Rurousha 流浪者

Soliloquy

2012-03-05T16:07:00.000+09:00

bakelovenotwar.co.za

How do I share my city with her? She's in her twenties. I'm sure she doesn’t want to accompany her doddering old aunt to dusty old temples, and she probably doesn't want to walk the whole day. Well, maybe. She asked if I'd be embarrassed if she wore tekkies.* Ha. She should see my old hiking boots.

We must go to Kappabashi. Kitchen Street. She loves baking. Her blog is really nice. A weapons engineer who makes cupcakes. I swear nobody's normal in my family.

I must take her to a really nice tea&cake shop in Ginza. Expensive, but never mind. How often will she come here? Food halls. She's going to LOVE our food halls, Mitsukoshi and Isetan, probably best two, must go there.

Shopping. Young women like shopping, don't they, but she's not exactly an ordinary young woman. I think she designed ... I'm not sure ... never mind, might've been classified. She said she wants to go to Takeshita-dori. Maybe afterwards we can go to Meiji Jingu. No. Shrine. Don't bludgeon her with shrines. We should rather go to nearby Kiddyland so that she can buy Rilakkuma souvenirs. She loves that bear as much as I do. Maybe the Rilakkuma store in Tokyo Station will be better?

Wednesday is easy. Wednesday I'll show her my shitamachi. I don't have to think about that. I know exactly where to go and what to do. So Wednesday is easy. I wonder if she'd want to go to Sky Tree. Remember she's not you. You love Sky Tree; who says she'd be interested? It's not open yet, anyway, but it's such a nice walk along the canal from Asakusa. I hope it won't be too cold. March is really not a good month to come to Tokyo: it's cold and gray and we don't have blossoms yet and …

Wait. Maybe I can find a few late-blooming plum trees and we can wax lyrical about life's transience.

So. Wednesday shitamatchi, Thursday Harajuku and Shinjuku and Shibuya - I hate Shibuya - but I must show her that famous crossing. Friday. What about Friday? Nikko? Kamakura? Hakone? All of them will be so cold. I wish I could take her to Kyoto but we don't have enough time. Only five days. She'll be here on the 11th, the quake anniversary. I hope we don't have a big quake while she's here. A little one will be OK so that she can feel what it feels like, but please, Namazu, behave yourself. If you harm her, I'm going to, I'm going to … I'm going to necklace you!

Onsen. I have to take her to an onsen. She said she won't be embarrassed to be kaalgat** in front of me, and she's done that Turkish bath thing in Turkey, so she should be OK. Maybe I should listen to The Hero and we should go to Yuzawa. South Africans always go gaga when they see snow.

The Hero is planning all kinds of itineraries. She's going to be SO surprised when she hears him speaking Afrikaans. I think she doesn’t really believe that he's fluent in our kombuistaal.*** I hope he takes her to a sushi restaurant. I don't like sushi. That's blasphemy in Japan, but there you have it.

I must remember what Sixmats said: don't kill your guests with temples and don't try to cram an around-Japan-trip into a few days. They just want to see where you live and what you do every day. She said she's not concerned about destinations; she wants to share my day-to-day life with me.

Ameyoko! I must take her to Ameyoko.

I hope she'll be OK in this small apartment. I hope she doesn't expect my Stellenbosch house. That was a big house with thousands of books and lots of art. Now I have only five hundred books and one calligraphy scroll. I think it's about five hundred. I hope she'll enjoy Tokyo. What if she hates it?

I must remember to buy flowers and a cute card and a small gift before she comes …

* Tekkies = sneakers

** Kaalgat = bare-arsed, i.e. naked

*** Kombuistaal = kitchen language, a disparaging term for Afrikaans

The sleepy bugs woke up and opened the door

2012-03-04T15:19:00.004+09:00

Not a bug, but a fly fishing fly!

Would you like to call tomorrow the 5th of March, or would you like to call it "the day the hibernating bugs woke up and opened the door"?

I don't know about you, but henceforth it's "boisterous bugs day" in my dictionary.

One of my many small delights in Japan is exploring the lunar calendar, which Japan inherited and adapted from the Chinese calendar. It's based on seasons, the rhythms of nature, the cycles that rule a farmer's (and of course a fisherman's!) life.

A Chinese year, for example, has 24 so-called solar terms that are spaced 15° apart along the ecliptic and match a particular astronomical event or signify a natural phenomenon. One of the solar terms, called keichitsu (啓蟄) in Japanese, usually begins on the 5th of March when the Sun reaches the celestial longitude of 345°. Keichitsu means "awakening insects".

It gets even quirkier. Each solar term is divided into three pentads of five days each, in other words, there are 72 pentads in a year. The first pentad of keichitsu is called chichūkeiko (蟄虫啓戸 or ちっちゅうけいこ), which means "the day the hibernating bugs woke up and opened the door".

Now is that cute or is that cute?

I don't have photos of bugs, but The Hero has dozens of fly fishing flies that look like bugs, hence the photo in this post. It's particularly relevant since fishing season officially opened on the 1st of March, as he continuously reminds me. He's itching to go: the trout are calling his name. (The photo is of a fly for tenkara, a traditional type of fly fishing practised in Japan.)

While the insects are knocking on doors, this blog will have to go into semi-hibernation – or at least slow down a bit – in the next few weeks. First my niece will visit me all the way from South Africa, and then it will be the start of the new academic year at university, i.e. ur-pandemonium for pedagogues. I've got a few posts lined up, including my list of best cherry blossom spots, but I'll have to write less and I might not comment as actively on other blogs. ごめんなさい! Things will return to normal in late April.

PS: Then again, I might continue to gambol on blogs as happily as a trout in a Niigata river, so don't blame me if I've just written a lie.

A temple that guarantees beautiful hair

2012-03-02T12:11:00.000+09:00

It's a tiny temple – so easy to miss – yet it offers a wonderful collection of, oh, everything, and it guarantees no more bad hair days!

It's called Shinjo-in (心城院) or Yushima Shōden (湯島聖天), and it hides at the foot of Otokozaka (men's hill) at Yushima Tenman-gū.

I often walk past this temple, but it's so nondescript that I never paid it any heed until a fortnight ago when I went to Yushima Tenman-gū to attend the plum blossom festival. As I marched up that road, a flash of red caught my attention: it was a brand-new ornamental bridge placed across the temple's pond. I hesitated, took a closer look … and almost fell out of my own hiking boots.

The bridge that caught my attention

What did I see but my friends the sexy daikons! The temple is decorated with the exact same symbols that you see at Matsuchiyama Shōden (待乳山聖天) in Asakusa. That was enough to persuade me to explore further, and soon my head was reeling, because it combines so much in such a tiny space! I'll list some of its features, in no particular order:

Frolicking daikons

It’s a Tendai temple. (Japan has two schools of esoteric Buddhism, Shingon and Tendai. They're not similar, but they're closely linked.)

It's devoted to an 11-faced image of Kannon Bodhisattva, but it also enshrines Kangiten Soshin, an elephant-headed god of fertility, family unity and flourishing business. (If "elephant head" rings a bell, you're right, he's based on the Indian god Ganesh.) Kangiten is a mysterious fellow: most of his statues are hidden from the public and only used in secretive rituals. I've read it's because the statues often depict two elephants embracing, and that's apparently too sexy for your average devotee, or maybe it simply reveals too much about those rituals. Who knows.

trocadero.com

The temple has a well called Yanagi Ido (柳井戸, Willow Well) that is celebrated as one of the best wells in Tokyo. Its water is particularly clear, and it's supposed to give you beautiful hair. Drummers of the women's taiko group Shiraume (白梅太鼓, White Plum Taiko), based at nearby Yushima Tenman-gū, always wet their hair at this well before they perform. If it had been a warmer day when I was there, I might have tried to dip a lock or two into the well.

Wash your hair in this well, and you'll never have a bad hair day again.

The pond next to the well is home to several turtles, but you can't see them right now, because they sleep in winter. That's what the sign says. I've really been indoctrinated by Japan's cute obsession: instead of being upset that I couldn't see the inhabitants, my immediate reaction was "awww, cute, sleeping turtles".

Shhh! They're sleeping!

The temple has a small Inari shrine. While religions worldwide are waging wars about who worships the one true god, Japan is a happy smörgåsbord of deities.

It also has a Jizō shrine in memory of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1 September 1923. I don't think Jizō would mind that I also included the tsunami victims of 11 March 2011 in my prayer.

Tiny Jizō statues

Finally, it's one of the stops on the Edo Kannon Pilgrimage, which apparently consists of 33 temples. I didn't even know such a pilgrimage existed, but you can bet your butts I'm going to walk it once I've researched it properly.

So there you go. Another tiny neighbourhood temple, brought to you by your friendly local foreigner. Moral of the story: don't focus so much on the obvious that you ignore the low-keyed treasures.

The entrance to Shinjo-in

Another photo of the bridge and the pond

Jizō

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A complaint about Japan's puny drugs

2012-03-01T08:00:00.003+09:00

The Hero is forever admonishing me that I should complain more on my blog.

"I don't want to complain!" I complain.

"You'll get more readers if you find fault with Japan," he persists.

"I. Am. Not. Bashing. Japan." I give him my fiercest "I am a teacher and I am not amused by your antics" stare, which can intimidate the stroppiest student, but inevitably has zero effect on him.

"Complain about me," he orders.

So I'm officially kvetching about two things in this post:

1) I'm bemoaning The Hero's objection to my lack of grumbling.

2) I'm bellyaching about Japan's ineffectual drugs.

Here in the land of great harmony (大和, Daiwa) you need a prescription for many drugs that are OTC in Western countries, and pills tend to have lower dosages. I've read many explanations for this:

"Japanese have less body mass." True.
"Japanese have delicate stomachs." Watch a salaryman chugging beer after beer after shōchū after shōchū, and decide yourself. (My original intention was to refer to funazushi, but it's too niche to count. Beer, on the other hand, is a staple food.)
"The Japanese government's rules regarding drugs are stricter than other countries' laws." That depends entirely on whether the drug in question is beneficial to middle-aged men or that vexing sub-group called women. It took just six months in 1999 for Viagra to be approved by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which, at that time, had six women among its 204 bureaucrats. It took almost forty years to approve the contraceptive Pill, and that only happened because women's rights groups went ballistic when Viagra had such a smooth entry into society. To this day, only the low-dosage Pill is allowed and less than 2% of Japanese women use it. It should be added, for the sake of journalistic objectivity, that this resistance against the Pill and the concomitant use of condoms probably contribute to Japan's low incidence of Aids.

Whatever the reason may be, my body barely registers whatever Japanese drugs I swallow. One example: when I lived in South Africa, I could buy a hay fever tablet called Telfast, 180 mg per tablet, without a prescription. Here in Japan that same pill, called Allegra, is available only on prescription, maximum dose 60 mg, at three times the South African price.

Now listen, Japan, I'm an African barbarian who's had to cope with dirt, dogs with rabies, mercenaries with AK-47s and viruses that would astonish even Hollywood screenwriters. I need strong doepa. (That's a South African word for folk medicine.)

Two Japanese placebos and one decent South African poison

I seldom get sick; as a matter of fact, apart from hay fever I'm remarkably healthy. My only ailment is occasional backache, the lingering result of a serious car accident many years ago. When my back unhinges itself, I need painkillers. Not Carfentanil, you understand, but Disprin won't do. The problem is that in Japan even Disprin is regarded as very strong.

The Hero is not a weakling. He gyms three times a week. He can walk up mountains in sub-zero temperatures for hours if not days. Although he's slender, he has a pair of shoulders that would shame many a rugby player. Yet he never takes more than half a Disprin when he has a headache. He says it upsets his stomach. Yours truly, greedily guzzling Bufferin, observes this daintiness with confused consternation.

I had no problem in South Africa: I bought an OTC tablet called Syndol, which contains paracetamol, caffeine and codeine. Here in Japan I usually drink Bufferin, which is mostly acetylsalicylic acid, i.e. aspirin. When I heard that a former prescription painkiller called Loxonin would be released OTC, I thought I might finally get something stronger. Ha. It's dead ordinary ibuprofen. Yet when you buy it, the pharmacist asks you if you've used it before, insists on reading copious precautions and warns you in a doomsday voice that you should not use it for more than three days.

Oh, puh-lease. I lived with Ebola virus and Lassa fever, now you want me to be frightened of ibuprofen?

You want to know why I don't I get a prescription for a stronger drug? Two reasons. Firstly, my backache is merely a nuisance, not a crippling disability. If the pain gets really bad, I visit my physiotherapist. Secondly, I realize this post makes me sound like a junkie, but I'm wary of medicine and point-blank refuse to run to a doctor each time I sneeze.

Actually I don't need painkillers all that often, but, you see, I had to find something to complain about. Did I succeed? Is this a decent Japan-bashing post? If you say no, you're going to give me a migraine, so just say yes! OK?

Never mind an extra day: Japan had an extra MONTH

2012-02-29T00:04:00.001+09:00

The rabbit in the moon

Never mind the 29th of February. Japan used to have a leap MONTH when it still followed the old lunar calendar: an extra month added to a year so that everything could be in sync with the seasons.

This process of inserting a day, week or month so that the year can correspond to the seasons is called intercalation. The Gregorian (or Western) calendar adds an extra day; the lunar calendar added an extra month which was called uru-u-zuki (閏月) in Japanese.

Why was this necessary? Let's keep this very short, sweet and simple. According to the old lunar calendar, a month is the period from one full moon to another, i.e. 29 and a half days. This only adds up to 354 days, or 11 days fewer than in the solar calendar. That means the lunar calendar gradually fell behind the seasons, and that's why an extra uru-u month was added roughly every third year.

The thirteenth month could be added at any time, but if it happened to fall in winter, it was believed that the winter would be very severe; and if it fell in summer, it would be a scorcher.

Enjoy the 29th of February, ladies. Propose, demand and indulge.

PS: I've always been fascinated by astronomy. No idea whence, but suffice it to say I'm a regular (that's a polite way of saying compulsive-obsessive) visitor at the Hubble site. I've discovered this great English site about astronomy in Japan. Enjoy.

A conversation with Bakatono

2012-02-27T08:47:00.002+09:00

Friday night. Freezing cold. The Hero has imploded on the sofa and is reading this blog and various comments on his phone.

"You can't call me The Hero," he announces.

"Why not?"

"You make me sound too good to be true. I'm not. I'm poisonous."

"Poisonous?!"

