After School Activities in Japan

I have been trying to put a piece together on extracurricular activities in Japan with comparison to the situation in the States. There are loads of stats on naraigoto (習い事, after school lessons) here, but much less information concerning extracurricular lessons and activities in America. The Census Bureau claimed that 6 out of 10 kids in the US participated in some kind of extracurricular activity, but didn’t give much detail as to what kind or how often. One interesting nugget in the report was that only 8% of children in America were taking part in all three activities (i.e. sports, clubs, and lessons) at the same time. Children referred to those in grades K-12.

As for our family, my second-grade son does karate 2-4 times a week, soccer 2-3 times, soroban (abacus) once a week, and English once a week with his friends from kindergarten. He has mini English lessons with me a few times a week in addition to the lesson with his friends. During school breaks, we enroll him in swim lessons. For half of last year, he was in a shōgi (Japanese chess) class a few times a month. His 6-year-old brother has a similar schedule, minus the shōgi, and soccer is only once a week. In the winter months, I take the boys ice skating every other week.

Living downtown as we do, almost all of the lessons are a short walk away.

When my elder son was in his infancy, I had ideas about what lessons I would have him take—English, of course, but also calligraphy, classic guitar, and so on. None of that happened, except for the English.

His first activity was Play School. A bit expensive, but highly recommended. Shortly after he entered elementary school, though, he grew tired of it. Karate became the focus. At first it was only 1-2 times a week, but after getting his arse whooped in a tournament, he told his mother that he wanted to become stronger, so she started taking him to the main dōjō. Soccer was started as a way to maintain the friendships with his kindergarten friends but last year he changed teams, again in order to be a better player. Soccer is his passion at the moment and he doesn’t mind going to every practice. He insists even though he is exhausted afterwards.

The other day, I was walking past the Eishinkan Juku (cram school) just as the kids were getting out. It was Saturday evening and they kids looked as if the life had been sucked right out of them.

Cram schools like Eishinkan offer tests free to the public as a way to, one, check the level of the eggheads who study at their school with that of non-juku kids, and, two, to scare parents whose kids don’t go into following the herd and sending their own children as well. It’s a funny business.

We had our boy take the test a few weeks ago are now waiting the results. Ideally we would like to avoid jukus as long as possible, but I wonder how feasible it is. At the moment only a handful of his second grade classmates go, but by fifth grade apparently it’s the reverse. Even kids who are not going to take a private junior high school’s entrance exam go to juku which always has me scratching my head.

The Keiko to Manabu report had some interesting stats on narai goto in Japan.

44% of kids surveyed engaged in one extracurricular activity. 34% two part in two. 16% had three. 5%, like our sons, had four.

40.8% of kids had swim lessons

27.7% had English lessons

20.3% Piano

14.1% Calligraphy

13.5% Cram School

12.8% Gymnastics

8.6% Soccer

7.1% Soroban/Abacus

5.1% Other Sports

4.3% Dance

4.3% Karate

Toka Ebisu Festival

One of the nice things about living in Japan is that there is always some festival or holiday to look forward to. Unlike America where once the holiday season ends with New Year's or, ho-hum, the feast of the Epiphany on January sixth, there is a long lull in festive events, in Japan something fun is always just around the corner. Once Christmas has passed, the trees come down and up go the kadomatsu and other New Year's decorations.    After the five or six-day drinking, eating, and TV-viewing binge known as O-Shôgatsu, or the Japanese New Year, comes Tôka Ebisu, a festival honoring Ebisu, the patron deity of businesses and fisheries. At around the same time, the Coming-of-Age Day celebration celebrating the entry into adulthood of the nation's twenty-year olds, is held. There is the bean-throwing exorcism known as Setsu-bun in early February, as well as a number of local festivals held in shrines and temples in the meantime.

On Sunday, I went to Fukuoka's main Ebisu shrine which is located just outside of Higashi Park. While I sometimes miss the New Year's celebrations do to travel, I always manage to get back in time to attend the Tôka Ebisu festival. 

Like most other festivals held throughout the year in Japan, you'll find the usual demisé food stalls selling o-konomiyaki (below), jumbo yakitori, and so on. What makes Tôka Ebisu different, however, is the number of stalls selling good luck items featuring the seven lucky gods (Shichi Fukujin) of which Ebisu is one, talismansand other trinkets to ward off bad luck, and so on. 

The festival also attracts a much different class of people. Whereas you can see many young men and women at the harvest festival Hôjoya (also known as Hôjoe), the people attending Tôka Ebisu tend to be older and "tarnished", making it an interesting place to people watch. I never fail to find the middled aged mamas of "snacks", rough-looking men who look as if Ebisu hasn't been very generous to them, and others desperate for an auspicious start to the new business year.

This year, there seemed to be far more people at the festival than usual. Perhaps it was the weather, perhaps it was that after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami everyone is hoping for a bit of luck.

Sweet roasted chestnuts.

If you look closely at the apex of the crowd in the picture above you can see an upside down red fish, a sea bream. This is a symbol of Ebisu who is often depicted carrying one. In Japanese the sea bream is called tai which rhymes with medetai, meaning “happy”, “auspicious”, or “successful”. Real sea bream are often displayed at a celebratory gatherings, such as New Years, the end of sumô tournaments, engagement ceremonies, and so on.

Just beyond the red sea bream is a procession of the Hakata Geiki, a troupe of geisha working in Fukuoka City. I’ll write about them in a later post in the coming months. Incidentally, the photo on the cover of my second novel, A Woman’s Nails, was taken at this event several years ago.

The geisha making their way to the shrine. This procession is held every year at the height of the Tôka Ebisu festival and worth seeing. This year we just happened to be there when it was taking place.

