings’, which are sweet glutinous rice cakes in three flavours (sakura, which is pink, a white one, and a green one that is some sort of sweet herb) arranged in a stick. We also ate lunch at a little café near the station, which was England-themed. The play was extremely fun, and was my first time seeing live one of the two-act variety of Takarazuka play. You might remember this from descriptions of other shows, but frequently the first act is a play with a plot of sorts, whereas the second is a revue. In the two-act type, the play itself is, of course, two acts like almost all plays that I’ve gone to see in the US. The very end, however, is devoted to revue-like numbers set to different versions of the music from the preceding play. The intermission falls between the regular Act1/ Act2 break, with the revue beginning directly after the usual end of the play. Interestingly enough, this was the first play for the newly-graduated class of the Takarazuka Music School. This meant that before the play started their class representatives gave a little speech (nothing fancy, just about how they were going to try their best and work hard) and sang a song called ‘Our Takarazuka’. At the end of the first act there was, of course, a big feel-good number with the whole cast. I was sitting in a better seat than usual, but I was still on the second floor. Now, the view from the second floor is still great, but one does feel a little disconnected from the action onstage, and especially envious when the actresses step into the aisles. As such, I was extremely surprised when, in the big first act finale, the new graduates poured out into the central aisle of the second floor seats! I could not have been sitting any closer. It was very exciting to be brought into the atmosphere, and it was the closest I’ve ever been to a professional actress of any sort, though I had to remind myself afterwards that they were probably about 19 years old. The part of the show that the new people appear in is actually always the big can-can line-dance in the revue, and they did a great job, I felt. There was, however, one little mishap: one of the dancers’ shoes flew off during the middle of the number. Luckily it flew all the way into the orchestra pit, because if it had landed onstage it would have been a hazard to the dancers and would have to be removed by someone, and if it had gotten all the way to the audience it could have taken someone’s eye out. To the girl’s credit, I didn’t see her miss a beat, she just kept dancing with one shoe on as if nothing had happened. After the show we waited around a bit for some of the actresses to leave the theatre, but some of them must have snuck around the back or something, because not nearly enough people came out where all of the fans were standing.
-The flower road is definitely worth seeing in spring. I’ll have to be back again.
-I had seen some of the actresses from this troupe when I went to see ‘Tales of Hoffman’ a couple months before, and it was exciting to see people I recognized on stage, even if they were in (much) smaller parts. This really is part of the fun of going to the smaller shows.
-If you can find used Takarazuka magazines at Book-off or some other general used book store then they’ll be about 100yen, but at the official used Takarazuka goods store they are about 380yen. Back issues at the gift shop, which are new, are 600yen.
-After the run of this show, the lead female-role actress for the troupe is retiring, which doesn’t mean a lot to me, as I’ve only ever seen her in this one show. I am, however, sad to see that one of the older actresses (she debuted in 1983) is retiring after the run as well. I’d seen that particular actress in this show (where she was very good), but also in my DVD of ‘Phantom’, where she played Carlotta extremely well.
-The people at the okonomiyaki place closest to the grand theatre are really nice, and the atmosphere is cute, but their okonomiyaki is not very big or thick, and tends to take awhile.

Shimabara and the Sumiya

2008-04-04T13:42:00.000+09:00

For my architecture course we had a field trip to Shimabara to see a place called Sumiya. Shimabara was a red-light district established in the mid-17th century outside of the precincts of Kyoto, and the Sumiya was its most high-class establishment (called an ageya) where those with enough means could hold lavish banquets with Tayuu (top-rank courtesans) in attendance. The city of Kyoto has, however, enveloped Shimabara in the years since it was built, so what was once a safe distance from any respectable location in the city is now an easy train ride away from Kyoto station. Sumiya is very big. While it was still a functioning ageya it bought up the buildings on either side and behind it until it almost filled the block it was situated on. The first floor, which has a massive kitchen, a beautiful garden and two very large rooms for partying are open to the public, but if one wishes access to the top floor, where the most lavish and famous rooms are located, a reservation is necessary. On the second floor there is one beautiful and unique room following another, starting with a small room sporting a backsplash made by layering silver over crinkled-paper for an unusual texture and sliding doors decorated with paintings of hanging bamboo screens. The next room’s ceiling is covered in hand-painted paper in the shape of fans, with no two alike. This fan motif is echoed in the door pulls, and the sliding doors on the far end open to reveal a little stage for musicians, which could be entered from an outside passageway. The next room’s most interesting feature was the latticework on the paper screens that let in outside light, which had been carved (rather than bent, as is easier and more usual) in a wavy pattern that tricks the eye into seeing moving, 3d waves. The final room is the most famous, and for good reason. The plaster and ceiling are completely black, partially from a century or so of candle smoke, but also, I believe, by design. Into the wood and plaster all over the room is inlaid mother of pearl in intricate patterns. The windows on the far end are almost gothic in shape, and have glass that was hand-made in Holland back in the 18th century. I can’t even begin to imagine how much that cost. Sumiya was actually a popular hangout for the Shinsengumi (the Shogun’s police force in Kyoto at the end of the Edo period), as their headquarters was not far away. In the mother-of-pearl room, there are several sword slashes on one of the posts, the result of one of the samurai getting angry and/or very drunk. The house as a whole is the only example left of an ageya, and is one of the very rare buildings that has survived from the Edo period intact, having never (even once!) burned down. It is a protected cultural property of some sort (there are many levels), and so is kept in very good condition.
-This was the most beautiful single building that I think I’ve been to since being here. I especially liked its eclectic feel, and the way it combines elements from all the native schools of Japanese architecture freely.
-So as not to disturb the customers’ view of the garden, the roofs over the terraces and porches were made without posts, using a sort of leverage system inside the roof itself to support the overhang.

Sakura, Sakura

2008-04-01T13:31:00.001+09:00

I feel that I should say something about Japan’s most beloved flower, the cherry blossom or ‘sakura’, as it has recently come into season. For the weeks leading up to the trees actually blooming all weather conversations commented on how the current conditions were going to affect the sakura. The weather report itself started predicting blooming times in different regions in Japan weeks ago, and for the last couple weeks there has been a special segment showing where the sakura are at their best. I went to see some of them myself on the Imperial Palace grounds one weekend while I was taking a break from work, and was quite impressed by them. The Imperial Palace has a wide variety of species of sakura, allowing for the longest possible blooming season. The flowers precede the leaves by a fair span, it would seem, making the trees look as though they were blanketed in pale-pink snow. All sorts of people were under the trees when I went, eating, talking, playing with their children and, of course, taking pictures of each other. I’ve heard, however, that sakura are at their best when the petals begin to fall, as happens not long after they bloom. The poetic allure of the sakura is due mainly to its impermanence, a theme that is extremely pervasive in Japanese literature as well as Buddhist teachings. In ancient times the aristocracy would sit under the cherry blossom trees and write poems about their delicate beauty, and in the modern day every company, student group, and family seems to take time out to eat (and drink) under the falling petals.

Nara period field trip

2008-03-30T12:42:00.001+09:00

Sunday was a fieldtrip for my archaeology class, which is currently my favourite of all the courses that I’m taking. Unfortunately, this was an all-day field trip, during which it poured rain unceasingly. The trip was to see two different palace sites from before Kyoto became the capital of Japan, when Nara was the capital instead. We’re talking 710- 784 AD. Well, the thing about ancient capitals is that there doesn’t tend to be a lot left of them, and this was no exception. The Heijo Palace complex in Nara was huge, and they’ve actually discovered where most of it is, but what I actually found myself looking at, was a bunch of holes in the dirt. You see, the first site that we went to see was where they had built a visitor’s centre around the archaeological site itself, which consisted of the remains of where the support beams had been placed when the original palace structure was built. Some of the other ways of showing what had been discovered included covering the area with dirt and then marking at ground-level where the posts had been (with different colours of cement or bushes) or even fully re-constructing based on archaeological findings. This last option was very interesting, though expensive enough that it is not widely exercised, though we did walk through a lovely reconstruction of a Nara period garden. At Nara period garden parties (among the nobility, of course) people would sit along side a little brook and write poems in Chinese that they would then recite to their friends. To reward people for good poems, a little raft with a cup of sake labelled with the poet’s name would be floated down the brook. The funny thing is, though this brook had been added to the reconstructed garden (and is reinforced by written records from the time), the actual site that the reconstruction is of has no evidence of any sort of stream at all. After this was a little museum, which would have been more interesting had I not been hungry and cold. Next we hopped a train to Osaka, where we saw the site of a palace from the same era (Naniwa Palace, if you’re wondering) represented in the coloured-concrete method, and then hurried into the museum that stood pretty much on top of it. The museum was actually one of the most interesting ones that I’ve seen, including a scale replica of a small portion of one of the buildings at Naniwa and several mannequins dressed in Nara court dress. There were other artefacts on that floor, and the floors below moved forward through Osaka history up to the pre-war period. After this we all headed back to Kyoto, and I was back in time for dinner.
-Rubber boots may not be fashionable, but I was extremely happy to have them for an entire day of walking in the rain.
-They used to use wood as toilet paper in the Nara period. It doesn’t seem worth it.
-As interesting and well done as the museum in Osaka was, according to my host family it hasn’t received as many visitors as they had been hoping, and the new governor of Osaka has talked about closing it down. I really hope that they don’t, but then I neither vote nor pay taxes.

Kimono day

2008-03-21T12:38:00.000+09:00

On Saturday there was a special orchestral concert that was free for those people who wore kimono. My host sister invited me to go, so I dressed up in kimono and hakama, those long pleated pant-like-things that I tried at Meiji Village several months ago. I had bought a pair of my own in the meantime as well as a kimono to go with it, and I was pretty excited to have a chance to wear them. The weather was beautiful, which was very nice touch, and though the concert bit was short it was nice to see the very lovely concert hall filled completely with people in different kimono. I was the only foreigner and one of the only people in hakama. The other event that was going on after the concert itself was the choosing of that year’s ‘kimono queen’ from among contestants from the entire length of Japan. They all stood up on stage in their long-sleeved kimono with their hair all done-up, and I was struck by how the all managed to look alike even in one-of-a-kind, beautiful kimono. They all had basically the same hairstyle except for one girl whose hair was in a traditional Japanese style, which I rather liked. We decided that this was not very interesting, and so my host sister and I went over to the neighbouring botanical gardens, which were also very beautiful. We strolled through the plum orchard, along a large planting of daffodils, and then into the greenhouse, which had a large variety of plants, including some of the only truly blue flowers that I’ve ever seen. Not long after returning home I was back out again, still in my kimono, to meet up with another friend of mine who had tickets to see the garden of a temple near to Gion that was going to be lit-up. Once we figured out how to turn in our reservation in exchange for actual tickets, the garden was very beautiful; whoever designed the lighting really knew what they were doing. After leaving the temple, we walked around Maruyama park, which is behind Yasaka Shrine, where they had a number of large Ikebana flower arrangements and sculptures similarly lit up. There were a number of very pretty arrangements, but I was amused by the sheer novelty of the sculpture made of slices of daikon radish. Continuing onto the grounds of the shrine itself we met with the food stands that one usually finds at these sorts of festivals, though sadly there was no okonomiyaki, which is probably my favourite savoury festival food. I settled on something that I translated for the store owner as a pork omelette, which was pretty good. There was pretty much nowhere to sit, but we perched on some convenient rocks and shared the orange juice that my friend’s host mother had packed for him. While we were still eating I got a text message from some of our other friends inviting us to go do karaoke nearby, so that was our next stop. The entire walk there I had different people staring at me. One drunk guy even turned away from the maiko that he was standing by next to in order to try and engage me in conversation. Karaoke was a lot of fun, but before long it was time for me to head back home, which is always a bit of a trick, but I managed to find a bus that was still running. On the way to the bus stop I had another (probably also drunk) guy call me a samurai, which does make me wonder if I’m walking with too heavy a stride.
-Twice a year, I believe, there is a weekend where, if you’re wearing kimono, you can use coupons to ride the subway and gain entrance to various places in Kyoto for free. I didn’t pay for transportation even once.
-I received a lot of compliments, as seems to happen a lot, from older women and their husbands. If I was half as popular with the younger people of Kyoto as I am with their grandparents I’d never have to pay for dinner again.
-I really didn’t get any work done this break, but I think that I’m okay with that.

Suffering Fan

2008-03-20T13:56:00.001+09:00

My favourite Takarazuka top star (Aran Kei) is currently in a show called ‘The Red and the Black’, which is playing for a week in Osaka, and I desperately wanted to go. I called for tickets the day that they went on sale to the general public and by the time I got through the tickets were already entirely sold out for every day in the Osaka run. Though I struck out there, my friends and I decided to see if we could get same-day tickets one of the days, and decided to go on a day when there were two shows, so that if we didn’t get the tickets for the first one we’d be in line for the second. Unfortunately, the theatre was not selling same-day tickets, so my friend and I decided that plan C would be to go to Osaka and hang around outside the theatre looking for scalpers. We got to the theatre extremely early, and were actually able to see some of the actresses coming in to get ready. The excitement of this was somewhat lessened by the fact that it was pouring rain and cold. At one point, while walking around to see where scalpers might be hiding, we saw a group of people waiting near to the stage door, and assumed that they must be waiting for the top star, because from that direction she could conceivably arrive by car. The woman standing next to us gave us some strange looks, but we ignored her. Finally, the people upstream of us started clapping and bowing, which we assumed meant that a star was approaching. We were, however, a little surprised when, instead of a fashionable Japanese woman in sunglasses, we saw a small group of middle-aged men come around the corner. These were the top actors for the show going on in the *other* theatre in the area, who looked at us two foreign women a little strangely, wondering perhaps how we had become such big fans of theirs. We waited and looked around until the doors closed and saw not a single scalper for the show we wanted. Having struck out entirely and soaked our shoes through, we decided to get some lunch and look around the area until closer to the second show of the day. I wasn’t aware, but there is actually a big antique book strip mall near Umeda station that has a great variety of things, including, as we discovered, old Takarazuka periodicals and programs. Neither of us escaped unscathed. We went back to the theatre to see if there were any scalpers this time, and were greeted with a large crowd of people, none of whom where selling their tickets. In the end we just decided to get some coffee nearby and head home. I only hope that I get back to Japan before Aran Kei retires, because I’d really like to see her again.
-Scalping is not necessarily illegal, from what I can tell, but there doesn’t seem to be much of it.
-When my boots get too wet they dye my feet black on the bottom.
-Apparently I need to enunciate better, because I asked the woman at the coffee shop for hot tea and wound up with a cappuccino.
-I used to laugh at the idea of famous people wearing sunglasses to hide who they were while out in public, since I thought that there was no way that that would be sufficient. However, it was actually really hard to tell whether I saw Aran Kei enter the theatre or not, because everyone was wearing sunglasses and hats and were essentially identical.
-I think that all of the tickets were bought up by the fan clubs before they even started selling to the rest of us.

Dinner with Sumo Wrestlers

2008-03-19T17:34:00.000+09:00

Wednesday I pretty much hung out around the house getting caught up on some sleep, but that evening my host mother took me down to Osaka to see a friend of hers that owned a temple that housed a sumo stable. I’m not exactly certain what the arrangement there is, but Sumo is currently having a tournament in Osaka, so there was a group of Sumo wrestlers staying on the grounds. The main guy there is a graduate of the same school that I’m currently studying at here, and was very nice, especially since he’d one his match that day. When we got to the stable, we sat down on the floor around low, circular tables on which were laid out a variety of cold dishes such as pickled plums, this tasty spaghetti salad, and marinated squid. The place setting included a rather large rice bowl and a smaller bowl that they put ‘nabe,’ (nah-beh) a sort of Japanese soup with chicken, clams, cabbage and other things. I was a little surprised when, instead of filling the larger bowl with rice, they offered to fill it with beer. Apparently, when dinning with Sumo wrestlers you drink out of rice bowls instead of glasses or sake cups. I decided on some sake, though only a little to start off with. The people at our table were very nice, though a little tipsy already when we got there, and the main Sumo guy was kind enough to pose for a picture with me. When drinking with friends here, it is customary to fill each other’s glasses, which meant that it was a little difficult for me to stop people from refilling my rice bowl. We were served the whole time by younger Sumo wrestlers that I took to be junior stable members. All of them seemed rather young, though all of them were, naturally, several times my size.
-Apparently women aren’t allowed into the Sumo ring. I’m sure that this is because Sumo originated as a Shinto ceremony.
-Sumo wrestlers are much bigger in real life than they look on TV
-When a top-ranked wrestler looses a match the front several rows of people throw the cushions that they are sitting on into the ring.
-To advertise at Sumo matches, they have people walk around the ring holding up cloth signs during breaks between matches.

Sensouji temple and back home

2008-03-18T17:31:00.000+09:00

Our final day in Tokyo wasn’t really a full day, as I had to be back to Kyoto in time for my dance lesson at 5:30pm. As such, we had really done all of the things that we’d planned for the trip on the preceding days and thus had a bit of a free-form morning. First, we went to see the famous temple located very close to where we were staying: Sensouji. I don’t really know much of the history of the place, or why exactly it is so famous, (though I do intend to look into it) but it was quite pretty and had a massive lantern out in front of it that we could have fit ten people inside of, I think. While we were there we bought some souvenirs for our host families. I decided on these rice crackers that came in several different festive colours that I had heard were the official gift from Sensouji temple. After this we decided that we had enough time to go back to Hibiya and do some more Takarazuka-related shopping at the stores that they have around the theatre, and so checked out of our hotel and parked our luggage in lockers at Hibiya station. In an interesting stroke of luck, we managed to arrive just as the actresses were heading into the theatre to prepare for that day’s show. The procedure for greeting the actresses entering the theatre appears to be identical to that for greeting them as they leave the theatre, which we had seen the previous day. We were, luckily, on the opposite side of the street from the last time, so we were able to see a little better one of my favourite actresses, who had had her back to us before. We didn’t stay to watch the whole thing, however, as we had a train to catch, and so proceeded with our shopping. That done, we schlepped our luggage over to Tokyo station, bought some lunch to eat on the train and another souvenir called ‘Tokyo Banana Cakes’, which I had heard were popular, and then headed home. Once I was back in Kyoto I really only had time to drop off my luggage and grab my dance things before I had to head to class, which went alright, but a bit difficult.
-Tokyo’s very exciting, but it’s nice to be back in Kyoto.
-When praying at a Buddhist temple you’re not supposed to clap like you do at a shrine. I didn’t know this until my friend pointed out a large group of Chinese tourists doing so.
-Tokyo seems to believe that it is in the tropics. The Denny’s that we went to their had take-out mangos (just the fruit, no preparation), the Thai restaurant we went to had papayas as a featured item, and the most popular gift at Tokyo station is a banana-cream-filled banana-shaped cake.
-Overall, even though the Tokyo subway system is confusing, it is extremely cheap, with the most expensive ticket that I bought all trip still less than the minimum fare on the Kyoto subway.
-Station pay-lockers are extremely helpful.
-When messing up in dance class, remembering that a Takarazuka actress thought you were cool helps with keeping a calm expression.

An Amazing Takarazuka Experience

2008-03-17T17:23:00.000+09:00

Monday was the day that we had been waiting for since we got to Tokyo: Takarazuka day. Takarazuka has its main theatre in the city of Takarazuka where I’ve been many times now, but it also recently opened a theatre in the Hibiya district of Tokyo. We had already planned to stay after the show for and wait for the actresses to leave the theatre so that we could see them up-close, but my friend came up with what turned out to be a brilliant addition to this plan: we would wear some of the clothes that we had bought in Harajuku the previous day. The goal of this was to be extremely visible among the legions of Japanese fans in normal clothing, and it proved pretty effective. All day we had people staring at us and, outside the theatre, asking to take pictures with us. One older woman asked me if I was an actress, and when I answered ‘no’ she told me that I should be, which was very flattering, really. After the show we scoped out a good place to stand by next to the fan club for the number 3 star of Snow Troupe, Mao Ayabuki. Within a given troupe every actress is distinctly ranked from the top star all the way down to the chorus members, with Mao Ayabuki outranked only by the top ‘pair’, the top otokoyaku (male-role player) and the top musumeyaku (female-role player). This is reflected not only in how parts are distributed and where people stand during the finale, but also in the placement of fan clubs outside of the theatre, which was surprising. The fan clubs are extraordinarily organized. Besides the fact that they are actually administrated by the company that owns Takarazuka, they have elected officials and very specific rules, it would seem. Whenever an actress left the theatre, the front two rows of people in each fan club would sit down, either to show respect or to allow the people behind them to see, we were not certain which. When a star exited the theatre, she headed straight to her fan club and stopped there, taking the messages and presents that she was handed and saying her ‘thank you’s. When she reached the end of the line, the president of the fan club would be waiting there with a bag for her to carry all of her gifts in and she would leave without looking at anyone else. In the case of Mao Ayabuki and the troupe’s #1 Mizu Natsuki the president of the fan club also had their car parked at the end of the fan club line to take the star to (I assume) her hotel. This process was repeated right in front of us as Ayabuki Mao met her fan club. She didn’t seem to notice us until she had already climbed into the car and was about to wave a final goodbye to her club. Just then she clearly noticed us for the first time, stared for a couple seconds and then just said a word in Japanese that is a bit hard to translate, but basically amounts to ‘wonderful’, ‘lovely’, or ‘cool’. My friend and I were speechless, and were probably staring stupidly with our mouths open as she drove away. We were pretty excited by this, as you can perhaps imagine. We decided that we needed to commemorate this event, and so headed to Akihabara, a district famous for electronics stores and large gaming complexes where we knew there would be print club machines. ‘Print club’ is where you choose a background, lighting level etc. and have your picture taken in a variety of poses. After the pictures have been taken, you can draw on them, add images or otherwise customize them, then choose your favourites and have them printed out as stickers. We did this at two different machines with great results. Afterwards, we had some Indian food (really having the curry tour of Japan, I guess) and went home where all we could do was gush about how wonderful of a day it had been.
-Mao Ayabuki called us “suteki” (pronounced steh-key).
-Fan club members have matching mufflers, Mao Ayabuki’s where beige, Mizu Natsuki’s were blue plaid and Otozuki Kei’s where purple.
-The actresses where all incredibly fashionable, even those who didn’t have fan clubs and were thus not very highly-ranked yet.
-The women who play female roles look, rather unfortunately, like any other Japanese women when not onstage, which makes them much less noticeable than their otokoyaku counterparts. They also didn’t appear to have fan clubs of their own.
-The Tokyo theatre is, on the inside, nearly identical to the one in Takarazuka, probably on purpose.
-Akihabara is filled with maid cafes, but we didn’t really feel a need to sample them.
-I had expected the lighting inside the print club booths to be fluorescent and thus unforgiving, but we actually looked really good in the final product.
-The secret to walking around all day in unusual clothes without being embarrassed seems to be to act as though you always wear clothes like that. Confidence is apparently key to not feeling like a complete idiot.
-Mao Ayabuki called us ‘steki’.