"Yes."

"You're not poisonous. Maybe dangerous, like Cassius."

"Who?"
"Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much; such men are dangerous."

"What's that?"
"Shakespeare."

"Uhn. Don't call me The Hero. Call me … The King."

"What?!"

"The King."

"What's the difference between The Hero and The King?"

"The King rules."

"I'm not calling you The King."

"Then call me Doraemon."

"No. Maybe I can call you Chōnan." (Oldest son.)

"Don't be stupid. You can't call me Chōnan. That's not a name. If you call me Chōnan, StarBrooke will know your Japanese is very bad." (He admires her Japanese ability.)

"I never said it's not very bad!"

"Uhn. Call me … Bakatono."

"You're not baka!" (Baka means mad.)

"It has nothing to do with that. Bakatono was a television character. He was played by Ken Shimura."

"What kind of character?"

"He was a stupid feudal lord."

"Oh."

"Everybody knows Bakatono."

"I don't."

"Stop going to shrines and start watching TV."

"Can I watch you instead?"

"Don't be stupid."

"If you can be a stupid feudal lord, why can't I be a stupid foreigner?"

"No."

"OK. Do you want coffee?" *

Such is life in an intercultural relationship. Even a casual Friday evening conversation** teaches you more about your adopted country than you'd learn in ten books.

* This was a subversive diversion. He's still The Hero.

** It's an ongoing conversation. You can read another dialogue, when he decided he should be called Right-winger, here. The other nomad, Sarah, has the same problem with her man. Read about it here.

A deity and a shrine to help marathon runners

2012-02-25T22:29:00.001+09:00

Sunday 26 February is the 6th Tokyo Marathon, when 30 000 runners will run from Shinjuku via Asakusa to Odaiba. I will hide at home until the madness is over, but I will keep my fingers crossed that all the participants will run with the swiftness of Idaten.

Idaten (韋駄天) is a deva (non-human beings who have longer, more powerful and more contented lives than humans) who is based on Skanda. He's regarded as a protector of monasteries and monks, and in Japan he's also enshrined in Zen living quarters and kitchens.

Kitchens? So what's he got to do with runners? Patience, people, patience. We're running a marathon, not a sprint.

Idaten is famous as a runner; as a matter of fact, a running shoe was named after him: the Mizuno Wave Idaten. As far as I know – and I know very little about sport – this shoe has been replaced by later models.

Here's his story. Although Idaten was trusted by Buddha and was given the task of protecting the temple where Buddha's holy ash was stored, he had a bad habit of snoozing on duty. One day the devil broke into the temple while Idaten was napping and stole the holy relics. When Idaten woke up, the devil was already many miles away, but Idaten realized that he had failed dismally in his duties and started running after the robber. He was so determined to recover the stolen relics that he caught up with the devil, and was able to maintain his honour and fulfill Buddha's trust.

That's one runner's story for tomorrow. I tried my best to find a shrine in Tokyo where runners can pray, but I haven't been successful yet. What I did find was a shrine in Kyoto where you can pray for strong legs. I shrieked when I realized where this shrine is, because it's within spitting distance of the hotel where I always stay when I go to Kyoto … and I never realized this gem was so near.

Yes, I've been to Kyoto several times, but I haven't written many posts about it. I can barely keep up with all my shitamachi stories; I haven't had time for a Kyoto series. Anyway, I always stay at the Palace Side Hotel near Marutamachi Station, and the shrine is a 5-minute walk from the hotel.

Goō Jinja amulet

The shrine is called Goō Jinja (護王神社). Let me reduce a very long legend to a few Tweets. Goō Jinja enshrines Wake no Kiyomaro, who tried to prevent an evil Buddhist priest called Yuge no Dōkyō from usurping the throne in 769. Dōkyō exiled Kiyomaro, ambushed him and wounded him in the leg. Then – if only real life were like this – three hundred wild boars carried Kiyomaro to Usa Hachiman-gū, where he was miraculously cured.

Goō Jinja displays many boar images and has a stone block with footprints that can supposedly cure leg problems. I know it's a Tokyo marathon and a Kyoto shrine, but it can't hurt to go there to ask for strength, can it?

The shrine's website is here.

Lina, my fee is payable in chocolate.

Woe betide women writers

2012-02-25T07:15:00.000+09:00

"As far as I have had the opportunity of judging, it appears to me that the usual style of letter-writing among women is faultless, except in three particulars."

"And what are they?"

"A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar."

-- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

PS: The first speaker is a man. Obviously. Austen is wicked. I adore her.

The scholarly god, the bull and the blossoms

2012-02-23T14:15:00.003+09:00

This is a story about a scholarly god, a bull and blossoms. I assure you, there's a connection that makes perfect sense.

Sugawara no Michizane (菅原道真) was a scholar, poet and politician in Kyoto in the Heian era. He was betrayed by a rival, Fujiwara no Tokihira, and exiled to a minor post in Dazaifu in Kyushu. After Sugawara's death in 903 at the age of 58, Kyoto was hit by various calamities, from droughts to floods, all attributed to his angry spirit. The imperial court, in an attempt to calm him down, deified him as Tenjin (天神), the god of scholarship. Today there are roughly 14 000 Tenjin shrines, or Tenman-gū, in Japan.

Ema at Yushima Tenman-gū with a drawing of Sugawara no Michizane

So what's the story with the bull? Aha. It all started at Sugawara's funeral procession, when the animal that was pulling the cart with his remains refused to go any further than a certain point. So the procession stopped, and his grave was dug on that spot. Today you still see statues of bulls at all Tenjin shrines. It's believed that you'll acquire wisdom if you touch the animal's head and then your own.

Arbitrary linguistic interlude: I don't know whether it was a bull or a cow that pulled his cart. Japanese has a word ushi 牛 that can refer to a cow or a bull, single or plural. Cow is me-ushi 牝牛 and bull is o-ushi 牡牛. English has cattle but that's only plural. Stupid English: it's a language that has clearly never touched a cattle's head.

Bull statue at Yushima Tenman-gū

Bull statue at Kameido Tenman-gū

Right, up next, blossoms. Since Sugawara loved plum blossoms, plum trees are always planted at his shrines. He wrote this famous poem about his favourite plum tree:

東風吹かば kochi fukaba (when the east wind blows)
匂ひおこせよ nioi okoseyo (let it send your fragrance)
梅の花 ume no hana (oh plum blossoms)
主なしとて aruji na shitote (although your master is gone)

春な忘れそ haruna wasure so (do not forget the spring)

I started grinning when I copied that poem, because I remembered StarBrooke's phrase "a real plum blossom post, profuse with poetry celebrating the delicate trees".

I'm cheating. I took this photo at Kameido Tenman-gū last year.

Have we covered all topics now? God, bull, blossoms. OK. We move on.

The biggest Tenjin shrine in Tokyo is Yushima Tenman-gū (湯島天満宮). It's located near Tokyo University and is very popular amongst students hoping to pass their entrance exams. Since these exams are held in January and February, the shrine is packed in these two months. It gets extra busy in February, when the shrine has a plum blossom festival.

The shrine was originally established in 458 AD for Ameno-tajikarao (天之手力雄命), a deity who's associated with strength and power, but Sugawara was also enshrined here in 1355, in honour of his brilliance as scholar. The current shrine was rebuilt entirely from Japanese cypress trees in 1995.

I went To Yushima Tenman-gū this week to attend the plum blossom festival, but it was a total anti-climax. There are no blossoms yet. Zenzen nothing. Perhaps because we've had such a cold winter? (Petal prediction: I suspect the cherry blossoms might also be a bit late this year.) The lack of blossoms didn't deter the visitors, who mostly go to these events to stuff their faces, and it wasn't a wasted journey for me either because I discovered another sexy daikon shrine and another tiny hidden shrine that's built around a tree. More about both later.

Yushima Tenman-gū

Now, a short paragraph about ema, the wooden tablets on which you write your wishes to the gods. When I recently did a post about Imado Jinja and remarked that I'd never seen so many ema at one shrine, commenter csmege responded that "Yushima Tenjin during the exam season might come close". Csmege, you're right. Yushima's ema are distributed on several frames around the main shrine, but if you count them one by one, I'm convinced the total would be more than Imado's.

Here’s a special good luck wish for Cecilia, who's currently finalising her master's degree; Sixmats, who's studying for his JLPT1; and all other students. I sent a silent wish your way when I was at the shrine. がんばってください!

I've included more photos. Sorry. They jump fairly randomly between Yushima Tenman-gū and the other famous Tenjin shrine in the shitamachi, Kameido Tenman-gū.

PS: The Hero says I should rename this blog The Shrine Blog. He might be right, as per usual ...

Sugawara no Michizane

A statue of Sugawara no Michizane at Kameido Tenman-gū

Yushima Tenman-gū

The only blossoms at Yushima Tenman-gū were on a beautiful bonsai.

Bonsai at Kameido Tenman-gū

Ema at Yushima Tenman-gū

This ema asks for entry into Chūō University (中央大学), which is famous for its law faculty.

I noticed this one tucked away beneath many others. I would, wouldn't I? It's a request for entry into Japan's top university, Tokyo University (東京大学). I'll keep 'em crossed for you, 愛－ちゃん!

22/2 is cat day (=^･^=)

2012-02-22T10:28:00.000+09:00

The 22nd of February is known as "cat day" in Japan. That's because 22/2 can be read as ni ni ni (the Japanese word for 2) and that's supposed to resemble nyan nyan nyan and that's supposed to be the sound of a (Japanese) mewing cat. Hence, cat day.

This photo was taken at Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto. Click to see a bigger version.

It's also a good day to introduce you to Japan's three feline superstars: White Basket Cat, better known as Shiro; Hatchan and Maru. Here's my favourite, the amazing Zen-calm Shiro and friends:

Properly weathered

2012-02-21T00:10:00.000+09:00

Pastoral (II) by William Carlos Williams is as good a poem as any to describe why I love the shitamachi. Properly weathered is good. (The two photos were taken in Taitō. You still see copper shingles on old houses in the shitamachi. It's an old form of fire protection.)

When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel-staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best
of all colors.

No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.

A river of colourful fabric in Nakai

2012-02-19T18:53:00.002+09:00

I don't always huddle in my beloved shitamachi. Sometimes I brave the great unknown and travel to a river where colourful bolts of fabric flutter merrily …

I wish I could've said gaily, but that word has been hijacked. Merrily will have to do. We continue.

… where colourful bolts of fabric flutter merrily in Nakai's annual Some no komichi festival. Nakai, a town in Shinjuku ward, is famous for its fabric dyers and kimono shops, and they celebrate this old craft in February by hanging 50 tanmono (a measure of kimono cloth 40 cm wide and 12 m long) above the local Myoshoji River.

Bolts of fabric above Myoshoji River. Click on the photos to see bigger versions.

I first read about this event on Kaori's blog, Shinjuku Daily Photo, last year. I made a note in my diary, actually managed to remember (a major feat!) and finally attended the event this weekend.

Some no komichi is written 染の小道 in Japanese, and it means, translated directly, dye street or dye district. Nakai specializes in a specific way of dyeing fabrics called yuzen (友禅), which is a kind of resist dyeing. Yuzen was created by Miyazaki Yuzensai (1650-1736), a fan painter who invented a technique that keeps colours separate. First a design is drawn onto white cloth, using a water-soluble extract from dayflowers (Commelina communis in Latin; 露草 or tsuyukusa in Japanese). Next, the design is outlined with a kind of rice paste that prevents the colours from bleeding into each other. Then a dye is applied, dried and covered with rice paste; the next dye is applied, dried and covered with rice paste; the next dye is applied …

It takes a long time.

Finally the cloth is washed in running water to get rid of the rice paste, and it's this final step that provides such a spectacular sight in areas like Kyoto, Kaga and Tokyo. Traditional Kyoto fabrics are luxurious, Kaga fabrics focus on five specific colours and flower designs, and Tokyo fabrics are more restrained because the Edo shogunate forbid ostentatious decoration and only allowed subdued colours. However, the Edo townsfolk – being rebels at heart – circumvented their overlords' rules by wearing extremely flamboyant linings.

Yuzen crafts were introduced in Tokyo about 200 years ago. The craftsmen originally plied their trade next to the Sumida River, but eventually moved to the cleaner water of the Kanda River and the Myoshoji River in Shinjuku. Today, 268 experienced artisans remain in the area, of whom 38 are government-designated master craftsmen.

You can read more at this website, a great resource for traditional Japanese handicraft.

Here’s another excellent website about yuzen fabrics that explains it much better than I can. I'm a complete klutz with my hands, and even sewing on a button defeats me. I can, however, touch type at a vicious speed. Does that count?

I've included more photos of the bolts of fabric above the river, as well as the noren which you can see in front of every commercial establishment in Nakai, ranging from traditional to funky.

This design reminds me of Africa.

Cute: noren at a bicycle shop

The five scoundrels on Asakusa's roofs

2012-02-17T22:41:00.001+09:00

I've done it! Mystery solved! Am I good or am I good?

It started with a thief called Rat Boy, whose statue appears on a roof in an Asakusa shopping street near Sensō-ji. I'd barely published that story or fellow blogger Lina demanded to know: "There are other statues too, you know, what about those other statues?"

Your wish is my command. I sniffed around and discovered that all those statues are thieves from the 1700s! The fact that one of them was so beautiful that he could disguise himself as a woman only makes the story even better.

This is the leader of the five thieves, Nippon Daemon.

As I mentioned in a comment on Lina's blog, these statues give me yet another reason to love the shitamachi. Do we honour the high and mighty? No. We admire clever robbers who thumbed their noses at their feudal overlords. Our heroes actually plied their trade in Osaka, and the kabuki play based on their antics is set in Kamakura, but what's a little geography between friends?

Bear with me. I have to bombard you with Japanese names for a few paragraphs, but I won’t use too many kanji.

The real thieves were Karigane Bunshichi, An no Heibei, Gokuin Sen'emon, Kaminari Shōkurō and Hotei Ichiemon. Playwright Kawatake Mokuami (1816-1893) turned their exploits into a kabuki play which eventually became more famous than the original characters. He replaced the real Osaka thieves with fictional Kamakura characters called Nippon Daemon (based on the real thief Nippon Saemon, who was executed in March 1747), Benten Kozō Kikunosuke, Nangō Rikimaru, Tadanobu Rihei and Akaboshi Jūzaburō.