Another feature of Tôka Ebisu is the drawing that is held at the shrine. On either side of the shinden there are booths selling tickets.

The first time I attended the festival was over ten years ago and didn’t know what to expect. So, when I pulled out one of the lots from a hexegonal box and the Shintô priest shouted, “Ôatari!” (Jackpot!), my mind filled with delicious possibilities: a new car? A trip to Hawaii? Cash? I had never ever won so much as a cakewalk or bingo game before. Needless to say, I was quite excited.

As another priest pounded out several beats on a drum and shouted “Ôatari,” the first priest pulled out a huge red fan from a pile of trinkets and talismans behind him and passed it to me. The fan had 商売繁盛 (shôbai hanjô, “prosperity in business”) written on it in large white characters. Prosperous was the last thing I felt.

That didn’t stop me, however, from going back year after year and trying my luck. In the past, the tickets were only ¥1,500. Today, they go for ¥2,000 each—so much for the deflationary pressure we are told has been pushing prices lower and lower—and where I once bought two or three of the tickets, I now only buy one.

Over the years I have “won” two of those large red shôbai hanjô fans, a massive wooden paddle as big as a cricket bat that has 一斗二升五合[1] written on it, a plate featuring Ebisu-sama, a wooden piggy bank, a calendar, and a small Ebisu doll.

A dutiful follower of this cult of Ebisu, I went on the tenth of January last year. The weather was awful—freezing cold and rainy—and I had been forced to wait under a canopy that leaked like a sieve for a good hour and a half until my wife and son showed up.

When they finally did, I was in a foul mood. My pant legs and shoes soaking wet, the cold was beginning to seep into my bones.

“Let’s just get the damn thing and head on home, okay?” I grumbled to my wife. “It’s freezing!”

We hurried into the shrine, which thanks to the lousy weather was not as crowded as it usually can be during the festival. There was only a handful of people in line for the drawing.

Well, no sooner had we handed over our ¥2000 at the reception desk than the man at the counter said, “Congratulations, you’re our twenty-five-thousandth visitor.” Or something like that. He had us fill out a form and then asked us to follow him to the place where the lots were drawn. After handing the form to the priest with the box containing the lots, I was told to pull one of the sticks out. It didn’t matter which. I did so and gave it to the priest who stood up and, turning on a microphone, said he had a big announcement to make.

“We have a major prize for our twenty-five-thousandth visitor today!” Another priest started banging away at a drum. The other priests in the shinden stopped what they were doing, stood up, and started clapping in unison. After a number of Banzais, the priest handed over a massive and cumbersome bamboo rake to me. It was adorned with ceramic depictions of the gods Ebisu and Daikoku, a red sea bream, a bale of rice, and other auspicious items.

Let me tell you, I couldn’t have been more thrilled had I won a trip to Hawaii.

I don’t know if it is thanks to Ebisu-sama, my son whose arrival in my life signaled the beginning of things finally going my way, or plain dumb luck, but last year ended up being the very best year ever in so many ways.

 When you’ve already won the jackpot, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to continue dropping quarters into the slot machine, and yet that is essentially what we did by returning to the Ebisu festival this year and trying our hand at the drawing again.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” my wife said.

“I know, I know,” I replied. “But still, it would be nice to get one of those boats with the seven lucky gods in it. I’ve always wanted one for the collection.”

Sure enough, Ebisu wasn’t as generous to us this year: we got a simple little wooden abacus. I suppose the message the gods are trying to tell us is that we should be more careful about how we spend money. Duly noted, Ebisu-sama!

[1] Ask your Japanese friends to try reading 一斗二升五合and most of them will be stumped. It is a riddle of sorts employing 斗, 升, 合 all of which are traditional Japanese measures of volume.

一斗 (itto, about 18 liters) is equal to ten 升 (shô, about 1.8 liters). 一斗, then, can be said to equal 五升の倍 (go shô no bai), which means “five shô doubled”. 五升の倍 (go shô no bai) is synonymous with 御商売 (go shôbai) which means “one’s business or trade”. Got that?

二升 (nishô). 升 can also be read masu. 二升 here is read “masu masu” which sounds like 益々 (masu masu), meaning “more and more”, “steadily”, and so on.

五合 (go gô, 5 x 0.18 liters, or 0.9 liters) is one half of a shô or 半升 (hanjô) which sounds the same as 繁盛 (hanjô, prosperity). So, putting it all together 一斗二升五合 can be read “Go-shôbai masu masu hanjô!” (御商売益々繁盛), meaning something to the effect that your business or trade will enjoy increasing prosperity.

Sansha Mairi

If you live in only one region of Japan for an extended time as I have, it’s easy to make the mistake of assuming that what is true in the town you reside in is also true throughout the rest of the country.

I first recognized this many, many years ago when I kept getting tripped up by the local dialect, known as Hakata-ben (博多弁). I’ve written about this elsewhere, but what I’m getting at here here is not my failure to understand what someone is saying because he is speaking the local dialect, but rather people not understand what I am saying because I have unwittingly used the dialect thinking that what I was speaking standard Japanese.

Take the Japanese word koi (濃い), which can mean deep, heavy, dark or thick—such as in koi aka (濃い赤), “deep red”; koi sūpu (濃いスープ) “thick soup”; ~ wa ajitsuke ga koi (〜は味付けが濃い) “. . . is strongly seasoned”; or even chi-wa mizu-yorimo koi (血は水よりも濃い) “Blood is thicker than water.” For the first ten years of my life here in Fukuoka, I thought koi was pronounced koyui. (Try looking it up in a Japanese-English dictionary.) If you go to Tõkyõ and ask a bartender to make you a stiff drink, saying “make it koyui”, he’ll probably give you a funny look.[1]

Traditional foods, too, can vary from region to region in Japan, so much so that a simple dish like o-zōni—a soup eaten during New Year’s—can contain radically different ingredients and yet still be called o-zōni.