Harajuku Sunday

2008-03-16T16:01:00.000+09:00

One of the more famous areas in Tokyo is a place called Harajuku. Harajuku is home to a vast variety of stores selling very off-beat clothing called ‘street fashion’. Within street fashion there are many different sub-groups, but the one that I am most familiar with is called ‘gothic and lolita’, which grew out of clothes worn by Japanese bands in the early 90’s, I believe. This style draws heavily on rococo and Victorian clothes as well as more punk-looking styles, and while often in black or other dark shades it is also found in pastels for a cuter look. While some people do wear these clothes to do everyday things, many people wear them in a park near Harajuku where they can see and be seen. The streets were absolutely packed with people, many of whom where foreign, and lined in many different boutiques selling all matter of different clothing. While we looked in many shops, I didn’t find anything that particularly jumped out at me until I caught a glimpse of a very colourful shop out of the corner of my eye. It turned out to be a costume store unlike any I’d ever been in before. The place had everything from large sequined headdresses to French aristocrat-style men’s jackets, all of it very well-constructed and unique. When I found a rack of men’s military costumes based on styles from Takarazuka I knew that I had to get one, and so, in an uncharacteristic impulse-buy, purchased a white square-buttoned uniform that was rather reminiscent of ‘Rose of Versailles.’ After leaving that store we looked at a couple more, and my friend found a really cute outfit for herself that was cute without being overwhelmingly so. After this we decided to head over to Shibuya, where the map that we had been given at our hotel said that there was a dim sum restaurant, the first that either of us had heard of in Japan. Shibuya station is enormous. It seriously felt more like an airport than a train station and was very difficult to navigate, even though the signs were in English. Near Shibuya station is a district called ‘Kabuki-cho’, which is rather infamous for its sleezy clubs and the like. We didn’t go in. Unfortunately, when we got to the promised dim sum restaurant it was closed for remodelling, forcing us to find somewhere else to eat in a very expensive area. We finally found a nice, clean, Thai restaurant, where we ordered a 2-person lunch set that was very good but extremely spicy to the point of being mildly painful. Our next planned stop was at something called a ‘butler café’, which is a take on the much more common maid cafés that crowd the Akihabara area of Tokyo. Basically, in a maid café the waitresses are dressed in frilly maid outfits and do everything in a very cutesy manner. Butler cafes come in two types: ones where the waiters are men, and ones where the waiters are women. Both types of butler cafes cater to young women, and my friend and I decided to try out one of the later type. The café was on a side street in Ikebukuro, and had I not known what to look for we would have walked right past it. The décor was elegant and the black-tea ice cream was really tasty, although I had, in an unfortunate oversight, chosen to sit in a corner about a foot away from a young couple that started smoking about 15 minutes after we got there. Part of the point of this sort of café is to talk to the waiters, which was, sadly, a bit difficult from our vantage point in the corner. We were both pretty tired after a long day of walking, so we headed back to the hotel early and watched some dvds, though we took a short break to go down to the corner for some curry.
-Harajuku is *very* busy on Sundays
-There just doesn’t seem to be any dim sum in Japan. I have heard rumours that there might be some in Yokohama or Kobe, both of which have historically had a lot of foreigners, but I’ve been to neither yet.
-In butler or maid cafes you basically can stay as long as you like if you buy something every hour. In the case of our café everything on the menu was 500yen, which really isn’t bad in Japan.
-Most sleazy areas in other towns seem pretty much okay in daylight, but Kabuki-cho is pretty unsavoury even in daylight.
-If you want to get to the other side of Shibuya station, I would recommend leaving the station entirely and navigating around it.

Kabuki and Tsukiji

2008-03-15T16:00:00.000+09:00

We had jotted down a couple of things that we wanted to do in Tokyo while we were still on the train, but when we got to our room there was a pamphlet about the current Kabuki performances being shown at the ‘Kabuki-za’ kabuki theatre that peaked our interest. Two of the pieces on the program looked interesting to us, the first being a dance piece called ‘Onna Date (that’s ohn-na dah teh)’ which means ‘female dandy’ about a woman who fights off would-be suitors, and another called ‘musume dojoji (mu-su-meh do-jou-gee)’ or ‘the woman of Dojoji temple’, which we had studied in class. I was most excited about this second piece, as it is famous for having a great many costume changes, ending with the main character turning into a snake demon. I wasn’t aware of this before, but apparently there is the option of buying same-day tickets to individual pieces within a day’s program instead of a whole act, so we decided to see if we could get in. Before the tickets that we wanted went on sale, however, we had time to look around the neighbouring Tsukiji area, famous for being where fish are taken off the boats early in the morning and sold to the area’s restaurants. The sushi in this area was supposed to be amazing, so we made a point to have our lunch there, finally deciding on a nice-looking place that had been around for over a hundred years. It was, in fact, the best sushi that I’ve ever had. After that we bought our tickets for the kabuki dance piece, which also included (because ‘Onna Date’ is rather short) the piece directly following, about a young man who, having been disowned by his rich merchant family for spending too much of his time with the courtesan Yugiri, returns to see his love again after three years. The protagonist in this piece was played in something called ‘wagoto’ style, which originated in Kyoto and is used to depict sensitive men of good breeding. I have to say, however, that while the effect was interesting and definitely amusing, the man’s courtesan lover showed more backbone than he did. After the first selection was over, we decided to go to ‘Musume Dojoji’ as well, and so had another couple hours to kill in the other direction from Tsukiji, the ritzy Ginza district, which is full of designer stores and boutiques. We, however, happened to be looking for a restaurant that my friend had seen on tv, famous for being the first restaurant to serve something called ‘katsu kareh’, which is basically a breaded fried piece of pork or beef that is put on rice and covered in Japanese curry. The restaurant was called ‘Grilled Swiss’ (I couldn’t tell you why) and was pretty good, but a little more expensive than I’m used to. Finally, the kabuki play was well worth waiting in line for and then standing through when there were no more seats left. The main character went through 8 costumes, some changes were offstage, but others were done by having attendants pull off layers onstage, which is pretty amazing to watch and hard to describe. The climax of the piece comes when the woman stands under a large bell that is suspended from the ceiling of the stage and has it come down around her. At this point, the actor inside the bell changes, not just clothes, but also wig and costume to go from a beautiful young woman to a demon snake. The snake is confronted (but not obviously defeated) by a man acting in the flamboyant and much more masculine ‘aragoto’ style, a nice counterpoint to the hero of the previous piece. After a full day, we decided that we might as well take a look at Roppongi, an area that is most famous for having a lot of clubs that foreigners tend to frequent, but also a good view of Tokyo Tower at night. The way the clubs were described in the guidebook made them sound more than a little bit sketchy, not that we were much in a clubbing mood anyway, so we were there pretty much to look at Tokyo Tower. Every building that was not affiliated with the new, ritzy, Roppongi Hills development was dirty and unappealing, and everywhere we looked there were roving bands of drunk foreigners. We took our pictures and headed back to the station, where there was, against all odds, a Wendy’s. The spicy chicken sandwich was smaller than in the US, and the frosty was considered a desert and therefore could not be included as the drink in a value meal, but otherwise it was a very nostalgic dinner.
-A normal Kabuki program consists of two acts, each made up of several small, self-contained stories and lasting over 3 hours. This seems to be a theme with traditional Japanese theatre, as a traditional Noh program also lasts all day.
-I’m not certain if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but Kabuki is always performed by men with some men (called ‘onnagata’), specializing in women’s roles.
-Everywhere we looked in Tokyo there were groups of foreigners. It was unnerving.
-For some reason the main street of the Ginza shopping area is blocked-off with benches where there would be medians normally. It was really odd to see people sitting in the middle of the street, especially since it in every other way looks like a normal road.
-There is something called ‘Natural Lawsons’ here that seems to be the Whole Foods of convenience stores. I think that everything in there was supposed to be organic, I only know that it was more expensive.

Tokyo Bound

2008-03-14T15:58:00.000+09:00

On Friday afternoon, directly after classes had ended for the day, a friend and I boarded the bullet train for Tokyo. For my spring break, I had decided to go see Tokyo, even though I’d only have a couple days, since I couldn’t dance class on Tuesday in good conscience. After a comfortable 3-hour ride, we arrived in Tokyo station, which was quite daunting. Even after we found our way out of the bullet train terminal to where we could catch the subway (not an easy task), finding which train line to take was not obvious. I have often said that the streets in Boston were planned by wandering cows, and I have to say that they seem to have enlisted the same cows to plan the Tokyo subway system. The map looks like a pot of spaghetti. In addition, for all that Tokyo is a very international city, most all of the maps had the names of stops only in characters, instead of written out in roman letters as they are in Kyoto. Luckily, my friend had been to Tokyo before over winter break and was thus able to get us to Asakusa, where our hotel was. Once we had checked in and dried off a bit (it had been driving rain ever since we got to Tokyo) we headed out once more to find some dinner, which we finally managed in a diner sort of place in one of the massive buildings along the main street. On our way back from dinner we passed a tank of fish outside of a restaurant where they presumably comprised the house specialty. They looked a bit like a sort of puffer-fish that I’ve seen before in Hawaii, which is to say that they were rather boxy with little fins on either side and a mottled shade of grey. These fish did not have a very large tank, but on one end of it was a bubbler that created a bit of a current. The fish seemed to find this very amusing: they would swim up to the bubbler, stick their ‘face’ in it, and get whooshed up towards the top of the tank, usually getting turned upside-down in the process. I watched this several times before my friend said it was time to go back to the hotel.
-One can buy reserved seat tickets on the bullet train for extra money, but we had no problems finding seats together in the non-reserved car.
-I bought a map immediately upon arriving in Tokyo, but it did not prove in the least bit helpful. Instead, we received a free map from our hotel, which we used in conjunction with the subway map that came in the back of my friend’s Japan guidebook.
-I have never before this met fish with a hobby.

Still in Ise

2008-03-08T15:57:00.000+09:00

Saturday we woke up early-ish to get to the breakfast buffet and checked out of our hotel. The buffet was good, though I had really been hoping for some pancakes or something, and had a nice mixture of Japanese-style- (pickles, rice, miso soup) and American-style- (bacon, cereal, bread) breakfasts. After eating we piled back onto the bus to go to the actual shrines, Geku, the outer Ise shrine, and Naiku, the inner one, dedicated to the goddess Amaterasu. I had already been to both, and I’ve already described both here, so I won’t say much about the details. Geku was rather calm, but Naiku was a zoo. To pay one’s respects at the main shrine one had to wait in a large crowd of people of all ages, almost all of whom were Japanese or on the same trip as I. When I finally got to the shrine itself, I was about to toss my coin into the grate when I felt something small and solid smack me upside the head. I was, understandably I feel, rather confused, and at first couldn’t tell what had happened, did it fall from the sky? What was it? And then I looked down and saw a 10yen coin. I think that one of the small kids in line behind me, tired of waiting for their turn, felt that they could just throw their coin into the grate from where they were standing, and were mistaken. After regrouping and purchasing a charm for good luck, a friend and I struck out to find lunch and souvenirs. My friend had an apparently very nice beef and rice bowl, and I had one of the other regional specialties, sushi rice with sashimi on top, which was also amazingly tasty. The fish practically melted in my mouth and was not expensive at all. If the shrine had been crowded, though, the shopping area outside of it was much more so. It was very difficult to wade our way through the area in our search for gifts, but somehow we managed. The actual main Akafuku store that has been around since the early 18th century was in this area, and people waiting to buy the snack there formed a line that disappeared over the horizon of one of the area’s wooden bridges. We decided instead to get our other gifts and then find somewhere else to buy the requisite Akafuku. I wound up getting some shrimp crackers (another regional specialty) and the same brand of sake used in ritual offerings to Amaterasu at the shrine. On our way back towards the bus (there were some stops on the way for a tofu donut and a puff-pastry, mochi, red bean paste, and roasted chestnut pie-lette) we ran into some of the other students who had actually waited in the ridiculous Akafuku line, so I bought a box off of one of them for my host family. We stepped off of the main street for a bit to find another store that was selling the famous snack, where my friend bough a couple boxes and I bought a new Hello Kitty dressed as the Shinto goddess Ame no Uzume. We stopped for one more famous Ise treat, which was a sort of mochi-sandwich with roasted chestnuts in it and a cup of roasted tea, and then got on the bus and headed back. I slept most of the way, but I did wake up to play bingo, though I didn’t win anything. Now I’m happily back at my host family’s house and very ready for bed.
-According to my friend, because the kid threw the coin at me and not towards the goddess I’m the one who’s responsible for granting his wish. I say that if you are going to throw money at me, at least make it more than 10yen.
-While I’ve never seen anyone give more than 100yen at any other shrine, here I saw 1000 and 10,000yen bills (about $10 and $100 respectively).
-Apparently the mochi sold at the Akafuku main store were made that morning exactly, while the boxes sold in other, smaller, stores in the area are day-old, which in part explains the line.
-Capitalism works: I didn’t want to stand in line, but I was able to find someone who *was* to buy from.
-Hello Kitty does not appear to be allowed to be Amaterasu herself, but other goddesses appear to be fair game.
-I ate entirely to much on this vacation.
-I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but ‘sushi’ actually refers to the pickled rice, not the fish, which means that they sometimes here have ‘sushi’ that is basically a bowl of pickled rice with various toppings, which is what I had for lunch.
-They used to include a pretty picture in each box of Akafuku, but the one that I bought just had an apology from the president of the company about the freshness scandal.
-Akafuku are *extremely* sticky: I accidentally had the box perpendicular to the ground for about 3 hours, but when we opened it up they were still exactly in place. The box actually comes with a little wooden scraper to help remove them. They gave my host mother quite a fight.
-My host mother’s waka (traditional Japanese poetry that is chanted) group performed for the president of Croatia while he was in Kyoto this weekend.

Ise Jingu

2008-03-07T15:44:00.000+09:00

This Friday we didn’t have class in favour of the program’s Spring field trip to Ise shrine in Mie prefecture, about 3 hours away by bus. I had, in fact, been to Ise before during Fall break with my friend (and reported on it here!) but it was still amazingly fun. Well, the bus ride wasn’t very fun, but I in general don’t like car trips. We did, however, have a very nice tour guide (who I think came with the bus) who pointed out things as we passed them and told us little stories to keep us from getting too bored. Our first stop was for lunch at this aquarium and shopping area near the shrine with the two big rocks that have the rope between them. Here some friends and I had ‘Ise Udon’ which is like a thicker version of normal udon noodles with a light soy sauce on them. Very tasty. After eating we went out to take a look at the rocks and the shrines on the shore across from them, one of which is for a frog deity and the other of which is supposed to be at the cave that the sun goddess Amaterasu hid in when she got angry at her brother. I was using the later when I heard a bunch of older Japanese women behind me, when I turned around they were surprised and started laughing, and when I said ‘hello’ and ‘excuse me’ to them they laughed harder. What I believe happened (based on my friends’ accounts) was that the women had been talking about how long my legs were, so when I turned around they got embarrassed, and then when I spoke Japanese to them they got even more embarrassed. I thought it was pretty amusing myself. After this we went back into the shopping area and tried some of a treat called ‘Akafuku mochi’, which is a famous brand-name sweet that originated at Ise shrine some 300years ago and is still considered a must-have souvenier. The last time that I was in Ise, however, there had been a controversy about its freshness, which meant that all of the brand’s locations were shut down. I have to say that it really is quite good, though simple. It is basically sweet glutinous rice cake with thick, smooth red bean paste hand-pressed over top. They served it with roasted tea, which suited it well. As we were heading back to the bus, we noticed that outside of the aquarium in front of its sealion tank they were having a little show of sorts. The seals inside the tank jumped and made faces against the glass by sticking out their tongues, and were very adept at catching the fish they received in return. For me, however, the most amazing thing was when they took the male seal out of the tank so that we could all get a closer look at him. He was MASSIVE. I looked at the small child standing in front of me and could only think that if this seal wanted to eat the kid he could just swallow her whole. After leaving the plaza, stop two was the Mikimoto Pearl Island. Now, if you don’t know, Mikimoto sells some of the world’s most expensive and beautiful pearls, and it is based in Ise, where the company first invented the technique of making cultured pearls. Here we first walked through an exhibit about the process of pearl-making, which was very well done, with some of the best English that I’ve seen since being here. After that it was time for the pearl divers’ demonstration. Pearl Oysters have been traditionally collected in Ise by female divers who, with their floating bucket tethered to one ankle, dive deep into freezing cold water wearing only cloth suits and head coverings and no shoes. After being very convinced that I did not have a future in pearl diving, I went to look at the museum, where Mikimoto has collected examples of pearl jewelry from all over the world and a vast range of time periods, almost all of it stunning, though some of it just strange (three-dimensional jack russle terrier, anyone?). The second half of the exhibit was all things that Mikimoto had made, and most of it was extremely beautiful (I thought that the pagoda made out of pearls was a bit much) and had me very prepared to go to the gift shop. Apparently aware that only a small fraction of their guests could possible afford an actual string of Mikimoto pearls, the majority of the gift shop was given over to less-expensive pearl options, one of which I availed myself of. After leaving the island it was time to go to our hotel, which turned out to be very nice. We were split into groups of five people, and each given a little cabin with its own bath, living room and kitchen and more than enough sleeping room for everyone. Before dinner we all decided to go to the hotel’s ‘Aqua palace’, which was basically a series of different pools of varying temperatures that had jets that would focus on different muscles. After this was dinner, where I ate entirely too much and enjoyed myself thoroughly, and then back to our lodge to watch some DVDs and hang out with the other students. One of the people on the trip had arranged a wine party, which was a lot of fun, mostly because the majority of the people tried to keep it classy and not get too drunk. Since the public hot spring bath closed at 11pm, a few of us left a little early to make sure that we got our turn. It was very nice in the outdoor tub (once one actually got from the door to the water, that middle part is really not fun), a nice cool sea breeze, hot salty spring water and fun people to talk to make for a good time. We also met some Japanese girls who had just graduated high school and were very energetic and nice. Post-bath we returned to our lodge, watched some more DVDs and fell into bed.
-Male seals are enormous and I hope that I never meet one in the wild.
-I still don’t like car rides, and will thus most certainly NOT be taking the 6-hour one from Kyoto to Tokyo, no matter how cheap it is.
-Somewhere in Shiga prefecture there is a massive, self-contained horse training centre that is essentially its own town.
-The Amaterasu myth, for those who don’t know it is this: The Sun Goddess had a brother who was a real problem and bullied her mercilously until, in a fit of anger, she locked herself in a cave and refused to leave. Because there was no sun, everything died and people starved, and the other gods, seeing this, tried everything to get her to come out. Finally, Ame no Uzume, another goddess, jumped up on a bucket and danced wildly and stamped her feet. All the gods laughed and cheered and Amaterasu, hearing the noises, peeked out of her cave to see what was going on, bringing light back to the world.
-My host sister mentioned before I left that recently the Akafuku had been better than it ever was pre-scandal, and I have to say it tasted extremely fresh.
-Akafuku’s trademark is that the red bean paste on top has impressions on it from being hand-packed onto the mochi.
-The Mikimoto exhibit made me want a tiara, but the gift shop did not have a single tiara on sale. This should be remedied.
-You can get a fairly decent Chilean wine at the 7/11 here for under $10.
-A large percentage of the people in the program don’t drink at all.
-Bathing in hot saltwater kinda stings after a bit.

Hina Matsuri

2008-03-01T14:29:00.000+09:00

Monday, March 3rd was the Doll Festival (Hina Matsuri), also called Girl’s day. This is a day when families throughout Japan display dolls that are dressed in traditional Japanese court dress in their houses and offer them sweets. The dolls come in many different types, and in some instances are arranged on multi-tiered structures, with an emperor and empress doll on the top with trays in front of them, lanterns on either side and attendants in order of rank descending downward. My own host family chooses to put their dolls up in April when it’s a little warmer and more fitting for the spring feeling that the holiday is meant to invoke. For this holiday there were several events and exhibits all over the city, one of which was going to be at a temple not far from my house. Hokyoji temple was to have a display of dolls from different periods of Japanese history, and on the first there was going to be a dance by a Tayuu from the Kyoto Shimabara district. Perhaps I have mentioned this before, but a Tayuu is an Edo era courtesan of the highest rank. A long time ago there ceased to be Tayuu in any actual sense, but in Shimabara there is one house that still has a couple women who train in the dances, songs, and general culture specific to the Tayuu. They are far rarer than geisha, and so when I read in my program director’s note that there was going to be one not far from my house I made sure to get myself over there. Unfortunately, there was no time listed in the note, and my guess at a reasonable time for it to happen was a couple hours too late, so I missed her completely. At least I got in to see the dolls, many of which were from the Meiji period (late 19th century) or before, and the weather was nice enough that I didn’t dislike the walk to get there.
-According to one of the host mothers, if someone’s daughter is getting married soon the family will put out there dolls for Hina Matsuri early.
-The positioning of the Emperor and Empress dolls in relation to one another is different in Tokyo.
-I seem to always be asleep when things are happening.

Going to the Movies

2008-03-01T14:16:00.000+09:00

These last two weekends I have gone to see movies with a friend of mine. The first one was a Japanese movie called ‘KIDS’, and the second was ‘The Golden Compass’, which just came out in Japan. Movie theatres here are a little different than in the states. The first thing I noticed was that when we bought tickets we chose what seats we wanted. The prices were the same, we just had assigned places to sit. For the first movie it didn’t much matter, as the place was pretty empty, but the second time it really did since it was ‘Golden Compass’s first weekend in Japan. Another difference is that you can buy programs and movie merchandise in the theatre itself. I’d never really thought about it, but I guess that there’s no real reason why there *shouldn’t* be programs for movies like there are for plays and concerts, there just aren’t in the US. During one of these excursions we stopped by this parfait restaurant in the area before our movie. This place had models of some of their parfaits in the front of the café, and over 100 different types of parfait on the menu. We decided to split a berry and chocolate one, but the selection was rather daunting. I might have to go there again and try one of their green-tea ice cream ones, though I think that I’ll do without the tomato one.
-American movies here can be seen either dubbed in Japanese or subtitled in Japanese, I natural chose the later.
-The ending song for ‘The Golden Compass’ movie is terrible. In my personal opinion the end song for a movie should not outline the premise of the movie just viewed in softly reverent tones with an overly simplistic rhyme scheme. But then that’s just me.
-The refreshments available at Japanese movie theatres are, I suppose necessarily, different from those in American ones. They had: red bean bread (anpan), caramel corn, oolong tea, and green tea ice cream, among other things. But no diet coke.
-There is something really disorienting about walking on an escalator that isn’t moving. One of the escalators at the theatre was off for some reason, and stepping on and off of it felt really weird.

