I have just discovered the Japanese version of the burrito. It is called temaki-zushi. You take a large piece of thin nori (dried seaweed) and put onto it sushi rice, lettuce, cucumber, fish, egg, or whatever you want. Then you roll it up and eat it. Very tasty, and healthy too.

Many Japanese companies think that naming their products in English makes them more desirable and "cool." However, many of these names make no sense, and in fact, many sound quite unappetizing. There is a sports drink called "Pocari Sweat," a diet drink called "Love Body" and a beverage company named "Calpis." The last one is my favorite; say it out loud with very little emphasis on the L and think of a barnyard animal.

Last night was my frisbee team's shinnenkai (New Year Party). We went to this place called "Ninnikuya" which literally means "Garlic Restaurant." So I'm thinking, it's just the name, something interesting - "Garlic." I was wrong. Every dish on the menu, including the dessert, had garlic in it. I'm sure that as we walked down the street afterwards that at least one random person wondered what was the odor that emanated from this group of chatting girls...

When I got home from this pleasant evening out, another suprise awaited me. My host mother told me that Wada-san, the woman in charge of all home-stay matters, had called earlier in the day. She does this periodically to check up on things from the host parent perspective, so I was not suprised about this. However, my host mother continued, Wada-san called at my Japanese teachers' request. It seems that they had had a meeting and discussed me. That is, they have decided that out of all the students, I am the one that has made the most progress from the beginning of the program to now. And they wanted to let my host family know that whatever they were doing to help was definitely helping. It is good to know that I have made progress, but it is sad to have true confirmation of the fact that my Japanese wasn't worth anything when I got here, although now it is decent. But I am happy anyway, knowing that my teachers think I have definitely improved, and my host mother is happy because she knows it is all the talking to her that made my speaking skills better. Everyone is ureshii! (happy)

I just returned from a field trip to a Japanese Middle School. We sat in on their English class and "helped" them study. In other words, they stumbled through questions like "What is your name?" "Where are you from?" and "What are your hobbies?" and we gave them one word answers. The Japanese education system is quite different from the American. For one thing, the teachers do not have control, nor do they attempt to take it. If a kid doesn't want to participate, he can go to the back of the room and do what he wants. Likewise, if it is noisy, or kids are rude, the teacher does nothing. Makes for a hectic time - I would not want to be a teacher in a Japanese school.
After this classroom experience, we got a special treat. Today was the day that one of Japan's Living National Treasures came to this middle school to start reintroducing traditional Japanese music into the curriculum. She brought with her about 30 kotos and taught everyone to play "Sakura, Sakura," a very famous folk tune. I already knew it from my lessons, and all the kids were impressed when I could play it so easily. The Living National Treasure woman was also impressed that I was taking koto lessons.

The Japanese are very conscious about the change of seasons. Little kids are not allowed to wear their long sleeved uniforms until the official first day of fall, if they wear them before that they get in trouble. However, there is one thing that does not change with the seasons: the skirts. Japanese schoolgirls have this horrible fashion of rolling up their knee-length skirts to a length where leaning over to button the last button on your coat will reveal your undies. And this is not only in the humid summer months, but also in the cold of winter. In addition, the 80's knee-high leg warmers are present year round, despite the schools' attempts at banning these out of fashion socks.

While watching TV last night, I once again noticed what I considered an overuse of the identity-concealing circles and voice changers on what would be regular television. So I asked my host mother about it. This is what I understand: In the US, most of the time that those are used it is for the protection of the person you can't see. Either the would get in trouble for being identified, or they don't want to be identified. In Japan, it is the opposite. The TV stations cover up the identity of someone who did bad things, or someone connected with someone who did bad things, to protect the viewers from what my host mother calls "the horror" of life. They block faces, whole bodies, voices, and even bleep out names of people who have committed crimes. Instead of seeing crimes scenes on TV, you will see only the building or the intersection near where it occured. You will never see the perpetrator. This could be considered as an attempt at rejection of the fact that there is crime in Japan, but I don't think so. My host mother says it is because Japanese people are so peaceful that they don't want to see violent things.

Visit number 2 to the Fushimi Inari Shrine in southern Kyoto yielded a few surprises for the unsuspecting religion class field-trippers. Firstly, the teacher decided to take us to each of the Seven Mysteries of the Mountain. But she couldn't find one. And none of the people who worked there new what it was. So I guess the Seven Mysteries have, over time, become the Six Mysteries.
Secondly, and most surprisingly, was the snack we had after climbing around the mountain. There seems to be a somewhat wierd food tradition of the Fushimi Inari Shrine being associated with sparrows. That is, eating sparrows. So we stopped at a little shop where they had grilled sparrows-on-a-stick for a little bite of this tiny bird. I would have to say it isn't the tastiest fowl I have eaten, but it wasn't bad. Not much meat, but what do you expect for such a little bird? Despite the fact that the head and brain are supposed to be the most tasty part, we all left the skewered skulls right where they were, and decided that if we ever came back we might try that too, maybe.