The play's full name is Aoto zōshi hana no nishiki-e (青砥稿花紅彩画, The glorious picture book of Aoto's exploits), but it's more commonly known as Shiranami gonin otoko (白浪五人男, Five men of the white waves) or Benten Kozō (弁天小僧). The latter is the main character in the play.

(Shiranami, white wave, used to be a euphemism for thieves. I don't know why. Anybody?)

A woodblock print of the five thieves, by Toyohara Kunichika

Benten Kozō is an interesting character. He was so beautiful – or such a good actor – that he could disguise himself as a woman and get away with it. It's also a particularly challenging part for kabuki actors: most specialize in either male or female roles, but in this particular play they have to morph from macho peasant thief to refined high-ranking lady.

The play was turned into a 1958 movie called Benten Kozō (title translated as The Gay Masquerade or The Jovial Rascals of Edo). It was directed by Daisuke Itō.

Here's a scene from the kabuki play, but be warned: kabuki is emphatically not everybody's cup of green tea. I couldn't find anything on YouTube about the movie.

If you're wondering how I found out about the five thieves, I wish I could claim wild rikisha rides, a secret rendezvous with an eccentric historian and daring midnight escapades through Asakusa's back alleys. The truth, I fear, is more mundane, as the truth is wont to be. I simply found a statue that politely included a written description, and that was followed up by some Googling. Elementary, my dear Watson. (You do know Sherlock Holmes never really said that, don't you? See here.)

I've included the description below. It says that these five thieves have become the guardians of Asakusa, but you should be careful as you walk through the streets, for they are clever and cunning. See why I love the shitamachi?

I've also included photos of the thieves' statues. The only one which I don't have myself is Nangō Rikimaru, but you can see him here on Lina's blog. He's the second photo in her post.

PS: Why is the plural roofs and not rooves?

If you click on the photo to see the bigger version, you might be able to read it.

Benten Kozō

Tadanobu Rihei

Akaboshi Jūzaburō

A woodblock print of Benten Kozō disguised as a woman, by Utagawa Kunisada

Rat Boy, the guy who started my quest. (He was not a member of the gang of five.)

That's Rat Boy on the roof, opposite the Asakusa Public Hall.

Obligatory blog birthday post

2012-02-16T10:34:00.002+09:00

I wrote my first post on Valentine's Day 2011. (I didn't do this birthday post on Valentine's Day, because I wrote about illegal sex instead. That means my birthday post is two days late, but never mind, let's pretend I'm on Africa time.)

I started my blog for three reasons. Firstly, I realized that various recipients weren't reading my emails about Japan. I don't blame them: they have zero interest in this country, and they probably got bored with my relentlessly cheerful missives. I suspect modern mankind regards happiness as naive, boring and irritating. We're supposed to be cynical, disillusioned and depressed. I'm not. Tough titties.

Secondly, I couldn't find much information about things that interest me: quirky shitamachi shrines, old forgotten traditions, mythology. You can find information on Japanese websites and in old out-of-print English books, but there isn't much on contemporary English websites. I thought maybe there might be three other odd individuals who might be interested in it too, and I could share what I unearthed with them.

Thirdly, I was tired to death of Japan-bashing and "Japan is wacky" blogs. There is one question that no foreign Japan-basher has ever been able to answer to my satisfaction: if Japan is so awful, why don't you go home? I enjoy balanced blogs that write about the good and the bad, but one year ago, so many had gone private or inactive. To mention only one: Mutant Frog Travelogue. (They might be back in business. Yay!) So I started writing a blog for myself.

A wider audience

I continued writing for an audience of one for several months. The Hero was generous in his criticism: you should find a specific topic, you're not sarcastic enough, you should write about everyday stuff.

Initially I made no attempt to promote my blog. Then I took a small step that changed things in a big way: I participated in Show Me Japan. It closed shortly afterwards, but it introduced me to bloggers like Lina of Urutora No Hi. She commented on my blog. I replied. I started commenting on other blogs where I'd been a lurker for a long time. I realized a) that it's fun to chat to other bloggers, and b) that if I checked out the followers/commenters on blogs I liked, I would often discover other bloggers who love Japan, books, words, travelling, gardens, museums, history. Nerds. Nomads. Poets. Bookworms. Eccentrics. Philosophers. Photographers. Parents. Loners. Marathon runners. Darn dinkum interesting folk. That's the best thing about blogging: it helps you to meet, virtually speaking, fascinating people all over the world.

I'm still shocked whenever a new person comments or starts following my blog. It makes me nervous, too, especially when that person is Japanese: now I have to research extra carefully and make absolutely sure I'm not writing rubbish.

Lessons

It's difficult to do a post every day, especially if it includes facts and photos. I try to do at least fifteen new stories every month. I suspect I won't be able to maintain this tempo. I wonder when I will run out of stories, but on the other hand, could you ever tell all there is to tell about Japan? Or just Tokyo? Or only my shitamachi? No.

Posts I think will be popular seldom are. I don't try to predict anymore.

I believe you either have to acknowledge comments on your blog, or you have to pay a courtesy call to that person's blog. The courtesy call often turns into a regular date.

Blogging is more fun but harder work than I thought it would be. I research my stories and check my facts, and that takes time.

Other Japan blogs

There is one type of blog I've started ignoring: bitterbekkers. "Bitterbek" is an Afrikaans word that means "bitter mouth" or more precisely "bitter maw". I love rants, especially about cyclists!, but neverending sarcasm is tedious. Such bloggers allege that they're portraying the "real" Japan, and I often get the impression that they're trying to outdo each other in cynicism, four-letter words and clever cutting comments. To them, life seems to be a neverending pissing contest.

Sorry that you got yourself a raw deal, Gaikokujin-sama, but that isn't my reality. It's not all Hello Kitty and cherry blossoms, but it isn't just racism, radiation and non-stop/weird/no sex either.

Quo vadis with this blog?

I don't know. I will continue writing about my beloved shitamachi, old stuff and books. I hope I can continue my conversations with individuals from all over. I look forward to meeting many more.

Thanks for our chats! Don't stop!

When sex between white and Japanese was forbidden

2012-02-14T06:13:00.003+09:00

I'm a white South African woman who loves a Japanese man. There was a time when this would've landed me in jail for breaking a law that forbid sex between whites and any other race. It was called the Immorality Act, and of all the horrors that South Africa inflicted upon its people, this one is of special significance to me.

I don't want to retell a complex history of a complex country. You know about apartheid, a government policy that segregated people according to their race. We lived in different areas, had to go to different beaches, worshipped the same god in different churches. Apartheid laws started crumbling in the 1980s thanks to increasing pressure not only by the African National Congress (who was then regarded as terrorists), but also by leaders in the white, coloured and Indian communities. The Immorality Act (English here, Japanese here) was lifted in 1985 and apartheid was finally abolished in 1994, when Nelson Mandela became South Africa 's first black president.

Throughout those apartheid years, Japanese people enjoyed a unique status in South Africa: they were counted as honorary whites. That is, they were white according to the Group Areas Act that determined where you could live, but non-white when it came to the Immorality Act. You could live together, but kerfuffling under blankets was not allowed.

Why this special status? Because money is more important than the virtue of virgins. When Yawata Iron & Steel Co purchased 5 million tons of iron from South Africa in the 1960s, worth more than $250 million, the South African government realized that it might not be a good idea to ban Japanese trade delegates to black townships. All Japanese people would henceforth be regarded as white, and they had almost the same rights as whites, except that they couldn't vote and were exempt from conscription. If you'd like to read a complete report, I recommend this paper called The Policy of Apartheid and the Japanese in the Republic of South Africa by Seiro Kawasaki.

It should be added that only a tiny handful of Japanese – about fifty – lived in South Africa in the 1960s, and only one had permanent residency.

This special status was insane, and liberal South African newspapers said as much. There was a cartoon in The Star of 5 May 1962 in which one Japanese says to another: "Honourable paper say Japanese government reciprocating by declaring all Honourable Europeans in Tokyo yellow."

It gets even crazier. There were roughly 6 000 Chinese in South Africa at that time, but they were not regarded as white. This caused fury in their community. They finally obtained the same official rights as the Japanese in South Africa in 1984, when their number had increased to 10 000.

Now for the cherry on the top. Fast forward to June 2008, when the Chinese in South Africa, now numbering 200 000, won the right to be reclassified as black so that they could benefit from the black government's affirmative action policies. "The [Chinese] association said their members often failed to qualify for business contracts and job promotions because they were regarded as whites."

I met The Hero long after the Immorality Act was killed, but I'm friends with an older couple, a South African man and a Japanese woman, who had to live in Japan in the 1970s to escape persecution. I don't know if South Africa will ever have normal racial relationships, but I do believe that you can't dwell on past injustices and bear a grudge for generations: always remember, but always move on. Happiness is the best revenge.

I know of four South African women who are currently living in Japan with Japanese men: two are middle-aged, two are young. Perhaps my younger compatriots don't know about the days when they would've had to submit themselves to midnight raids; police confiscating bed sheets for evidence of semen; and ostracism by church, school and community. Perhaps they do, and they're quietly raising a middle finger to Verwoerd & Co.

Here's my Valentine's Day message to The Hero: You will always be my Valentine, and the laws of neither gods nor men will ever change that.

And if you don't give me an awesome present on White Day, I'm calling the security police.

Help! How do I access messages?

2012-02-13T05:00:00.000+09:00

My dashboard tells me I have messages from followers. When I try to access those messages, nothing happens. Blogger tells me to log in with my account (I'm logged in already, you dumb program!), but when I try, nothing happens.

I tried Googling this problem. No success.

So ... any advice to a technologically challenged African barbarian?

PS: I have a very busy day ahead of me and won't be able to respond until tonight, but any suggestions would be very welcome.

This is what my language sounds like

2012-02-11T18:38:00.001+09:00

A while ago I promised I would do a post about Afrikaans songs. Oh dear. It's more work than I thought it would be, and it's aggravated by the fact that I've lost touch with contemporary culture in South Africa. (Please don't ask me about Die Antwoord. I don't get it. I don't want to get it.) So for now, while I continue my research, I've selected two golden oldies that are very natsukashii (that's a Japanese word for "dear" or "missed") to me. You'll notice the central themes that unite these songs: an abiding love for Africa, as well as loss and longing.

Quick recap: Afrikaans, my mother tongue, is a South African language developed from 17th century Dutch. It has adopted words from Malay, Khoisan and Bantu languages, but 90% of its vocabulary is of Dutch origin. Yes, I understand Dutch (with a bit of effort) and Flemish (easily). Afrikaans has about 6 million native speakers.

Tomorrow we return our focus to Japan. Tonight, songs from home. I mean my first home. Japan is now my home. It gets confusing, but you know what I mean, don't you?

Halala Afrika, by Johannes Kerkorrel

Halala Afrika is a beautiful song by a brilliant songwriter whose stage name was Johannes Kerkorrel ("kerkorrel" is an Afrikaans word for "church organ"). He caused a music revolution in South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, since he openly defied the white government and the Dutch Reformed Church in his songs. He was fired from the Afrikaans newspaper where he worked and banned from the national broadcaster, but his songs were hits in South Africa, Belgium and the Netherlands. He committed suicide in 2002.

Halala is a Zulu word that means "welcome". Afrika is the Afrikaans spelling of Africa.

English

When this land was young and the horizon wide open

It was green in this hemisphere south of the equator

And at dusk when the sun set and the cattle walked home

You could hear the call of the women across the hills:

Halala, we are Africa, forever. (The Afrikaans is ambiguous. It could also mean "our Africa is eternal".)

Tula tula mtanami, tula tula sanaboni, tula tula mtanami,
Ubab' uzobuya sihlale naye, ubab' uzobuya sihlale sonke.

Then the ships arrived from the west, white sails across the sea

To ask for food and water, but to stay for so much more

And this land that was so open, this land we abandoned

For the ghettos of cities we were given copper wires:

Halala, we are Africa, forever.

Tula tula mtanami, tula tula sanaboni, tula tula mtanami,
Ubab' uzobuya sihlale naye, ubab' uzobuya sihlale sonke.

Our mother's womb hid many treasures

Diamonds and coal, gold, noble metals

And the people turned into slaves, paid to tunnel

Into the earth to remove every shred of wealth

And the wide open savanna was strangled with barbed wire

And all the animals – from elephant to gemsbok – had to bow

Before the power of the big game hunter and his massive guns

Until nothing remained but silence, only silence ruled:

Halala, we are Africa, forever.

(The song includes a chorus in Zulu, one of South Africa's black languages. Translated into English: Hush, my child; hush, little baby; hush, my child. Father will return, we shall stay with him. We were living happily; return this land we enjoyed to us.)

Afrikaans

Toe die wêreld hier nog jonk was en die horison wyd en oop
Was dit groen hier in die halfrond, suid van die ewenaar
En in die skemer as die son sak en die beeste huis toe loop
Klink die roepstem van die vroue oor die heuwels van die land:
Halala, ewig is ons Afrika.

Tula tula mtanami, tula tula sanaboni, tula tula mtanami,
Ubab' uzobuya sihlale naye, ubab' uzobuya sihlale sonke.

Toe kom die skepe uit die weste, wit seile oor die see
Om te vra vir kos en water en te bly vir soveel meer
En die land wat een tyd oop was, die land het ons verruil
Vir die ghetto’s van die stede is ons koperdraad gegee:
Halala, ewig is ons Afrika

Tula tula mtanami, tula tula sanaboni, tula tula mtanami,
Ubab' uzobuya sihlale naye, ubab' uzobuya sihlale sonke.

Daar was rykdom in die maag van ons moeder Afrika
Diamante en ook steenkool, goud, edel metaal
En die mense word die slawe hier want die mense word betaal
Om te tonnel in die aarde, elke greintjie uit te haal

En die groot en oop grasvlaktes, span dit toe met doringdraad
En van die olifant tot die gemsbok, al die diere moes kom buig
Voor die mag van die grootwildjagter, voor die mag van sy groot geweer
Totdat net die stilte oorbly, totdat net die stilte heers:

Halala, ewig is ons Afrika.

Kinders van die wind, by Laurika Rauch

I know an age-old song
about life’s joys and sorrows,
about shipwrecks long gone
to the depths of the sea.
The words are lost forever
but still the tune lingers on —
like a dimly recalled image
from a very old story.
Visions, dreams, and names
have been scattered by the wind,
and where all the words have gone
only a child could guess.
Nomads without direction,
seekers that never find…
Ultimately, we are all just
children of the wind.