Nightlife

2008-02-22T14:14:00.000+09:00

Friday one of the people in the program (also from my same college) was celebrating her birthday by putting together a group to go out for ‘yakiniku’, which I’ve described before (where you get the meat raw and grill it yourself?). It was a lot of fun, especially as it was my first experience with something called ‘tabehodai’, which means essentially ‘all you can eat.’ The rules are this: everyone at the table has to order it if anyone does, and you can order as much as you like from the tabehodai menu in 1.5 hours for a flat rate. I believe that if you leave a lot behind you get charged extra, but this did not come up. I don’t know how much beef, kimchi, and various other things I ate, but I think that I most certainly got my money’s worth. I think that the waiters where a little scared, there were 22 of us Americans and we were all pretty rambunctious. And hungry. After dinner, most people broke off to continue their evenings, but since I was for once in the Shijo area on a Friday night with no other plans, I decided to see if I could see any maiko heading to engagements in the nearby Pontocho geisha district. It was a very festive atmosphere, but I didn’t see any maiko or geisha, just groups of rather tipsy salary men. When I decided that I wasn’t going to have any luck there, I opted to head over across the river to the Gion geisha district to see if I could see any there. I did have more luck, and was able to see at least three different maiko, though I felt too embarrassed to take pictures of them, and I didn’t really want to bother them while they were working. So I have no photos, sadly. This done, I decided that it was probably time to head home, only to realize that I’d already missed the last bus back home. This was a nuisance, but there was still the subway, though it is a little more expensive and doesn’t drop me off as close to my house. Well, I usually get to the subway station by taking an underground tunnel from underneath the very conspicuous Hankyu department store in a straight line straight to where I need to go. Unfortunately, sections of the Hankyu tunnel close after a certain point in the evening, forcing one to attempt to follow its route from street-level, which is more difficult than it sounds when one is tired and the streets are crowded with Friday night revellers. So, after several wrong turns I finally got on the subway home a little more tired than I had anticipated.
-The buses don’t run nearly as late as I seem to think.
-This all-you-can-eat beef place was only 2100yen for women and 2200yen for men, which is quite a steal, especially considering how expensive beef is in Japan.
-Pontocho maiko must be sneakier, because the streets are narrow with few side-streets, and yet I saw no one. Gion’s streets are wider, so I guess that it’s harder for them to hide?
-An alarming number of taxis go through the main street of Gion at night.
-Most all shops appear to be closed by 9, only the bars, clubs, and restaurants stay open late.

General Douglas MacArthur and the Takarazuka Revue

2008-02-17T12:05:00.001+09:00

On Sunday five friends and I went to see another Takarazuka show, this one called ‘Reimei no Kaze’, which they translated as ‘Morning Breeze’ but I would translate as ‘Dawn Wind’. The morning did not start off well. For starters, I had bought my tickets separately from my friends, and so while I had a ticket to the 11am show, they were all attending the 3pm one, which left me on my own for most of the day. Unfortunately, I also got on a slow train while on my way to Takarazuka city and started to run pretty far behind schedule, to the point that I was still two stops away from the station I needed at 10:45. In preparation for a mad dash from the station to the theatre, I removed my ticket from the purse that I was using (which was deep and had no pockets, making it hard to locate things in) to the pocket of my trench coat. Well, while I was running to the theatre it must have fallen out of my pocket, because when I arrived at the doors to the Grande Theatre my ticket was no longer there. Luckily, I miraculously remembered my seat number and row, and no one had accidentally sat in it, meaning that once everyone was seated and the show had begun the ushers called down for me, having verified that the seat that I claimed to own was in fact empty. So, I missed the first 8minutes or so of the play, but at least I made it in. Like the other two shows that I have gone to in this theatre, the first half was a play in the proper sense, in that it had a plot and the like. Not that I understood the plot. In fact, I understood very little about what was going on that wasn’t directly related to history, did I mention that this was a play about Japan before, during, but mostly after WWII? The story itself followed a man that I’d never heard of named Jiro Shirasu, who I am led by the program to believe was an actual person, and his devotion to a peaceful but independent Japan. To be honest, I was much more interested in the other main character: General Douglas MacArthur. Who was played by the lovely Yamato Yuga, an about 5’7” Japanese woman, with a corncob pipe and aviators. In this show MacArthur was a dashing young man who truly loved the country of Japan for all of its beauty. There was not much singing in this first part, and since I understood very little of what was going on (I talked to a Japanese woman afterward who said that even she had had a difficult time following the show) I didn’t enjoy it as much as I have others that I’ve seen. What I *really* did enjoy, however, was the revue that made up the second half of the show: Passion. It was a lot of fun, the dancing was amazing, the music very catchy (does anyone remember the song ‘Mambo #5’? They sang that in Japanese.) and the top stars as bright as ever. After the show I met up with my friends and visited a store in the area, then visited the costume museum and gift shop, had some lunch and talked with some people. I had originally thought of heading home, but I realized that even if I headed home immediately at that point that I would be late for dinner, so I sent a message to my host mother and waited for my friends’ show to be over so that we could all eat together. We were about to get on the train to head home when one of my friends realized that her wallet was missing, which led us back to a couple stores and the theatre, which was unfortunately closed.
-The Takarazuka Grand Teatre closes before 8pm.
-The police box at Takarazuka station has a ‘Takarazuka Top Stars’ calendar on the wall. Every store in the area has some sort of poster or whatever, but the police station?
- The troupe, Cosmos troupe, is the youngest in Takarazuka, and I had heard beforehand that it tended to be more modern and experimental than the others. What I was not warned about, however, was that the costume designers for Cosmos are not afraid of colour. The palates were amazing, one scene in pink, three shades of bright purple, brilliant blue, gold and the main singer in silver and red, another was all in lime green, orange, black, red, purple, red, and more gold. Thankfully there were a couple scenes in there that were monochromatic, my eyes needed the rest.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T12:08:00.000+09:00

I figured that, since Valentine’s day is a holiday imported into Japan and yet is in many ways distinct from American Valentine’s day, that it was worth mentioning here. For starters, the tradition here is not for men to buy their girlfriends things, but for women to buy men chocolate. The chocolate falls into two categories: That which is for someone for whom a woman has special feelings (such as a boyfriend or crush) and that which is obligatory, (such as is given to bosses, teachers and the like). Frequently, if a woman really likes someone, she will make something chocolate for them, such as cake or other candies. What this means is that Valentine’s day here is very much a chocolate holiday, though I believe that there have been attempts to branch out in other directions. Every department store, bakery, and convenience store has a substantial section devoted to chocolate, the quality of which of course depends on the venue. I personally decided to pick up some chocolate for my host family at my favourite bakery, where they had some ‘raw chocolate’, which is basically very soft chocolate that melts at just above room temperature, that had black pepper in it for a little bit of interesting flavour. When I got home my host family had also bought me some chocolate, a box from a Kobe company called Morozoff, which is believed to have started the chocolate-giving tradition here in Japan. It was *very* nice chocolate. There is none left.

Zen, Tea, and warm socks

2008-02-13T12:03:00.000+09:00

For my architecture class on Wednesday we had a field trip to Daitokuji Zen Buddhist temple. The purpose of this outing was to see some of the famous tea rooms in the complex, as we were studying the very specific elements of tea ceremony related architecture. This was all well and fine, but there was the slight problem of the weather, by which I mean that it was freezing cold with more than a negligible amount of snow falling. That morning I had had a bit of a misunderstanding with my alarm clock, and thus did not have much time to consider my wardrobe for the day (wake-up time: 10:20. Class time: 10:45. Average amount of time taken to get from my front door to school at a brisk walk: 15minutes). I would have been fine if we hadn’t had to actually enter the temple, where shoes are prohibited. Our first stop, the Zuihou-in sub-temple, was quite lovely, especially as we were served matcha green tea and semi-sweet snacks and then treated to a talk by one of the priests, who was very interesting. After this we walked around the temple for a bit, saw the two different rock gardens, and then were invited into the ‘main attraction’ as it were: the tea rooms. Both of the ones that we visited were extremely small, less than 6ft square, with very simple interiors made of natural materials. I hadn’t much thought about it before, but tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism really do suit each other. I was still pretty much fine when we left this temple, and I really enjoyed the priest’s explanations of the rooms and his thoughts on spirituality, as well as the unexpectedly adorable knitted cap that he put on about halfway through. I suppose that if I were bald I’d wear one too. The next place in Daitokuji that our professor had wanted us to see was unfortunately closed for repairs, so we decided to visit another subtemple called Koto-in which is famous for its bamboo. I was getting pretty cold by this point. The rooms in the place were very nice, with screens and the like but I was hardly in any state to enjoy it. I thought that I was going to die when everyone reached the veranda (which looked out on the accumulating snow and a forest of bamboo that swayed in the breeze) and then sat down. Outside. Watching the snow. I don’t know how long the group literally chilled out there, but it felt like an eternity and my feet were starting to hurt. Finally we got up to leave. It actually hurt to put my shoes back on. I wasn’t warm again until my bath that evening. I love the bath.
-Daitokuji never taught Christianity, but it was associated with it in the past. In Zuiho-in there is a rock garden that is in the shape of an asymmetrical cross and a special kind of stone lantern under which is apparently buried a statue of the Virgin Mary. These lanterns were used secretive ways to continue Christian worship after it was outlawed. A former patron of the temple converted to Christianity, so the garden and lantern are in honour of him.
-The Taian tea room was built originally by Sen no Rikyu, the founder of tea ceremony as we know it, and was used to host his most famous pupil, the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The version that exists now was rebuilt a long time ago, but as it uses the same main pillar it is considered to be the same tea room.
-To enter a formal tea room, the guest is required to literally crawl through a small doorway about 75cm x 75cm. This served a double purpose, the first being that everyone is equally humbled in the tea room, samurai and commoner alike, the second being that it would be next to impossible to get through the door while still wearing one’s sword.
-I actually did receive a text message from my professor at about noon before our 1:15 class that everyone should dress warmly and wear thick socks, but I really don’t know how I was supposed to find thick socks after I was already at school. Apparently this is considered ample warning in my professor’s world, which is something worth noting for future reference.

Tombs

2008-02-11T15:57:00.000+09:00

When making our plans for February break, my friends and I decided that we should try to get back a full day before school began again so that we would have time to relax and finish any homework that needed doing before school started up again, and thus planned to come back on Sunday evening, as Monday was a national holiday. Our plan was, however, foiled when we learned that we had an all-day field trip planned for our Japanese Antiquity class on Monday. I was a little annoyed by this, but I got on the train to Tenri at 9am anyway. Tenri is a rather small town that is most famous for the ancient ‘keyhole tombs’ that are rather plentiful in the areas surrounding it. Many of these tombs are designated as those of members of the royal family of Japan by the Imperial Household agency, and thus may not be excavated or even stood upon. Other, smaller, tombs however have fewer restrictions on them. They are called ‘keyhole’ tombs because from above they look like an old-fashioned keyhole, with a rounded mound connected to a trapezoidal flat section. The first one that we went to see was rather small and had no plants on it, though we were told by our professor that during the summer it is covered in bamboo. Because at one time the entire rounded portion was covered in pottery (haniwa, actually) you can still find little pieces of red clay ceramic in the area. The piece that I found was only about 1x.5 inches, but it’s still cool to have. After this one we went to another tomb that I didn’t really get a feel for the overall appearance of, due to the cover of bamboo and trees. We walked up a bit before reaching a sort of stone altar with a small opening into the side of the hill behind it. When our professor told us to head in I was a bit sceptical, but after a rather undignified backwards crawl into the tomb I saw that it was actually pretty big inside. It was about a 10ft long by 6ft –ish wide room with a large sarcophagus made of a single slab of stone taking up about half of it on the far end. Various members of our group tried climbing in, and each one fit including one of the over-6ft-tall guys with room to spare. I am claustrophobic, however, and thus did not volunteer. After this we had lunch, then headed to another part of Tenri to see a tomb that had been excavated several years ago, and in which they found a ton of brass mirrors. There was a playground at the foot of it, where several of us took advantage of. The weather was so amazing that it was hard to stay away from it. For the first time in months I was outside and wishing that I didn’t have my coat with me. Our final stop was one of the restricted tombs, said to hold the remains of the 10th emperor. We couldn’t go in, but we did walk around it. It was pretty big, with a shrine sort of set-up in front and a wall all the way around it. We got home later than expected, and I had a hard time finishing my homework by a decent hour, but it was an unexpectedly fun day.
-There is an ongoing debate about the location of a country called ‘Yamatai’ by ancient Chinese chronicles. In the record, the Chinese mention establishing contact ‘Himiko’ the queen of this region that was supposedly the most powerful in Japan at the time. The problem is that there is no such name in the Imperial family genealogy, and no region called ‘Yamatai’. The problem of finding out who Himiko was had a lot of publicity during the bubble economy, which the city of Tenri capitalized on by hinting, due to the number and richness of the tombs discovered within the region, that Yamatai was near Tenri. There are several areas in Japan that make similar claims.
-My professor is a lot more personable than I had originally thought.
-One is never too old for play structures, though one might be too big.
-There is no Tenri Hello Kitty, which is unfortunate: I really wanted a Himiko Hello Kitty.

Homeward Bound

2008-02-10T15:56:00.000+09:00

Our last day was not of any particular note. Check-out time was 10am, and since there didn’t seem to be anything to do in Chitose we decided to just go to the airport really early, do our gift shopping, find a place to sit, and hang out until it was time to leave. The lines at the airport were really confusing, and we stood briefly in two different incorrect lines before an airline spokeswoman rounded us up and put us in the right one. After that we went to get our all-important souvenir shopping done at one of the many shops that they have for just that purpose. I decided on these corn and white chocolate snacks that sort of taste like rice crispies treats and something called ‘shiroi koibito’, which is a famous Hokkaido souvenir that is basically thing vanilla wafers with white chocolate in between. Awhile ago (I’m not certain when exactly) there was a scandal where it was discovered that the shiroi koibito distributors had been taking expired boxes, changing the dates on them, and then selling them. This seems to have been cleared up, as it is once again a popular item. After this we headed to the restaurant area which had a lounge near a coffee stand and hung out there. There was a lot of noise, however, from some sort of event that involved women dressed up as characters from a popular girl’s television show posing for pictures with their young fans. It was a little odd. Lunch was over-priced pizza preceded by the best soft-serve ice cream that I’ve ever had, the plane ride was longer than I had remembered but uneventful. It’s good to be back in Kyoto.
-I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but if you are travelling domestically in Japan you do not need to present your ID at security, and you can keep your shoes on. They also do not seem to have the same liquid rule that they do in the states, as my friends was advised to take the beer that he had bought as a gift for his host family on the plane with him.
-There seem to be two schools of thought on how to costume real people as animated characters. The first (the one with which I was familiar) is that since the characters are supposed to be humans, they should just be people dressed in the character’s costume. The second (the one I saw at the airport) seems to be that since animated characters have a very distinctive look that does not work well on real people, they should be costumed head-to-toe, with masks and gloves and no actual skin showing. I understand this, but it’s a little creepy.
-I love seeing new places, but it’s nice to have the privacy of my own room.

Chitose

2008-02-08T15:55:00.000+09:00

While we had rooms for Wednesday through Friday nights, our hotel was all booked up on Saturday night, which meant that we were going to have to find some other accommodations for our last night in Hokkaido. When we went down to breakfast that morning we asked the owner of the Inn if he knew of anywhere in the area that might be open, but he came back after making a couple calls to tell us that things were full up in Sapporo for the Snow Festival weekend. At this point we considered our options, of which there were a limited number. One option was finding an internet café, where we could rent a booth for the night and sleep on the couches, which I was not in favour of mainly due to the lack of privacy and showers that that entailed. Another option was finding a room in a by-the-night hotel, but we had not seen a single one since being in Sapporo and didn’t really want to ask for directions to one. Finally, we realized that we were going to have to go to the Chitose airport the following afternoon regardless, and could just head that way early and put up in an airport hotel. With this in mind we went to the Sapporo station tourist information place and got the numbers of some hotels in Chitose, chose the least expensive looking ones and called them in succession. Finally we happened on one that had a triple open for the night in question, which was a little more expensive than our previous hotels but possessed a shower and real beds. We spent the rest of our afternoon seeing the last of the ice sculptures in Susukino and getting some lunch, which we had at an Indian/Thai food restaurant, where I was able to get Thai curry with cheese naan. We hopped a train to Chitose after retrieving our luggage from our hotel, and were at our new accommodations by 5:30pm. There is nothing to do/see/eat in Chitose, or at least the part that we were in. We left our hotel after relaxing in the room for a bit and headed in a direction that seemed to have a few more lights, and managed to find only a couple ramen restaurants. I hadn’t really wanted ramen, but we didn’t have a choice, and in the end it was some of the best ramen that I’d had all trip. They had an English menu, but it was bizarre. I would have taken a picture, but I didn’t want to be rude.
-When staying in Sapporo for the Snow Festival, it is probably better to book rooms further in advance.
-They do actually have showers in many internet cafes in Japan, but I have been told that it is better not to use them.
-After this week I’m not going to want to eat ramen again for awhile.
-The best (and cheapest!) food that I had the entire trip was all from the main shopping arcade in Sapporo.

Yuki Matsuri

2008-02-07T15:53:00.000+09:00

The next day we explored the festival displays more fully during the day, returned to our room for a rest in the late afternoon, and then decided to head out and see the festival at night. Many of the bigger sculptures are lit-up with coloured lights after dark, so we decided that we would eat our dinner at the food stands in the area while taking a look. The food stands sold many Hokkaido specialty foods, including grilled sweet corn (which we tried) and crab (which we did not). It got a little cold, though, as tends to happen in the north after dark, so we headed home. Or rather, we tried to. We got a little turned around. The following day we decided to see the Sapporo beer museum and old factory, and also decided that we should go there on foot, mainly because the bus that was mentioned in our tour book did not appear to actually exist. It was a little further than it looked on the map. Truth is, there are two different beer museums, both of which we visited, and both of which are former Sapporo factories that no longer make beer, actual production having been moved out of the city decades ago. The first location was more mall than museum, which was fine because we had already worked up an appetite slogging through the snow. We opted for okonomiyaki, which was filling and warm. After another trek through the snow we found ourselves at the second factory, which was more of the museum that we had been expecting. After the brief walkthrough of the history of Sapporo beer, we ended in the beer garden, which looked rather like a European bar with wooden floors and chairs and a big hearth. I didn’t get any beer myself, but I did find that they had various unusual flavours of ice cream, including curry, squid ink, cream cheese and shiso. I decided on black beer and lavender, both of which were delicious (and cheap). We decided to take the bus back to the city centre, and had lunch there at a very cheap dumpling restaurant (400yen for rice, a small plate of gyoza dumplings, miso soup, and some sort of cabbage salad. We were very tired afterward and simply fell into bed upon our return.
-Take some sort of transportation to the Sapporo beer museum.
-If I wear my gollashes, I will have no problem avoiding puddles and the like, but if I opt for warmer sneakers, I will inevitably find myself standing ankle-deep in a puddle.
-Yebisu, Sapporo and Asahi beers were, at least initially, all made by the same Nippon Brewing Company.
-The Hokkaido baseball team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, train by next to the Sapporo beer garden. Coincidence? I think not.
-Foods for which Hokkaido is famous: crab, dairy, melon, ramen, ‘jengisu kan’ or thinly sliced sheep meat, ikura fish ro, squid.
-sapporo- style okonomiyaki involves a thin pancake, on which you place cabbage and bean sprouts, noodles, sheep, and a fried egg. It’s really good.

To Sapporo

2008-02-06T16:08:00.000+09:00

On Wednesday morning we got up early and took our hotel’s concierge up on her offer to drive us to the bus station. It really was very nice of her, and we sadly didn’t have any good gifts on hand to give her, and so were forced to just buy the nicest chocolate that was available at the convenience store. The bus was amazing. It didn’t cost any more than the subway would have, but was comfortable, warm, and got us to Sapporo in one vehicle. The driver even stopped at a rest stop to allow everyone to get out and buy snacks or use the bathroom. At this stop I decided to sample something called ‘Potato fry’, which was basically like a thin layer of doughnut around a potato. It was very tasty. The bus dropped us off at Sapporo station, from which we rode the subway to Susukino, where our hotel was. Perhaps ‘hotel’ is not the right term, as it was more like a homey guest house run by an older Japanese couple, where we had a simple but nice room in a traditional style, with the bathing facilities shared between guests. We actually circled it several times before finally finding it. After we’d dropped off our luggage, we took a look at the Snow Festival that we had come to see. It was pretty interesting, with tons of people from all over the world visiting massive and extremely detailed snow and ice sculptures. After looking around a bit we returned to our room, rested, and then headed out for some dinner. We luckily happened upon a cheap but delicious ‘yakiniku’ or ‘grilled meat’ restaurant that had excellently tender meat and the best kimchi (Korean pickled spicy cabbage) that I’ve ever had.
-The streets in Sapporo are laid out on a grid, with all of the blocks numbered based on their distance north, south, east or west of the television tower that is roughly at the centre of the city. This should mean that it is easy to find places in Sapporo, but because it is the blocks and not the intersections or streets that are numbered it can get very confusing.
-Yakiniku restaurants essentially provide patrons with a sort of small grill in the middle of their table, on which they grill their own meat and vegetables to their taste. It’s a lot of fun.
-There are many young women in Sapporo who, despite below freezing temperatures, wear short skirts without stockings or leggings underneath and fashionable but not very warm-looking coats. While I have noticed this in Kyoto, it is far colder in Sapporo, leading me to believe that these girls have no nerves in their legs.

Volcano!

2008-02-05T16:08:00.000+09:00

On our last day in Toya we opted to really see the area before we left it early the following morning. With this in mind we walked about in the snow, made some snow angels, and sampled the road-side footbaths. Our actual destination was the Volcano Science Museum, newly refurbished for the imminent summit. It was there that we learned that Toya is centered around the most active volcano in Japan, Mount Usu, which had eruptions in 1910, 1977, and again in 2000. It is, however, a very predictable volcano, with rumbling and ash plumes leading up to eruptions days in advance. Because of this it is a very important volcano to the scientific community, according to the literature. The museum itself was a lot more interesting than I had anticipated, with a theatre rigged with several movie screens and something that made everything vibrate as if there were pre-eruption earthquakes, a simulator of the 1977 eruption, and some relics of the 2000 eruption. In this last category they had a truck that had been totaled by ballistic projectile rocks (I learned the word for that in Japanese from the exhibit as well!), shattered paving stones and train tracks that had been bent by the ground moving underneath them. After the museum we took a look around the visitor’s centre, which had information about local wildlife. We finished off our day with some dinner out and a movie back in the room with a bottle of local wine from the convenience store. Oh, and of course one last dip in the hot springs.
-While my new wellingtons are waterproof, thus protecting my feet from the snow, they are not at all insulated, which means that my feet are still cold, just not wet.
-Mount Usu actually has several smaller peaks on it, which are named for the different eras that they ‘appeared’ in. The idea of mountains just popping up is more than a little alarming to me.
-There are several invasive species that are causing problems around here, among them raccoons and crayfish. I can’t say that I understand how either of them got here though..