I went to Osaka yesterday to change my airline ticket, and was once again reminded of two very important things:
1. My religion teacher says, "Always call before you go anywhere in Japan, they change things without telling you." This is the truth, for when I arrived at the place where the office was supposed to be, it had moved to Tokyo. I am a baka (idiot).
2. When you want a garbage can, you can never find one. That's right, the public garbage cans in Japan are few to none. It is an old taboo that still continues today that you don't eat or drink while walking. So no one has wrappers or cans or paper to throw away. Or maybe it is because there are no trash cans that they don't eat while on the street. It is surprising, this attitude toward trash. The Japanese try to make it out that they are very environmentally smart, they separate burnables and recyclables and such, but the amount of packaging they use is ridiculous. Hence, after grabbing some onigiri (rice and seaweed triangles) from the conbini, I had to carry the plastic wrapper around in my pocket for the next 3 hours.

The Japanese language is full of "loan words" from English, Dutch, French, German, Portugese, and many others. The list of words, which are written in a form of the alphabet called katakana is increasing every day as new terms in business and pop culture make their way into the language. The Asahi Shimbun (Newspaper) recently published a list of some of the newer ones which few people, Japanese and English alike, could barely recognize. They also made a sentence in "Japanese" made almost entirely of loan words. I am going to type it here in phonetics. Read it aloud and see if you can get some of the words. I bet you can. "Aidoringu sutoppu basu de shukkin shi autososhingu no wakingu gurupu de shinku tanku no anarisuto no puriezenteshon wo kiku." (italics are loan words) Did you catch "idling stop bus, outsourcing, working group, think tank, analyst, and presentation"? Imagine how hard it would be if we just started putting foreign words into our vocabulary these days. In Japan, the older generation can barely understand the younger's speech because there are so many loan words dropped in.

My host brother is getting married sometime soon. So he came down to Kyoto this weekend with his fiancee and her mother to pick out the wedding dresses. Yes, dresses. Weddings in Japan can be very lavish and most include at least two dresses, the norm is three. There are several styles of weddings, Western church style, where the bride wears a beautiful white gown and walks down the aisle (regardless of religion), the Shinto wedding, where the bride and groom wear traditional Japanese kimono and you spend long amounts of time sitting on your knees while the priest invokes the kami, or a small affair with friends and family. All of these, however, include an extravagent reception afterwards. It is at this time that the bride will change her dress or kimono up to three more times, each one equally as gorgeous and expensive as the original wedding dress. She is then paraded through the hall to show everyone how beautiful she is. The guests clap happily, as they should with a wonderful meal, liberal amounts of alchohol and the gifts that are given to them by the families of the newly married couple. I hope I am still here when he gets married, because I want to see all this first hand. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when the special day is..

I hope that by now all of you baseball fans out there will have heard of Hideki Matsui "Godzilla", the newest big hitter for the New York Yankees. He hails from over on this side of the ocean, and is the biggest baseball star these days. The Japanese really love to follow the careers of their sports stars overseas. Everyday in the sports news there will be a highlight from some game in the States or in Europe which involves a Japanese player. Matsui has been in the news consistantly every day for at least the last 3 weeks. At least. Before that, if it wasn't him, then there was a clip of a random hit by Ichiro, or a kick by a soccer player in Germany. The Japanese are very proud of those representing their country in athletics.

Snow, beautiful snow. Yesterday was the first day that Kyoto had any significant amount of snowfall this year. I believe we accumulated 1.5 inches in about 4 hours. Soon after which, the sun came out and the warm air drifted in, reducing the shimmering whiteness to puddles of cold water and globs of slush falling from trees. Luckily, I was free with enough time to go next door to Nanzenji Temple for some lovely "temple in the snow" pictures before it all melted away. The trees in this picture almost looked like they had sakura (cherry blossoms) on the branches - an ironic contradiction to the icy snowflakes they really were.

Yesterday was Seijin no Hi, or in English, Coming of Age Day. It is a national holiday which celebrates the people who will become adults (age 20) during this coming year. Walking along the street you see all of the girls in elaborate kimono and the boys in suits and ties. There are ceremonies all over the country with famous speakers and tearful testimonies. The TV stations broadcast parts of the ceremonies and comment on how lovely the dressed up young people look.
From what I gather, you don't have to actually wait until you become officially 20 years old to be considered this age. Therefore, you could still be 19, but be considered 20, and therefore be able to buy alchohol anytime during this year, prior to your birthday. A nice convention for uniformity, and an easier way to check ID's, I think.