Rat Boy, the Robin Hood of Japan

2012-02-10T08:09:00.001+09:00

He was the greatest robber in old Edo. His real name was Nakamura Jirokichi (仲村次郎吉); his nickname was Nezumi Kozō (鼠小僧), which can be translated as Rat Boy.

Jirokichi was born in 1797. He was a cabinet maker's apprentice when he was a young man, but he led such a wild life that his father disowned him. That's when he started his famous career as a burglar. He was first caught in 1822 and banished from Edo, then captured again in 1831.

A statue of Jirokichi in a shopping street near Sensō-ji in Asakusa

He confessed that he had broken into more than 100 samurai estates and had stolen over 30 000 ryō (cold coins) in his 15 years as a cat burglar. His exploits turned him into a folk hero. He had very little money in his possession when he was caught, which strengthened the popular belief that he had robbed the rich to give to the poor. (It's very possible that he wasted all his money on booze and babes, but let's not spoil a good story with conjecture.) Commoners were delighted to hear that the daring thief had fooled their despotic overlords.

After his second arrest, his punishment was death: he was put on a saddle-less horse, paraded through Edo and executed in August 1831.

He was buried at Ekōin (回向院) in Ryōgoku (両国), and you can still visit his grave. His original tombstone has disappeared because so many people took chips from it, believing that it would ensure good luck in gambling or in financial matters. A new tombstone was made, and nowadays visitors scratch a special rock with a pebble and put the dust in their wallet. This, it is said, will give you a share of the luck that Rat Boy enjoyed for many years, and will make your wishes come true.

Jirokichi's grave at Ekōin in Ryōgoku

If you're wondering about his nickname, it isn't clear why he got it, but I'll summarize the most popular theories:

He was a small man with rat-like features.
He broke into mansions through the roof, like a rat.
He was quick and smart, like a rat.
He carried a bag of rats with him. When he entered a wealthy mansion, he released them. If the residents awoke and heard a noise, they thought it was a rat and went back to sleep.

Jirokichi was immortalized in a kabuki play called Nezumi komon haruno shingata (鼠小紋東君新形). It was first performed in 1857 with Ichikawa Kodanji IV (四代目市川小團次) in the lead role.

Ekōin is an interesting place that includes a special cemetery for pets, but more about that in my next post!

This rock at Jirokichi's grave is believed to bring good luck. You should scratch it with a pebble, and then put the dust in your wallet. (It's a replacement. The original tombstone was chipped away into nonbeing.)

Good luck dust

Side view of the grave

A print of Ichikawa Kodanji IV as the Rat Boy

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Hay fever hell

2012-02-08T11:24:00.001+09:00

Oh wretched life! Oh accursed fate! Oh odious abhorrent piteous calamity! Oh condemnation, oh malediction, oh abomination! Oh woe is me, for I am locked in the deepest dungeons of despair.

I knew this was coming. I was awaiting it with fear and trepidation, preparing my arsenal, quietly praying for salvation. Then it arrived. It was a very cold day, when any normal person would sniff due to a cold or the flu, but yours truly was sniffing courtesy of her first hay fever attack of the season.

Yes I know it's winter! Don't tell me it's impossible to get hay fever when it's snowing! Don't argue with me when I'm feeling crabbier than a woman who's got PMT and menopausal hot flushes at the same time! Enough already!

I have hay fever or, in Japanese, kafunshō (花粉症). Though I hate the condition, I love the word that describes it. It sounds just like a sneeze: Ka-FUN-shoooooo! Ka-FUN-shoooooo!

I used to get bad hay fever attacks in South Africa, too. Eventually I got clever and started taking anti-histamine tablets before spring arrived, and that usually prevented this head-wrapped-in-cotton-wool feeling. My first year in Japan was blessedly hassle-free, but in my second year the enemy launched a full-frontal attack. Apparently this is common: it's almost as if your body needs time to realize the "new" pollen is similar to the "old" pollen, and that it should go into defense mode.

My arsenal includes tablets called アレグラ (Allegra), a nasal spray called アラミスト (Aramist) and even – for days when my hay fever is so bad that it makes me cough – an inhaler called フルタイド (Furutaido).

Japan, and Tokyo in particular, has one of the highest levels of hay fever incidences in the world, thanks to the sugi (Japanese cedar) forests that surround the city. It is said that 25% to 30% of Tokyoites suffer from severe hay fever symptoms. I wrote more about this problem here.

Sugi trees usually reach their peak pollen production in late February, but as soon as that's over, it's hinoki (cypress) time. That means that if you're susceptible to both pollens, as I am, you face an unbroken period of misery from late January through early May.

Arbitrary paragraph 1: I used to be surprised that students were surprised that Japan wasn't my first hay fever experience. A very common response: "I thought kafunshō was only in Japan." That puzzled me, until I realized it's probably linked to the belief that only Japan has four seasons. If only Japan has spring, then only Japan has hay fever, right?

Arbitrary paragraph 2: Masks. Many foreigners dismiss masks as a waste of time. I've tried it several times. My verdict? I just don't know. It's definitely not enough; I have to take medicine, too. Does it help? I'm not sure that it protects you physically against pollen, but it might be an emotional support. I don't wear it anymore. It irritates me, and I'm plenty irritated enough already thank you very much now let me suffer in silence. Sneeze.

Salty stories from the shitamachi

2012-02-06T15:29:00.002+09:00

After the saccharine sweetness of Hello Kitty, I needed an antidote, hence this post about salt.

Have you noticed the small piles of salt next to a restaurant's entrance? You usually see it in front of more traditional establishments, which means it's a common sight during my shitamachi wanderings. These piles of salt are called morijio (盛り塩, pile of salt) or shiobana (塩花, salt flowers), and it's supposed to ward off evil and attract customers. To the good and the pure shall come prosperity!

This is a sushi restaurant in my neighbourhood. Can you see the salt?

The belief that salt can ward off evil and illness can be found in many cultures. Here in Japan salt plays a major role in Shinto purification rituals, and sumo wrestlers scatter it on the arena before they start fighting. They do this to drive out all evils, so that their match will be fair and honourable.

Two small piles of salt on both sides of the door

I'm not going to rewrite Wikipedia's entry on salt; I'd rather tell you some salty folklore.

昔々, mukashi-mukashi, a long time ago, it was believed that you shouldn't buy salt at night. If you did so, you'd never succeed in marrying off your daughters. If you ran out of salt at night, it was better to borrow some from your neighbour.

An even bigger mistake was to say the word shio (塩, salt) at night, because it sounds just like shi (死, death), and it's always a bad idea to invite death in to read you a bedtime story. If you had to say it and felt "that white stuff" wasn't poetic enough, you used the phrase nami no hana (波の花, literally wave's flower, i.e. the crest of a wave). There's a distinct resemblance, isn't there?

Another forgotten-by-now custom is that when an unwanted guest finally left a house, the housewife would scatter salt over the entrance to undo the mischief the visitor may have brought with him. (I really need to keep some salt in my classroom … ) Ditto people who returned from a funeral: they had to be purified by salt at the entrance before they entered their own home.

I also want to tell you about a dog called おいぬさま, O-inu-sama or Honourable Dog, that can be found in a tiny shrine at the back of Kameido Tenjin. It’s really small, hidden behind a bigger building next to the parking lot. (I only discovered it because I always get lost.) I include him in this story because he's covered in salt. There was a booming salt trade in this area during the Edo period, i.e. plenty of wealthy merchants, and to this day you can still pray for health and wealth at this tiny shrine. Nobody is quite sure where the dog comes from, but he was probably enshrined at another location near Kameido Tenjin. It's possible that he was one of a pair, and that his mate was destroyed during the WWII firebombing. That might also explain the damage to the statue.

The salt-covered O-inu-sama at Kameido Tenjin

A last piece of arbitrary information: Japan's best salt is arguably Nuchi-Masu, made on Miyagi Island in Okinawa. Even if you don't agree that it's the best, you'll have to admit it's the healthiest: it contains 21 different minerals (but less sodium nitrate) and actually lowers your blood pressure. The production process was designed by a man called Masakatsu Takayasu, who's a physics graduate. You can read more about Nuchi-Masu here.

Oh, no, that wasn't the last bit. This is the last bit. You do know that salary is derived from the Latin word for salt, don't you? More specifically, it's based on the Latin word salarium, which referred to the stipend paid to soldiers for the purchase of salt. Whether this etymology confers a status of purity on sararimen is another matter altogether.

An über-icon called Hello Kitty and the cult of cute

2012-02-05T14:30:00.000+09:00

Hello Kitty is a cat. Her length is five apples, but her weight is only three apples. (I can't help thinking that's a mathematical blunder, but let's not get too literal.) Her blood type is A+++++, and she loves eating yummy cookies (but her weight remains three apples) and "buying things". She has a significant other called Dear Daniel.

Hello Kitty was created in 1974 and registered in 1976 by Sanrio, a Japanese company that creates cartoon characters and sells branded items. She generates more than $1 billion a year from sales and licensing, and though she has competition – ranging from Mickey Mouse to the Teletubbies – she remains top dog. Err. Top cat.

Millions and millions of women are obsessed with her. You can even, heaven help us all, have a Hello Kitty wedding. Any man who's willing to marry a woman in a Hello Kitty ceremony deserves the wife he's getting.

I couldn't resist, either: I bought a phone strap of Hello Kitty reading a book.

I became intrigued by this obsession as well as Kitty's mouthlessness. I was convinced this muteness had a very deep, very Freudian significance, so I went in search of proof for my suspicions. As you know, that's the basis of all True Scientific Research: first reach your conclusion, and then find facts to back it up.

Kitty is the queen of cute, but she frequently abandons her kingdom of kawaii for a sovereignty of schmaltz and kitsch. (Sounds like a law firm: Schmaltz & Kitsch.) Here in Japan, a country ruled by kawaii, she is the über-icon, the ur-archetype of kawaii. She is everywhere. Silent, dumb, innocent, cheerful, obliging. Why do women like her so much? Why - in a country still famous for its aesthetics, for the simplicity of its haiku and the quiet empty spaces of its watercolour paintings – why did kawaii take over? It's a very recent phenomenon; it didn't really take hold until the 1970s.

Here’s one explanation from an article by Mary Roach which you can find here:

The most obvious appeal of cute to the Japanese is, in large part, the appeal of childhood. "There seems to be this feeling of always wanting to be a child, of never wanting to move on, to grow up and leave it behind," says Yuuko Yamaguchi, assistant general manager of Sanrio's character-design department. Small wonder. Japanese adulthood is, perhaps more so than in most cultures, a time of onerous responsibility and pressure to conform.

"Childhood, in Japan, is a time when you were given indulgences of all kinds - mostly by your mother, but by society too," says Boston University anthropology professor Merry White, author of The Material Child: Coming of Age in Japan and America. "In the US, we are said to be a youth society, but what we really are is an adolescence society. That's what everyone wants to go back to. In Japan, it's childhood, mother, home that is yearned for, not the wildness of youth."

It's interesting that this yearning for childhood, as expressed by an obsession with kawaii, started in the 1970s. That's when

Japan

really turned into an economic super-power: its citizens had cash to burn, but also had many responsibilities and experienced a relentless pressure to work harder, do better, run faster. American pop culture was spreading its influence throughout the world, and here in Japan you had the first generation that had no memories of the war and had experienced neither hardship nor defeat. Yet they still operated under that "onerous responsibility", the fierce pride, the tremendous self-discipline that helped Japan to shake off the ashes of Hiroshima and become the power it was in the 1980s and still is today. (Let's not forget, doomsayers, that it still is the third biggest economy in the world.)

It requires discipline as well as self-denial to maintain the harmony that is so important in Japan. A Westerner's first reaction is to reject this vehemently and to insist on freedom, but don't dismiss what you don't know. Perhaps this way, wa, is equally valid, for though you pay a premium, you get much in return. I digress. This issue – individual vs group; personal freedom (and does it really exist? how free are we to do what we want?) vs conformity - that is another topic for another day.

Anyway, to return to Hello Kitty, perhaps this bloody corny cat is simply a result of wealth, disillusionment and a yearning for childhood with no responsibilities. I read another interesting explanation in this article in The San Francisco Chronicle. It quotes Ken Belson and Brian Bremner, authors of Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion-Dollar Feline Phenomenon. Here's an excerpt:

Hello Kitty quickly struck a chord with Japanese consumers, Belson and Bremner write in their book. When the brand came along, the Japanese had rebuilt their country and had bounced back from the destruction of the war. Japan's hard-working population was poised to enjoy the fruits of an economic miracle, a run of prosperous boom years that would peak in the 1980s.

Hello Kitty was originally aimed at children, but she turned into adult escapism:

When the 1970s arrived, long, daily, mind-numbing [train] commutes were taking the fun out of work for millions of Japanese. Increasingly, women became servants to their salarymen husbands who brought home the bacon but rarely saw their kids. Stuck in new, remote bedroom communities [outside big cities], women wanted comfort, and Hello Kitty, with her soft features and homespun story, was just the kind of nurturing creature to help them escape the hostile, industrialized urban world.

That brings me to my next quote by Hermann Broch, who wrote The Death of Virgil. He said kitsch is nothing other than "an escape into the idyll of history where set conventions are still valid … kitsch is the simplest, most direct way of soothing this nostalgia". Milan Kundera said, a bit more bluntly, that "kitsch is the ultimate denial of shit".

You can't really talk about kawaii without referring to its dark side, kitsch, can you? I tend to equate these two terms, but they're not always similar. One could argue that a three-year-old girl with Hello Kitty hairpins is cute, but a forty-year-old woman with a Hello Kitty bag is kitsch. My rant is not against cute cartoons for kids or even adults – I happen to love Rilakkuma, the bear who loves relaxing – but against a monopoly of kitsch. It's a fine line, but I think adult women who turn into Hello Kitty acolytes definitely cross it.

Rilakkuma is much cuter. January 29th is my birthday.

After reading myself into a migraine, I reached the tentative conclusion that Hello Kitty represents the ideal woman as seen by man: she's cute, innocent, childish, submissive … and she has no mouth! She can't nag, complain, demand, yell or express an opinion. (Sorry, guys, it also means no blow jobs.) What I can't figure out is why women would want to identify with her, or is this identification in itself a denial of adulthood and its unpleasant aspects? "Let me stay a small girl so that Daddy can always look after me; then I don't have to deal with nasty things like decisions and responsibilities."