Snow Country

2008-02-04T16:07:00.000+09:00

After such an exhausting Sunday we opted to lay around and consider our options on Monday. With this in mind, we slept late, took a short walk around the area to see what there was to do, and came to the conclusion that the answer was ‘not much’ on both counts. It appears that Toya is a popular Summer destination for people trying to escape the heat of more southern locations. It is really a very beautiful place, with a caldera lake (Lake Toya) where I believe that people go boating or fishing, mountains for hiking and camping, and of course the hot springs. In the Winter the place is practically deserted, with more than half of the stores closed up and a lot of snow. This explains why our hotel was so cheap. After our brief exploration and a stop at the convenience store for food we stayed in most of the rest of the day watching more television. Dinner was a ‘yakitori’ restaurant recommended by our concierge, and on our way back from dinner we found this sort of illuminated arch in the middle of the town that was really pretty. It’d be amazing to hold a party or something in a place like that, if, you know, it weren’t below freezing outside. Over breakfast that day we came to a decision: we were going to have to move. Our main reason for going to Hokkaido in the dead of winter was to see the Sapporo snow festival. Unfortunately, if we were to continue staying in Toya we were going to have to pay a considerable amount for day trips into the city, with 3 hours worth of commute each direction. When we decided that this was not a viable option we set about calling hotels and youth hostels listed in the ‘Lonely Planet’ travel book, and managed to find a hotel in the city that had about the same price as the place we were currently in. We managed to get rooms for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, but not Saturday, our last night in town. We’ll figure something out for Saturday night. It’ll be an adventure!
-Places in Hokkaido have heating in every room, shop and restaurant, which means that I am consistently warmer here than in Kyoto.
-Hokkaido cold is the dryer cold that I am used to from home, not the bone-chilling cold of Kyoto. It’s amazing to me that I can feel more comfortable in sub-freezing temperatures here than in snowless Kyoto.
-There are little hotsprings on the sides of the road here that have been made into hand, foot, and dog baths. It’s really very novel.
-Lonely Planet has good hotel information.
-Toya is going to be the site of this summer’s G8 summit, for which they are already preparing.

Toya

2008-02-03T16:06:00.000+09:00

Sunday was a travel day. My friends and I hopped the airport shuttle from Kyoto Station at about noon, opting to have lunch once we were at the airport. The Kansai airport is large and has many shops and restaurants, none of which I appreciated the last time I was there, following my 12-hour flight from San Francisco. Because we had time to spare, we grabbed some overpriced food court pizza and looked around. I finally managed to get myself an Osaka Hello Kitty (with her dressed as the Hanshin Tigers baseball team mascot and riding a piece of takoyaki) and also happened upon a new(?) line of Kabuki-themed Kitties. I decided that they were too cool to pass up and bought one (with her dressed as a Tayuu courtesan from the Edo period and carrying a sword). After this we figured that we might as well head to our gate, which we did after the most laid-back security run that I’ve ever been through. They didn’t even ask for my id. The plane was rather like any other plane that I’ve ridden except for that everything was in Japanese, there were practically no soda options on the drink cart and we were given no pretzels. Of course, it was only a hour-or-so-long flight to Chitose Airport in Hokkaido. Once at Chitose, we took a train to the main train depot outside of the airport grounds, where we attempted to buy a ticket to Toya, where we were going to be staying. This is when we discovered that our hotel was a lot further from Sapporo than we had expected. The nice man behind the counter said that we could only buy the tickets from him (instead of from the ticket machine), and quoted us at almost $40 per person, with a travel time of 2 hours. We were stunned. When we asked him if there was a cheaper option, he wrote us out a complicated, almost 4-hour-long itinerary, changing trains three times with our longest layover being a full hour. Those tickets cost just over $20, and since we, as always, had more time than money, we took them. It was a long evening. For our hour-long layover, we hung out in the heated waiting room at the train station, drinking vending machine tea and watching episodes of a show called ‘Pushing Daisies’ that one of my friends had on her computer. Once we finally reached the Toya train station it was too late to catch a bus, so we grabbed a taxi, which took us to our hotel. We were exhausted, but we got into our rooms and took advantage of the hot springs that the hotel had on-site and then watched a little more TV. We fell into our soft, warm beds and I, at least, fell almost immediately asleep.
-The resort town of Toya is a considerable distance from Sapporo, even though our information and that printed in the ‘Lonely Planet’ Japan travel guide give the impression that it is just outside city limits.
-Because our hotel had a hot spring that was open 24-hours a day, the hotel rooms themselves did not have showers.
-When we checked in, we were shown a list of bath guidelines. The one that most caught our attention was the one that stated that we should not go into the bath more than 3 times a day. I would have thought that this was just silly, if I hadn’t also heard from my host sister that some people get so excited about having a hotspring so close and free that they bathe too frequently in the sulphurous water and make themselves sick. I did not have this problem.

Shopping for warm

2008-02-02T16:05:00.000+09:00

I managed to get through another week of school without incident, which is always a good thing, especially when that week ends with a week-long break! During February the Japanese students at my school here have exams, so the exchange students get a whole week off. Most everyone in the program is taking this opportunity to go on some sort of trip, some friends are going to Saipan, others to Okinawa, but I myself am going to Hokkaido for the Snow Festival that they hold there this time every year. Because Hokkaido is famously snowy and cold, my host sister took me shopping for suitable clothing today. This included a trip to Uniqlo, where I decided to try a different tactic than last time (When I found that I don’t really fit their women’s XL) and try for men’s clothes instead. This actually worked pretty well, since men’s clothes tend to have broader shoulders, and I wasn’t really looking for fashion pieces so much as things that would keep me warm. Pants were, unfortunately, a little more difficult. The only thing that I had difficulty finding were waterproof boots, which no shoe store of any size or description seemed to carry. In the end I had to settle for some rather fancy gardening boots, but at least I got something. There is nothing worse than having wet feet.
-Apparently a men’s M here and a women’s M in the US have similar dimensions.
-Men’s pants are just plain different from women’s. I never noticed this before because I had never tried to find a pair of men’s pants that fit me before.

Nijo Castle

2008-01-23T16:03:00.000+09:00

Well, last weekend was not particularly eventful. For the most part I stayed in, got some rest, did some homework…and watched my new Takarazuka DVDs. All very important things. The week itself was not very eventful either, as per usual, and so also not much deserving of recounting, but I did have a small class field trip to Nijo Castle (another UNESCO world heritage site) that was rather fun. Nijo Castle was built by the first Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu back around 1610 in the middle of Kyoto more as a symbol of power than as residence, as the Tokugawas actually ruled from Edo (modern-day Tokyo). I went there with my architecture class, as it is a wonderfully preserved example of a very old building style. It is essentially a fortress in the middle of the city with battlements, arrow towers, a moat, and several interior layers of defence as well. The part of it that we went to see was Ninomaru palace, which is inside all of the walls and is extremely lovely. Every room is painted and gold-leafed, and there are massive wood carvings over many of the doors. Outside of the rather massive building is a garden that is also very lovely in a rather austere sort of way. It’s probable that it’s a little prettier in spring when there are actually flowers, but I rather liked it the way it was. One of the most famous features of the palace is what they call the ‘nightingale floor’, which cannot be tread upon without making a squeaking sound reminiscent of chirping birds. This was to prevent anyone from sneaking up on the Shogun. It really was nice, though a little chilly, and I really wish that cameras were allowed inside the building itself, but they probably are worried about the effect of flashes on the paintings inside.
-The rooms inside the palace are painted to reflect their uses. For instance, rooms for receiving lower-ranked lords who might have fought on the opposing side in the battle that established the Tokugawa Shogunate is painted with tigers and hawks, while the rooms that served as the private quarters have serene landscapes on the walls.
-While many traditional Japanese buildings have painted sliding doors, or scrolls in special niches, Ninomaru palace’s rooms are like one continuous painting, continuing above the doors, into alcoves and sometimes even onto the ceiling.
-No one new is allowed into the palace after 4pm, and I don’t think that you can enter the main Nijo castle structure after 3.
-Even though I had heard that in Japan department stores and the like play ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (pardon my butchering of the spelling) when they are trying to close for the evening, this was the first time that I actually heard it.

Tales of Hoffman

2008-01-20T13:47:00.000+09:00

Alright, I am sure that people are sick of me talking about this on here as they are listening to me talk about it in the AKP lounge, but I went to Takarazuka again on Sunday. This was my first time seeing a play in the smaller theatre (called Bow Hall), where they put on simpler shows without musical reviews after them that are cast with actresses who might later rise to top-star status. In the larger theatre the top role is always taken by the performing troupe’s top star, but in Bow Hall they give various different people chances to take lead roles. The play itself was ‘Tales of Hoffman’, and was based on the opera of the same name, though was not really an opera stylistically. I believe that some of the music was the same, but there were liberties taken and (I believe) songs added. The people that I saw really did seem promising, though I was not fond of the sound equipment, and felt that it would have been better if the actors hadn’t been microphoned, as the theatre itself was small enough that I’m sure we would have been able to hear them. After the show itself we hit up the gift shop, this time to buy DVDs that I had been allotted grant money for. I submitted a proposal a while ago for money to use buying Takarazuka DVDs that would allow me to expand an earlier project that I had done on trends in Takarazuka costuming, and had received approval before I went to Takarazuka this time. I bought: ‘Rose of Versailles- Oscar and Andre’, ‘Elizabeth’, ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, ‘Hoshikage no Hito’, and ‘Phantom’ in addition to some things for myself (a ‘Rose of Versailles’ song book, a Kei Aran calendar and another set of tickets for a show about vampires). Unfortunately, spending this much money was way out of my spending pattern, which meant that my debit card company got suspicious and put a hold on my card that I had to clear up on the following Monday.
-Most shows in Bow Hall are double-cast, which gives even more actors chances to take lead roles.
-Spending that much money in one go (even knowing that I’m going to be reimbursed) makes me lightheaded.
-If they do not have a piece of merchandise that you want at the gift shop in the theatre, go to one of the stores outside the theatre.
-It seemed that there were (very quiet) scalpers outside the theatre, which makes me think that I might be able to get tickets on the day of for a play that I was not able to reserve tickets for initially.
-If you want to buy mp3s from a Japanese site, you need a credit card with a Japanese address attached to it, but if you buy something called ‘Net Cash’ from a convenience store here you can use that to pay online.

Making the Rounds

2008-01-19T13:47:00.000+09:00

Because it was going to be one of the last days that I would get to spend with my friend from school who was in town, we just walked all around the district near my school on Saturday. We didn’t visit anywhere that was particularly new (to me), but we did get to talk a lot and managed to see a couple exciting things, including a bride and groom having their wedding pictures taken outside of a local shrine and a maiko getting into a cab (in full dress) in Kamishichiken geisha district. We had lunch at a ‘Colorado Café’, where the service was slow but the sandwiches were cheap and tasty, and hit up Book Off (a used book, CD, DVD, and game store) and the 100yen shop. By the time I limped home I had some impressive blisters and wallet that was rather lighter than when I had left in the morning.
-The white hood worn over a Japanese bride’s hair is supposed to ‘hide her horns’ until after vows have been exchanged, which I think is just hilarious.
-Some of the people here are great at sales. I went into a used kimono shop and the woman there asked me if I’d ever been on television. It might also have been the sunglasses.
-Apparently traditional Japanese formal shoes that are worn with kimono are ‘one size fits all’, and don’t fit me at all.

Karaoke in Kimono

2008-01-18T13:44:00.000+09:00

Friday was the big AKP New Year’s Party, for which I had had my outfit planned for weeks: a furisode kimono (one where the sleeves fall down to below waist-level when the arms are extended at shoulder height) that was cream with red and gold chrysanthemums and peonies, a green obi decorated with fans and gold, purple, orange and white flowers that my host family had bought for me, and a hair ornament with red and cream flowers made of folded silk. I had also bought a book full of complicated obi knots and chosen which one I wanted, which my host mother and my host mother’s sister helped me to implement. I finished it all off with a magenta kimono coat and headed off to the Kyoto Tower Hotel, where we had all stayed our first week in Japan. They had a lot of very tasty food at the party, and a lot of people performed things that they had worked on all semester, including groups doing koto, shamisen, taiko and shakuhachi (traditional Japanese instruments), Hula, and my own traditional Japanese dance class. It was a lot of fun, and afterward (just as I was about ready to return home, actually) some friends invited me to karaoke. So, still in my kimono as I didn’t have any other clothes with me, I joined them in a rousing night of singing everything from the Beatles to my own Takarazuka solo. We were out really late, though, and I ended up riding the last train home at about midnight.
-People still seem to be baffled by the concept of a foreigner in kimono.
-My friend stopped a couple of well-dressed men on the street to ask if they were hosts. They said ‘no’, but we were not convinced, maybe they were off-duty and didn’t want to admit it?
-Make sure you know when the last train is.
-If an entry into the karaoke machine doesn’t take right away, just try again.

Birthday

2008-01-16T13:43:00.000+09:00

Well, today was my birthday, January 16th. As things go, it was a pretty calm day, and since I had classes all of today I really didn’t have the time to do anything more exciting, though I plan to do something on the weekend with some friends if I have time then. My host mother made a truly lovely dinner for me, and my host sister got a bottle of wine to go with it. I have to say that I was really touched.

Coming of Age Day

2008-01-14T13:40:00.000+09:00

We had Monday off because of ‘Seijin no Hi’ or Coming of Age day, where all people who turned 20 in the preceding year dress up *very* nicely (The girls almost all in kimono, the boys usually in suits, I think) and go to an event put on by their local government. Many students from AKP were eligible for and received invitations to the event, but my birthday evidently falls into some sort of grey area, and I was thus too old to go. Instead, some friends and I went to the Kyoto National Museum, which had an exhibit of swords that had been made for Temples and Shrines in the Kyoto area. Some were more heavily decorated than others, and there were even swords from before 800 AD! We toured around pretty much the entire exhibit before heading back. On our way to the Shijo subway station we passed one of the other top geisha districts in Kyoto, Miyagawa-cho, which I had not previously known the location of. I was excited, but my camera had completely run out of batteries, so I have no pictures of the area.
-It might be worth taking the bus to the museum next time, especially if it’s as cold as it was this time.
-The Kyoto National Museum has a really good student discount, whereby you can see anything in the museum (excepting the special exhibit, which is in a different building) for 250yen.
-After the festivities for Seijin no Hi, those who are studying ‘kyudo’ or traditional Japanese archery go to the Sanjuusangendo Temple for a big contest that includes the area’s masters as well. I didn’t go; it was too early in the morning.
-The symbol of Miyagawa-cho is three interlocking circles.

Familiar Faces

2008-01-11T15:41:00.000+09:00

On Friday I finally had the chance to meet up with a group from my college that had been in town since the beginning of the month. I had been asked to give a small presentation, which I was a little nervous about, but it was fine in the end. For my presentation I decided to wear kimono, but since it was raining I had to wear it with my boots instead of more traditional footwear, which is an interesting look that is slowly becoming a trademark of mine. I topped off the ensemble with my host mother’s bamboo and silk umbrella, which was beautiful and very useful, though made me feel doubly out of place on the return home. I had never been out late enough that I worried about catching the last bus before, but this time I missed the 201 bus that I wanted to take home, and so wound up taking a 203 instead, which actually only went about four stops before it reached the bus depot where it was staying for the night. Because it was not a bus that I was used to taking, I didn’t really know where I was or how to get home, so (in a step that made sense at the time) I went to the convenience store for a coke and some bread. The people behind the counter looked at me like I was an alien. In a kimono. Everything turned out okay, as after a quick call to my host mother I learned that I was within cheap cab distance of home.
-Outfits that seem cute and well thought out in the early evening feel ridiculous at midnight in a little-known and almost deserted part of town.
-Have I mentioned that cab doors open for you automatically here? It’s pretty cool.
-I have got to get myself one of those umbrellas, they are really beautiful, though admittedly not very portable.

Back into a routine

2008-01-08T15:40:00.000+09:00

Well, classes have officially begun, and it seems as though I’ve chosen some good ones. My first elective is called ‘Japanese Antiquity and its Political Uses in the Modern Era’, which is an interesting topic, and even though that class hasn’t actually met yet (it’s a Monday class, and we have yet to have a Monday with classes) I think that it will be interesting. My other class is ‘Kyoto and the History of its Housing’, which is taught by an actual architect and is already engaging, especially since it’s a topic that I don’t really know very much about yet. In addition to those I have Japanese class again, but everyone shifted professors, so it’s almost like a new class.
Something happened to a friend of mine that I think is worth mentioning. She was walking home one evening (about 6ish, she said) and was almost in front of her homestay where she hear a motor coming up quickly to one side of her. At first she thought that it was a car, and so was startled when she felt it brush against her, but it was in fact a motorcycle, the rider of which had just grabbed her bag. The rider was wearing a helmet with a dark visor, and got away quickly enough that she had no hope of chasing it. Inside her bag was, of course, pretty much everything that she had that was of value: DS portable video game, cell phone, wallet, alien registration card, textbooks and tickets to two different Takarazuka shows. She reported it to the police, and they actually went to the first of the shows for which her tickets had been taken to see if the thief was stupid enough to use them (he wasn’t). Everyone always talks about how safe Japan is, visitors and natives both, but it’s probably important to remember that there is no place that is completely safe.
-I really need to get back into shape for school.
-I need to be more careful about my purse, and I’m thinking that I’m going to start using a shorter strap (to keep it closer to my body when I walk).
-The Takarazuka tickets were the biggest worry for my friend. I think that they would have been for me as well, sadly.

Last day of Break.

2008-01-07T17:26:00.000+09:00

My friend’s final day in town (and my last day of break) we decided to spend shopping. Because we had more time than we had initially thought, we headed back to Teramachi street to pick up some last souvenirs and waste some time. Breakfast was at the convenience store (hot tea and sweet red bean buns), and then lunch was at a store in Nishiki market that sells mochi (glutinous rice pounded to make a sticky sort of cake) out of the front but also has a little restaurant in the back. It was really very good, not very expensive, and seemingly completely vegetarian. I had white miso soup with mochi and sticky rice with sweet red beans, while she had mochi coated in various types of bean powder. After we’d finished shopping and wandering around, we headed to the airport shuttle bus which she then took to the airport. The rest of the day was spent getting errands done and preparing for a new semester of college (I forget sometimes that that’s why I’m here in the first place).
-Nishiki and Teramachi don’t have a lot going on early in the morning, or maybe it’s just because it’s New Year’s season?
-If you are one of the first people into Daimaru department store, every clerk and worker stands at their post and bows to you as you pass. We were only taking a shortcut through the basement grocery store there, but I still felt very important.
-There are airport shuttles that leaves for Itami and Kansai airports, though they are not every hour as was reported to my host mother. The shuttle itself departs from in front of the Keihan Hotel attached to Kyoto Station and is not very expensive.
-I did not fail any classes, and my teacher actually liked my Takarazuka project, hurray!
-I’m actually going to get more sleep now that school has started than I did over break.

The Market at the Temple and the Shrine in the Fields

2008-01-06T17:24:00.000+09:00

The 6th was Dad’s last day in town, and luckily my friend had found out about another flea market at Toji that was happening on that day, so we decided to go take a look around. It was less than half the size of the usual Toji market on the 20th, but it was still very interesting and filled with a large variety of unusual and random items. We managed to find an old diving helmet and framed pieces of old Japanese WWII propaganda among the usual kimono and porcelain. For Dad’s final dinner in Japan we actually had some very lovely Italian food, some of the first that I’d had in a long time, with tomatoe, mozzarella, and basil salad. Afterwards we got Dad back to his hotel in time to catch the airport shuttle, and then it was just my friend and I. That afternoon my host family had offered to take the two of us over to Arashiyama to see some of the sights there, so we headed out that way by car. We walked through a lovely bamboo forest to a shrine called Nonomiya, which, in the Tale of Genji, is where the Lady Rokujo last meets with Genji while her daughter is being prepared to become high priestess of Ise shrine. Because of this, the shrine is likely to do some good business in 2008 with the 1000th anniversary of the writing of ‘Genji.’ After that we tried for another big temple (the name escapes me just now) but it was, unfortunately, closed for the New Year’s season. We did, however, get to see the neighbouring lake that was used for moon viewing parties centuries ago. After that we returned to my host family’s house for dinner, which they had made an effort to keep vegetarian for my friend’s sake. It was very good, though I could hardly move at the end after eaten so much.
-Nonomiya is described both in Genji and at least one Noh play taken from it as being a bleak and isolated place, but now it’s a thriving tourist area that seems to meet up with the rest of the city, more or less.
-We had sushi for dinner, but not the kind that most people think of. ‘Sushi’ actually refers to vinegar-seasoned rice and not fish, so what we had was a rice-bowl sort of setting topped with vegetables, egg, and seaweed.

Takarazuka Again!

2008-01-05T17:23:00.000+09:00

I had managed to get tickets to see the Takarazuka Snow Troupe’s performance of ‘Je t’Aime’, which was set in France, starring Mizu Natsuki. It was a great performance, though the first half (the actual play) wasn’t as much of a spectacle as ‘El Halcon’ had been. The second act, however, did not disappoint. It was called ‘Mirroir’ and was centred around the theme of mirrors of various kinds, from reflections in water (with beautiful blue silk veils as part of the set) to a new take on the Medusa story (very good statue impressions in that one) to Snow White and Cinderella having an argument over ‘who was the fairest’ (in massive hoop skirts no less!). All of this was set to various pop songs such as ‘Night and Day’, ‘Cartoon Hero’ and ‘Johnny Angel’. The dancing, costumes, sets, singing and sequins were all that I had hoped for and more, and it seemed that Dad and my friend enjoyed it all as well. After the show (and the required visit to the gift shop) we got some lunch in a soba shop in the shopping mall adjacent to the train station. It was really good, and seemed to be the real deal, complete with sweet buckwheat crackers when we sad down, buckwheat tea, and actual wasabi roots to grate over the noodles themselves. I have to say though that the best thing about the restaurant was probably the fact that it was non-smoking during lunch hours. After that I believe that we got back on the train, dropped off things at our various rooms, and met up again for dinner.
-My first Takarazuka show was no fluke: they just happen to be amazing.
-The more I look the more non-smoking restaurants and cafes I see, but they still seem to be a long way from an all-out ban.
-Takarazuka DVDs are still expensive. I bought what I thought was a cheap copy of ‘Rose of Versailles,’ but turned out to be only the scenes that a certain actress (Aran Kei) was in. Even in scenes where she was present, the camera only focused on her, often to the exclusion of the actual action in a scene. I still like it, though. So, you should probably be aware that in the Takarazuka gift shop it looks too good to be true, then it probably is.
-There’s also a nice little cafeteria-style restaurant that has good, cheap food that is quick. This is nice especially if you’re just catching a quick bite before the show.