Customs, as I have mentioned before, also differ from prefecture to prefecture. The Bon Festival of the Dead, for example, can, depending on the region, be held as early as July 15th (in Shizuoka, for example) or in other parts on August 15th. Some regions, such as Okinawa, observe what is known as Kyū Bon (旧盆) which falls on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month. In 2019, Kyū Bon and “regular Bon” will take place at the same time, namely from the 13th to the 15th of August. Living all this time in Kyūshū, I used to assume that all Japanese celebrated the Bon in the middle of August and would pester everyone with the question: “Why isn’t this a national holiday like New Year’s?”

Stop pushing’!

Now only a few years ago, it finally dawned on me that something I had taken for two decades to be a widely-observed custom was actually a very local one: sansha mairi (三社参り).

In Japan, many people (and I would venture most) visit a Shintō shrine during the first few days of the new year, a custom known as hatsumōdé (初詣), to pray or make wishes. At the shrines, they buy good luck charms called o-mamori (お守り), drink a special kind of saké, and buy written oracles known as o-mikuji (おみくじ). It’s primarily in Fukuoka, though, that people visit (o-mairi, お参り) three shrines (三社) rather than one.

Live and learn.

God? You up there? Do you hear me, God?

So When is O-Shogatsu Over Anyways?

This is a piece I wrote for GaijinPot last year.

My wife took down the shime kazari the other day.

Shime kazari are the decorations you find hanging on front doors and gates at o-Shōgatsu (お正月, or the Japanese New Year). Traditionally made with twisted rice straw, they are often festooned with a daidai (bitter orange), fern fronds and gohei or shide (zigzag strips of white paper), the ornaments serve to welcome Toshigami-sama, the Shintō deity who brings a bountiful harvest and blessings for the new year.

Modern designs, like ours (above and below), take great liberties with more traditional decorations, adding generous loops of red-and-white  cords of twisted paper, known as mizuhiki, pine branches, colorful Japanese washi paper, auspicious doodads and occasionally fresh flowers.

I asked my wife what she was doing.

“Shōgatsu is over… ”

“Says who?”

“My parents already took down their shime kazari.”

“So? I paid ¥4,000 for that. Put it back. Please!”

“But… ”

There’s quite a bit of debate about when you should take your New Year’s decorations down. Regional variations have something to do with it — why, even the design of the shime kazari themselves can vary greatly from region to region — but so do different interpretations of when o-Shōgatsu is officially concluded.

I guess you could say a similar discussion exists in the West concerning when Christmas trees should be tossed out. Is it the Feast of the Epiphany, which falls on Jan. 6 (hence the 12 Days of Christmas)? Or should the tree and other holiday decorations remain until Candlemas, which falls on Feb. 2, i.e. 40 days after the nativity of Jesus? Thanks to Christmas tree recycling drives hosted by the Boy Scouts in early January, in America at least, trees are now being ground up into mulch before they can become a fire hazard.

As for the last day of o-Shōgatsu, many assert that it is Jan. 7. This day is widely considered to be the final day of matsunouchi, the week-long period starting with New Year’s Day during which the kadomatsu (New Year’s “gate” pine) and other decorations are displayed. New Year’s greeting cards, known as nengajō, should be received within the first week of the year. The seventh is also the day Japanese eat nanakusa gayu, a dishearteningly bland rice porridge dish made with seven different herbs. It was for these reasons, I suspect, that my wife’s mother and many others had already taken their own decorations down.

But, I still wasn’t sold on the idea.

During a quick walk around my neighborhood, I noticed several shops were still displaying their shime kazari. Perhaps because it was Seijin-no-hi, or Coming-of-Age Day, a national holiday that serves as a psychological bookend to New Year’s.

Whatever the shops’ motivations, some believe that it’s quite alright to keep the decorations up until Jan. 15, a date known as Ko-Shōgatsu (小正月, Little New Year), as was the custom up until the Edo Period (1603-1868). The first week of the new year was called Ō-Shōgatsu (大正月, lit. “Big New Year,” in this instance) while the rest of the month was considered just regular “Shōgatsu.”

Rice porridge with seven herbs and salt.

Ko-Shōgatsu is known by other names, too, such as Niban Shōgatsu (Second New Year’s), Onna Shōgatsu (女正月, Woman’s New Year) and so on. Before Japan adopted the Gregorian solar calendar, the 15th was the day on which the full moon appeared. As far back as the Heian period (794-1185), it was customary to eat rice porridge made with sweet, red azuki beans. A similar dish called o-shiruko (sweet red-bean soup), made with azuki beans and half-melted globs of mochi (sticky rice cake) is traditionally eaten around the 11th, the day kagami (mirror-shaped) mochi decorations are broken. Today, at shrines throughout Japan, you can find hi-matsuri (火祭り, fire festivals), known as sagicho or dondoyaki (burning of New Year’s gate and other decorations), held on the 15th when kadomatsu, shime kazari and the previous year’s talismans are set alight in a bonfire.

Despite that, others argue that it’s acceptable for New Year’s decorations to remain until Hatsuka (20th day of the month) Shōgatsu, which falls, not surprisingly, on the 20th of January. In the Kansai area, the head and bones of the buri (Japanese amberjack) are cooked with sake kasu (lees), vegetables and soy beans. Because of this, the day is also called Honé (bone) Shōgatsu.