As far as that mouthlessness is concerned, my friend Sara, who's a poet, wrote this haiku:

her pain is winter-
white silence, unspeakable;
Hello Kitty mute

Sanrio itself explains her lack of mouth as follows:

The reason Kitty's mouth is not drawn is so that anyone looking at her can imagine their own expression for her. When you're happy, you can imagine a smile on her face; when you're sad, she's sad with you. Kitty always knows how you feel, and being your friend, she shares your feelings.

Here's a funny site written by a man who's married to a Hello Kitty fanatic, and here's a food-for-thought academic article about kitsch and gender issues by Rita Felski.

I don't know what I've tried to achieve with this rambling scribbling, and there are many contradictions, but I'm suffering from Hello Kitty post-traumatic stress disorder and I'm going to stop abruptly without having reached any profound insights or earth-shattering conclusions.

Your insights would be deeply appreciated.

Post-script: I originally wrote this a few years ago, after South African friends expressed their befuddlement with Hello Kitty's popularity. A recent chat with fellow blogger StarBrooke reminded me of My Very Scholarly Dissertation, so I edited it slightly and posted it on my blog. Please take into account that I'm not a sociologist or an expert in pop culture. The best English blog about contemporary culture in Japan is Néojaponisme. I'd still rather go to a shrine in the shitamachi than the latest happening spot in Shibuya (or wherever the latest happening area is) [meh], but this blog is well worth a read.

Imado, the shrine of true love and lucky cats

2012-02-03T19:58:00.001+09:00

I got it wrong again. I wrote about Suitengū, the shrine for pregnancy and childbirth, before I wrote about love and marriage. I know that love-marriage-babies isn't necessarily the order in which things happen …

As a matter of fact, quite the opposite. When a couple gets married because the woman is pregnant, it's called dekichatta kekkon (出来ちゃった結婚), i.e. "ready-made marriage" or shotgun marriage. According to the Ministery of Health, Labour and Welfare, 25.3% of all marriages in Japan in 2010 were dekichatta kekkon. I find myself wondering how many of these pregnancies were genuine oopses, and how many were meticulously planned accidents.

Anyway, if you abide by the rules, as Japan is supposed to love to do, you should first meet a nice boy, then get married, then get pregnant. That first step is the most difficult one, and that's why you need help at Imado Jinja (今戸神社) in Asakusa. It not only ensures that you'll find your true love, but it's also the birthplace of Japan's beloved lucky cat, the manekineko. That, at least, is what locals believe. Here’s the legend: Once upon a time, a long time ago, an old woman lived in Imado. She was so poor that she was forced to sell her beloved cat. One night the animal appeared to her in a dream, and told her to make and sell its image in clay. She listened to its advice, sold thousands of cat statues and became very wealthy.

Two large cat statues at Imado Jinja. The male is left, the female right.

As if one lucky cat isn't enough, Imado Jinja offers you two, a male and a female, with えんむすび (enmusubi) written above their figures. A rough English translation would be "love knot" or "partner for life". (There's a Shinto god of marriage who's called Enmusubi-no-kami or 縁結びの神.) So then. If you want that fateful encounter that will change your life, toddle off to Imado. If you've already found your beloved, you can visit the shrine together to pray for continuing happiness.

えんむすび, together till death do us part

I went there on a drizzly day in January. Despite the fact that it was a weekday with bad weather, there were plenty of young girls at the shrine, as well as a number of couples. No single men.

I've never seen so many ema at a shrine: hundreds of thousands of personal pleas for love, passion, romance, eternal bliss, a prince on a white horse (or in a red Ferrari). Cinderella is reincarnated daily in the dreams of hundreds of women at Imado.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of ema

My verdict? Cute but not classy, thanks to dozens of plastic cats and ubiquitous Disney images. It's worth a visit, but I prefer the other place that claims to be the origin of the manekineko: Gōtokuji, a Zen temple in Setagaya. You can read my post about Gōtokuji, as well as more information about the lucky cat, here.

Extra paragraph added for history lovers: Imado used to be famous for Imado-ware or Imado-yaki, earthernware pots and figures made during the Edo period. You can read more about it here.

Entrance to Imado Jinja

Ema with cats in wedding clothes

More cat statues

Cute cat watering cans in white ...

... and black.

Happy New Year wish (2012 is the year of the dragon)

Disney characters on a bench

Even the "no smoking" sign is written on a cute heart.

Couples reading ema

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Suitengū, a shrine for mothers and babies

2012-02-02T09:18:00.000+09:00

Want to get pregnant? Visit this shrine. Mission successful and want an easy delivery? Return. Baby arrived effortlessly? Go back to say thanks.

Or simply go, even if you're a happily childless woman, just because it's fun to be at funky shrines. The shrine in question is Suitengū (水天宮) in Ningyōchō, a place of worship which is associated with Suiten (水天) or Suijin (水神), the Shinto deity of water, the sea, fishing folk, fertility, easy delivery, motherhood and children. Benzaiten, another deity who is associated with water and everything that flows – art, poetry, good luck, even money – is also enshrined here.

Suitengū. Click on the photos to see bigger versions.

There are several Suitengū shrines in Japan, but this one in Ningyōchō has an additional quirky feature: a statue of a dog and her puppy. It is said that if a pregnant woman touches the dog, she'll have an easy delivery, just like doggy moms do. I've also read that this statue embodies Inari, the god of rice and fertility, whose messenger is a fox.

The statue of the dog and her puppy

Three generations

It so happens that every twelfth day is a "dog day" (戌の日, inu no hi) according to the old Japanese calendar, so you should visit the shrine on a dog day in your fifth and ninth month of pregnancy.

More pregnancy traditions: a pre-birth celebration is held in the fifth month, when the mother starts wearing a bellyband (腹巻き, haramaki) to protect her abdomen. Couples also buy a lucky charm (安産御守, anzan omamori) to provide protection during pregnancy and birth. A naming ceremony takes place seven days after the baby's birth, and the parents visit the shrine on the 32nd day after the birth of a boy and on the 33rd day for a girl. This used to be a new-born's introduction to its village.

If you're interested in history, the original Suitengū shrine was founded in the 12th century in Kurume in Kyushu. When the Genji clan defeated the Heike clan in 1185, the six-year-old emperor Antoku and his mother drowned themselves in the sea. They took the Sacred Sword with them, since it symbolizes legitimacy to the throne, and they believed they would find a palace at the bottom of the sea. One of their court ladies fled to Kurume, where she built a shrine to pray for their souls. She called the shrine Suitengū or "celestial palace of the sea".

Fast forward to 2012. After I visited the shrine, I wandered through the backstreets of Ningyōchō. I was looking for the kimono wholesalers' section, but it wasn't as interesting as I hoped it would be. It's a working area, duh, without glorious displays of luscious garments.

The easiest way to get to Suitengū is on the Hanzōmon Line. Exit 5 at Ningyōchō Station is right next to the shrine. Early notice: the shrine's big annual festival is on 5 and 6 May.

Sake barrels at the shrine

What are those wire thingies?

This is a kappa or water sprite. It makes sense at a water shrine, ne?

One of the tiny back alleys in Ningyōchō

Kimono shop. That's yours truly reflected in the window, standing pigeon-toed like a proper Japanese lady. The photos below are of kimono wholesalers' signs.

Mixed feelings about Tsutaya Books in Daikanyama

2012-01-30T19:55:00.007+09:00

Daikanyama is probably Tokyo's most upmarket suburb. It's the enclave of fashionistas and ladies who lunch. I was struck by the absence of men: it's mostly women traipsing around with designer outfits and designer dogs, looking anorectic (referring to both women and dogs) [whippets seem to be à la mode]. All shops are tiny and empty, and all have French names. All restaurants are French or Italian, and all menus are in English. You might as well be in Europe.

I went to this area to visit a new bookstore called Tsutaya in Daikanyama T-site. I was so excited about it that I went there two days after I read about it for the first time. Half an hour later I left with mixed feelings. I wanted to like it. I was prepared to like it. I took ¥20 000 with me, just in case. Perhaps this will tell you more about my experience than anything else: I didn't buy one single book. I'm not sure what put me off. Perhaps its ostentatiousness? I've read the design is supposed to be understated, but everything is screaming for attention, from the lighting fixtures to the massive leather couches.

Ah. Ignore me. I'm too poor and too much of a savage to give you a truly unbiased opinion.

Courtyard between two buildings at Tsutaya Daikanyama

Tsutaya Daikanyama is a massive bookstore spread across three buildings. Each building has two floors: books on the ground floor, and then either music, movies or a bar/lounge called Anjin on the top floor (where you order from iPads, not real menus). It's a bold step in an era when book sales are plummeting, even in book-loving Japan, and we'll have to see whether it pays off. Apparently it's primarily aimed at what is called "premium age clientele". That label irritates me. Premium age? How many more euphemisms for old people will marketers create? [Edit added on 31 January 2012: According to this story in The Japan Times, "premium age" refers to 45 to 50. Oh, I see. Middle-aged. If you're older than 50, you're what? A write-off? Premium caesium?]

Incidentally, I've read that the complex will soon have an anti-ageing clinic. If the self-help book doesn't do it for you, go get some Botox and sheep placenta.

Its other target market is the "urban premium crowd" and the "burgeoning new wealth who looks for subtle quality". That's marketing jargon for pretentious twats.

Let's examine it not as a reader, but as a former publisher and book retailer. You'll need enormous turnover to pay for that space, and profit margins in the book retail industry are notoriously small. I was there on a weekday morning, and for their sake I hope they're a lot busier on weekends.

I didn't see any premium age persons, but there were plenty of urban premium females, with the emphasis on premium. Oh, they'll cost you plenty, make no mistake. They were looking, not buying, mostly in the cookery books section and in the J-pop section. It's the first time I've ever seen a bookstore in Japan with more female than male customers.

I didn't see any young kids in the store. Might that be because Daikanyama mamas put their offspring into nursery schools affiliated with Keio University as young as possible in order to have more shopping time?

The busiest section was Starbucks on the ground floor. I didn't see any customers with book bags in Starbucks.

Is it worth a visit? Yes, it's a beautiful store. Go, by all means! It's a temple of the book. However … I left with the uneasy feeling that its emphasis is on looks, not books; that it's meant for people who buy books for the effect rather than for the contents.

I'm glad I went, and I'll go back because I think it deserves a second chance, but it offers nothing that will dent my loyalty to Jinbōcho and Kinokuniya.

I took the interior shots with my phone. The quality isn't brilliant. Sorry!

Looking down towards the magazine section

My intention was to walk around Daikanyama after visiting the bookstore, but I got bored very quickly. I'm just not a shopaholic. I fled, and forty minutes later I was back in my beloved, scruffy, warmhearted shitamachi. That's when I realized what both Daikanyama and Tsutaya lack.

It's called soul.

You can read more about the bookstore here and here.

Kids' corner

Lounge with grand piano

Listening spot in CD section

This is where you tie your whippet while you buy a book on gourmet dog dinners.

I couldn't figure out what this was, until ...

... I realized it's a dog garden: pet grooming and defrosting of whippets tied to cute gadgets on fake rocks in mid-winter.

Why don't Japanese commuters hate me?!

2012-01-29T21:35:00.001+09:00

Why do foreigners complain that Japanese people don't want to sit next to them on trains?

If you think I'm complaining about their complaints, no, you're wrong!

I'm complaining because I don't have whatever force field they have that repel their fellow commuters.

I've seen this countless times: there are ten empty seats in a carriage. The train stops. One Japanese commuter gets in. Does this person avoid me? No. No hesitation, makes a beeline, plonks down next to me; and there I am, squashed between people, while other Japanese commuters sit in blissful solitude with oodles of space.

What am I doing wrong?! Why don't Japanese commuters fear me?! I want to be feared! I want to sit without a big man crowding my space with his newspaper, or a woman with shopping bags collapsing on my lap, or a teenager who crumples against my shoulder, or a student who's listening to ghastly brain-pulverizing music on his iPhone/pod/pad, or a girl who digs into my ribs with her elbow as she applies some mediaeval torture instrument to her eyelashes.

This lack of discrimination applies to everybody: doddering old fogies, businessmen, grocery-laden housewives, self-conscious schoolgirls, kids, students, blue-collar workers in nikka-pokka, hostess bar ladies in their outfits (or nice girls next door; you never know in Japan) … they all zero in on me.

It's not fair. Hate me! Please, hate me!

I've heard this complaint – "The seat next to me is always empty!" – so often that I assume there must be some truth in it. Yet … don't we all discriminate when we choose train seats?

My first choice is to sit next to a middle-aged woman on her own, because she usually sits quietly, tucked in, occupying little space. Chances are she won't listen to music, won't read a newspaper, won't eat anything and won't smell of cigarettes. She'll probably be polite and she might be reading an interesting book. (Two middle-aged women together, on the other hand, are to be avoided. Chatter chatter chatter.)

Conclusion: I choose a commuter who's exactly like myself! It's not racism, but it's definitely sexism. I'd much rather sit next to a woman than a man. So shoot me.

My second choice is a young OL. She might fall asleep and slump against me, but I don't get uptight when a woman invades my personal space.

My third choice is younger businessmen. They don't sit down balls first with legs spread at least one meter, as older men are wont to do.

I avoid teenage boys, because they'll be either noisy or sleepy. I avoid young girls, because they're too giggly. I avoid men in their 50s, because they all suffer from entitlementitus.

Guess what? I also shun big foreigners, I dodge foreign women drenched in perfume, I bypass any badly overweight commuter of any nationality. Is that reprehensible, or is it merely an attempt to make a crowded commute as pleasant as possible?

I can guess why other commuters choose me. I'm quiet, mousy, self-contained. The fact that I'm foreign is immaterial. I'm not saying foreigners are never avoided because they're foreign, but I do think sometimes it's a bit less nefarious than that.

I'd like to hear about your experience, which might be completely different. Am I correct in guessing it's mostly males who are persona non grata? Do you think you're avoided because you're not Japanese? If your answer is yes, what exactly is it that you do on trains? Or don't do? I really want to apply whatever your secret is!

Life with a Japanese man

2012-01-28T08:38:00.000+09:00

Any relationship requires adjustment, compromise, negotiation and, at appropriate moments, guerrilla warfare. If it's an intercultural relationship, you need to double your efforts.