Very Important Moss

2008-01-03T17:21:00.000+09:00

The following day my host sister and host mother took Dad, my friend and me around to a couple famous places in Kyoto. The first stop was the golden temple again, where Dad got a coin into the bowl in only one shot, and then on to Ryoanji which was close by. Ryoanji has beautiful grounds, but it’s most famous for its rock garden (an area of carefully placed stones amid raked gravel). The rock garden has about 15 stones in it, but they are positioned such that you can only ever see 14 at a time, with one always hidden by one of the others. It’s pretty nifty. In addition, the back wall of the garden is tapered towards the corner, creating the illusion of a larger space. The grounds themselves are very calming, and undoubtedly stunning in the spring, when the massive wisteria trellis and rows of cherry trees would be in bloom. From there we went to the Silver Temple, Ginkakuji, the sister temple to the Gold Temple, Kinkakuji. While Kinkakuji is located under one of the mountains around Kyoto on which the Chinese character for ‘big’ is burned every summer, Ginkakuji is under the other character for ‘big’, and was meant to be covered in silver to strengthen the comparison. Unfortunately, a war broke out before Ginkakuji could be finished, so even though it is called the ‘Silver Temple’ it is actually made of wood. While the building itself is rather unremarkable, the gardens surrounding it are truly lovely, and include sculpted white sand flows and winding manicured rivers winding down the mountainside, which is in turn covered in green mosses and trees. Apparently there are mosses in the garden specific to the area or rare that are threatened by invasive species of mosses from other locations. After this temple we attempted to get across town to Sanjusangendo, but did not make it in part due to the heavy traffic and in part due to the fact that the temple closed early. Instead we had tea and tarts at the neighbouring Hyatt and returned to the hotel.
-Kinkakuji may be more immediately impressive, but I found Ginkakuji to be more beautiful overall.
-At Ginkakuji there were samples of mosses for the purpose of pointing out the different species present on the temple grounds. The label for the native mosses was ‘Very Important Moss (Like VIP)’, but the one for the invasive species was ‘Moss the Interrupter’, which I think should be the name of a super villain.
-They have samples of this wonderful plum and shiso tea at Ryoanji that is tart and thankfully quite warm.

Another trip Northward

2008-01-02T17:20:00.000+09:00

On my friend’s first day in town we did the Kamishichiken/Kitano Tenmangu course on foot. Kamishichiken was still closed, but Kitano Tenmangu had booths set up and a lot of people milling about. After that we decided to walk somewhere else, and realized that we were within walking distance of Nijo Castle. On our way there we passed a lot of closed stores, but also found a strange shrine that was located on small islands within a pond. I later learned that this place had something to do with ninjas, though I wasn’t clear on what exactly. Unfortunately, when we reached Nijo Castle we learned that they do not allow people to enter after 3pm, and since it was almost 4 by then we had to head back home instead. We ate at my favourite curry place that night and then headed to bed, since my friend was about ready to fall asleep in her dinner.
I believe that it was the following day that we met my friend at her hostel and went to see the nearby Higashi Honganji, which is the main location for its particular sect of Buddhism. One of the main buildings was under construction, but we could walk around the sort of porch that circles it. The placard there said that it was the largest wooden structure in the world, but I seem to remember that Todaiji in Nara said that *it* was the biggest wooden structure in the world. Maybe it’s a point of contention between the two. we went to Teramachi street, where my friend bought a kimono and obi at the same store that my mom and sister had earlier (the prices were still great) and we all managed to tour around a neat woodblock print store that carried a wide variety of things, both original and reproduction. For lunch we decided on grilled noodles (yakisoba), and I found a small place that looked both tasty and cheap. Unfortunately, the entire table of people behind Dad smoked like chimneys, and I swear that between the four of them they more than killed a pack of cigarettes while we there in the small, unventilated restaurant.
-One of these days I’m bound to get the hours at Nijo Castle right and actually manage to go inside.
-When buildings go under construction here they encase them in other buildings, doubtless to control the conditions inside. The one covering the building at Higashi Honganji was massive.
-Smoking is still very prevalent here, though I have seen a few non-smoking places. The thing that worried the most was seeing small kids at the next table in that smoke-box of a restaurant. I saw on the news here recently a segment on second-hand smoke, where they were stopping people on the street to ask them about it, and most everyone seemed surprised to hear that it was dangerous.
-It never occurred to me how hard it would be to be a vegetarian in this country until I started trying to find things for my friend to eat. Even though she was allowing fish for the purpose of the trip (because seasonings, soup stocks and sauces are all fish-based) we’d still find pork sprinkled into things without any mention having been made on the menu.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T14:45:00.000+09:00

It must have been the first, then, that my dad, my sister and I went to Shinkyogoku Street to shop around. Shinkyogoku is parallel to Teramachi street and is another shopping district with a bunch of cute little shops. It was really cold, however, so we wound up heading home a bit early, but not before we stopped at an okonomiyaki restaurant for lunch. I’d never been to an actual okonomiyaki restaurant before, but it was a lot of fun, especially since the two waitresses on duty were excited to practice their English with us while showing us how it was done. Basically, you order what kind you want (I got pork) and they bring it to you raw and you cook it on the table in front of you, which has basically a large griddle on it. You put down the meat first to cook it, then (if you’re having this style) the noodles. While they’re cooking, you mix together the egg, cabbage, and batter that they gave you in a bowl, pour it on top of the meat, put the noodles on top and cook it on both sides. All that’s left after that is to top it in sauce, mayonnaise, seaweed and/or bonito flakes and eat up! It was the perfect lunch for that day, since the griddle gives off a lot of very welcome heat.
It must have been the next day that we tackled the Yasaka Shrine/Nene’s road/ Kiyomizu temple trip. Yasaka was very busy, but it was also full of booths selling all sorts of foods and shrine charms, which gave it a very festive atmosphere. My sister bought a special sort of protection charm that they (apparently) only sell at New Year’s, which is an arrow without a point hung with ribbons and bells and very attractive. If Yasaka was busy, Kiyomizu was quite nearly un-navigable. Somehow we managed to get through it, see the sights, buy some charms, and marvel over the architecture unharmed and return home. My sister sadly had to leave extremely early in the morning on the 2nd, se we had a final meal at Mos Burger together before I left for Kyoto station to meet my friend who was coming into Kyoto that night. I had, stupidly, thought that the Mr. Donuts in Kyoto Station would be a good meeting place, and waited there for awhile before realizing that not only had I given awful directions, but also that it could not be seen from the main level of the station as I had thought. My next thought was to leave a message for her apologizing and giving directions for how to contact me the next morning at he hostel, but when I asked at a nearby hotel where there was a hostel near Kyoto station they told me that there was none. Luckily all was actually well, as the email that I received not long after confirmed.
-‘Modern Yaki’ is a type of okonomiyaki that has noodles on it in addition to meat. This style is, I believe, most popular in Hiroshima and Osaka.
-It seems that every Japanese person ever goes to shrines and/or temples in the first week or so of the New Year. Many of the women wear beautiful kimono to do so.
-Mos Burger currently has this amazing shrimp burger out that comes in an almost pita-like wrap with shredded cabbage and mayo or chile sauce.
-There actually is a hostel near Kyoto Station, it’s just not called a hostel, it’s called a ‘Tour Club’.
-A lot of things are closed for the first week or so of January, but convenience stores (and Mos Burger) are always open, so we didn’t have any trouble finding food.

Maiko Time

2007-12-31T14:44:00.000+09:00

My dad came into Kyoto the night of the 30th, but since my mom was leaving the following morning at some ungodly hour we didn’t have much of an overlap between everyone’s vacations. My sister and I had our appointment with the Maiko studio on the morning of the 31st, so while Dad entertained himself walking around the Gion district we got dressed up. The first thing that they did was have us change into lightweight shifts and tabi (split-toed socks), and then while I was choosing a kimono from their collection (I had to choose one of the longer ones because I’m taller than their average customer) my sister had her hair tied back in a net and her makeup done. It seemed that after washing our faces, the makeup person rubbed pink makeup onto our cheekbones and the sides of our noses, then painted us in white makeup, starting with the back of the neck down over the shoulders and then the face including the lips. This was all then powdered lightly in pink blush again where she had put the pink makeup before, then black was used on the eyebrows and to line the eyes, and then red on the lips (drawn smaller than our actual ones) and the corners of the eyes. When the makeup was done, we were dressed in our kimono of choice, starting with an under-robe with a stiff kimono collar but no sleeves, a sort of tight wraparound skirt with red on it, with a patterned red collar (chosen by our dresser) layered on top of the under-robe collar covering it completely. Next was the kimono itself (Mine was blue with a pattern of cranes and feathers, while my sister’s was dark green with gold-accented phoenixes and flowers), which was tied on tightly and then topped with a stiff plastic piece, and the obi, which was in two parts. Last were more sashes (obiage), a cord with a large broach (obiage and obidome), and the wig itself complete with hair accessories (kanzashi). Once we were all dressed up in this way it was a little difficult to move, but while we had our pictures taken in the studio the photo guy helped us. After the studio, we stepped into our tall wooden sandals (okobo) for a walk around Gion, where we attracted quite a lot of attention. Maybe if we had been Japanese (or at least Asian) some tourists would have thought that we were actual Maiko, but since my sister and I are both clearly not, I thought that we would just take our walk without incident. I don’t know how many people wound up taking our picture, or how many of them posed with us, but it was a considerable number, enough that my Dad didn’t see me wave down my host mother and host sister (whom I had text messaged earlier so that they would know when to stop by). My host family has a picture of my family, so they knew my Dad immediately by sight, but Dad was a little surprised when my host sister ran up and hugged him by way of saying ‘hello.’ It was a little sad when it was finally time to change back into our real clothes, but it was also nice to be able to walk with a free stride and breath deeply again. It wasn’t cheap to do, but it was so much fun and we took tons of great pictures, it was like being a celebrity for an hour or so! After this we walked around a bit more, had some lunch, did some shopping, and picked up some sushi from a takeout place near my house and some cake from my favourite bakery and ate it in the hotel room. When I got back to my host family’s house I watched the end of the red and white competition on television and listened to the temple bells tolling to welcome the New Year.
-A real maiko’s kimono has a one-piece under-robe as well as a one-piece extra long and extra wide obi, but these are not very practical for dressing up tourists in. While we chose our own kimono, the shop woman chose everything else including our wigs, which is how my sister ended up with pink flowers on her head.
-Since the shoes are smaller at the bottom than they are at the top, they’re a little challenging to walk in. In addition, I’m already taller than most of the women in the country, but with over 5 inches of shoe under me and several more of wig over me I positively tower.
-Every year NHK (I believe) hosts a ‘red and white’ competition, which is basically a big televised show where the preceding year’s top female singers (the red team) ‘compete’ against the top male singers (the white team) to see who’s better. I don’t know how they decide the winner, but this year it was the white team.

Gion

2007-12-30T14:42:00.000+09:00

On the day of the 30th Mom, my sister and I went shopping along the main street in Gion. It was cold and windy out, but it was still very busy. We looked in on all sorts of shops, from extremely expensive kimono accessory shops to a couple smaller affairs. One that we found ourselves in was very small and non-descript, but had an impressive collection of Maiko fans (showing that they were patronized by Maiko from the Gion district) and a good mixture of little souvenirs and more expensive hair accessories for kimono. While we were in the shop, another woman was being closely attended by the store’s two workers. She was an older woman, with her hair in an unusual sort of chignon and an expensive-looking fur coat. I think that she actually might have been a geisha, though it is hard to tell older geisha in their day-clothes from other women. After some shopping we stopped at a noodle place in the basement of another small shop that was quite good and mercifully warm, and then decided to take a look at a ‘Maiko Experience’ store. This is a place where a person can pay to be dressed up as a maiko (complete with wig and makeup), and have professional pictures taken and/or go on a walk around the area surrounding the shop. There are many of these around Kyoto, including one in Gion where we had been shopping. We checked into it, but the woman said that they were booked for the day, so we made reservations to come the following morning.
-Around the new year’s season, many shops have ‘mystery bags’ for sale. These are bags that have a flat price and are filled with many different little things from the store, always worth more than the amount paid for it. I guess that this is a way that stores get rid of older merchandise before the New Year, but I got a great assortment of things from a fan shop in Gion this way, all very lovely things at a fraction of the total value.
-Make reservations in advance for dress-up things such as Maiko experience shops.
-The best western toilets to be found are almost always in the large department stores, and since they are so big I don’t feel as bad about not buying anything.
-A 24cm long foot (on a woman) qualifies as an LL (or XL) at Hankyu department store at least, and they don’t tend to carry much above that.

More Temples

2007-12-28T14:40:00.000+09:00

On my sister’s first day in town it poured rain, so we opted to try the hotel buffet for breakfast instead of going to the convenience store and back as had been the plan. The buffet had some American foods that I hadn’t had in awhile (such as cereal, sausage, rolls) as well as traditional Japanese breakfast foods such as grilled fish, miso soup and various vegetable salads. Because it was raining, I decided that it would be a good day to try Teramachi Street, which is a covered outdoor mall, filled with small stores, restaurants, and souvenir shops. Both Mom and my sister managed to come out of the day with kimono and obi that had been significantly reduced in price before New Year’s. I didn’t buy much of anything, although I did pick up some much-needed fuzzy socks to sleep in (They’re sea-foam green with cherries) and a lovely scarf with a deco motif. That evening Mom wasn’t feeling her best, so only my sister and I went with my host mother and host sister to conveyor-belt sushi, where we ate a lot (too much) and my sister tried natto (fermented soybeans) sushi. I made the mistake of saying, just as she put it into her mouth ‘I’ll tell you what it is later’, which I guess sounded a little too ominous. She managed to get it down, no thanks to me.
It must have been the next day that we went out with my host mother to see the gold temple (Kinkakuji), one of the most famous in Kyoto. It was originally the second home of a shogun, but was turned into a temple after his death. The main focus of the complex is an open sort of building whose top two floors (of three) are plated almost entirely gold. This sits on a manicured pond that the shogun used to paddle around on in a little boat. After this, the path leads up through some gardens, out past some more temple buildings and a tea room. There are a couple of places along this path that have small clusters of stone images surrounding small bowls. The aim is to toss a coin from the path and make it land in the bowl, which I did manage to do, but only on a bounce (does that count for less luck?). We stopped briefly at the tea room for some matcha and a semi-sweet rice and bean cookie, and then were off to lunch. We ate lunch at a café attached to a bread shop in Kitayama, and ordered lunch sets that we could barely finish. It was a very good thing that the dessert that came with the set was a light apple jelly with frozen yogurt, because anything heavier would have made me ill.
It was either that evening or the next day that we went back to Kitano Tenmangu shrine to look around, going through the Kamishichiken geisha district on the way, which was all but deserted. At the shrine my sister wanted to buy a charm, and asked me to ask the priest at the booth what a pretty purple one meant. I didn’t quite understand his answer, but I thought that he had said something about ‘finding love’ or something, which my sister figured didn’t sound too threatening, but when I bought it the priest said ‘Congratulations’. Now, I’m still not certain what he meant by that, but my immediate thought was that I had bought some sort of ‘safe childbirth’ charm accidentally. Oh well, at least it’s pretty. At some point, on one of these days, we attempted to visit Nijo castle, the official residence (I believe) of the Tokugawa shoguns for when they were in Kyoto. Unfortunately, the castle was closed for New Year’s, as was the sword shop across the street from it. On the way there, however, we stopped in at a shrine that was home to a wild boar-God, where we bought a shrine charm for back pain.
-While Teramachi has a lot going on during the pre-new year’s season, the Nishiki market is positively a mob scene.
-The Shijo area shopping district, including Shinkyogoku and Teramachi, are great places to go when it rains because pretty much all the walkways are covered.
-While in America New Year’s is a big party holiday, in Japan it’s very much a family thing, which, among other things, means that most of the geisha districts seem pretty much closed down.
-There really should be some sort of special radio station in Kyoto that (rather like school closings announced on snowy days in Colorado) tells tourists which temples are closed on a given day. It would save a lot of walking.
-2007 was the year of the boar, the last in the 12-year animal cycle brought to Japan from China a really long time ago. 2008 is the year of the mouse.
-My host mother is a check paying ninja of the highest rank. I had thought to physically grab the check for lunch when it came, but she used her lightning-fast reflexes to get it before I could. Clearly the only reason that I have been allowed to pay for my host sister sometimes is that she is still in training.

Tour guiding

2007-12-26T14:38:00.000+09:00

On the 26th Mom and I made it out to Kiyomizudera and Sanjusangendo temples, along with Yasaka shrine. In general it was beautiful weather but uneventful, but we did manage to do a good deed while about to leave this lovely café that we’d found on the way down from Kiyomizudera. Just as we were getting ready to leave, a couple of foreigners (I later learned that they were from Boston) sat down at another table, and I overheard them ask for an English menu, which the café did not have. I liked the place a lot, and I knew that if they couldn’t read the menu the couple would leave, so I helped them with ordering as much as I could. They were really nice people, and I hope that they like what they ordered. On the same day we also took a walk around Gion, though we were both tired enough that we didn’t go far. We did, however, manage to see a young geisha heading into the Ichiriki teahouse in full dress. This was the first time that I’d seen a geisha dressed to go out, so it was pretty exciting for me. That was a long day but a good one.
It must have been on the 27th then that Mom and I went to Nishijin to look around and get souvenirs. That was also fun, especially since they had a different fashion show from the last two times that I’ve been there. These ones were nice, but they had some more modern features that I wasn’t as fond of, such as pink-feathered obi accessories with matching headbands. They also had a couple of ensembles that matched obi and kimono colours pretty closely instead of complementing them as is more common. On the evening of the 27th my sister arrived from the US, and we were able to talk for pretty much the first time since the year began. The shuttle that I had arranged for her had been a lot harder to find than promised, I was told that a driver would be standing outside customs waiting with her name on a card but she wound up at the hotel safe and sound anyway, so I considered it a victory.
-Nene’s street up behind Yasaka shrine is lovely, but there were more hills than I remembered.
-You can’t go into the cool Victorian hotel behind Yasaka that I went to with my host mother unless you are eating there.
-At the Nishijin Textile Centre, scarves are not as easy to find as one might think, though they are available, along with a HUGE range of neckties.

Traditional Japanese Christmas

2007-12-24T14:35:00.000+09:00

Kitano Tenmangu market was on the menu for Mom’s second day in town, since it was the only market day that was going to fall during any of my family’s stay in Kyoto. It was pretty lively, though not as crowded as the last time that I was there, even though it was the last market day before the New Year. We walked around there for awhile, taking a look at what was for sale as well as the shrine itself, and then headed back towards the hotel through Kamishichiken geisha district. I was hoping that Mom would get to see a maiko before going home, and figured that that was the place to do it. I was not disappointed, as within a couple of minutes of being in the quarter I saw three different off-duty maiko. I can only guess that they are busy getting errands done around noon-ish. I was, unfortunately, not able to locate the oyakodon restaurant that I had eaten at with my host sister, so we wound up at a noodle shop along the way home. It actually proved to be a good choice, since the menu had pictures, the service was quick, the prices reasonable, and the food quite tasty. After a long day we went back to the hotel and rested (at least in my case) very tired feet. Since it was Christmas day, I decided that dinner should be the traditional Japanese Christmas fare: fried chicken and Christmas cake. The fried chicken came from Mos Burger and was quite good (not too greasy and not all breading), and the two slices of roll cake from my favourite bakery here was delicious. We ended up getting one slice of green tea-flavoured roll cake with whipped cream and sweet black beans inside, topped in sweet soybean powder, and another with white cake rolled up with whipped cream and fruit and topped in bran flakes. We brought all this back to the hotel room and ate it while watching ‘Miss Congeniality 2’ on the hotel pay-per-view. Merry Christmas.
-Christmas really is a bit of a non-event here, though the carols and decorations leading up to it might make one think otherwise. On the day itself everything is still open as usual.
-I wish that I could tell you how it came to be that they eat fried chicken on Christmas here, but I honestly don’t know when it started. I’m thinking it must have been one hell of a marketing campaign.
-As far as I can tell, any kind of cake can be Christmas cake, as long as it is eaten in the Christmas time period, though it should probably have ‘Merry Christmas’ written on it. Roll cakes, sponge cakes, chocolate cakes and castella all qualify.
-I don’t know what castella is, but I had ‘mini castella’ at a festival once and it tasted like pancakes, and then we had a castella Christmas cake at my host family’s house, which seemed to be dense and orange-flavoured

Christmas Shopping

2007-12-23T15:21:00.000+09:00

Now that finals are all over and done with my winter break has finally begun! To celebrate, I cleaned my room. Thoroughly. It’s amazing how much completely useless paper can accumulate over the course of a semester, and even more amazing how many packages of free tissues can accumulate after 4 months in Japan (over 13). On Friday there was the last Toji market day of the year, which was ridiculously crowded with people shopping for the New Year’s festivities, but a necessary trip since finals had kept me from doing any Christmas shopping at all. Unfortunately, I actually didn’t manage to find much in the way of gifts, but I did manage to find myself a furisode kimono (one whose sleeves fall from the wrist to about mid-thigh with arms extended) for only about $30 that complements the obi that my host family bought me as an early Christmas gift. Christmas here is actually not a big deal at all, in any real terms, but lights, Santa Claus, Christmas trees and Christmas sales have been imported from the US. It’s actually almost more of a couple’s holiday, whereas New Year’s is a very big family holiday with several days’ worth of accompanying traditions. Since this coming year is the year of the mouse (we are just leaving the year of the boar) everywhere you look there are adorable mouse-themed greeting cards, statuettes for family altars, incense holders and all matter of sweets. Shrines and temples have been preparing for months already, but the official day to begin family preparations for New Year’s is the 22nd, the Winter Solstice (here in Japan).
-Christmas in Japan has somehow (I’m sure it was a brilliant marketing campaign) become associated with fried chicken. That, and Christmas cake, which comes in every size, style and flavour from any bakery in town.
-Rather like Christmas cards in the US, New Year’s cards are extremely important here. Though many people do them digitally (I here) through email, my family and many others set about the arduous task of writing to relatives and friends to wish them a Happy New Year.
-One of my friends noted that Japan, the capital of cute, is the perfect country to be in when we head into the year of the mouse.
-On the 22nd, it’s traditional to eat pumpkin and take a bath with yuzu, a lemon-like citrus fruit. Unfortunately, modern plumbing and fruit are not a good match, so if you want to take a yuzu-bath then you pretty much have to go to a bath house.
-They don’t sell much in the way of wrapping paper here, due mainly to the fact that any store will wrap nicely anything that you buy, usually for free.

