A Day in Osaka

Osaka Castle

Japanese Spider Crab (2-3 feet in diameter)

January has been cold, but once we get through the first two weeks of February the worst of winter is over. I'm battling a sore throat and the flu has been going around, but so far we've avoided it.

I took the kids to Osaka (Japan's 2nd largest city) on Saturday.  First, we went to the aquarium where they saw thousands of different species of marine life, then we took a trip to Osaka Castle, which has an excellent museum inside.  Unfortunately, they were pretty much done with it once they'd climbed to the top and looked out over the ramparts.  They seemed a little tired, but I drug them to Osaka Kids Plaza where they managed to kill another two hours easily.  It's a three-story play area and kids' museum with all kinds of things for children to enjoy.  By the time we got back home, they were thoroughly exhausted, and so was I, but it was nice to enjoy a fun packed day together.

A New Year

Crab!

Steamed Oysters--Yum!

Although my back is still far from 100%, it healed enough for me to travel to Fukuoka for the New Year's holiday.  I spent most of my time eating traditional Japanese foods, shopping with the kids and watching TV.  My in-laws got the chance to spoil the kids with money and gifts and certainly enjoyed being able to do so, now that we're here in Japan for a while.  My wife also enjoyed being able to visit her family and friends, and I was glad she had the opportunity to do so, as New Year's is the most important holiday in Japan and we're unlikely to be back in Japan during the winter anytime in the near future.

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HERE IS SOME INFORMATION ABOUT NEW YEAR'S TRADITIONS IN JAPAN BY KANEKO OF THE ISHIKAWA JET ALUMNI ASSOCIATION:

New Year, although “Shogatsu” means January, it is generally celebrated for the first three days or the first week of January and is the most important period for the Japanese. Schools and business close for one week or more, after about December 29^th, and many people who live away from their families return home to spend this time with their families. To prepare for “Shogatsu” a general house cleaning is done, and New Year’s pine and bamboo decoration, sacred straw festoon, and round mirror-shaped rice cake are set out. On New Year’s Eve, bells speeding the old year are 108 times rung at temples and the New Year is welcomed by eating year-crossing noodles. On New Year’s Day, many ware Japanese style Kimono and people go for the first temple or shrine visit of the New Year and pray for health and happiness in the New Year. Shogatsu is also enjoyed by reading New Year’s cards and by children receiving New Year’s gifts.

New Year dishes, Osechi-ryori are special side dishes eaten on the first three days of the New Year. Tiered lacquer boxes are abundantly loaded with multi-hued side dishes, grilled or boiled dishes and vinegary dishes. It appears that present-day Osechi-ryori was developed with the particular practice of keeping it as is for a while, because it is splendid to look at and also out of consideration for reducing housewives’ work for three days. There are some regional differences but Osechi contents are essentially fixed. Those contents are respectively charged with wishes: for example, sea bream (Tai) is “auspicious” (medetai), herring roe (Kazu no ko) indicates” the prosperity for one’s descendants” and sea tangle roll (kobu maki)

means “happiness” (yorokobu).

Kadomatsu are decorations made with assembled pine branches enhanced by stems of bamboo and sprays of plum tree. During the New Year period, a pair of them, one for each side and placed in front of the house gate. In Japan pine, bamboo, and plum tree are taken as good luck, and pine in particular has been valued since ancient times as meaning longevity. Originally, Kadomatsu were for receiving the year of god.

Shimekazari decorates doors at New Year and serves as a charm against evil spirits. The sacred Shinto rope is hung to indicate a purified place for receiving divinities. The Shimekazari is made by attaching good luck charms like bitter oranges, ferns and lobster to the sacred Shinto rope.

Hatsuyume refers to the dream that occurs the night of New Year’s Day to the morning of the 2^nd. If it is an auspicious dream, it is said that the coming year will be a good one. Good dreams, counting from the top, are said to be about “first, Mt. Fuji; second, hawks; third, eggplant”

Zoni is a soup with rice cake (mochi) and vegetables and is an essential dish for celebrating the New Year. In the Kanto area, zoni is generally prepared as a clear soup with square mochi, while in Kansai, it is made with bean paste and round mochi. But the seasoning and other ingredients are different according to each region and household.