One day I have to write a serious post about the Japanese man/white woman combination. The opposite, white man/Japanese woman, has been analysed ad taedium, but my combination remains relatively rare. The other day a 50-something white colleague – the immensity of his ego is rivalled only by the enormity of his stomach – said to me, "I've never understood what you women see in Japanese men." Well, Casanova, I don't understand what your Japanese ex-wife saw in you. Evidently she doesn't either.

Yes. One day, after careful consideration and editing, I really must publish a highbrow post, but for now we remain light-hearted.

One of the complexities of life with a Japanese man is that I'm never sure whether ~~he's being difficult~~ ~~I don't understand him~~ ~~he doesn't understand me~~ he's being difficult because he's a man, because he's Japanese or because he's he. He says it's because he's Japanese; I think it's a man thing. He has no doubts about the main reason for my recalcitrance: it's because I'm a southern barbarian and, to add insult to injury, a country bumpkin as well.

Our differences aren't only culture-related.

He's an outspoken charmer; I'm a timid wallflower in social situations.

He has a beautiful baritone voice; I sound like a crow that's been castrated.

He's stubborn. I'm not stubborn at all. I simply have exceptionally firm principles.

He speaks four languages fluently and understands a fifth; I can barely manage two. He corrects my grammar in my mother tongue, Afrikaans. He's always right.

I'm a neat freak; he's a weapon of mass destruction.

I'm impatient; he's calm, except when confronted by bad drivers.

I start shivering below 20 °C; he goes fishing in sub-zero temperatures.

I'm a morning person who starts nodding off at 10 pm; he bounces around like a caffeinated hyperactive toddler at 2 am.

See that tiny figure towards the right? That's The Hero. Fishing.

He doesn't like Tokyo; I do.

He likes Afrikaans pop songs; I don't.

He prefers Veloce; I'm forever trying in vain to drag him into Starbucks.

He goes to gym 3 times a week; I'm a couch potato, except for walking. He doesn't like walking in Tokyo. "It's too far," he says. Then he goes to gym for 90 minutes. D'you know how far you can walk in 90 minutes?!

I've given up. I walk on my own. That way I can wander aimlessly as much I want to. Fair is fair. He doesn't expect me to gym with him and when I accompany him on his fishing trips, even in the snow, it's entirely voluntary. I go hiking while he's fishing. It's a good combination of hobbies.

He's going to read this post and then he's going to say "moenie stupid wees nie". It's a mixed Afrikaans/English expression that means "don't be stupid". He says it rather frequently. I've decided it's an indirect Japanese way of saying "you are a goddess among women and I worship the ground you walk on but you really should replace your scruffy hiking boots with more elegant footwear".

If it's not, please don't enlighten me.

I was a sex therapist in a bookshop

2012-01-26T08:26:00.002+09:00

The best job I ever had was the worst-paid job I ever had: assistant in a bookshop. I had to be an expert on everything, from whodunits (British is best) to sex therapy.

I was a student at the time, and my bookshop job was for pocket money. It was a pointless exercise, of course, because every penny I made was promptly reinvested in the shop itself. While I worked there, I wrote down my funniest moments. Here's another one.

It was a quiet afternoon. I was sitting behind the counter, reading a linguistics textbook.

Gradually I realized that I was not alone. I peered upwards fuzzily, and encountered The Cleavage. A talon dripping in blood-red Cutex languidly waved into my field of vision. Gold bangles shimmered. She displayed three books on the counter in front of me. "Tell me," a sultry voice arose from the depths of The Cleavage, "are these books all based on that big book over there, and which one would you recommend?"

I glanced at "that big book over there" and then at the three books on the counter. "Yes," I said, "that big book and these three smaller books are all based on the Kama Sutra."

"What’s that?"

I wanted to snap at her: "I’m a bluestocking, not a blue movie actress, what do I know?!" Instead I hooked my rapidly flagging smile around my ears and answered in my best "I’m an academic and I shall give you a rational answer" voice: "It’s an ancient Indian erotic manual. It’s especially known for describing various sexual positions."

"Oh," said The Cleavage, "so which one would you recommend?"

"Personally I prefer the missionary," I said. Blank look.

"Let’s see," I continued. "They’re pretty similar, aren’t they?" I turned the books upside down in a futile attempt to get rid of the rather graphic pictures that were displayed right beneath her bosom. Waste of energy. If the front page had the "splitting the bamboo" position, the back page had the "congress of the mare" variety.

I was getting desperate. I simply blurted out the first thing that entered my mind: "Well, they’re the same price, but that one is bigger and thicker, and that’s always better." As soon as I said it, I recognized my double entendre. Fortunately The Cleavage remained blissfully unaware of my foreplay I mean wordplay. "OK, then I’ll take this one, and I’ll also take these two books. Will you take the others back to the shelves?"

"Intercourse I mean of course!" I replied. She bought the Kama Sutra, a book about full body massage and a book of erotic stories. As I handed them over, I did my usual "goodbye I’m so happy you honoured us with your patronage" speech. "Have fun!" I warbled. Yeah, right. Then I delivered my coup de grâce: "Please come again!"

She smiled vapidly and left. Whereupon I collapsed behind the counter in a breathless heap of post-coital exhaustion.

And that, dear readers, is what happens in the genteel, elegant, sophisticated world of the book.

PS: I remembered this incident when I visited the temple of the sexy daikon.

PPS: If you want to see a truly awesome position, go here. Fear not. Your maiden aunt won't be offended.

Obligatory snow photo

2012-01-25T08:03:00.000+09:00

Remember the glorious ginkgos at the University of Tokyo? They're looking a bit different now. I took the top photo with my smartphone on Tuesday morning, after we had a bit of snow overnight. (Nothing compared to northern Japan, but relatively generous for Tokyo.)

The snow had already turned to ice by early morning. I never knew it was so tricky to walk on this slippery stuff. (Don't laugh. I'm from Africa. See comments below photos.) How women do it in high heels I shall never understand. I wore my hiking boots. Elegant, not. Warm and steady, very.

Incidentally, we had snow ánd thunder in Tokyo. Is that common?

Winter

Autumn

Early autumn

*To get serious: Southern Africa has snow, but in limited, very specific places.

The Western Cape, where I grew up, has snow on its high mountains. A town called Ceres gets heavy snowfall, but not exactly heavy enough for skiing.
Astronomical observatory town Sutherland in the Northern Cape, 1450 m above sea level, has temperatures that plunge below -10°C.
Lesotho, a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa, has snow on its highest peaks throughout the year, and in winter its highlands shiver in -18°C.
The Highveld, the plateau on which Johannesburg lies, experiences winter frost that solidifies your bone marrow. I lived in Joburg for several years. It's not as if I don't know cold. The difference is that by noon, you're basking in 20°C+.

Matsuchiyama, the temple of the sexy daikon

2012-01-23T21:35:00.001+09:00

This is a naughty temple, with lots of frolicking daikon immortalized in flagrante delicto. As if that's not enough, it stands on a hill that raised itself in a day, and then a huge golden dragon appeared and coiled itself around the hill, whereupon the heavens poured forth heavy rain that relieved a long drought in the district.

See why I love mythology?

This Asakusa temple is one of my best discoveries in the shitamachi, but like so many treasures in this area, you won't find it in English guide books. It's called Matsuchiyama Shōden (待乳山聖天), and it has two symbols: a money bag and two daikon with intertwined legs, i.e. bonking away merrily. (A daikon is a large white radish that's used in a wide variety of dishes.)

Intertwined daikon

I've read various articles about Matsuchiyama's daikon, and they all say the vegetable has an invigorating effect when eaten, hence its link to sexuality. I find it odd that there's no mention at all of the plant's obvious phallic shape, but maybe I'm just dirty-minded.

Matsuchiyama also imparts wealth, according to legend, hence the money bag symbolism. The wealth/sex thing gets even more interesting when you take into account that the old Yoshiwara pleasure district was very close to the temple. There used to be a canal that linked the Sumida River with Yoshiwara just a few meters from the temple, but it's been filled in and converted to a narrow promenade. Way back then the temple attracted many worshippers from the sex industry, and it very well still might, but these days most visitors are probably looking for love, a successful marriage and fertility of either womb or wallet.

Money bags on roof with blah white-grey sky behind it

You can see the daikon and money bag everywhere: on lanterns, on water basins, on the roof of the temple. You can also buy real daikon to offer to the gods enshrined here. One of them is Bishamonten, one of the shichifukujin or seven lucky gods. That's why this temple is also part of Asakusa's seven lucky gods pilgrimage. You can read more about these pilgrimages in this post which I wrote about Fukagawa.

I walked to Matsuchiyama this morning to clear my edit-fuzzy head. Unfortunately it was a ghastly day for photos – overcast, drizzly and just blah – but I've included my best efforts. I like this quirky temple so much that I will definitely return on a sunny day to enjoy its atmosphere and to take better photos. The temple also has big cherry and ginkgo trees, and you can see the ultimate phallic symbol, Tokyo Sky Tree, from its grounds. Grin. Plenty of reasons to go back!

Arbitrary aside: a woman with chunky legs and thick ankles are said to have daikon legs (大根足, daikon ashi). Again the similarity should be obvious.

You can read more about the temple (in Japanese) here and here.

Dreary photo taken on a dreary day, but that's Matsuchiyama

See the daikon on the right? Also note that the water basin is in the shape of a money bag.

Daikon on the lantern

The lanterns are everywhere!

I love this photo. I'll have to go back on a sunny day to get a better version of the daikon plus Tokyo Sky Tree.

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The joys and horrors of working in a bookshop

2012-01-21T20:48:00.002+09:00

Long, long ago in a world far, far away I worked in a bookshop while I pursued postgraduate studies. Here's a story from that time.

Working in a bookshop is not just about reading. It’s like a gym work-out. You carry approximately ten tons of books every day. You wrestle with bookshelves. You dust, you vacuum-clean, you wipe and shine and re-pack your books into neat little just-so piles. You double-check that your favourite books are still displayed nicely, that you have enough of the latest bestsellers, that you haven’t sold the last of the slow-but-steady sellers, that you have enough copies in the storeroom of Harry Potter and Tintin and Asterix.

Every once in a while, when the store is quiet enough, you stop to become more intimately acquainted with a sexy, promising individual. You pick it up, open it reverently, inhale its richness, fondle it a bit … and then succumb, defenceless, to its allure. Books are just like men: some are infinitely disappointing; others are suitable for a harmless flirtation; but some – ah – some will fascinate, titillate and satisfy you for a lifetime.

My pet hates: Dan Brown, Paulo Coelho, Deeprak Chopra, J.M. Coetzee, Nicholas Sparks, LaVyrle Spencer and her bodice-ripper brigade. Vastly overrated, every one of 'em.

Customers are a necessary burden if you want to work in a bookshop. I enjoyed their passion for books and their eccentricities, and even their boundless stupidity provided amusement. When you work with books, you have to remind yourself constantly that not everybody who walks into your shop is necessarily a bibliophile. Some are truly intimidated by books, and they grasp at your knowledge like a lifeline. Book club women are in a class of their own. They seem to fall into two extreme categories: the (inevitably terribly British) know-it-all school-marm jolly-hockey-stick types, and the totally lost souls. The former demand that you immediately produce the obscurest tomes on Victorian authors; the latter wander aimlessly into the store, look around them in a bewildered fashion, and then JUMP on you.

"I need to buy a book for the book club. What do you recommend?"

"Do you want an English or an Afrikaans book?"

"Ag, it doesn’t matter."

"Aha. Well, what do you like to read?"

"Oh, everything."

"Hmmm. Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?"

"Oh, anything."

"Errr. Do you like serious books, or more humorous books?"

"Oh, everything."

"Right. Let's go look at the picture books, shall we?"

It gets worse. Another hapless victim wanders towards the counter, and here comes that most profound of all statements: "I'm looking for a book."

You don't say? A book?! You're looking for a book in a bookshop? Well I never, what an absurd idea, what makes you think we have books?!

"Sure! What kind of book?"

"I read about it in a magazine."

"OK, what's the title?"

"I don't remember."

"Author?"

"I don't know."

"What is it about?"

"I can't remember. It's a red book."

"Das Kapital?"

"What?"

"Can you remember the magazine?"

"No."

"I think I know what you're looking for. It's not called (insert current schlock bestseller), is it?"

"Yes! Yes, that's it!"

AAAAARGH!

Tired of bad luck? Swap your bullfinch!

2012-01-20T08:51:00.003+09:00

When it comes to festivals in Japan, I can never decide what the correct blogging procedure is: write about it before the festival so that others can go, too; or write about it after the festival so that you can include the latest photos. Both?

This time, though, I'm going to do a story before the event. Partly because it's so cute that you should really go, and partly because I probably won't have time – drat! – to go myself this year. These photos were taken last winter.

Every January, on the 24th and the 25th, Kameido Tenjin in Tokyo holds a ceremony called usokae shinji (うそ替え神事) or "uso exchange ritual": worshippers bring wooden carvings of bullfinches and exchange them for new ones, hoping to turn past bad luck into good luck. This belief is based on word play: the bird's name, uso, is written as うそ in Japanese; but uso, written as 嘘, can also mean lie or falsehood. Play with meanings, and you turn the bad luck into a lie, i.e. non-existence. While they're swopping uso, they chant "kaemashō, kaemashō" or "let's change, let's change".

Although the exchange itself is on 24 and 25 January, the shrine displays the wooden carvings until February, when it also has a plum blossom festival. Plum trees are associated with Sugawara no Michizane, who's enshrined at Kameido Tenjin, but all of that is another post for another day. (There's also an Honourable Dog that's covered in salt, because there used to be a booming salt trade in this area in the Edo period. See? Lots of stories to tell about this shrine!)

Ema

Main shrine at Kameido Tenjin

One of the famous drum bridges

The temizuya, where you wash your hands, is in the shape of a turtle (kame in Japanese), which symbolizes longevity. Click on the photos to see bigger versions.

Sugawara no Michizane

Ladies, unskilfull persons and hard vsuall English wordes

2012-01-19T06:21:00.000+09:00

Oh I geddit! I'm a linguistic idiot because I'm a woman. That's why I can't master Japanese, I get headaches when I edit Afrikaans and I can never remember how to spell occasion (I always write ocassion). Ladies, gentlewomen and other unskilfull persons, you see, need help so that they can more easilie understand many hard English wordes.