After a long absence...

2007-12-23T15:20:00.000+09:00

Whew! It really has been a long time since I posted an entry, but I promise that I have a good excuse: finals. In one week I had three presentations (one in Japanese) and a final paper due, for which I spent the entire preceding weekend in my room. The following week I had three Japanese exams and another final paper due, for which I spent the entire preceding weekend in my room. In short I did nothing (and saw less) of interest. About the only interesting thing that I did at all was go to see the illumination at the Rhom company headquarters just outside Kyoto city proper. It was beautiful. Fall came late here, so many of the trees still have their leaves, even if they’ve turned yellow, which meant that when they were filled with tiny randomly blinking lights they looked as though they were made of gold. The company itself makes tiny parts for cell phones and the like, so lighting up a couple dozen rows of trees was small potatoes for them, but the result was utterly gorgeous and I’m afraid that my photos do not begin to do it justice. They also had a couple massive trees covered in a net-like configuration of blue lights, which basically made them look like very large baskets, which was a little odd. The last most exciting lighting trick was done with a weeping cherry tree that had no leaves on it, but had been meticulously covered in white lights that traced every branch. Worth seeing, if you’re in the area.
-You can still buy anything that you would ever want at the 100yen store. I managed to get watercolours in 12 shades, three different sizes of paint brushes, paper that did not warp when wet from painting, two CD-R’s and silver eye shadow for about $7 (all for one of my projects)
-Even when not at school in Boston, I still manage to wind up with ridiculous amounts of work. This must be some sort of twisted talent of mine.

A Trip to the Meiji Era

2007-12-01T16:15:00.000+09:00

AKP was nice enough to completely arrange and pay for a trip to a place called ‘Meji Village’ for all of its students and their host families, so that’s where I was today. Meiji Village is essentially a park in Mie prefecture where various buildings (sometimes the whole thing, but more commonly a representative sample) from the Meiji Era (1868-1912) where moved in an effort to preserve the feel of the period as a whole. They have all sorts of buildings too, from sake factories to doctors’ offices to homes of famous authors and politicians, meaning that there was actually far too much for us to see in just the 3 hours or so that we had. They also have preserved there streetcars from Kyoto and a little steam locomotive, both of which I rode, which lead you from ‘Kyoto’ to ‘Nagoya’ and then onto ‘Tokyo’, with the buildings in each area grouped loosely with regard to their original location. Luckily, today was a beautiful fall day, warmer than many days preceding and probably than most of the days that will follow, with beautiful fall leaves everywhere. One of our first stops was lunch at the cafeteria building, where my host sister and I dined on a style of box lunch that used to be sold at train stations, and were usually comprised of local products. After lunch we went down to road a bit to a photo studio that was set up to let tourists dress up in period clothing and have professional photos taken. For this, you could choose between very over-the-top Victorian-esque clothing and more traditional Japanese clothes. As tempted as I was by the plumed hats, my host sister convinced me to try the quintessential Meiji costume: that of the Meiji schoolgirl. During the early 20th century there was a big push for public women’s education, and since uniforms in Western styles were too expensive, the school board came up with an outfit that could be put together by pretty much any girl in her home. This comprised of a normal kimono top, men’s traditional hakama pants (which essentially look like a full, pleated, ankle-length skirt in heavier fabric) and ankle boots. So, I was talked into it, and after the professional photos were taken, the photographer, I think because she was amused at the novelty of a blonde girl in traditional dress, let us take pictures with our own camera in front of the building while we waited. After that bit of excitement we wandered around for a bit, finally stopping at a structure unlike any other in the park, and really unlike anything I would have expected to see there. For one, it looked like something from the 20’s, and for another it didn’t look in the least bit Japanese to me: it was stone and concrete, and highly detailed, with many windows and terrace-looking platforms. It was, in fact, the lobby of the Imperial Hotel, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, preserved for posterity in the middle of Mie prefecture hours away from its original home in Tokyo. It really was beautiful, too, and in my opinion it seemed influenced by decorations on Aztec temples. After all this we had to head back to the bus for our long drive back to Kyoto before it got too dark.
-Rest stops in Japan are NOTHING like ones in America: they are clean, well-stocked, have restaurants and gift shops that have things that you might actually want to purchase and food that will not make you sick.
-It was easy to think, while walking down sunlit streets lined with old buildings in perfect repair, that I would have enjoyed living during the turn of the last century, but a stop in at a doctor’s office, with all of its instruments and hand-made medicines reminded me that I really am lucky to be alive now.
-A train car used by the Meiji Emperor was on display as well, and when my host sister and I were telling my host mother how beautiful it was she grimaced and said ‘yes, and all our hard earned tax dollars went to making a car for one person to ride in’. That put things into perspective.
-When bread (‘pan’) first came to Japan during this time period, the Japanese, who didn’t see it as a staple food as they already had rice, didn’t quite know what to do with it. Their solution was to put red bean paste (‘an’) in it and call it ‘anpan’. It was a huge success and is still a staple of the student diet.

Everything's Bigger in Nara

2007-11-29T15:55:00.000+09:00

I was a little worried about my friend after dinner on Wednesday night. Pretty soon after we got home it was obvious that she was ill, and she didn’t look any better on Thursday morning, and we were both fairly certain that she had gotten food poisoning at the Italian restaurant where we had dinner. It would have been better, I think, not to continue on to Nara that day, but for some reason my friend’s host mother disagreed. I don’t know if she thought that my friend was faking it, or overreacting or something, or if she was just embarrassed to have asked me all the way to her house just to send me home early, but we wound up getting in the car and driving to Nara, about an hour and a half away. Nara itself was beautiful as Ise with regards to fall colour, and if we had been disappointed with the scale of things on the previous day, we were more than impressed with our findings on the following one. The main two features of Nara that people will bring up are 1) deer and 2) Todaiji Buddhist temple. As for point 1, there are, in fact, a lot of deer, but they were not as aggressive as the deer at Miyajima, mainly (I believe) owing to the fact that tourists are allowed to feed the deer in Nara, and there are many stands that sell sembei (rice crackers) for that purpose. Basically, if the deer see that you don’t have any sembei, then they won’t bother you because they know that you have no food for them. Now on to the more interesting point 2. Todaiji temple has been in Nara for a very long time, though it has been destroyed by fire on more than one occasion. The current structure is actually about 33% smaller than its predecessor, but still manages to rank as the largest wooden structure in the world, and houses a massive statue of the Buddha (14.98 meters) seated on a lotus flower and flanked by two gold-plated Boddhisattvas. It is hard to give justice to just how awesome this place is, and pictures simply don’t do it justice, though I did my best. The temple also ranks as a UNESCO world heritage site (I wonder how many of these there are in Japan? Because I feel like I’ve been to quite a few). At the end of the day my friend looked a little better, though could still only bring herself to eat rice. They dropped me off at home with a massive box of persimmons and my own Omiyage of cakes shaped like camellia blossoms.
-I really love persimmons and persimmon trees, though I can’t remember having ever seen either before coming here. My favourite thing about the trees themselves is that long after the leaves have fallen off the fruit remains, which is really a lovely effect.
-Everything’s bigger in Nara.
-I’m really glad that I have the host family that I do, even if they don’t have central heating.
-Almost everything in Japan, it seems, has a history that goes something like ‘they built an incredible structure here a really long time ago, but then it burned down. They built another pretty darned cool one after that, but it burned down too, so this one’s not so nearly as old as it could be if we they’d had a sprinkler system installed.’

Holy Lands

2007-11-28T15:44:00.000+09:00

After dance class on Tuesday I went home with one of my friends, since she and her host mother had invited me to come with them to Nara and Ise. Many of the other AKP people had taken advantage of the break to go out of town to Tokyo and the like, but as I had made no such plans it was nice to be able to get out of Kyoto, if only for a few days. Starting early (for me) Wednesday morning my friend, her host mother, and myself boarded the express train for Ise, which took about 2 and a half hours with only one change of trains. Ise is the site of the most important shrine in the Shinto religion, a religion indigenous to Japan and so highly tied into its culture that even people who profess to different faiths often observe Shinto holidays and the like. The reason that the shrines at Ise are so important is that they are the earthly homes of the highest Goddess, Amaterasu-Okami, and one of her main vassal-Gods, Toyouke-Okami. Amaterasu is the sun goddess of the shinto religion, and the mythological progenitor of the Imperial line, which means that besides having a massive temple complex dedicated to her, she also receives gifts from the Imperial household, as well as daily meals, and a new house every 20years. The first place that we went, though, was not the main shrine but the outer one dedicated to Toyouke, the god of food and clothing, responsible for feeding the Goddess, which is much smaller but similar in architecture. From there we went to the ‘Inner Shrine’ to Amaterasu, which was much larger and more crowded. The most striking thing, for me, about both of these temple sites is how little there was in the way of ornamentation. In most every other shrine that I have visited, the buildings have been covered in decorations, surrounded by statues and closed in by brilliant red torii arches, but here there was not only a dearth of carving and statuary, but also no paint: every building and arch was the natural colour of the wood that formed it. According to my brochure, this style of building is believed to be the oldest and purest form of Shinto architecture. The houses of the gods themselves were also very different from what I was used to, in that they were square-ish thatched cottage-looking things, with crossbeams from the ceiling protruding from the roof on both sides to form wide ‘V’s that were then capped in gold. All around the houses themselves were black river stones, with a wide, carefully delineated path of bright-white ones leading up to the ‘front door’. No pictures are allowed to be taken of these buildings, a rule that I have encountered at no other shrine, and only the Emperor is allowed to enter the gates of the main sanctuary. Though the buildings were few and simple, the area surrounding both Toyouke-Okami and Amaterasu-Okami’s shrine were extremely serene and beautiful, simply by virtue of the fact that they were left as natural forests bordered by extremely clear rivers. Besides these two shrines, we also went to another, smaller, one at Iseshima, where there are two rocks in the ocean itself tied together with rope. Both my friend and I had seen pictures of this before, and really wanted to see it as the scale of it all seemed massive. When we got there, however, it appeared that photographs of the location skew the proportions a bit, as it was not nearly so big, and, because of our expectations, a little ridiculously small. In actuality the rope is no bigger than any other rope and the rocks are only a stone’s throw offshore. It was, however, rather amusing that the shrine’s onshore site’s main ornamentation was given over to statues of frogs, which is a play on words, as the word for frog (kaeru) is the same as ‘to come’, suggesting money, good luck, or whatever one wants coming in. After all of this it was time for the all-important Omiyage shopping trip. For a very long time, the most popular gift from Ise was a dessert made by a company called ‘Akafuku’. Unfortunately, there was a scandal involving Akafuku shortly after I arrived in Kyoto, which meant that every single stand, store, or outlet of the Akafuku company was closed, doubtless causing massive losses in revenue. Surely when you hear this you are thinking that they must have inadvertently killed someone, but that’s actually not the case. What they did was freeze some unsold merchandise, thaw it out, and sell it as a fresh product. No one died. No one even got sick, and the dessert wasn’t the sort of thing that could be dangerous if not fresh (such as meat or dairy), but because they lied about the freshness of their product they are in serious trouble. They take freshness here very seriously, apparently. In the end I decided on some lovely pickled radishes (we eat pickles with just about every meal at my host family’s house) and some candy that apparently has nostalgic value and is also only available in Ise. After a very successful trip we headed back to my friend’s house.
-The word for shrine in Japanese is ‘Jinja’, often used as a suffix to the name of the god that lives there (seimei-jinja, for example, enshrines someone named Abe no Seimei). Very big shrines are called Jingu, also used as a suffix to the name (Heian-Jingu, for instance, enshrines a Heian emperor). Amaterasu-Okami’s shrine is so important that it is just called ‘Jingu’. It doesn’t need any other name, it is THE Jingu.
-Ise is also famous for being the site of the Mikimoto, the famous Japanese pearl company.
-If you go to Jingu, there are very detailed English-language brochures available for free from the large stands where they sell the shrine’s charms, you just need to ask or look really foreign.

Clear waters and the 30-ken-long gallery

2007-11-26T16:46:00.000+09:00

Because my host mother had a day off, she offered to take me to see two of the most famous temples in Kyoto, Kiyomizudera and Sanjusangendo. We got up early (for me) and headed out by bus to Gion, got off in front of the Yasaka shrine, and took a long-ish but beautiful walk through the grounds and out the back, stopping at a Victorian-style ladies’ hotel for lunch. It was a bit expensive, but it was quite nice and the interior of the place was positively beautiful. After that we walked through some very nice streets lined with vendors of every sort of traditional Kyoto Omiyage to Kiyomizudera. Kiyomizudera is a Buddhist temple built up into the mountains around Kyoto, and has been declared a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s most famous for the way that large portions of it are built on tall platforms out from the side of the mountain, which are supported on series of wooden beams fitted together without any nails. It has remained this way for well over 100 years, though I can’t remember exactly how long. Even though it was no longer a holiday the place was mobbed with tourists and school groups, who were often recognizable by their brightly-coloured hats before their uniforms could be spotted. Below the main buildings there is a smaller shrine where a spring from the mountain is channeled into three streams of water, which people drink from by way of long-handled dippers, that are supposed to grant (from right to left as you face them) success in ones studies, health, and love. I drank from the studies one, since there wasn’t one for ‘ridiculous amounts of money.’ After this we hopped on another bus to Sanjusangendo, which might also be a world heritage site. This was another very old Buddhist temple, though of a completely different feel from Kiyomizudera. The main focus of this temple is the 1,000 carved wooden statues of the Buddhist deity Kannon, all incredibly detailed and plated in gold, carved by master carvers over a period of 100 years. They are joined by a complete collection of statues of 28 guardians of Buddhism, which are also incredibly lifelike, aided in that illusion somewhat by the fact that, although the statues themselves are made of wood, their eyes are made of crystal. The overall effect of all the statues flanking one massive statue of Kannon, all in wood and all in a single long room is very impressive and definitely worth seeing. After such a long day, we only made one more stop: the Minamiza Kabuki theatre in Gion, where the names of the actors and plays that were going to be shown at the biggest Kabuki event of the year had just been put up on the façade. Every actors name was written in calligraphy on a large plank of fresh wood, and every play was displayed with a full-colour painting to represent it along the top of the entrance. The tickets for this event are apparently all but impossible to get.
-Maiko experience shops, where any tourist can be dressed up like a Kyoto maiko and allowed to walk around the area for awhile, are myriad in the neighbourhood around Kiyomizudera. This means that if you see a ‘maiko’ walking around that area, they are almost certainly not the real thing. According to my host mother, maiko are almost never seen in such touristy areas unless they are there for a festival of some sort.
-Most places temples that I have gone to allow pictures, but not Sanjusangendo, so be aware.
-The temple building at Sanjusangendo was built on layers of clay and sand in order to protect it from earthquakes.
-Fall and Spring are the two most touristy seasons in Kyoto and it shows.
-I also bought Takarazuka tickets today by reserving them over the phone in advance and then buying them from a machine at the Lawson’s convenience store. I only ordered just over a month in advance, so it’s not impossible, and the woman on the phone was very nice and understanding of my language limitations. I was, however, extremely happy that my host mother was there to help me with the machine, since the entire thing was in complicated (for me) Japanese, though probably I could have gotten help from the girl behind the counter at Lawson’s.

Market

2007-11-25T16:36:00.000+09:00

On Sunday a couple of friends and I decided to go to the Kitano Tenmangu market, held every month on the 25th, weather permitting. Unfortunately, because it was still a 3-day weekend for all of Japan in a place famous for beautiful leaves and an unseasonably warm day, the place was absolutely mobbed. There was no where in the entire flea market (which raps around the entirety of the Kitano Tenmangu shrine, which is pretty big) where you could turn around without bumping into at least 4 people, but it was still fun to be out in such nice weather with my friends. For some reason, I’ve made it out to the Toji market twice, but never before to the much closer one at Tenmangu. Anyway, no one really bought a whole lot, which is fine, though we saw a lot of entertaining things and tasty-looking foods, and we did eventually choose lunch out of things of the second category (I had takoyaki, which is octopus heavily battered and baked). After that, I went with one of my friends to see the student festival at my college. Student festivals here are amazing to me, especially because they really are entirely put together by the students themselves. We were actually too early for this one, but we did get to see people setting up their stands, practicing the acts that would be on the two large stages that had been set up, and painting signs, testing equipment and all matter of other industrious things. Essentially, school clubs decide on their fund-raising method of choice and fully plan and execute it themselves, which is interesting enough when college students manage it, but extraordinary when you realize that most every school of Japan from elementary-on has one of these every year. Doubtless the first-graders have a certain amount of help, but it’s still pretty cool, in my opinion, that they are given responsibility for something like this from such a young age. Anyway, that was pretty much what I did on Sunday.
-I heard once from someone that Japanese people will not wear clothes that have been used by someone else, but this is clearly a fallacy, as there are massive numbers of used kimono booths at these flea markets, at which the vast majority of shoppers are Japanese.
-I had here my first bad experience with someone, though I could be over-reacting. I was perusing a box of hair ornaments in someone’s booth, and went to pick up one from the tangle when the shop woman jumped up and forcefully yelled “No! Only look!” which surprised me and annoyed me enough that I just left. I don’t know that it was just because I was a foreigner, but it really felt that way. Too bad for her though, because I had money in my pocket that could have been hers.
-Japanese college students (not all of them, but far more than in America) do not do much work or go to many classes. Basically, the goal is, through years of stressful testing, to get into a good college whose name alone is proof of your intelligence and will help you get a job in the future. Once you’ve actually entered college you essentially devote all of your time to your club of choice, which accounts in part for the students’ zeal in fundraising at the festival.

Fall leaves and Murasaki

2007-11-23T16:06:00.000+09:00

This week was my fall break, which ends up being actually a full 10days, because Friday was a national holiday (Labour Thanksgiving, actually). Luckily, a friend from my Joint Seminar class (one of the Doshisha students) invited me to tag along with her ‘Genji’ class to Ishiyamadera, which is the Buddhist temple where it is believed that Murasaki Shikibu began writing the Tale of Genji, generally considered to be the world’s first novel. My friend had told her professor before that there was an American girl who was interested in classical Japanese literature, which he found amusing, and so I found myself headed out to the farther reaches of Kyoto Friday morning. Because the elevation at Ishiyama (literally ‘stone mountain’) is higher, the maple leaves were out in force, making for some of the best foliage I’d seen thus far, a fact that seemed to have gotten around, because the temple was mobbed with people enjoying their 3-day weekend. The temple complex itself is huge, with several buildings, outbuildings, winding paths up and around the rocks and many rooms for small exhibitions. We started up, after washing our hands at the fountain to purify ourselves, towards a beautiful area of tall grey rocks that were surrounded with beautifully contrasting red leaves, which I was told the poet Bassho had once compared to white autumn wind, which people think means that the rocks themselves actually used to be bright white instead of grey. Beyond that there was a replica of a screen which showed a series of small pictures that each represented a chapter of Genji, and then the main temple building. After that we saw a small exhibit of old scrolls, paintings, and more folding screens having to do with Murasaki and Genji, as well as an ink-grinding stone that is said to have belonged to Murasaki herself, though my friend said that this would be hard to verify, since almost exactly 1000years have passed since Genji was written. The amusing thing, for me, about the stone was that it had two circles for mixing ink in, the left-hand one decorated with a carp, and the right-hand one with an ox. These are puns: the word in Japanese for dark (koi) has the same sound as the one for carp, while the word for thin (usui) sounds a lot like the word for ox (ushi), so one would mix darker ink in the left one and lighter ink in the right one. After we’d had our fill of Genji for one day we headed to a café, where we stayed for awhile talking over our cake and café au laits. I returned home a little later than expected, but luckily just in time for a wine party that my host family had put together. They had bought a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau and prepared several delicious ‘tapas’ to complement it, including octopus and potatoes (much better than it sounds), scallops and sweet pickled onions, and crab salad with cucumber. This wine was the first that I’d had since coming to Japan, but actually fits in with the regular schedule of Japanese customs: every year on the same date Beaujolais Nouveau comes to Japan first (since it’s probably the first country to get to any particular calendar day) and since it’s the sort of wine that should be consumed immediately, every year it’s a big sell. A very satisfying day, in my opinion.
-It’s not a good idea, when you don’t understand what someone has said, to repeat part of their sentence, as that can sometimes be seen as an actually answer to their question, and sometimes a very odd one. I don’t know what I said, but I could tell it was weird from the laughter that followed.
-There is a boat on the river near Ishiyama called the ‘Michigan’. Imagine my surprise as, in my search for a regional ‘Hello Kitty,’ I found a charm of Kitty riding a steamboat labelled prominently with the name of a state from my own country!
-It is very easy to find yourself both ordered for and paid for in a big group here. It happened with the temple entrance fee, the café, and a significant portion of my return fare. Now I really need to buy a gift for my friend’s professor.
-When it comes to small talk, lamenting the weather works equally well in Japanese as it does in English.
-My friend had actually lived in California for a while when she was younger, and is thus fluent in English. She related to me an essay that she had read about a Japanese literature professor teaching in America, which talked about the differences between teaching on America’s East coast as compared to the West. One major feature of Japanese literature and arts in general is the extreme attention paid to making sure that the season is accurately referenced, with images carefully grouped by seasonal appropriateness. Because of this, the professor had no trouble teaching Japanese literature on the East coast, where seasons are similarly distinct, but ran into a problem teaching near LA: he felt as though he was teaching fiction.

2007-11-17T11:51:00.000+09:00

Today was amazing. That is to say, today was the day when we went to see the Takarazuka Revue in the city of Takarzuka itself. I should explain. Takarazuka was an all-female revue begun in 1913 to bring tourists to the resort town of Takarazuka, and was based on the Paris reviews of that time period. Because it is an all-female performing style, women play the men’s parts as well as the women’s parts, with actresses specializing in one or the other. The style is opulent, somewhat Vegas-like in its love of sequins and feathers, and the actresses are all extremely talented in singing and dancing as well as acting. The show that I went to see with my class was called ‘El Halcon,’ staged by the Star troupe, which was about a ruthless British naval officer who was secretly a Spanish spy, and a French noblewoman-pirate, but really the plot was not very important. What were important were the amazing costume and set changes, the intensely synchronized dance sequences and the many raising and lowering platforms, not to mention the extremely convincing acting. After the show itself and the entirely plot-less (but amazing) musical review that followed, we made a couple tries at the gift shop, where the DVD’s were well out of our price ranges, then walked around the city a bit and visited a small museum of costumes from previous shows, including a set from the most popular Takarazuka show ever staged: ‘Rose of Versailles.’ I really hope that I can go to another show before I leave Japan, but the tickets are very hard to get, as the fan following is intense. I have to say though, that the tickets we had were probably the worst in the house, but even so I had no trouble seeing what was going on, probably because though the auditorium is tall, it isn’t very deep and the levels are steep. Plus, everything is amazingly over-the-top and everyone is mic-ed.
-The Takarazuka actresses who specialize in male roles (‘Otokoyaku’) are immensely more popular than those who play female roles (‘Musumeyaku’), and generally have more starring roles (and more merchandise).
-Takarazuka has done everything from ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’ (which they called ‘Ernest in Love’) to a ‘biographical’ show about Hemingway to ‘Carmen’ to period Japanese dramas.
-Almost the entire audience was made up of middle-aged women, with practically no men in sight.
-The Takarazuka Hello Kitty was twice as expensive as any of the other special Kitty’s, so I didn’t end up buying one.