Kagami-mochi is a set of two round shaped flat rice cake large and small, about 10-20cm in size stacked on a stand. At New Year, they are displayed in the alcove and offered to the Shinto and Buddhist deities. In Japan there are the old beliefs that at New Year the revered divinity know as the year god (Toshigami) visits homes and the original significance of Kagami-mochi was as worship offerings to the year god.

Nengajo, this is a card sent as a greeting for the New Year. It usually has a picture of an animal appropriately corresponding with that year’s sexagenary cycle (eto) and is sent so that it arrives on New Year’s Day. Japan Post cards indicating a New Year’s gift are popular, because a prize is awarded by lottery. Most business Nengajo come complete with the printed contents, while writing one’s own Nengajo can tax one’s ingenuity. Nengajo also arrive from old friends, it is a pleasure both to write such cards and to receive them.

Otoshidama is money given at New Year to children by parents and relatives who come to visit. Originally, it was said to be a custom born from sharing rice cakes dedicated to the deities at New Year as something bestowed anew by the deities. In recent years, along with the reduced number of children, the amount of Otoshidama money given to one child is increasing. So much that it is not so strange for parents with a lot of expenses at this season to want to make a loan of the money to their children.

Down for the Count at Christmas

Christmas isn't as big in Japan as it is in North America, but most parents still indulge their kids with a present on Christmas morning.  Many Japanese celebrate Christmas in a non-religious fashion with  beautifully crafted (and rather expensive) Christmas cakes and many consider a big bucket of KFC a special Christmas dinner!  In many ways, Christmas is a young couples holiday here with young lovers going out for dinner and an evening stroll. Shops are still fairly busy, though, and there is still the hustle & bustle of Christmas in the air when one is in department stores and shopping arcades.

As for me, I hurt my back on the morning before Christmas day and spent most of the next 48 hours lying on a futon, except for a daily, pain-filled, walk to a chiropractor about two or three hundred yards from our apartment.  Luckily, after three days of misery, I was finally able to get on the subway (the start and stop, herky-jerky motions can trigger a spasm) and travel to a clinic where I was prescribed muscle relaxants and pain killers. So, while the kids were happy to get toys and candies, I'm just happy to be able to get up and move around a bit.  I'm still crooked, twisted, and tight, but at least it doesn't hurt to sit anymore and I can finally walk a reasonable distance. Most of all, I'm just thankful that I'm on the track to recovery and that, despite being in severe discomfort, I was able to quietly sit and observe my kids during the holiday.  It seems that life flies by so fast while we're busy raising children that it's easy to miss their growing up.  This Christmas, rather than worrying about who was opening what or what to do with the wrapping paper, I was able to simply lie there and enjoy their expressions of joy and the priceless idiosyncrasies of my children at play.

Lumineria and Iranian Chit-Chat

Entrance to Kobe Lumineria

Exit of Kobe Lumineria

On Tuesday evening, we went to see "Lumineria" in downtown Kobe.  It was a beautiful display of lights standing 40 feet high or so and stretching for several blocks. It began in December of 1995 to serve as a memorial for those who died in the Great Hanshin Earthquake that had taken place in January of the same year and to serve as a symbol of hope for those who survived.  This year it served in the same capacity as we all remember the earthquake and tsunami of 3/11.

On Wednesday evening, as I was working out in the gym, I happened to meet an Iranian who was competing in the adjacent arena's international power-lifting competition.  We went from small talk to a discussion about the differences between media perception and reality within our two countries and how people were really a lot more alike than not.  Before he let me say goodbye, he insisted I wait for him to return quickly to the arena so that he could give me a small gift for me and my family--an interesting buttery sweet with saffron and cardamom  spices and a bag of Iranian pistachios.  It was a sincere gesture of kindness and I wish I'd had something to give him on behalf of Americans as well, but I simply said farewell in the Farsi blessing he'd taught me earlier.