Yesterday, in a classic avoidance behaviour manoeuvre, I started re-reading a book called Is that a fish in your ear? by David Bellos instead of actually editing the document I'm supposed to be editing. It's a book about translating, and it contains a reference to Robert Cawdrey's 1604 dictionary called … this is the full title …

A table alphabeticall conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard vsuall English wordes, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French, &c. With the interpretation thereof by plaine English words, gathered for the benefit & helpe of ladies, gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons. Whereby they may the more easilie and better vnderstand many hard English wordes, vvhich they shall heare or read in scriptures, sermons, or elswhere, and also be made able to vse the same aptly themselues.

You can read the dictionary here. The preface is hilarious; the word list itself is not bad at all. Now please excuse me. I have a headache that has to be completed. The Hero finished his translation at 3:30 am this morning; now it's my turn.

Oh! Wait! More avoidance! See this photo below? When I had to decide which books to bring to Japan – not an easy task if you have a collection of a few thousand – I dithered about this dictionary. It's massive, it's heavy, it's awkward. "You'll never need an Afrikaans dictionary in Japan," I told myself. "Yes," I answered myself, "but what if you forget a word?!" Eventually I packed it, mainly for sentimental reasons: it's been my companion, guru and mainstay for so many years.

I never thought, not in my wildest dreams, that I would sit with it on my lap, like Linus and his security blanket, while editing a Very Official Bureaucratic Document in Tokyo.

Ek mis my HAT en Spelreëls en Skryf Afrikaans van A tot Z! (I miss three other well-known Afrikaans reference books.)

Winter peonies at Tōshō-gū Shrine

2012-01-18T14:29:00.000+09:00

Tōshō-gū Shrine in Ueno Park has a beautiful peony garden that is open to the public twice a year: early January to early February for winter peonies, and mid-April to mid-May for summer peonies.

There are about 40 varieties of winter peony in the garden, but it's so difficult to cultivate the flowers in winter that less than 20% blooms, according to the garden's website. The winter flowers are not as spectacular as their summer cousins, but I go every January to marvel that such fragile flowers can bloom in such icy cold weather. (They're big, but not particularly robust. The summer variety, too, wilts towards noon. You have to catch them very early in the morning.)

More trivia:

Peonies are called botan in Japanese. It's usually written in kana as ぼたん or ボタン, sometimes in kanji as 牡丹.
The flower was brought to Japan from China in the Nara period (710 to 794). It was celebrated not only for its beauty, but also as a painkiller and anti-convulsive medicine.

Cute!

Just to show you the contrast, I've included photos taken of last year's summer peonies, protected not by a straw cover against the cold, but by a paper umbrella against the sunlight.

Back to winter. The photo below shows the long row of stone lanterns in front of Tōshō-gū. Can you see the white line on the lower part of some lanterns? That's where the lanterns were repaired after last year's big quake, which toppled many of them.

Copy-editing is a very silly business

2012-01-17T07:04:00.001+09:00

I used to be a copy-editor, many lifetimes ago, but I was never a very good one. My attention span isn't up to it. I still start scowling when I see obvious mistakes like its/it's and whose/who's, and don’t you dare use impact as a verb in my presence. I will impact you in your nuts! However, I don't do copy-editing anymore. I got tired of endless debates about teabag vs tea-bag. It doesn't matter. That particular point is style, not grammar. Choose your style, be consistent and chillax.

Then, unexpectedly, I got involved in editing again. Suffice it to say that it's an Afrikaans version of a Japanese document. A Very Official Bureaucratic Kind Of Document. The kind of document that is written in extremely formal language, with unnecessary repetition of synonyms (each consisting of more syllables than the previous word) and a generous application of the passive voice.

The Hero is translating from his native Japanese; I'm editing his Afrikaans. Not that it needs much editing. He's just careless with punctuation. (You are! You know you are!)

I developed a headache halfway into the second paragraph thanks to the passive voice. Or should I say, a headache was developed. Neither I nor text had any role in it. It transmogrified from a spacetime singularity into a headachy beingness. That's the passive voice. Nobody does anything. Things just happen, entirely by themselves. Beer was consumed, emergency measures were undertaken, from the silly to the sublime. The beer is, of course, an example of the sublime.

I've also realized that Afrikaans has two extremely irritating aspects:

(1) Its diacritics. It loves letters like ô ê ï ë. Do you know what a pain in the butt it is to write these letters in Word? Should I growl at Word rather than at my mother tongue? The Hero, being The Hero, blithely ignores all diacritics in his translation; I, being a compulsive-obsessive anal-retentive copy-editor, have to redo them with much muttering, mumbling and grumbling.

(2) The lingering use of the polite form of the second-person personal pronoun. English – such an uncomplicated language! – has you, French has the familiar tu and the formal vous, German has the familiar du and the formal Sie, Japanese has … oh dear … how many different humble, standard, polite and exalted forms does Japanese have? Lots. Anyway, Afrikaans has the familiar jy and the formal u, but u has become almost obsolete. It's used so rarely that it sounds hideously pompous, pretentious and just plain stupid. I thought I was rid of it, but here it is, popping up in this Very Official Bureaucratic Kind Of Document. I don't like this address form. U gat. Thine arse.

Pronouns are unnecessary complications. Languages should get rid of them. This whole he/she thing is driving me nuts. The only way to avoid he/she is to use a singular they – a grammatical blasphemy that usually sends copy-editors into a froth – but I'm ready to hands-up. What's good enough for Chaucer is good enough for me. Here's a line from The Canterbury Tales, circa 1400:

And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame,
They wol come up …

(Whoso is syntactically singular, but it's followed by a plural they.)

This editing job has increased my Japanese vocabulary exponentially. I now know at least 2 117 new words, such as 領置物, that I will never be able to use in ordinary conversation. It's enough to drive a woman off THEIR edge.

PS: Serendipity. Just before I published this post, I noticed that No-sword wrote this post about Japanese pronouns. We're on opposite ends of the scale – he's a total guru and I'm a barbaric beginner – but I really enjoy his blog. Highly recommended.

Next time, before you decide it's Japan's fault ...

2012-01-16T07:32:00.002+09:00

I write this story to my own detriment. It makes me look stupendously stupid, but it might contain a few truths, too.

A while ago I took my camera to Canon's Shinjuku Service Center so that dust could be cleaned from its sensor, and afterwards I wrote another ode to Japanese customer service on my blog. A few days later I walked to Sensō-ji to take photos of its New Year preparations, and I had nasty shock: my camera wouldn't focus.

My reaction was instantaneous. I went ballistic. "Damn you, Canon," I fumed, "what did you do to my camera? This is your fault! I take my camera to be cleaned and you screw it up. Why did I praise you for your good service, you morons, you accursed blasted infernal idiots!"

I was furious, and the teeming holiday crowds did nothing to calm me down. I fled to the parking area at the back of the temple. As I stood there, sulking, I noticed this character:

"What are you looking at?" I snarled at him.

He glared back.

"Don't just stand there!" I snapped. "Do something!"

His glare didn't falter.

"Asshole," I muttered. I left like throwing my camera at him, and in that state of agitation I grabbed it by its lens. I wasn't really going to throw it; it just felt good to pretend.

That's when I noticed it. The lens was on MF, manual focus, not AM, automatic focus. I only use the former for close-ups, which I hadn't attempted yet on that day; and I simply hadn't noticed that I couldn’t focus thanks to a stupid button.

Or rather, thanks to a stupid photographer with zero practical skills and even less common sense.

ごめんなさい、キヤノン！間違えた! 私のミスです! (Gomen nasai, Canon. Machigaeta! Watashi no misu desu! I'm sorry, Canon. I made a mistake. It's my mistake.)

It was a dumb, dumb, dumb mistake, and once I'd stopped blushing, grovelling in embarrassment and apologizing to Danjūrō Ichikawa IX (that's his statue; he used to be a famous kabuki actor), I started wondering whether we – us foreigners in Japan – don't tend to do this too often.

Something goes wrong, and instead of turning the camera around and looking at ourselves, we immediately accuse Japan of … oh, the list is endless … xenophobia, racism, discrimination, feudalism, backwardness, isolationism, stupidity, condescension.

I fear our opinion of Japan is often a reflection of our own insecurities. Is Japan perfect? Hell, no. Problem 1: mamacharis. Problem 2 – 10 000: politicians. Is it always our own fault? No, that's not necessarily true either.

But next time, before you decide it's Japan's fault, perhaps you should check your own settings first.

Tsukudajima, an island of yore in the Sumida River

2012-01-15T10:48:00.000+09:00

It's all too easy to say this neighbourhood is unique. It probably isn't. All Tokyo's wards have a distinct personality; all have similarities. Many neighbourhoods combine very old with very new. Yet, having conceded all that, Tsukudajima (佃島) is different. Really.

Tsukudajima Bridge

Click on the photos to see bigger versions.

Tsukudajima used to be a natural island in the Sumida River's estuary. The area was settled at the beginning of the Edo era, when Tokugawa Ieyasu invited a group of fishermen from Osaka to live here. Nowadays it's much bigger, supplemented by reclaimed land that includes Tsukishima, Kachidoki and Harumi, and it offers a stunning contrast of skyscraper condominiums and lopsided old wooden houses that have survived various calamities. As a matter of fact, Tsukudajima is one of the few places in Tokyo where you can still see nagaya (長屋, tenements or row houses) which date from the Edo era. A nagaya is a long wooden structure that's divided into several independent houses. Each row of houses is separated by a narrow alley. Merchants had residences facing the main streets; commoners and craftsmen rented houses in back streets.

Nowadays you find them mostly, if not only, in the shitamachi. Unfortunately it looks as if they face an uncertain future, because they're regarded as a fire hazard.

Old and new

Nagaya

If you want to go for a walk in this area, I suggest you start at Tsukishima Station on the Toei Ōedo Line (Exit 6). If you turn left as you reach ground level, you'll reach the old nagaya within three minutes. Do yourself a favour and stop at the tiny temple Tsukuda Tenzai Jizōson, which I wrote about here.

The main shrine in that area, Sumiyoshi Jinja, is a branch of Sumiyoshi Taisha in Osaka. It deifies several gods, including Empress Jingū, who is venerated as a goddess of easy childbirth and warfare at sea. I suffer from severe cognitive dissonance when I try to connect those two issues. You could argue that it's a hell of a battle to get a baby out of its ocean of amniotic fluid …

Nah. Still doesn't work for me. Anyway, the shrine protects fishermen. If you're into arcane detail about mythology, I recommend this post at the blog Omamori from Japan.

Sacred and profane

The main building at Sumiyoshi Jinja

The main entrance to Sumiyoshi Jinja

The ceramic sign on the torii (see below) was painted in 1882 by calligrapher Ippin Shijin Shinno, who visited the shrine regularly. The inscription says: 明治十五壬午歳六月三十日住吉神社一品幟仁親王. (Translated: Meiji 15, year of the ox, June 30th, Sumiyoshi Jinja, Ippin Shijin Shinno.)

This lighthouse was built in 1866 on an island called Ishikawajima. The island is now part of the landfill that comprises Tsukudajima, Tsukishima, Kachidoki and Harumi.

The area is also famous for tsukudani (佃煮), a seafood preserve made of fish, shellfish and seaweed that have been simmered in soy sauce, mirin and salt. That's what you do if you don't want your fish to rot. I didn't particularly look for these shops, since I'm not brave enough to try the concoction.

2012's cherry blossoms

Boats seen from Sumiyoshi Jinja

These cherry trees on the banks of the Sumida River will be magnificent in spring.

I end this post with some totally arbitrary information: in the movie Babel, Chieko Wataya and her father, Yasujiro, live in a condominium in Tsukudajima.

No, I lie. I end this post with some ukiyo-e about this area, done by masters such as Hokusai (the first one) and Hiroshige (the last two).

Tsukudajima and Fuji-san, by Hokusai

Tsukudajima and the first cuckoo of spring, by Hiroshige

Tsukudajima from Eitai Bridge, by Hiroshige

Tsukuda Tenzai Jizōson, the temple of the tree

2012-01-14T07:43:00.001+09:00

It's the most awesome temple I've ever seen. It's also one of the tiniest, but that doesn't lessen its impact in any way whatsoever.

Tsukuda Tenzai Jizōson (佃天台地蔵尊) in Tsukudajima consists entirely of a ginkgo surrounded by the walls of ordinary homes. It has a low ceiling, which means you can only see part of the trunk, and it houses an image of Jizō, the protector of children and travellers, carved on a flat stone.

This is it! This is the temple!

The little temple is in a maze of alleys, barely wide enough for one person, that meander haphazardly through wooden houses that survived the great Kantō earthquake as well as the American firebombing. The ginkgo's trunk fills the temple itself; its branches tower above the houses. It must be beyond magnificent in autumn. Apparently the origin of the tree is a bit of a mystery. All I could find on the internet is that it's been around forever, and that the residents of Tsukudajima, an island in the Sumida River, have been protecting it for many generations.

I would kill – which is not very Buddhist of me – but I would kill to live in the house right next to the ginkgo.

Tsukudajima is a fascinating area that provides a mind-boggling …

I can hear my journalism professor admonishing me in years long gone: "Get rid of your adjectives! Good writing doesn't need it! Nouns and verbs, that's all you need, nouns and verbs!"

Tsukudajima is an area that juxtaposes old Edo and modern Tokyo in a … sorry, prof! … in a mind-boggling, jaw-dropping, gee-whizz way: muddy canals, fishing boats and old shrines against soaring condominiums. The block that hides Tenzai Jizōson consists of old houses huddling next to alleys so narrow that you sometimes have to turn sideways as you walk through them. It's in the vicinity of the better known Sumiyoshi Jinja.

The temple is in the maze of houses to the right in this photo.

I've realized I'll have to return in spring, too, because there are … sorry, prof! … glorious, resplendent, magnificent cherry trees along the Sumida River.

My New Year's Walking Resolution is to explore Tokyo's rivers, especially the Sumida, a bit more, hence my trip to Tsukudajima. More about this area to follow soon.

That narrow alley just behind the sign leads to the temple.

Click on the photos to see bigger versions.

Standing at the back of the temple, looking towards the alley in front

The trunk disappearing into the roof

The ginkgo. The photo was taken in the alley behind the temple. I want to live in that house with the balcony!

See that tree on the left? That's the giant ginkgo.