My wife, following her mother’s example, had been deferring to tradition. I countered with the argument that if we were really going to stick to good ol’ “tradition,” we would have to keep the shime kazari up until March 2, which — in accordance with the Chinese lunar calendar — is actually Jan. 15.

“Let’s keep it up until Hatsuka Shōgatsu, then,” my wife suggested.

“The 15th will be fine,” I said. “We don’t want to get carried away.”

Kadomatsu

Kadomatsu (門松, literally “gate pine”) are traditional decorations of the Japanese New Year placed in pairs in front of buildings, and to a lesser extent homes, to welcome ancestral spirits or kami of the harvest. They are put out immediately after Christmas, sometimes as early as the evening of the 25th, and remain traditionally until the 15th of January (Matsunouchi, 松の内), but only until the 7th in recent years.

Designs for kadomatsu can vary depending on region but are typically made of pine, bamboo, and sometimes umé tree sprigs which represent longevity, prosperity and steadfastness, respectively. 

The fundamental function of the New Year ceremonies is to honor and receive the toshigami (deities of the new year), who bring a bountiful harvest for farmers and bestow the ancestors' blessing on everyone. After January 15th the kadomatsu and other New Year’s decorations are burned in bonfires at Shintō shrines to appease the gods and release them, an event known as Dontoyaki (どんと焼き) or Sagichō (左義長).

At the Nishitetsu Grand Hotel

At Daimyō Elementary School

In front of Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tenjin

At the Seahawk Hilton Hotel in Momochi

In front of a popular Japanese restaurant called Chikae

Kagami Mochi

Kagami mochi (鏡餅, literally mirror rice cake) is a traditional Japanese New Year decoration, which consists of two round mochi (rice cakes), the smaller placed atop the larger, and a Japanese bitter orange, known as a daidai, with an attached leaf on top. It may also have a sheet of konbu and a skewer of dried persimmons under the mochi.

It often sits on a stand called a sanpō (三宝, see photo below) over a sheet called a shihōbeni (四方紅), which is supposed to ward off fires from the house for the following year. Sheets of paper called gohei (御幣) or shidé folded into lightning bolt shapes are also sometimes attached.

Kagami mochi first appeared in the Muromachi period (14th-16th century), the name kagami ("mirror") having allegedly originated from its resemblance to an old-fashioned kind of round copper mirror which also had a religious significance.

The two mochi discs are also said to symbolize the going and coming years, the human heart, yin and yang, or the moon and the sun. The daidai (橙), whose name is synonymous with "generations" (代々), is said to symbolize the continuation of a family from generation to generation.

Traditionally, kagami mochi was placed in various locations throughout the house. Nowadays, however, it is usually placed in a household Shintô altar, called a kamidana or placed in a small decorated alcove, called a tokonoma, in the main room of the home.

At a small privately owned shrine in the neighborhood.

The faux kagami mochi in my home.

At Kego Shrine in Tenjin, Fukuoka

Our neighborhood mochi shop at year’s end.

Fresh mochi rice cakes.

Shimenawa

Shiménawa (七五三縄, 注連縄 or 標縄, literally "enclosing rope") are another common decoration of the Japanese New Year. Rice straw is braided together to form a rope, that is then adorned with pine, fern fronds, more straw and mandarine oranges. They can represent a variety of auspicious items, such as the rising sun over Mt. Fuji or a crane. The shiménawa pictured above is the one that hung on my front door a few years ago.

Used mostly for ritual purification in the Shintô religion, shimenawa can vary in diameter from a few centimetres to several metres, and are often seen festooned with shidé paper. The space bound by shimenawa often indicates a sacred or pure space, such as that of a Shintō shrine.

 Shiménawa are believed to act as a ward against evil spirits and are also set up at a ground-breaking ceremonies before construction begins on a new building. They are often found at Shintō shrines, torii gates, and other sacred landmarks.

They are also tied around objects capable of attracting spirits or inhabited by spirits, called yorishiro. These include trees, in which case the inhabiting spirits are called kodama, and cutting down these trees is thought to bring misfortune. In cases of stones, the stones are known as iwakura.

Most of the following photos were taken of shiménawa hanging at the entrance of restaurants and boutiques in my neighborhood.

This is the kind of shimékazari typically found in Fukuoka.

Corporate Japan

A few years back someone posted an infograph of the “Corporate States of America” with the most representative/iconic companies based in each state. Now someone has done that with Japan. Have a look.

Hokkaidō: ニトリ (Nitori, interior/furniture retailer) and 六花亭 (Rokkatei, confectioner/chocolate)

Aomori: サンデー (Sunday, home center/DIY)

Iwate: 薬王堂 (Yaku Ōdō, drugstore chain)

Miyagi: アイリスオーヤマ (Iris Ohyama, maker/seller of household plastic products)

Akita: たけや製パン (Takeya Seipan, maker of bread and western-style sweets and cakes)