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Saturday, January 11

Last night, on the way home from a sukiyaki party, I was passing by Gion (the famous old entertainment district), when I saw two Maiko-san.
Maiko-san are Geisha's in training. This is a special occupation requiring large amounts of studying of all the traditional Japanese arts, such as traditional instruments, tea-ceremony, dance, and exquisite manners.
They were wearing beautiful kimono, tall geta (wooden sandals), white faces, and elaborate hairstyles. I was lucky: most people who live in Kyoto have not actually seen one. They are rare and hard to get a glimpse of. I would have taken out my camera, but alas, I did not have it with me. And I think it would have just added to the commotion of everyone else stopping and staring.

My host mother asked told me an interesting story last night. She said that her daughter's friend from Australia came to visit Japan once. This friend came to stay in their house and in the course of the evening, she became comfortable enough to ask this question, "How often do you eat cat for dinner?" My host mother, being the respectful Japanese woman that she was, was appalled by this question, and offended that anyone would ever think that any Japanese person would eat a cat!
And so let this be a lesson to you: please do not confuse such significant food traditions, such as which Asian country eats what Americans would consider pets. I believe I would refer you to China for that recipe, however, if you are interested in a tasty horse dish, I may be able to provide some pages from a rural Japanese cookbook.

In continuation of the New Years theme, I wish to share another event which was recently on television as New Years purification ritual. It is the yearly purification of automobiles for the safety and protection of all who drive them. Everyone drives to a big parking lot and parks their recently washed cars, inluding some city garbage trucks, grocery store semis, and deli minibikes. They are then blessed by Shinto priests or Buddhist monkes (depending on where you go) who perform a little ceremony and give each owner an omamori (protective amulet) to hang from their rearview mirror or put in their glove box. This protection is good for one year, after which the amulet is returned to the shrine to be burned (getting rid of the evil it collected), and a new amulet is bought. It is said that if you keep an omamori for longer than a year it gives you bad luck.

Yesterday was the 7th of January. Not necessarily a special day in most people's eyes, but in Japan it has a special funtion. And as with many Japanese special function days, it is connected with food. The New Year's holiday lasts for quite a few days in that the Japanese eat only certain foods for New Years. These foods contain lots of rice and sweets, but very little vegetables. So, when those days are over (around the 6th) they have the day for eating vegetables (the 7th). So, yesterday we had two kinds of beans, 4 kinds of green grass-like veggies, potatoes, plus fish. A healthy meal to balance the not so healthy week prior. Too bad for the kids who don't like to eat their vegetables.

I have often jokingly (I hope) been asked when I am going to get a Japanese boyfriend. And I have always answered "never." Although some may doubt, this is the truth, for several reasons. Primarily, because I don't want one. However, if I did want one, the chances are very slim that I could get one. Walk down the street in Kyoto and every once and a while you will see a few mixed couples all snuggly, and you will notice one important factor - it is always a Japanese girl and a foreign guy. Never is it the other way around. There have been several theories on this phenomenon. One is that foreign women are taller, and Japanese guys have a little complex about dating tall women. Another is that foreign women are much more independent, and Japanese guys can't handle a woman who isn't completely under their control. In any case, my dream of marrying a Japanese guy and having a daughter named Haruko are completely shot. Ha.

The New Year in Japan is the most important time of the year. It is a time to get rid of the old, the unclean, and all the bad stuff of the year before and start the new year on a fresh note. During the three days of celebration (at which time everything shuts down), everyone does at least three things: goes to a shrine and/or temple, eats traditional Oshogatsu food, and cleans the house from top to bottom. It's a bigger event than spring cleaning. As a result, when I returned to my homestay, I found a perfectly clean room with new curtains, a small rug, and the biggest, fluffiest comforters I have ever seen. Which is good, because it was negative degrees last night. Anyway, I decided to join in the Japanese tradition of making things new and renovate my website. You can now find all of my winter adventures, including Christmas, New Years, Nijo Castle, Kiyomizudera, and more things, including a page of Random pictures. Check out the tanuki and see if you find anything slightly offensive about this woodland creature...

I have returned again to school. Not yet for classes, but I once again have internet access. In the next two days I will be updating with all the fun places I went during Winter Break, and at the same time I will be moving out of my apartment and back into my homestay. I am sad to lose the freedom of doing whatever I want and being right in the city, but I will be glad to be back where really good food is cooked for me and I have people to talk to all the time. I hope everyone's winter breaks were also very nice and relaxing.