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BlogExpat interviews me

2012-01-13T13:10:00.000+09:00

A while ago I received a request for an interview from BlogExpat. You can read the full interview here, or you can click on the logo below to access it. Here's a short excerpt:

4. What's your favorite thing about being an expat in Tokyo?

Life in your own country is life on auto-pilot. When you move to a very different culture, you have to control your flight yourself. I agree with Donald Richie, who's written extensively about Japan and its culture: "I do not see how a foreigner can live here and construct that shroud of inattention, which in the land from whence he came is his natural right and his natural tomb." I also enjoy Tokyo's safety. Other foreigners have stories about stolen purses and random knife attacks, but I'd like to remind them, very gently, that I come from a country that according to UNODC has the highest murder rate in the world. Compared to that, Tokyo is heaven.

Bookworms, this is a must-see video!

2012-01-12T21:15:00.000+09:00

Thanks to my friend and fellow book fanatic Vox in Stellenbosch for telling me about this.

Japan's most famous wanderer, Bashō

2012-01-11T00:12:00.001+09:00

The haiku poet Matsuo Bashō 松尾芭蕉 (1644-1694) lived in the Fukagawa area of Tokyo. Today you can still visit his favourite spot next to Sumidagawa, as well as various other places associated with him, including the departure point of his famous journey to the north.

This used to be Bashō's favourite spot next to Sumidagawa. That's his statue.

Bashō's favourite spot (in that green curve on the right) seen from Sendaiborigawa

Bashō's haiku can be read all along the river. This one is about walking around a pond in the moonlight. (His famous "ancient pond and frisky frog" haiku is there as well, but I like this one.)

名月や / meigetsu ya / (under the) beautiful moon

池をめぐりて / ike o megurite / around the pond

夜もすがら / yomosugara / I walk all night long

Here's the frisky frog haiku, written in 1686:

古池や / furu ike ya / an ancient pond

蛙飛びこむ / kawazu tobikomu / a frog jumps in

水の音 / mizu no oto / a splash of water

Perhaps that is why you can see so many frogs in Fukagawa: from paving stones to tiny porcelain statues at a small Inari shrine near Bashō's favourite spot.

The Inari shrine near Bashō's favourite spot

The photos below show Bashō in front of a replica of the Saito-an house, which belonged to his patron Sugiyama Sanpu. The statue is on the spot where Bashō set off on his famous journey to the north. His haiku written during his travels were included in a book called Oku no Hosomichi, which is usually translated as The Narrow Road to the North. The first entry in this book reads:

The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. From the earliest times there have always been some who perished along the road. Still I have always been drawn by wind-blown clouds into dreams of a lifetime of wandering. Coming home from a year’s walking tour of the coast last autumn, I swept the cobwebs from my hut on the banks of the Sumida just in time for New Year, but by the time spring mists began to rise from the fields, I longed to cross the Shirakawa Barrier into the Northern Interior. Drawn by the wanderer-spirit Dōsojin, I couldn’t concentrate on things. Mending my cotton pants, sewing a new strap on my bamboo hat, I daydreamed. Rubbing moxa into my legs to strengthen them, I dreamed a bright moon rising over Matsushima. So I placed my house in another’s hands and moved to my patron Mr. Sanpu’s summer house in preparation for my journey.

This website provides nine different translations of the opening paragraph of Oku no Hosomichi. I selected the translation Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings by Sam Hamill, 1998.

Bashō in front of the Saito-an house

If you want to visit the Saito-an house, it's at Umibebashi 海辺橋 across Sendaiborigawa 仙台堀川 in Fukagawa 深川.

Modern skyline seen from a replica of Bashō's hut

Sendaiborigawa

National Geographic has a well-written, intelligible article about Bashō here.

Is South Africa dangerous, rich and black?

2012-01-09T08:45:00.000+09:00

Every so often an eikaiwa student asks me, "Is South Africa dangerous?" Or, "Is South Africa very rich?" Or, "Why aren't you black?"

It's more difficult to answer these questions than you might think.

Is South Africa dangerous? That depends, but if you're a Japanese tourist travelling alone, yes, it is. I've reached the conclusion that the average Japanese person, living in a relatively safe* society, is too trusting for Africa.

[* I'm not saying Japan is 100% safe. I'm not saying South Africa is 100% dangerous. I'm saying that relatively speaking and in comparison to many if not most other countries, Japan is safe and South Africa is dangerous in terms of murder, assault and robbery.]

So I tell my students if they're experienced travellers who've gone solo to the world's remote spots, they'll be OK; but if they've only done package tours to Hakone, perhaps Africa is not a good idea. Especially for women. A traveller in Africa needs self-assertiveness, common sense and a healthy dollop of badassedness, and most OLs I teach at my eikaiwa do not have that.

South Africa is actually not that dangerous: not in daytime, not in typical tourist spots, not if you're a native who can "read the air". Although I should add that I don't know one single friend or family member who hasn't been a victim of theft, robbery or assault. I know so many people who've lost loved ones through mindless violence.

Me? Purse snatched, money stolen from my office, two robberies at two different houses, luggage stolen four times, car stolen at the airport while I was on a business trip. That was the worst. I'd just returned from Ghana after an 18-hour flight delay – yes, 18, this is Africa – and I was exhausted, sweaty, smelly and as malevolent as a black mamba*. I'm still surprised that I drove out of the airport in a rental car without leaving carnage behind me.

[* Is this a politically incorrect comparison? A black mamba is one of the ten most venomous snakes in the world. You also get a green mamba, but it's not as aggressive. I could say I was as malicious as a great white shark, but I object to "great". That word discriminates against space-efficient individuals like myself.]

Is South Africa very rich? Yes, the Oppenheimer family (De Beers, net worth $7 billion), the Rupert family (Richemont, net worth $4,8 billion) and Patrice Motsepe (Rainbow Minerals, net worth $3,3 billion) are rich. So are ANC politicians on their gravy train. The rest of us? South Africa has abundant natural resources (world's largest producer of gold, platinum and chromium) and the 18thbiggest stock exchange in the world, but rich? You decide: 50% live below the poverty line, 25% are unemployed, the Gini index is 65 (one of the highest in the world).

Why aren't you black? Ask my mother. It's her fault.

Sigh. As far as I know, Japanese children learn about apartheid at school. So ... if there were no white people in South Africa ... what, exactly, was apartheid all about?

I'm not black, despite the fact that I was born in Africa, because my ancestors were European. They emigrated to South Africa between 1650 and 1850 to escape religious discrimination against Protestants, or to make money, or to see the world. I'm definitely not the first person with itchy feet in my family. Today there are 4,5 million whites in South Africa, about 9% of the total population.

Incidentally, I'm not white. I'm yellow. No, really. My skin has distinct yellow undertones. I'm yellower than The Hero. We both find that wryly amusing.

Any other questions?

No, I don't have a gun. I'm not American. I mean I don't have a legal gun. I do have this illegal AK-47 in the kitchen cupboard behind the nabe pots. Hey! Come back! Where are you going? Don't you have any other questions?

Enjoy good luck in 2012 with a bit of godly help

2012-01-07T19:14:00.001+09:00

Want to enjoy good luck in the new year? Want to make really, really sure that your butt is truly covered as far as happiness, health, wealth and wisdom are concerned? Then go on a seven lucky gods pilgrimage (七福神巡り, shichifukujin meguri).

I like Japan's lucky gods: a man takes care of the kitchen, and a woman is in charge of art, music and money. Anyway. A pilgrimage to shrines or temples has always been popular in Japan. One of the best-known pilgrimages is the 88 holy sites of Shikoku, a hike of 1 647 km that takes at least two months; but if you have less time as well as energy and devotion, you can do a mini-pilgrimage to the seven gods of good luck. This pilgrimage, usually in one neighbourhood, can be done at any time of the year, but it's especially popular in the first two weeks after New Year. Each lucky god is associated with a different blessing, so if you do all seven, you're upping your chances to survive the year unscathed.

There are several pilgrimages in the shitamachi, but we chose to do the Fukagawa Shichifukujin Meguri (深川七福神巡). It takes two to three hours, depending on how much you loiter and how many photos you take, from Morishita to Monzen-Nakachō.

The first stop is Fukagawa Shinmei-gū, where the god of wisdom, Jurōjin 寿老人, is enshrined. There's no statue of Jurōjin at the shrine, so you'll just have to trust me that he's usually depicted as an old man with a long white beard and a scholar's cap.

Fukagawa Shinmei-gū

Hotei 布袋 is enshrined at Fukagawa Inari Jinja. He's my favourite: the god of laughter, happiness and satisfaction with what you have. He's also the god of bartenders.

Fukagawa Inari Jinja

Hotei

Bishamonten 毘沙門天, the god of warriors and healing, is enshrined at Ryuko-in.

Ryuko-in

I don't know who this is. A little warrior-chan in training?

The fourth stop is Enju-in, where Daikokuten 大黒天 is enshrined. I don't have a photo of the temple itself, which is rather nondescript, but I do have photos of Daikokuten. He's rather jolly, isn't he? He's the god of wealth, farmers, food, good fortune and ... the kitchen. He's usually depicted wearing a peasant's hat. He also holds a magic money mallet, and he carries a large sack of treasure slung over his shoulder. He's often seated on a bag of rice, as in the second photo below, with mice nearby. Mice signify plenty of food.

Daikokuten

Another statue of Daikokuten. See the mice?

Next up is Shingyo-ji, where Fukurokuju 福禄寿 is enshrined. Fukurokuju is the god of wealth, happiness and longevity. (As you may have noticed, more than one god has the responsibility of ensuring wealth and happiness and a long life. It's a tough job.) Fukurokuji has an unusually elongated forehead. He is typically shown in the customary garments of a Chinese scholar, holding a cane with a scroll attached to it.

Shingyo-ji

Fukurokuju

The sixth stop is Fuyuki Benten-dō, where Benzaiten 弁財天 is enshrined. Benzaiten is the only goddess in the shichifukujin, so she should be ashamed that her shrine is the scruffiest. Look at the peeling paint! Mind you, she's not the housewife type. She's the goddess of everything that flows, for example music, words, speech, eloquence and by extension money. That's why I'm a fan of the seven lucky gods: a guy in the kitchen and a woman with the wallet, as it should be.

Fuyuki Benten-dō

The pilgrimage ends at the smaller Ebisu 恵比須 shrine at Tomioka Hachiman-gū. Ebisu is the god of good fortune, the ocean and fishing. It's a really tiny shrine, so I'd rather show you Hachiman-gū. Hachiman, who's not one of the seven lucky gods, is often referred to as the god of war, but it's more correct to call him the tutor of warriors. He's also worshipped as the god of agriculture.

Tomioka Hachiman-gū

You know about me and roofs ...

Omikuji

The reward for completing the pilgrimage: a certificate with stamps from all seven shrines and temples. I'm ready for the year of the dragon ...

A map of the meguri

Cat thingummies in Yanaka

2012-01-05T23:01:00.002+09:00

I love Yanaka because Yanaka loves cats. I'm not sure why there are so many cat-related doodads in this suburb, but apparently the area is well-known for its stray felines (possibly because it has so many trees, temples and cemeteries where cats can roam freely), and that's why the residents have adopted cats as their unofficial symbol.

If you love cats, or want to spoil a cat-lover with cat presents, I recommend Neco Action. Delightful.

All these photos were taken in Yanaka. Click on the photos to see bigger versions.

Night shots at Sensō-ji with an f/2.8 lens

2012-01-04T22:42:00.000+09:00

I returned to Sensō-ji on the evening of the 3rd. It was very busy and a long line was waiting to pray, but you could still move through the crowd without too much trauma. I've already written about the temple in this post, so I'm just going to show you the photos.

Incidentally, I don't use a tripod. All these photos were taken with a low-light lens, Canon's EF-S 17–55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens. I was very careful not to get dust on my sensor when I changed lenses!

As usual, click on the photos to see bigger versions.

Long line waiting to pray

Bulls and bonfires in the shitamachi

2012-01-03T08:14:00.001+09:00

Rise and shrine!

That was an awful pun. Where wôs I?

Our second New Year's walk meanders to three shrines. It starts at Yushima Tenman-gū, which honours Sugawara no Michizane, a scholar, poet and politician in Kyoto in the Heian Period.

Quick history: Sugawara was betrayed by a rival, Fujiwara no Tokihira, and exiled to a minor post in Kyushu in 901. After Sugawara's death, Kyoto was hit by various calamities, from droughts to floods, all attributed to his angry spirit. The imperial court deified him as Tenjin-sama, the kami of scholarship, in an effort to calm him down. It worked. Today there are approximately 14 000 Tenjin shrines in Japan.

The one at Yushima is always packed over the New Year's period, because students go there to pray for good luck in the upcoming entrance exams. It's especially popular with youngsters who want to enter the nearby University of Tokyo. I went for a visit despite my crowd aversion, because I have a very soft spot in my heart for the shrine, the students and scholarship in general.

Yushima Tenman-gū's roof, seen through the first plum blossoms of the year

I love the curves of shrine roofs. Click on the photos to see bigger versions.

Waiting patiently to pray

Students writing ema

There are several ox statues and carvings at Yushima, because Tenjin is associated with this animal. It is said that during his funeral procession, the ox pulling his funeral cart stopped in his tracks and refused to budge. Tenjin's shrine was then built on this spot. You're supposed to rub the ox's head or nose for good luck.

Next stop, Shitaya Jinja, the most important shrine in the Ueno area. It was founded in 730 and was originally called Shitaya Inari, which explains why the surrounding area is still called Inari-chō.

They have a small, informal dondoyaki (どんど焼き) every year – a ritual bonfire in which the old year's New Year's decorations (there must be a shorter way to say that) are burned. Incidentally, the biggest dondoyaki in the neighbourhood is at Torigoe Jinja on Sunday, 8 January. It's a more formal event that starts at 1 pm and continues for an hour. (There's a similar type of bonfire called otakiage or お焚きあげ, which focuses on religious items like votive tablets and good luck charms. Here's an explanation.)

Shitaya's big red torii

Natural wood has a special beauty, don't you think?

Last year's New Year's decorations, waiting to be burned

Dondoyaki

Talking of Torigoe Jinja, here it is. Its New Year's celebration isn't that big; it saves its energy for the Torigoe Festival in early June. It needs to conserve its strength, because its main mikoshi weighs a massive 4 tons and has to be carried by 200 people. It tips over at times, which means the police and the paramedics have to be on standby. (No, I've never been. It's too hectic.)

Torigoe Jinja

The tools of the trade: a taiko drum and sake barrels

Torigoe Jinja's ema

It's me and roofs again.

A small pile of ginkgo leaves, definitely the last of the season, on a stone torii at Torigoe Jinja