Yamagata: でん六山形県山形市に本社を置く菓子メーカー

Fukushima: ヨークベニマルスーパーマーケットチェーンを展開する福島県郡山市の企業

Ibaraki: ケーズホールディングス茨城県水戸市に本社を置き「ケーズデンキ」の屋号で家電量販店をチェーン展開

Tochigi: コジマ栃木県宇都宮市に本社を置く家電量販店チェーン

Gunma: ヤマダ電機群馬県高崎市に本社を置く家電量販店チェーン

Saitama: 赤城乳業埼玉県深谷市に本社を置くアイスクリーム専業メーカー千葉県イオン「イオングループ」を統括する純粋持株会社

Tōkyō: NTT東京都千代田区に本社を置く日本の通信事業最大手であるNTTグループの持株会社

Kanagawa: 崎陽軒本社を神奈川県横浜市に置き主にシウマイの製造販売ならびにレストラン事業を展開

Niigata: 亀田製菓新潟県新潟市に本社を置き主にせんべいなどの米菓の製造を手掛ける企業

Toyama: 光岡自動車富山県富山市に本社を置く自動車メーカー

Ishikawa: アイ・オー・データ機器石川県金沢市に本社を置く精密機器メーカー福井県増永眼鏡福井県福井市に本社を置く眼鏡フレームの老舗メーカー

Yamanashi: 富士急行山梨県富士吉田市に本社を置き運輸・観光・不動産・流通事業などを行なう会社

Nagano: セイコーエプソン長野県諏訪市に本社を置く情報関連機器・精密機器のメーカー

Gifu: 西濃運輸路線トラック業界最大手で岐阜県大垣市に本社を置く運輸会社

Shizuoka: ヤマハ静岡県浜松市に本社を置く楽器・半導体・自動車部品製造発売を手がけるメーカー

Aichi: トヨタ自動車愛知県豊田市に本社を置く自動車メーカー

Mie: 井村屋三重県津市に本社を置く菓子メーカー

滋賀県近江兄弟社滋賀県近江八幡市に本社を置く医薬品メーカー

京都府任天堂京都府京都市に本社を置く家庭用レジャー機器の製造・販売を行う企業

大阪府パナソニック大阪府門真市に本社を置く世界的な総合電機メーカー

兵庫県川崎重工業兵庫県神戸市に本社を置き二輪車・航空機・鉄道車両・船舶等を製造する企業

奈良県呉竹本社は奈良県奈良市にあり書道用の墨汁・筆・硯などで知られるメーカー

和歌山県オークワ和歌山県和歌山市に本社を置き8つの府県で展開しているチェーンストア

鳥取県寿製菓鳥取県米子市に本社を置く菓子メーカー

島根県一畑電気鉄道島根県松江市に本社を置き交通・観光・流通・建設等の事業を展

開岡山県ベネッセコーポレーション岡山県岡山市に本社を置き通信教育・出版などの事業を行なう企業

広島県マツダ広島県安芸郡府中町に本社を置く自動車メーカー

山口県ユニクロ山口県山口市に本社を置き衣料品の生産販売を一括して展開する企業

徳島県日亜化学工業徳島県阿南市に本社を持ち発光ダイオードなどの電子デバイス扱う化学会社

香川県日プラ香川県木田郡三木町にあるアクリルパネルメーカー

愛媛県大王製紙愛媛県四国中央市に本社を置く独立系大手製紙メーカー

高知県キタムラ高知県高知市に本社を置く写真用品店チェーン

福岡県ゼンリン福岡県北九州市に本社を置く日本最大手の地図制作会社

佐賀県久光製薬佐賀県鳥栖市に本社を置く医薬品メーカー長崎県ジャパネットたかた

長崎県佐世保市に本社を置く通信販売会社

熊本県再春館製薬所熊本県上益城郡益城町に本社を置く化粧品・医薬品・医薬部外品の通信販売業の企業

大分県ジョイフル本社を大分県大分市に置き九州を中心にファミリーレストランをチェーン展開

宮崎県宮崎交通宮崎県宮崎市に本社を置きバス事業などを展開

鹿児島県セイカ食品鹿児島県鹿児島市に本社を置く総合食品製造メーカー

沖縄県オリオンビール沖縄県浦添市に本拠を置く大手ビールメーカー

Mochi-tsuki

Because my sons’ kindergarten is Buddhist, there are no Christmas decorations or Christmas-related events. None whatsoever.

(No worries there as we already do plenty at home.)

The kindergarten does, however, hold New Year’s related events, such as “mochi-tsuki”. 

What’s “moji-zugi”, you ask?

Mochi-tsuki (moh-chee-tsoo-kee) is the making of mochi (rice cake) by pounding steamed sticky rice (もち米, mochi kome) with large wooden hammers for God knows how long. It is in the words of the esteemed Mr. Wiki very “labor intensive”. I think the only thing that we have remotely similar to mochi-tsuki in the US is handmade ice cream.

Now the thing with handmade ice cream is that your effort is rewarded with something that tastes pretty damn good. Mochi, on the other hand, is rather bland. Mixed with sweet beans or covered with syrup, it can be rather nice. But, again, alone it’s so hopelessly boring, it makes you wonder why people go to all the trouble.

My son has already left for school. He asked me to go, too, but as only the fathers of third-year students can attend—damn—I have been spared the forced labor demanded of tradition.

This evening I will be taking my boys to see the Christmas lights in Kego Park and ride the kiddie “Polar Express” train.

There are only five more days till Christmas. For some reason or another, this holiday season has just whizzed by. Last year, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. This year, though, . . .

I think it’s the realization that Christmas with young boys who believe all the stories of Santa Claus, no matter how far-fetched or contradictory, won’t last forever. We’ve got perhaps five or six more years of the season’s magic. And then? Well, we will just have to find a new way to enjoy the holiday. Perhaps with a mochi-tsuki party.

Shimekazari

When you live as long as I have in only one part of a country, it's easy to assume that the way things are done in your region are the same nationwide. It took me two decades to realize that sansha mairi (visiting three shrines at New Year's) was a custom peculiar Kyūshū, and in particular to Fukuoka. 

Similarly, the shimé kazari, a New Year's decoration placed above the entrance to homes and buildings, varies from region to region. Shime-kazari is said to originate from shime-nawa (twisted hemp and rice straw rope placed at the entrance of shrines to indicated a sacred space) and meant to keep misfortune and unclean spirits away and greet Toshigami (年神), the gods and ancestors brought with the new year.

Sorry, but . . .