Dolls

2007-11-16T11:41:00.000+09:00

Rather than hang out in the AKP lounge after my Japanese class on Friday, a couple of friends and I decided to check out the Kyoto Costume Museum, which is near to Nishi Hongan-ji Temple and in the area of the Gojo subway stop. It was a little hard to find, mainly because we were expecting some sort of building devoted to costumes, but we eventually realized that it was on the 5th floor of a building that, on the main level, sold supplies for Buddhist temples, including ceremonial robes and large altar implements. When I realized how small it had to be, I was a little disappointed, but I quickly recovered. The first thing in the place is a scale model of the Rokujo Mansion from The Tale of Genji, which was in incredible detail and gave a very good idea of what life was actually like for nobility at the time. Because the conventions of architecture were incredibly different way back in 11th century Japan, it was a little hard for me to envision most of the rooms when I was actually reading the novel, which made this model especially interesting to me. The first half was devoted to various scenes of the normal activities of Heian noble women, represented by perfectly dressed dolls in 12-layered silk gowns with tiny books, go-boards and mirrors. The second half of the mansion was devoted to portraying two major scenes from Genji itself, the first being ‘Marriage vows of the third night’, where Genji makes the lady Murasaki his official wife. The second scene, however, is from the ‘Aoi’ chapter, where Genji’s first wife is giving birth. They show all of the ladies in waiting getting everything ready for when the baby comes, dressed in white to drive away evil spirits, with priests reciting prayers for health, and mediums being possessed with any malignant spirits in the area. The centre of the scene, of course, is the Lady Aoi herself, laying on her sickbed with Genji attending her, but over her prostrate form, carefully positioned is a doll of the Lady Rokujo, Genji’s spurned mistress whose living spirit is attacking Aoi and making her ill. It was very effective. The other half of the exhibit was devoted to a life-sized mock-up of a Heian room, with two fully dressed figures. In this room, however, they also had an assortment of robes that could be donned by any visitor for free. They weren’t complete 12-robe sets or anything, but they were enough to give a good idea about what it was supposed to look like, and only took a second to put on instead of over an hour. Thoroughly thrilled with our find, we returned to the lounge to head out with everyone for a dinner arranged by one of the other students to thank the women who work at the office keeping everything running smoothly. We ended up at an Italian restaurant near sanjo, easy walking distance from the Karasumaoike subway stop. Our reservations had been made beforehand, and the dishes going to be served were also decided in advance. We got a LOT of food for not a whole lot of money, and it was really tasty too. I wouldn’t recommend going there with only a few people though, because the portions are famously large. As it was, no table finished everything given to them. Several people went out for drinks afterward, but since I was going to have to wake up early the next morning I declined.
-It seems that ‘pumpkin pie’ is a bit hit-or-miss here. The slice on the dessert tray at the restaurant seemed to be literally pureed pumpkin on a crust topped with whipped cream.
-A story told by a friend of mine bears repeating: She was going to stay the night at one of the other students’ host family’s house, and thus needed to buy a gift for them as a ‘thank you.’ She decided on flowers, and was looking at all of the expensive single stems of chrysanthemums and the like, when she saw a group of little bouquets to the side. She picked one of them up and asked the store owner to wrap it up nicely, which he did after giving her a strange look. When she arrived at the house, the host mother thankfully accepted the flowers, but a couple days afterward, her friend (whose house she had stayed at) pulled her aside and said ‘my host mother just wanted me to tell you that the flowers that you bought, while nice, are actually only meant for offering to graves and the like, so..’. So, the small pre-prepared bouquets should not be used as gifts to living people.

7-5-3 Day

2007-11-15T13:40:00.000+09:00

Sunday I hadn’t really intended to do anything, since I had so much homework for Monday, but my host sister pointed out that it was probably the last weekend to see kids going for shichi-go-san, or ‘7-5-3 day.’ This is a holiday of sorts in Japan where three- and seven-year-old girls and 5-year-old boys get dressed up in (usually) traditional clothing and go to a Shinto shrine to be blessed by the god there for long life and the like. I have read that it has roots in old samurai class coming of age days, but I’m not entirely certain about that. What I do know is that I went around noon to Heian Jingu in Higashiyama and saw a number of very adorable children, whose parents were only too happy to let me take their pictures. The seven-year-old girls tended to look very excited and proud of their pretty clothes, though I saw a couple minor tantrums in the making, while the 3-year-olds seemed kind of confused and dazed by the number of people, and I saw more than a couple just sit down in the dirt and start playing with the white gravel in the shrine courtyard. The boys seemed to be either very proud of themselves or a little wary of other people, in which case they tended to stay close to their mothers. To the side of the main area of the shrine I saw what appeared to be several different brides having their photos taken, and though I tried to get a good shot they were a bit too far away. On my way back to the bus stop, I got my first sense of fall since being here. The leaves would normally have changed already in the rest of Kyoto, but this year they are a little late, so only the areas at a higher altitude, such as Higashiyama, are sporting much in the way of colour. The smell of warm, dry leaves and the sound of them being blown across the sidewalk behind me made me miss home, and I’m glad that I made it outside on what is probably one of the last of such days left in the year.
-Traditional shoes will not stay on kids’ feet any better than normal shoes. The mother of one boy I saw had clearly realized the futility of putting them on her son at all, who sported brand new sneakers under his traditional-style clothing instead.
-While I made sure to ask parents before I took pictures of their children, large tours were making their way through the shrine that day, and tons of them were snapping away without so much as a ‘Thank You.’
-I say that ‘usually’ they wear traditional clothes, because there were some notable exceptions, among them a pair of sisters dressed in an inspired modification on traditional dress. Both girls had kimono-style dresses on, with the swinging sleeves and robe-like collar, but they were short, with a ruffled crinoline underneath, and decorated with lace at the collar and sleeve-openings. Instead of a stiff obi sash, they had large sashes that tied in large bows covering most of their back, and then, the absolute perfect decision in footwear: cowboy boots. I wish that I had managed to get their picture.
-In truth, not only did the parents grant me permission to photograph their kids, they were very flattered and made sure that their kids looked their best for my pictures.
-Because the sum of 7+5+3=15, families tend to go to the shrine on the weekend closest to the 15th that is convenient. Since all holidays in Japan were dated by the Lunar calender until the early 20th century, many dates remain unfixed.

Osaka and Puppets

2007-11-15T13:38:00.000+09:00

Saturday was a great deal of fun, but also incredibly long. For my performance class we had tickets to go see The National Bunraku Theatre in Osaka, about an hour and a half by train from Kyoto. Bunraku is traditional Japanese puppetry, where each puppet is about ¾ life size and operated by three men: one on the feet, one on the left hand and one on the head and right hand. These men operate in full view of the audience, but one hardly notices them. The puppets themselves are capable (because of their complex design and three-man system of operation) of extreme levels of subtle movement, including moving eyebrows (on some puppets) and heavy breathing of someone scared or exhausted. Because the puppets are so dynamic and evocative, the impassive faces of the men behind them are easily ignored. Well, a friend and I got to Osaka pretty early so that we could have a look around, since neither of us had ever been in the city before. The section that we were in seemed rather like any other big city in America, except for the extreme proliferation of themed specialty hotels, including a Christmas-themed one that was pink and decorated in giant Santa Claus figures. We also found ourselves at one point in a massive shopping arcade, that was made up of a number of covered streets and cross-streets full of all sorts of stores. Before the performance itself we were able to meet with one of the puppeteers who showed us how the puppets worked and moved up-close, and then led us around backstage of the theatre itself. We even got to stand on the stage with the curtain closed, which was very exciting for me, at least. The shows were both very well done, though I preferred the second piece, ‘Love Suicides at Sonezaki’ to the first one, which was a story from the ‘Tale of the Heike’. All told, each play was two hours long with a 30-minute break in between, which made for a very long day. If anyone has a chance to go, however, I would recommend it, especially because they provide very good earphone guides for non-Japanese speakers if you reserve them. Unfortunately, as has happened to me a couple times since being here, I expected to eat with people after the show, but everyone else had had their fill with the snacks that they ate at intermission, and as it had gotten so late most of them opted to just head home, so I was left eating dinner at Mos burger by myself, which was still very tasty.
-A full program of Bunraku is four hours in the morning and then another four in the afternoon. I don’t think that I could sit for that long, even though it is amazing.
-You can eat meals in the Theatre itself, though you need to make sure that you don’t have any crinkling paper or anything.
-A popular actress here admitted on TV that she was afraid of the ceramic badger figures that you often find in front of shops or in gardens here, and after seeing the one above I don’t think I blame her.
-The Japanese term for a comb-over translates to ‘barcode,’ which is pretty funny, in my opinion.
-Maybe I should check with people about dinner plans before I make assumptions about them.

More Karaoke

2007-11-15T13:32:00.001+09:00

Friday evening I went out with a couple of my friends for dinner and karaoke. We were just walking around, looking at shops and vaguely searching for food when, while loitering in a kimono shop, we ran into another of our friends! So, the four of us found a neat little café above street level called the ‘Shinsetsu Café’ which roughly translates to ‘Kindness Café’. It was actually very reasonable and cute, though the menu was rather limited to skillets with various arrangements of noodles, meat and okonomiyaki, always served still sizzling with two eggs on top. The inside was covered in vintage Japanese comics, old signs in English and soccer paraphernalia, and really felt like the kind of place that people just hung out in during the day. After that, we wandered over to a karaoke place that we had heard of, stopping at a comic and comic-related stuff store that was fairly amusingly, and sadly containing a special, limited edition of an anime that I’ve wanted to see for awhile, that was not only really expensive but also the wrong region coding for any machine in the US. But, the karaoke place was fun and reasonable, and we got through quite a few songs before we had to head home, including ‘Nights in White Satin’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, and miscellaneous Japanese songs, with one attempt by me to sing ‘Vanilla’ by Gackt. A good end to a Friday, if I do say so myself.
-These karaoke bars are set up for the die-hard fan, with all three meals available at decent prices, showers and enough different activities to satisfy pretty much anyone, I should think.
-It seems that things get less expensive the farther from the open ends of the shopping arcades or the higher above street level that you go.
-I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but prices here almost always include tax, and there is no tipping, which makes splitting a check immensely easier.
-There are post boxes everywhere, both for domestic and international letters.
-They have enormous chrysanthemums here. They're beautiful, in many colours, but the biggest I've ever seen.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-15T11:36:00.000+09:00

Because they couldn’t book a room on the actual day of Thanksgiving, AKP threw a Thanksgiving party this Thursday instead. It was a potluck, but AKP provided the turkey and drinks, and a group of students organized the decorating and entertainment. For the occasion, Mom sent me the recipe for one of my favourite Thanksgiving dishes: roasted chestnut dressing. I managed to pull it off fairly well using fresh rosemary from my host mother’s garden, but I accidentally didn’t add chicken broth, which made the texture a little dry. I think that the most amusing thing about the party itself was the wide variety of dishes that people brought. There was, of course, a great deal of Japanese food, such as sushi and croquettes, but also some other western stuff, like mashed potatoes and rice crispies treats. One of my favourite additions was the batch of spam musubi that some of the students from Hawaii made. I was able, in addition to stuffing myself, to meet some of my friends’ host families, including my friend’s host father, who frequents a teahouse in Gion, and gave me several name cards of Gion maiko-san, which are incredibly beautiful and amusingly uninformative. They only actually include the maiko’s first name (which is a sort of ‘stage name’ that they come up with when they become maiko) and the district that she is from, but are printed with beautiful patterns, which change depending on the season. These ones were also stickers, though I can’t say I know why.

More Dancing

2007-11-04T11:41:00.000+09:00

Sunday was when the Gosechi dances were going to be held, so I decided to go and see them, since it was only a 10-minute walk and it was the last day that they were going to be held. I got there a little late, and the crowd was huge, but I was still able to see the dancing itself. The dancing and music more closely resembled the dancing in Noh or other traditional Japanese styles, and the kimono were beautiful, all in a Heian-era court style (I believe). Instead of the main melodic line being carried by reed instruments, today it was given by a group of male singers in something resembling Gregorian chants. After the dance was over, I stopped at one of the little areas set up within the palace grounds where they were serving tea, and got a very tasty red-bean ‘cake’ and a cup of matcha for only 500yen, which is a steal. After that I perused the various souvenir stands and headed home. While on my way there, however, I got a message from a friend of mine saying that she had tickets to go to the ballet with two other girls, but was feeling too ill to go. After some deliberation I decided to go, and had a very good time. It turned out that it was a sort of exhibition of the best dancers from various ballet schools in Kyoto, and even if they were not professionals, they certainly seemed to be of high caliber. The final two groups were, I thought, the best, with beautifully choreographed groups of nearly synchronized dancers weaving in and out of gorgeous symmetrical tableaus. Not a bad day, considering I’d had no plans going into it.
-No matter where you go in Japan, there will be somewhere to buy Omiyage. At the Imperial Palace there were massive varieties of traditional snacks, pickles and tea, as well as photos of the Royal family and fine stationary.
-I actually really like ballet, maybe I’ll go see it again sometime.
-On Hina Matsuri or the dolls’ festival, the traditional drink is some heated mixture of soft rice, milk and ginger that is very tasty and apparently rather good for your health.
-This is my 40th entry, scary huh?

A sampling of the traditional

2007-11-03T11:18:00.000+09:00

Because the Palace is open, they are holding dances every morning this weekend inside the grounds (where they have been traditionally performed) at 10 and 11am. My host mother and I went to see the 10am one, thinking that the performance today was of the Gosechi dances, which were dances held yearly (I believe) at least since the Heian period to commemorate a legend that says that one night the emperor was playing music by himself when a group of heavenly maidens came down to dance for him. Actually, today’s performance was of something called Gagaku, a court dancing style I believe performed only by men that came over from China a very long time ago. That was also very interesting, because everything about it seems very foreign to the traditional arts that I’m used to, though it greatly predates them. After that, my host mother had gotten us tickets to see a house called Reze-ke, which was I believe the home of an imperial princess that has been passed down through many generations from before the Edo period. The house is only open to the public very rarely, and also contains priceless artwork and is a designated cultural property. The current ‘owner’ of the house (because she cannot live there, and the house itself is, I believe, maintained by the government) is actually my host mother’s waka teacher. Much of the house is actually made to facilitate singing and writing poetry, including an unusual interior. To make room for large gatherings, large sections can be opened up so that there is no separation at all between rooms, and because they usually sit in a row to do this, some extremely traditional architectural conventions have been warped. The storehouse of the estate was actually one of the only things to survive the great Edo fire that destroyed the imperial palace and Reze-ke itself, making it one of the oldest buildings in the area. Inside are (apparently) priceless collections of poetry and art that can only be accessed by the house’s owner. After this, my host mother, host sister and I went almost to Gion to a temple that was having a sort of event. Basically, the finest traditional stores in Kyoto were exhibiting their products, with each store having a sort of diorama to decorate. They had everything from traditional candies (Toraya was there, which is only a block from my house) to sushi (real sushi, I don’t know how they did it) to kimono and ceramics, and every booth seemed to be attended by a very elegant-looking person in traditional attire. I couldn’t get over how cultured some of the older women looked in their kimono. At the end we were served tea and a snack Omotesenke school style, and I was able to take a picture with the current head of the Omotesenke school of tea ceremony. When we left we were served soba noodles in broth topped in grated radish by women dressed in a style traditionally worn by country women selling their produce in the city. After that we visited the main temple building and paged through the used book fair going on outside of it, then walked around the corner to a café for lunch. The inside of it really reminded me of the inside of an Irish pub in the daytime, with long wooden tables and benches where several parties were seated, and a relaxed atmosphere.
-While ‘waka’ to most people implies poetry, the words for ‘poem’ and ‘song’ are the same in Japanese (uta), which makes it possible to sing a poem.
-Rezeke’s tatami mats have a pattern on their silk borders that cannot be used in any other place in Japan.
-Rezeke also is one of the only houses that may receive one of the special straw tassels from the main float at the Gion matsuri, which is a good-luck talisman.
-Toraya is coming out with a special collection of Tale of Genji sweets for the novel’s 1000th year anniversary, which depict the different flowers that are used as names for characters and chapters in Genji.
-To show off its prowess, one of the kimono shops had in their display a type of kimono not worn by pretty much anyone today. It was a kosode, which was common dress only until the middle-beginning of the Edo period, and afterward was only used in the Imperial court.
-There are two major schools of Tea Ceremony in Kyoto (maybe Japan as a whole, I’m not certain): the Urasenke and the Omotesenke schools, both of which descend from the founder of tea ceremony as it is known today, Sen no Rikyu.
-Omotesenke tea is less foamy then Urasenke tea.

The Imperial Palace

2007-11-02T11:04:00.000+09:00

Fridays I have, as I’ve doubtless noted before, only one class, which allows for a large amount of time-wasting, but today I actually did something educational. Usually the park-like area within the walls of the Imperial Palace complex is open to the public, but the inner gardens and buildings are surrounded by separate, alarmed walls that are too tall to see over. This weekend, however, people were allowed for free to walk through a designated path and see where the Emperor used to live. Unfortunately, there have been so many fires at various times that have destroyed different sections of the palace, and at times the whole thing, I believe, there are actually few buildings that date from before the 19th century. Even so, the buildings have, I believe, been rebuilt in the same styles that have been in use since the Heian period. It really was beautiful. The gardens alone were gorgeous, with carefully pruned pines and large ponds, and the various rooms had paintings that were from the great masters of various periods of history. I particularly like the Emperor’s Study room, where they used to hold big waka poetry contests with the large blinds open to the garden. After our tour through the Imperial Palace, we returned to the common room at school and loafed around for awhile before someone mentioned going out to an Indonesian restaurant that they’d heard of. It took us a little while to find it, but when we did it was both beautiful and delicious. It was called ‘Hati Hati’, and had many dishes with complex flavours, the best of which were the beef rendeng and the beef satay. One of my friends had, I learned, lived in Jakarta for seven years before returning to the US, and so was able to speak a little bit of one of the Indonesian dialects to the owner of the restaurant, who was very nice. It was a little more expensive than our usual fare, but not bad for the quality of food we got. After that, one of the other students was being thrown a surprise birthday party at a bowling alley close by, so I stuck around long enough to scare him along with the others as he came out of the elevator. As I’m not much of a bowler I headed out after that. When I got to my street, however, I noticed that it was cordoned off by policemen and trucks with red lights. I told the police officer that I lived just a bit down the road and he let me through, but on my way I saw what the problem had been: one of the houses in my neighbourhood had had a fire. I don’t know how or when it started, but once I drew close I could smell the unmistakable odour of charred, wet wood. When I reached the house itself my host mother was a bit worked up, and understandably so: fires have been extremely dangerous in Kyoto as long as there has been a Kyoto to catch fire. All of the buildings are made of wood and paper, and they are packed closely together with only narrow streets separating them except in modern areas where there are firebreak roads. This fire was far enough away from the fire to not even acquire much of the smell, but it was still rather startling.
-The Imperial Palace grounds have been in their present location since 1331. The palace described in The Tale of Genji and other contemporary literature was located 2km west of the current one and was built in 794.
-After a large fire in 1854 most all of the Palace had to be reconstructed.
-As you face the ‘throne room’-like building, there is a tachibana mandarin tree on the left and a cherry tree on the right, something that is often mimicked in different locations and gardens in Japan.
-The owner of the Indonesian restaurant seemed to speak fluent Japanese, English, and at least one dialect of Indonesian, maybe more.

Outcastes and Innards

2007-11-01T10:58:00.001+09:00

For my joint seminar class we went to a community centre and museum for the Burakumin in Kyoto. For those who don’t know, the Burakumin were a class of people rather like the untouchables in India. They dealt with things such as slaughtering cows and pigs and handling corpses, which were considered extremely unclean. Because of this, they were segregated from the rest of society until the Meiji restoration, where the caste was abolished. Unfortunately, writing down on paper that Burakumin were just like any other citizen did not destroy the belief that they the lowest class available, and so up until the post-war period Burakumin neighbourhoods remained the most impoverished and poorly-funded areas in cities all over Japan. Also, the Burakumin had, while they were a separate class, monopolies on certain trades including shoe-making, which disappeared when the class was abolished and the market flooded with foreign imports. To aid the local population in Kyoto, a member of the class who had become rich set about improving schools, building modernized shoe-factories, and even starting a bank for his fellow Burakumin. The bank is now the site of the community centre and museum that we visited. I wish that I could recommend something with such history to American visitors, but there isn’t a single word of English in the entire place, which makes it virtually incomprehensible to the non-Japanese visitor. After that, we went out with the professors for Korean barbeque, which was tasty, though only because I didn’t ask what I was eating. The specialty of the place was pork, so we had that instead of the more traditional beef. We were given the pork raw along with a gas burner to cook it on, and served kimchee (spicy pickled cabbage, daikon radish, and something resembling zucchini), salad to wrap the meat in, a rice porridge of some sort, and a soup with thin slices of mochi (pounded glutinous rice). All the way back to campus I talked with one of the Doshisha students from the class about The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book, which was very entertaining. On the train, another American said ‘hello’ and introduced herself as an exchange student studying near Tokyo who was from Washington State. I always want to introduce myself to other foreigners, but I’m always too shy to actually do so.
-When you have Korean barbeque and you don’t think that you have been given actual meat, it’s better not to ask what exactly it is that you are eating.
-Just like in Chinatowns in various large cities, Korean restaurants also seem to like to place things like pigs’ heads in their front windows to advertise the appetizing nature of their foods.
-Be five minutes late to a meeting place for a class field trip and you could wind up going the whole way by yourself.
-The ATMs here accept Bank of America debit cards.

Halloween!