The rest of the week was rather ordinary: a trip to the library, some window shopping and eating out with the kids since my wife was sick.

A Real Living Room

A relatively boring week at school was capped off with a rather nice weekend.  After hitting the gym on Saturday morning and having lunch, we took the kids to a little Christmas festival with a magician, singing, story telling--and best of all, no cliche manger drama!  Then we and an Australian family we're friends with were invited to a little welcome party held by two Japanese families.  We drank beer, ate sushi and shot the breeze while all of our kids ran around and entertained each other.  Both of the Japanese fathers spoke decent English and one who hosted the party had lived in Virginia for several months and remembered how lonely and frustrating it was for him before he met people who began to show him around a bit. Nothing like a little ex-pat empathy to build common ground--he even offered to lend us an extra TV he had when he found out the kids were watching DVDs on a little seven-inch portable player.

On Sunday, the kids and I walked a mile or two to nearby Taisan-ji temple to enjoy the colors of fall and explore the temple grounds.  Afterward, we soaked our tired feet in a small hot springs foot bath located outside of Taisan-ji onsen (hot springs), before taking a free bus back up to the train station near our house.  Then we walked over to McDonalds for a cheap & easy kids meal and a nostalgic taste of home.  Early in the afternoon, we got the TV, went shopping for a small book case to put it on, and a carpet for the floor, came home and now--voila!--we have a cozy little living room set up where we can watch TV or DVDs though out the could winter months ahead. Can't beat that.

Kyoto Colors

Rafting down the Hosu River Canyon

A Traditional Japanese Inn Nestled among the Foliage.

After a nice Thanksgiving meal of roasted chicken, beef chuck roast, and mashed potatoes & gravy with several of the other JETs on Wednesday, it was back to school.  You see, Japanese thanksgiving day is only one day--Nov. 23--and if it's on a weekend, well, too bad.  Nothing like the extended break we enjoy in U.S. schools.  So, the highlight of the week was Saturday's trip to Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, to see the maples turn and the colors of fall explode.  We were not disappointed--it was absolutely beautiful scenery and would have made for a pristine, romantic get-away had we not been accompanied by tens of thousands of Japanese with a few hundred foreigners thrown in. It was like being at an outdoor night club that had been filled to 150% capacity.  If we were careful, we could slip into a spot along the roped off garden and snap a picture of one of us, making it appear as if all were calm and quiet.  Luckily, we decided to skip visiting more temples in exchange for a ride in a vintage train along a private railroad hugging the side of the Hosu River Canyon and to follow that ride up with a two-hour rafting trip back down the river.  I wouldn't recommend taking children to Kyoto in the fall for leaf viewing or in the spring when the cherry blossoms or in bloom, but I certainly hope ours remember more than being packed into subways and shuffled around throngs of people; I hope they remember that they walked among the fiery maples of their mother's homeland awash in the cascade of Kyoto colors.

Skills Development Conference

Well, this past week included the Skills Development Conference, which was thankfully a lot better than the first professional development experiences I had to endure in August.  The presenters were much better and the presentations were infinitely more useful. There's still plenty of room for improvement, though. 

We rented out a large room in the community center for the kids' birthday party, and since it rained all day, we're glad we did. My wife had ordered a cake that used some kind of laser technology to print a picture of the kids right onto the frosting--although I was a bit freaked out at having to carve up my children's faces just to get a sugar fix. 

Sunday's weather was sunny, but windy, and things are definitely cooling down, but it has yet to drop below 40 degrees for the overnight low, so things aren't too bad yet.  Unfortunately, the apartment is encased in uninsulated concrete and we have single pane windows and sliding glass doors on the balcony, so it's colder inside than it should be. 

This week we'll be renting out the same room at the community center to celebrate Thanksgiving with some of the other ex-pats around town.