Few end-of-the-year customs in Japan seem sillier to the casual observer than that of the mochū hagaki  (喪中葉書, "mourning postcard"). Mochū hagaki  (pictured above) are postcards sent out to friends, relatives, co-workers, and others in December or earlier, notifying them that due to the death of family member in the past year they are in mourning and will therefore be unable to send nengajō (年賀状), or New Year's greeting cards. It is as if people are saying, "FYI: I am sending this postcard to you now to inform you that I cannot send you that other postcard later."

To be fair, mochū hagaki do serve some useful purposes. For one, they inform others that they need not bother sending a nengajō to the family out of respect for their loss—even when the person who has died was 105 years old, as is the case in the postcard on the left, and "relief" rather than “sorrow” might be a better adjective describing the emotions felt when Great Grandpa finally kicked the bucket. And, probably more importantly, mochū hagaki preemptively assuage any misunderstandings that might occur when a nengajō goes unanswered.

Kamado Jinja

Kamado Jinja (竈門神社) used to be one of my favorite places in the greater Fukuoka area. Not many people knew about it, which was one of the shrine’s charms. But then a few years ago, the gift shop was renovated and the o-mamori talismans were redesigned to appeal to younger tastes. Couple that with the popularity of Instagram and Kamado is no longer a secret.

I am often conflicted about places like this. It’s the same with bands—the oh, I liked them before they sold out kind of thing. On the one hand you don’t want a shrine or a cafe to be so quiet that it goes out of business, but you don’t want the place ruined with mindless hordes taking a million selfies. Surely there must be a happy medium somewhere.

Fingers Come to a Rest

My fingers come to a rest on the keyboard.

Is this really writing? I can’t help but wonder.

So calculated, each sentence is.

Back space. Correct. Rewrite. Save. Tappity-tap.

Back space. Correct. Rewrite. Save. Tappity-tap. 

Spontaneity has been lost, the flow of words dammed up. Tappity-tap. Back space. Correct. Rewrite. 

How long did it take me to write a grammatically correct, yet insipid and meaningless sentence?

Fucking computer!

Beauty, Looking Back

Several years ago, a friend of mine expressed his admiration of the Japanese language: “They even have a word for a woman who looks beautiful from behind, but when she turns around is actually ugly.”

The word he was referring to was mikaeri-bijin (見返り美人). The phrase originally comes from the ukiyoe woodblock print “Beauty Looking Back” by Hishikawa Moronobu (1618-1694). If I am not mistaken, the phrase didn’t originally contain the connotation of being disappointed once able to look squarely at a woman as it does now.

Even after studying Japanese for over two decades, I continue to be fascinated by the language. Just this morning, when I was looking up “fall from grace”, I came upon a kanji I had never seen before: 寵 (chō).

“Fall from grace” in Japanese, by the way, is kami no onchō-o ushinau (神の恩寵を失う). Bet you won’t be using that phrase anytime soon.

The on (恩) in onchō (恩寵) is a fairly common kanji meaning “obligation, indebtedness, a debt of gratitude”. An “ungrateful” person is someone who literally “doesn’t know the debt of gratitude”: on-o shirazu (恩を知らず).

Chō (寵), on the other hand, doesn’t quite translate neatly into English. It can mean “being particularly loved or doted upon”, “blessed or favored” and so on.

Words containing (寵), include:

            寵愛 (chōai), the favor of (a king)

            寵姫 (chōki), the most loved woman of the monarch

                        This is a word I use daily, as is the next one.

            寵妾 (chōshō), the favorite concubine.

            寵児 (chōji), a darling or star (of the media or literary world)

                        Ah to be a bundan no chōji (分団の寵児)!

            寵臣 (chōshin), the favorite vassal or retainer of the lord

The funny thing about my friend, his initial interest in the Japanese language never developed beyond a handful of expressions, which begs the question: why is it that so many otherwise intelligent and thoughtful Westerners who have lived years, if not decades, in Japan still suck at the language?

Four Burners

Pat was driving, and as we passed the turnoff for a shopping center she invited us to picture a four-burner stove. 

“Gas or electric?” Hugh asked, and she said that it didn’t matter. 

This was not a real stove but a symbolic one, used to prove a point at a management seminar she’d once attended. “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.

Pat has her own business, a good one that’s allowing her to retire at fifty-five. She owns three houses, and two cars, but, even without the stuff, she seems like a genuinely happy person. And that alone constitutes success.

I asked which two burners she had cut off, and she said that the first to go had been family. After that, she switched off her health. “How about you?”

I thought for a moment, and said that I’d cut off my friends. “It’s nothing to be proud of, but after meeting Hugh I quit making an effort.” 

“And what else?” she asked.

“Health, I guess.”

Hugh’s answer was work.

“And?”

“Just work,” he said.

From "Laugh, Kookaburra" by David Sedaris, printed in The New Yorker

I normally don’t read Sedaris for mind-bending existential content, but his short story “Laugh, Kookaburra” had me thinking about life and the choices I have made over the years, the “burners” I have turned off or down to low.

Shortly before I remarried, my fiancée would take me over to her parents’ home in the suburbs on Sundays and lock me up in their washitsu—a sparse Japanese-style room with tatami mats—forcing me to write for five or six hours straight. I had a good idea for a book that just needed to be written down, but I was having a devil of a time making any progress on it.

Being locked up in that room for hours on end was torture at first. Whenever I would try to venture out of the room, my girlfriend, who kept guard over me in an adjacent room, would turn me around, shove me back in and say, “Two more hours!”

“Two more? Can’t I have a drink of something or a smoke?”

“No!”

So back in I would go, and kneel down on the tatami only to stare for minutes on end at the empty white page on my MacBook, the cursor flash-flash-flashing as if to taunt me: “You got nothing. And you used to think you had what it took to be a writer! Hah! You got nothing!"