2007-10-31T14:28:00.000+09:00

Halloween is not a very big holiday in Japan, which is understandable. Unfortunately, this meant no trick-or-treating or pumpkin carving, but I did manage to go to a party. I had been a bit ill the night before, but was luckily quite well enough the next day to dress up and go out. I had been planning my costume since before the 21st when I went to the Toji market, and was luckily able to pull it off. I went as a Tayuu, which is an Edo-era (around the 17th or 18th century for my costume) courtesan. The main features of a tayuu as visible in woodblocks of the period are the obi and hair. The obi is always tied in front, and the hair is usually a veritable forest of ornaments, ranging from long lacquered pins to large clusters of silk flowers surrounded in strips of silver. Of these two, I could only really manage the obi and a couple representative hair pins, since my hair could certainly never support the shear numbers required to pull off the real deal. I addition to these, tayuu wore massively tall ‘geta’, which are essentially wooden flip-flops with blocks of wood on the bottom. These sorts of shoes are really not available for purchase, and even if they were they would be a little out of my price range, so I borrowed a pair of normal geta from my host mother. It was very fun, really, and since I had opted out of the full white makeup I could actually speak and the like without being afraid of cracking my makeup or something. Unfortunately I still didn’t feel like taking the chance on candy after being ill the night previously, so it was a healthier Halloween than I’ve ever had. So many of the costumes at the party were great, and though I arrived too late to vote on any of them for the contest, one of my friends won first place! She had made a really great ‘Princess Mononoke’ costume, including the mask, from scratch while here. After it all, many people headed out to go clubbing, but I wasn’t up to it, so a friend and I went to a Thai restaurant instead.
-There is an amazing capacity for people in this country to decide to take no notice of something that doesn’t really concern them. I walked by tons of people in my costume and no one mentioned it, asked me where I was going, or even stared. Maybe they were just being polite?
-When you’re not feeling well in Japan, they make a dish that is rice warmed with water into a sort of porridge, cooked with broth and a pickled plum. It’s delicious.
-If you want to buy traditional Japanese shoes in Japan and are over a women’s size 8 American, you’ll probably have to buy men’s shoes. I wore my host mother’s, but I was hanging off the back by about an inch.
-There are women in Japan today who are engaged in preserving the specific dance, music, and dressing arts of the old Tayuu profession, and who essentially work like geisha, entertaining at parties and making appearances at events.

Kamishichiken

2007-10-28T14:06:00.000+09:00

Sunday was considerably more entertaining. After emailing in my paper, my host sister and I went to lunch in Kamishichiken, which is actually the oldest geisha district in Kyoto. The restaurant that we went to was 140 years-old, in a 200 year-old building, and only served one thing for lunch: oyako-don. Luckily, I love oyako-don, which is spelled with the characters for ‘parent’ and ‘child’, and consists of chicken and egg over rice with a little seasoning. I addition to being a lovely setting, it is also not very expensive, at about 400yen a head. After that, we decided to walk around the district, which is beautiful. While Gion is the most famous and the most well-preserved, it feels extremely fake and is filled with hordes of tourists. Pontocho feels like something that you discover on accident, that you wouldn’t even know was a geisha district if there wasn’t a sign on the street in front of it, but Kamishichiken still has its old-fashioned houses and store-fronts, cobbled stone streets and a calming and quiet quality. We stopped at a couple stores here, the first one sold purses of all sizes and descriptions made out of kimono fabrics and very reasonably priced. The next one that we stepped into sold extremely upscale kimono accessories, but the women that ran it were extremely nice, and one even told me that she was rooting for the Rockies when I told her that I was from Colorado. When we came out on the other side, we were at Kitano Tenmango, one of the major shrines in Kyoto, which is home to a shinto god of learning, who is a bull. Because of this, it is a favourite pilgrimage place for students and concerned parents. The most famous ‘omamori,’ or shinto protection charm, for good grades is the one that they sell at Kitano Tenmangu. Also, because it was once the site of a massive tea ceremony gathering, it is also often the site of tea ceremony recitals. While on the grounds of the shrine, we ran into a Kamishichiken maiko-san! Again, she was not too busy to stop for a picture with me, and was very nice about the whole thing. After this we walked down to the Nishijin textile district, where they have been producing fine silks since before the capital was moved to Kyoto before the 9th century AD. They had a display there of kimono used in Noh performances, which were beautifully patterned and filled with colour and texture. After this we went to the Nishijin Textile Centre, where there is a kimono fashion show every hour or so, displays of kimono weaving and dyeing techniques, and a large gift shop. You can also dress up in different styles of kimono and get photographed for set amounts of money. We had stopped at a café near Kitano Tenmangu that sold tofu-based desserts that were actually very nice (the grape tart was excellent), but when we got back to the house a family member was visiting, and had brought a delicious roll-cake, which we also ate. All in all, a very nice day.
-There is something called a ‘Kimono Passport’ which, if you have it and are wearing a kimono, will get you discounts at places all around Kyoto. It’s free, and available at various kimono stores and the Nishijin textile center.
-I have noticed something with my own host family members, and after asking my Japanese teacher about it she confirmed that it’s fairly common: when we order at a restaurant or café, we’ll always all order the same thing. Usually I’ll order something and then they’ll follow suit.
-Kamishichiken is my favourite geisha district thus far, though I think that I’m going to have to try them all..
-Some of the exclusive restaurants and teahouses in these districts don’t even have signs out front. I guess that if you don’t know that it’s there then you probably don’t belong there.
-I believe once a year or so, maiko-san give the stores that they often patronize fans with their names written on them as a sort of ‘thank-you’. They are round ‘uchiwa’ style ones and always prominently displayed in the shop.

Kitayama Halloween

2007-10-27T14:05:00.000+09:00

I spent most of my Saturday writing a paper for class that had me endlessly frustrated, but that evening my host mother and sister took me to Kitayama, which is not far from our house, where there was a small Halloween event. Basically, several of the shops in the area were open later than usual, and some booths with games and crafts were set up in a parking lot. For me, though, the main event was the jack o’ lantern display. In large groupings in front of stores and around the game booths were beautifully carved pumpkins all lit up and everything. It was very beautiful and more than a little nostalgic. One of the stores had a selection of imported American candy, but they didn’t have candy corn, Reese’s cups, Sugar Daddy’s or anything of that sort so I didn’t buy any. Plus, it was really expensive for sub-par Hershey’s. I almost bought some pumpkin bread though. My host mother bought a little ceramic pumpkin that she put out on the front path with a little light that really looks like a candle. I love seeing it there.
-Even though Halloween is a very new addition, there are some virtuoso pumpkin carvers here.
-Of all things to import, why Hershey’s pumpkin marshmallows?

Friday plans

2007-10-26T14:04:00.000+09:00

After classes on Friday two other students and I went to Doshisha’s elementary school to help them learn about Halloween and carve pumpkins. Unfortunately, once we got there we were told that a weather warning had gone out, which meant that all of the students had to return home directly after classes. This was because many of the students commute an hour or more to school everyday by themselves, so if a bad storm came through and the trains had to be closed they could be stranded alone somewhere between school and Osaka. So, even though we couldn’t meet with the students and carve pumpkins, we did get a good look at the brand-new elementary school building, which is beautiful. Unlike my elementary school, where I really don’t remember there being pretty much anything in the way of windows, the place was full of light and space, even on a grey and raining day like Friday.
-I’ve seen kids alone on trains before, but it still amazes me that small kids are allowed to travel so far on public transportation by themselves.
-These students had already started learning English. In elementary school.
-One of the classes was doing a dance to a Japanese version of a song from ‘The Lion King’, which apparently exists.

So many Kimono!

2007-10-22T15:24:00.000+09:00

Even though we (unusually enough) had class on Monday, it was still a great deal of fun. Monday was Jidai Matsuri or, roughly translated, the Festival of Ages, which is one of the 3 great festivals of Kyoto. Because it to a certain extent was relevant to the class that conflicted it, our professor cancelled class so that we could go. The basic idea is that all of the major periods in Japanese history up to around 1900ish are represented by people in costume who process from the Imperial Palace grounds to the Heian Shrine. I was, understandably, very excited by this prospect. Some friends and I secured a decent place outside of the Imperial Palace and some convenience store lunch and settled in for the show, which began at about 12:15. The best seats are those inside the walls of the imperial complex, but those spots had long since disappeared, so we were a bit down the road from its South gate, close enough to the beginning. It really was amazing, with hundreds, maybe even a thousand or more people walking, riding on horseback or on platforms, playing instruments and carrying banners. I was, however, a little disappointed that the majority of those in the parade were men. In my opinion, the most interesting clothes are those worn by women, especially since they seem to change more quickly and notably over time than those worn by men. Even so, it was a great time, and when it was over I still had another exciting activity to go to. AKP has some sort of relationship with an antique kimono shop in Demachiyanagi, so a group of us were able to go there and take lessons in how to put on kimono and tie obi. After we’d gotten dressed, they served us an unusual iced tea and meringues, and the final price for the whole thing was only 500yen, which was a steal. Another lovely day.
-Jidai Matsuri was begun when the capital of Japan moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, and was created as a means of restoring the suddenly empty old capital.
-The wigs, makeup, costumes, and armour were intensely detailed, and besides where the materials themselves came from, I wonder where the expertise needed to put everything on was found.
-On very crowded trains, it’s always the foreigners who have airspace around them forcing everyone else to cram into each other. In this case, it wasn’t that the Japanese people didn’t want to trust them so much as the foreigners not wanting to touch each other.
-It’s possible that the number of men’s costumes (and consequently soldier’s costumes) was meant of old to represent the emerging militarism of the period in which the festival was created.
-Similarly, the women present were almost all historical figures (such as Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shounagon, Izumo no Okuni), which would seem to underline the emergent nationalism of the period as well.

Bargain Shopping

2007-10-21T15:09:00.001+09:00

Sunday was a great deal of fun, but was exhausting in both the physical and financial sense of the term. I have perhaps mentioned it before, but there is a flea market at the Toji temple on the 21st of every month, and Sunday was the 21st. A couple friends and I toured around the whole thing, but due to the 21st falling on a weekend and the occurrence of simply beautiful weather it was incredible crowded. There are really good deals to be had at the Toji market, and I took full advantage: I walked away with two kimono in good condition at 500yen and 800yen per, a beautiful and flawless obi for 3000yen, two lovely hair ornaments for 1000yen each and a good under-kimono for 1000yen. There was also pretty good cheap food, which I availed myself of, though the drinks are pretty inflated in the price department, but there are plenty of vending machines outside of the temple grounds where a bottle of tea is 150. After staying there almost all day with various groups of friends, I headed over to Kyoto station, which has a vast number of shops, including three or so malls. I was in desperate need of a new laptop bag as the one I brought with me was literally hanging on by a thread, and wanted to get a new handbag to use in the place of my favourite one, which was showing signs of wear after almost 3 years of constant use. I chose, at my host sister’s suggestion, to go to Avanti, which is one of the collections of stores at the station, and was very successful. By the time I got back to my host family’s house with my nearly obscene number of shopping bags I was thoroughly worn out.
-When you see the bins of kimono with ‘500’ written on it, it’s worth digging through, because there are some good buys in there.
-You do not need to speak the language to bargain, it’s more than half body language.
-Taiyaki is still one of my favourite things.
-When you buy almost anything with a credit card here they will ask you if you want to pay in instalments, and I don’t know why.

Tea Ceremony for Foreigners

2007-10-20T15:03:00.000+09:00

Saturday two other AKP students and I went to a tea ceremony (or Ochakai) hosted by the Urasenke school which was for and by foreigners in Japan. It was held at their headquarters about a 15 minute walk away from Doshisha and was moving through over 400 guests that day. The tea ceremony itself was very nice, and the snack that they served us was a sort of fluffy crepe filled with only mildly sweet roasted chestnut paste. Unfortunately, it seems to be the custom here to narrate tea ceremonies to those who might have never seen one before. Personally, I find it hard to concentrate on the carefully practiced and almost ritually exact movements of the ceremony when I’m having someone tell me ‘and now she’s adding the water…’ which I am certainly capable of seeing for myself. After the ritual, we picked up our gift and looked in some shops around the area, most of which are either tea ceremony implement shops or little tea cafes attached to shops that sell sweets that are used in tea ceremony. At one of these shops, directly by next to the tea school, we mentioned to the owner that we were studying at Doshisha. When he heard this he said ‘I went to Doshisha too!’ and told the shop girls to bring us tea and lovely hand-painted envelopes of the papers that tea ceremony guests use to eat their snacks. The tea actually wasn’t tea, but a tasty drink made with hot water, shiso (beefsteak plant, I think, but a very strong flavour) and sour plum. After that we toured around the quarter some more looking at things that we could not possibly afford (but then, is $100 really that much to spend on a ladle rest?) and got some food of both lunch and dessert varieties. When I got home and shared my gift from the tea school with my host family, they told me that it was from a rather famous traditional Japanese dessert store called Tsuruya that was in the area. All in all another great day, especially since it stayed sunny, cool, and crisp the whole time.
-There is a style of tea ceremony invented by the Urasenke school in order to make foreigners more comfortable that uses stools and little tables.
-The whole area reminded me of the novel ‘The Tea House Fire’ which was quite a good read.
-Tea ceremony is an amazingly expensive hobby, but also rather like collecting art, since the finest implements are one of a kind, often antique, and seemingly always produced by workshops that have been producing for over 300 years.
-I’ve had yet another experience with a very generous person here in Kyoto.

Manga Day

2007-10-19T14:57:00.000+09:00

Friday poured all day, which is in one way a good thing: since it was already raining when I woke up I could prepare for it. Still, it’s hard to get ready for a constant downpour. Since the weather was so cold and wet, and I only had one class that day, a friend and I decided that it was time to try out the curry house across the street from the university. It proved to be a wise choice. I ended up ordering their seasonal specialty chicken curry soup, which had potatoes, carrots, hard boiled egg and a side of rice. Very tasty and not very expensive. On our way back to campus, I ran into some of my other friends who were going to the manga museum, and decided to tag along. For the uninitiated, manga are Japanese comics, which are almost always in black and white and tend to have complicated storylines, rather like novels, and are one way that I waste money. Anyway, the manga museum in Kyoto was having a special exhibit on the treatment and depictions of samurai in various comics, especially focusing on specific historical characters that often come up, such as Miyamoto Musashi, the Shinsengumi, and Oda Nobunaga. After that we stopped at the café attached to the museum for cake and tea and talked for awhile. It was really the best possible way to spend a cold wet day.
-Curry is the best possible rainy day food.
-Even though it was pouring out, there was no hot tea to be had at the curry place, and I wonder if this is normal.
-When a Japanese menu refers to ‘chew’ (which is I believe how they put it into roman letters) it means whipped cream.
-Once, when the Hanshin Tigers (the Osaka baseball team) won a major game, the fans stole the statue of Colonel Sanders from outside of a KFC and threw it into the river. The statue is now chained to the building.
-The manga museum has on display a scroll from the Edo period (probably 400 or so years old) that shows cartoons of frogs and rabbits, possibly the oldest example of ‘comics’ in Japan.

Einstein Noh

2007-10-17T13:40:00.000+09:00

Though it was a Wednesday, today was actually noteworthy. In my Literature and Performance class we had a guest ‘speaker’ who was one of the people that we had watched perform Kyogen a couple weeks previous. I was surprised, not only by how young and good-looking he was, but by his near-perfect, unaccented English. The best part about this class period was that it wasn’t a lecture in the proper sense of the word. Instead, we cleared away all of the desks and chairs and he taught us several basic moves in the Kyogen repertoire, including laughing, crying, opening a door, and impersonating a chicken. All of these actions were extremely exaggerated (which is part of why they are so funny) and had an accompanying word/noise. I have to say that it’s the most fun that I have ever had in that class. After classes ended for the day, a small group of us had tickets to see the practice performance of a new Noh play called ‘The Hermit Isseki,’ which is actually about Einstein, only set in the Noh world. It was very contemporary, to my rather un-knowledgeable eyes, with the stage on the steps of one of the buildings of the Toji Buddhist temple and surrounded by a shallow pool of water, which reflected the lights oddly onto the building that formed a backdrop. In the place of the usual four pillars that hold up the roof of a Noh stage were four clear plastic cylinders with lights on the bottoms of them and filled partially with water. It was very beautifully presented, but I spent a good time feeling quite cold: I don’t fully understand why anyone would think that it was a good idea to stage a couple-hour play outside at night in October, even in an unseasonably warm year.
-When you read textbooks it sounds as though the conventions of Noh are set in stone, but they clearly are not so static as all that.
-Toji temple is beautiful by night, but usually closed.
-Practice Noh performances are about half as expensive as official Noh performances, and after some initial rehearsing they do a full costumed run through of the show.
-Nothing feels quite as good as a hot bath after sitting in the cold for a couple hours.

Miyajima

2007-10-13T12:05:00.000+09:00

Saturday was, for me, a very fun and yet very tiring day. I had at first intended to go with the group that was visiting Etajima to see the old Royal Naval Academy and the Battleship Yamato museum, but decided against it. That group was going to have to haul its luggage the whole day, take a couple long-ish boat rides (I really don’t do well on boats), and basically included rushing from spot to spot all day. I had had my fill of museums the day before at Hiroshima, which was incredible, if emotionally stressful, and was really looking forward to a relaxing day on Miyajima. After my breakfast of fish, miso, rice, tofu and various other traditional Japanese foods, I went with a couple of other people to see Itsukushima shrine about 3minute’s walk away from our hotel. It is a Shinto shrine that was built by Taira no Kiyomori of The Tale of Heike fame back a really long time ago on the inland sea. I mean, literally on the inland sea, with the buildings (including a contained Noh stage) built over the water, and the large Torii arch that marks a shrine’s official entrance out in the ocean a considerable distance. After visiting that, we stopped by the five-storied pagoda that is also affiliated with the Itsukushima shrine, and went into the odd sort of shrine that sits across from it. It is called Hokoku shrine, and it was commissioned by Toyotomi Hideyoshi back in 1587 as a Buddhist temple to pacify the souls of the war dead. It was, however, never completed, and thus has no proper interior ceiling or front entrance, and was recreated as a shrine to the soul of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It really has a beautiful location on top of a hill, and has various paintings and woodcuts on the rafters inside, as well as a ton and a half of rice scoopers in various sizes. They are standing in corners, attached to the rafters with the other art, stacked by next to the main shrine, and even available for sale so that one can write a wish (I assume) on it and offer it to the enshrined god. I had seen a massive rice scoop displayed in the town centre the day before, but after this I started to see them everywhere. No shop that I stopped in failed to have some sort of rice scooper for sale and every restaurant had at least one displayed inside. When shopping for my Hiroshima regional Hello Kitty, rice scoops again figured prominently among the choices. On the official Hiroshima Hello Kitty front I decided on Kitty dressed as a maple leaf and riding a rice scooper and one of Kitty riding a paper crane. The rest of the day was spent shopping around for Omiyage for my host family and eating more than was probably healthy. I finally settled on a bottle of sweet potato shochu (a form of Japanese liquor that is not made from rice) and one of sweet red bean shochu, some pickles and a box of the compulsory momiji manjuu, which are essentially cakes the texture of pancake filled with various things (everything from traditional red bean to blueberry or cheese) and made in the shape of maple leaves. Out of every 10 shops I saw, 13 sold momiji manjuu.
I feel compelled to make a note about the deer. As I noted before, they are quite cute, and completely used to humans and thus do not mind being touched, but they are crazed when it comes to food. One of them took a bite out of my shopping bag, and another ate a friend of mine’s map. I saw them chasing down schoolchildren that were carrying any kind of food, and they were not averse to walking right into the centre of a group of people and rifling through bags and pockets. After a long day, it was great to finally fall into my bed back in Kyoto and sleep until some ridiculous hour.
-Itsukushima is over the ocean, so it is nicer to visit the shrine while the tide is in for the full effect, thus the morning or late evening.
-Once you’ve seen the main buildings reflected in the water at high tide, wait for later afternoon when the tide goes out so that you can walk out to the torii to see how big it is.
-Food and other things are surprisingly cheap for a tourist town.
-beware of the deer.

Hiroshima

2007-10-12T11:59:00.000+09:00

Well, today was an amazingly full day! Early this morning, all of us exchange students and all of the program teachers boarded the bullet train for Hiroshima. One and one half hours later, we arrived at the atomic bomb dome in the centre of the city. This is the first stop in the Hiroshima city Peace Park, and is the government building over which the first atomic bomb detonated. It has been preserved just as it was after the bombing, when it was one of the few structures left standing. From there, it was a beautiful stroll down the river, where we met one of the many groups of Japanese schoolchildren there for class trips. The ones that came up to me asked me (in English, this must have been part of the assignment) who I was and where I had come from, and then asked me to sign their little booklets. After that, we visited the memorial for child victims of war that was built by the friends of Sadako, of 1,000 paper cranes fame. All around the monument where glass boxes filled with sets of 1,000 cranes from all over the world, and in front of it a group of grade schoolers had gathered and sang a song in harmony. It was surprisingly effective. I had brought origami paper with me that I bought at a 100yen store beforehand, so several of us folded cranes and dropped them into the donation box. After that we wandered around downtown Hiroshima before heading to the Peace Museum, which chronicles the invention of the atomic bomb, its effect on Hiroshima, and its possible consequences for the world as a whole. I actually found the whole thing to be very well done, and clearly aimed at promoting peace and disarmament instead of pointing fingers. I have to say though that there were some rather gruesome moments. After that we listened to talk by a bomb victim who had been about 12 years old at the time of the war, and who is one of a group of such people who travel the world to protest nuclear weapons. Again she did not try to place blame and she even said that she at one point realized that if Japan had had the bomb, that they would have used it as well. After this, we boarded a trolley, then a ferry, bound for Miyajima island, site of a shrine that has been dedicated a world heritage site and our hotel. This was a traditional Japanese hotel, with cotton kimono, green tea and sweets waiting for us in our beautiful room. Dinner was a feast of traditional foods, which we followed up by a trip to the hot spring public bath. This was actually surprisingly fun and very relaxing. Afterwards, another girl and I walked around the island, which was incredibly peaceful, and petted the deer that appear to be pretty much tame. So, it was a long but definitely rewarding day.
-The peace park is vast and extremely lovely. It is probably possible to spend an entire day there.
-Hiroshima city is devoted to a message of peace, and as such its main symbol is the dove, while a secondary one is the paper crane.
-They said after the blast that nothing would grow there for 75 years, but that was luckily not the case. In fact, certain trees in the city (called, appropriately, phoenix trees) survived the bombing and bloomed again afterward.
-The bullet train is very smooth, but not really smooth enough to write a letter on.
-There was no hot tea on the snack cart on the bullet train, which seems to go against everything that this country stands for.
-Miyajima is beautiful at night when they light it up, but the lights don’t stay on all night and were off by 10pm.
-The deer here allow themselves to be petted, and are about the height of extremely tall dogs, and quite delicate-looking.
-Public baths are actually really fun after the initial awkwardness, though I wouldn’t want to go alone.