But it worked. After a few weeks, I started to get into the groove and before I knew it I was writing almost every day, usually in the morning, but sometimes at night until I had finished Rokuban. And when I had finished Rokuban, I then went on to do a major overhaul of A Woman’s Nails and managed to get through it without it being too painful. Then, I went on to the next work, and the next, and the next.

Where just completing a novel had once seemed like an insurmountable task, now I was faced with a new challenge: how to sell the novels I was now finishing.

The improved productivity came partially from turning down one of those four burners: friends. I seldom go out for drinks or dinner anymore. If I do, it’s usually by myself. I used to hate being alone, but nowadays it doesn’t bother me in the least. Sometimes I prefer it as I can get stuff done while I’m eating—reading, catching up on the news, and so on.

Being in Japan allowed me to turn the “Family Burner” down to low for about a decade and a half, but then I got married and had kids and now that burner is on full-blast, stealing gas from the other burners.

Raüchermann

I was showing a young woman my collection of handmade German Christmas ornaments the other day.

“And these two,” I said, pointing (mit großem Stolz, I might add) to a large Nußknacker (nutcracker) and Räuchermann (incense smoker), “I got when I was an exchange student in Germany about twenty, no, thirty years ago.”

“Oh . . . So they’re vintage, then!” she said.

It was then that I took the nutcracker and bludgeoned the cheeky kid to death.

Sistema de Transporte Colectivo

A Mexican friend, inspired by my photos of Japanese men sleeping on trains, sent me this photo of the Sistema de Transporte Colectivo. A few things struck me when I looked at it for the first time. 

For one there are no men. The hombres, I was told, are corralled in other cars. Like Japan, the trains in Guadalajara have cars for women only. Three of them, in fact. Not sure if this is to prevent perverts from copping a feel like in Japan or perhaps for religious reasons.

The second thing I noticed is how clean the train was. No garbage on the floor like in China. No graffiti as is all too common in the U.S. 

As for the third thing, take a look at the walls and ceiling of the train. Notice anything? Or rather, do you notice anything missing? Those of you who have ridden Japanese trains will probably be impressed that there isn't a single advertisement inside the train. In Japan, hardly any space is left untouched by an advertisement of some sort. You're attacked by it at every turn. If the train companies could find a way of putting adverts on the passengers themselves, I'm sure they would go and do it.

Hajichi Tattooing

An elderly woman is placed on a stretcher at the close of the Battle of Okinawa 73 years ago.

On her hand you can see a type of tattooing, called hajichi or haduchi (針突、ハジチ or ハジキ or ハドゥチ). The women of Amami also tattooed their hands. “Island women decorated their hands with elaborate tattoos, whose quality was considered a marker of social status. Women tattooed their right hands between and thirteen, when they came of age, and tattooed their left hands when they married. On the Okinawan mainland, it was done at twelve or thirteen. The first tattoo marked chastity. Without a decorated right hand, a woman was unfit for marriage. A tattoo on the left hand, by contrast, represented a woman’s obedience to her husband.”†

The hands were tattooed little by little over a period of time, until they numbered 23 in total, an auspicious number.

Amami Hajichi hand tattooing

Ainu (アイヌ) women (below) tattooed not only their hands, but also their lips once married. Not sure what it was called in their language.

Ainu Tattooing was banned in October of 1871, but had little influence over the Ainu who believed they would gain the wrath of God and not be able to get married if they were not tattooed. In 1876, the restriction was lifted in the name of religious freedom. Similarly, in 1889, hajichi were banned in Okinawa, which had become a prefecture of the Japanese Empire ten years earlier in 1879.

Like the women of they Ryūkyū archipelago, Ainu women also tattooed their hands:

Face tattooing was common among aboriginal tribes on the island of Fermosa (modern-day Taiwan), suggesting that the Ainu, Amami, Ryūkyū people, etc. had Polynesian roots.

†Ravina, Mark. The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004, p.82.

Labor Thanksgiving Day

About this time every year, I have the same conversation with my students: “There’ll be a national holiday next week,” I begin. “Can any of you tell me the name of that holiday?”

Silence.

“C’mon, think. This Friday — and no peeking at Wikipedia!”

One of the student calls out: “Culture Day!”

“No. Culture Day, or Bunka no Hi, was three weeks ago on Nov. 3,” I remind them. “Thursday, Nov. 23. What’s the holiday? Anyone? Anyone?” I feel like the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

“Oh! I know!”

“Ayano, yes, what was it?”

“Kinrō Kansha no Hi.”

“That’s right! Now what is Labor Thanksgiving Day? Anyone?”

One student suggests that it is a day we give thanks to our parents for working hard.

“Well, maybe, but there’s more to it than that. Are any of you doing anything special for Labor Thanksgiving Day?”

Crickets.

I go around the room, asking students what their plans are. Some will work at their part-time jobs, others will probably loaf about at home. A few may go shopping.

“If you’re not going to do anything special, why have a national holiday?” I ask. “Whenever a national holiday holiday rolls around, I always try at least to wear my ‘Rising Sun’ skivvies.”

When half of them laughs, the other half that has been dozing comes to life. Now that I’ve got their attention I ask why some of their holidays, such as the autumnal equinox, Shūbun no Hi, fell on a Saturday last year? “Why not move the day to a Monday like so many other holidays? Why is the date for Shūbun no Hi and other holidays like Kinrō Kansha no Hi fixed?”

They don’t know.

Shūbun no Hi, I explain, is actually one of two Kœreisai and Labor Thanksgiving Day is in reality a harvest festival called Niiname-sai, a Shintō rite performed by the Emperor.

“Have any of you heard of either Kōreisai or Niiname-sai?”

Of course, none have.

“Are you guys really Japanese?” I ask with feigned disbelief, eliciting embarrassed laughter from the students.

I then ask them how many national holidays Japan has.

“Eleven!”

“Nope.”

“Twenty!”

“I wish!”

“Eight!”

“Sorry.”

“Sixteen!”

“That’s right. There are 16 national holidays. And next year there will be nineteen. Many more than most countries have.”

With their help, I write the names of the holidays on the board with the corresponding dates. Once I have them all down, I tell them to pay attention to the 10 holidays that have fixed dates: National Foundation Day (Feb. 11), Showa Day (Apr. 29), Culture Day (Nov. 3) and so on. “Now, what do these days have in common?”

More silence.

“Anyone? Anyone?”

No one even volunteers a guess. They really have no idea what I’m getting at. None.

“All of the holidays with fixed dates are related to the emperor,” I explain. “Ten of your 16 national holidays are related to the emperor.”

You’d think they would know this already, but for the vast majority of them it is a revelation.

1. New Year’s Day (Jan. 1) was, until 1947, a national holiday on which the imperial worship ceremony called Shihōhai (四方拝) was held.

2. Foundation Day (Feb. 11) was known as Kigensetsu (紀元節), or Empire Day, until 1947, a holiday commemorating the day on which, legend has it, Emperor Jimmu acceded the throne in 660 BCE.

3. Vernal Equinox (Mar. 20 or 21), an imperial ancestor worship festival called Shunki Koreisai (春季皇霊祭).

4. Showa Day, the birthday of Hirohito who has been referred to by his posthumous name Emperor Showa (昭和天皇, Shōwa Tennō) since his death in 1989.

5. Greenery Day (May 4). This is the former name for Hirohito’s posthumous birthday. In 2007, Greenery Day was moved to May 4 and April 29 was renamed Showa Day. From 1985 to 2006, May 4 was a generic “national day of rest,” one more day expanding Golden Week.

6. Autumnal Equinox (Sep. 23 or 22). Like the spring equinox, this was an imperial ancestor worship festival called Shuki Kōreisai (秋季皇霊祭).

7. Culture Day (Nov.3). While this day commemorates the 1946 announcement of the new Constitution, it is actually Emperor Meiji’s birthday. The timing of that announcement was probably not a coincidence. Kenpō Kinenbi, or Constitution Memorial Day, takes place on May 3 and celebrates the promulgation of the 1947 Constitution of Japan.

8. Labor Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 23), again, is the imperial harvest festival called niiname sai (新嘗祭). Niiname-sai (新嘗祭, also pronounced Jinjōsai — lit. Celebration of First Taste) is a Shinto harvest festival that takes place at the Imperial Palace and shrines throughout the country on the 23rd and 24th of November.
   According to the Encyclopedia of Shinto, “The Emperor arranges an offering of sake, rice porridge, and steamed rice (made from the newly harvested rice) served in special vessels crafted from woven beech leaves (kashiwa) and presented to the kami (gods) on a special reed mat (kegomo). Following this evening meal (yumike), the Emperor purifies himself in seclusion (kessai) for the night and, after changing robes (koromogae), prepares the morning offering of food for the kami.”
   The rite is called Daijōsai (大嘗祭) when the emperor performs it for the first time after ascending the throne.

9. The present Emperor’s Birthday is Dec. 23, or Tennō Tanjōbi. With the abdication of Emperor Akihito and the enthronement of his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, next spring, I suspect that Dec. 23 will be renamed Heisei no Hi once Feb. 23 becomes the new Tennō Tanjōbi, bringing the number of national holidays to 17, and those related to the Emperor to 11. (Actually, there will be even more holidays due to the ceremonies related to the abdication and enthronement.)

As for the 10th, Marine Day (the third Monday of July), this holiday used to be held on July 20 and commemorated Emperor Meiji’s return to Yokohama at the end of a trip around the Tōhoku region of Japan aboard the sailing ship, Meiji Maru. (Incidentally, the restored ship is on display at the Etchujima Campus of the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.)

“Why do you know this?” a student asks me.

“Why don’t you?” I shoot back.

“We’re not interested… ”

“This has nothing to do with being interested or not. I’m not all that interested in Japanese holidays myself, but I am curious.”

“Curious?”

“Yes, curious! You have a national holiday called Marine Day. Didn’t that ever make you wonder why there wasn’t a Mountain Day, too? Well, I guess there is now, so go figure. Or, doesn’t it strike you as odd that you have all these national holidays on which you don’t do anything in particular? Again, why have a national holiday? Case in point, the equinoxes: why are they national holidays, but Obon (Japanese festival of the dead) is not? Obon is a much more important holiday for ordinary Japanese people, but it’s not a holiday . . .”

Curiosity. Inquisitiveness. A healthy dose of skepticism. These are things that are sorely lacking among Japanese students today.

Established in 1948, Labor Thanksgiving Day is a day on which, we are told, Japanese “celebrate production and give thanks to their fellow citizens”. In reality, they do little more than blow both the day and their hard-earned money mesmerized by pachinko machines.

Temple of Cats

One of my favorite places in Hakata is Shōfuku-ji, Japan’s oldest Zen Buddhism temple. Every autumn I try to make it over there to take photos of the maple leaves. Today, though, I was surprised to discover that the temple has been over run with very people-friendly cats. (They understand Hakata-ben, too.)

博多にある正福寺は猫だらけですばい。日本の一番古い禅寺はいつのまにか「猫寺」になったと？ 「猫ちゃん」
「にゃん？」
「何ばしょーと？」
「坐禅たい」