Spring Festivals

I've been a total slacker about my blog this spring. Sorry! It's basically been a fairly normal spring, but there have been a few adventures. In order to not make this the world's longest post, I've decided to split it into two. Today, you get to hear about the festivals I went to.


In early March, I went on a kimono tour. The Nakai neighborhood in Tokyo has a long history - going back to the 1600s - associated with the dying of cloth for kimonos. In March, there was a sort of festival where the canal was filled with banners of dyed fabric. Unfortunately for me, the day I went was rainy, they couldn't hang the silk cloth - only the cotton - and so the canal wasn't full of the colorful banners. But it was still interesting.

In addition to the canal, shops all over the neighborhood hung banners outside.

And there was an exhibition that showed kimonos and banners made from silk painted by masters.

Some of the most expensive of these kimonos are made from silk that was hand woven. The hanging below shows the 38 different steps that go into creating the final design in the bottom right corner. It kind of explains why some of these kimonos cost about the same as a house.

In early April, I went to two festivals. The first was a fertility festival called Kanamara Matsuri (aka, the Festival of the Iron Phallus). Apparently, this festival sprang from the fact that, back in the Edo period, the ladies of the night would go to this shrine to pray for protection. Eventually, the festival came to celebrate fertility, protection in childbirth, and protection from sexually transmitted diseases. 

In an effort to try to keep this family friendly, I'm only including a couple pictures. The main part of the festival is when transvestites (or simply men dressed as women, depending on which website you look at) carry the portable shrine shaped like a giant pink phallus around the neighborhood. What I do not understand is why this shrine is named Elizabeth. Seriously. It's the Elizabeth Mikoshi. I don't understand.

Everything revolves around fertility. The shrine's wood plaques that people write their hopes and prayers on. The candies (both male and female). Everything. This festival seemed to be equal parts young Japanese going crazy, foreigners wanting to see this amazing spectacle, and Japanese grandparents in kimonos enjoying the festival. So now I've seen a Japanese grandmother licking a large (maybe 6 inches) candy (ref note on shape above). It was an experience!

The following weekend, I went to Narita (the town, not the airport) to see the taiko festival. I love taiko. And I love that Japan loves cute things, and so the banner for the festival was an airplane (for the international airport) holding taiko sticks.

Because I was participating in an exhibition on the embassy compound to demonstrate my very limited nihon jujutsu skills, I was only able to go to the concert at the shrine, which was the main event of the festival. The shrine had actually been on my to-see list, as I'd heard it was very nice. And it was! 

One of the gates of the shrine.

And of course, the taiko performance was excellent and very dramatic, performed on the steps of the shrine as the sun set.

The following week, I participated in the IMAF 36th Annual Martial Arts Exhibition to help demonstrate nihon jujutsu. While I wasn't perfect, I didn't humiliate myself in demonstrating the basic moves, so that was a positive. And one of the girls who was there saw it and has joined our class, so that's cool!

So those are all of my festivals/events of the spring. Next post - flowers! 

Yuki Matsuri

I finally made it to the Sapporo Snow Festival! I heard that, along with a snow festival in Norway, it's one of the largest snow festivals in the world. It was certainly impressive! The festival has nearly 200 snow and ice sculptures at three sites, plus ice skating, snow boarding and ski jumping, sledding, slides, etc. I managed to take nearly 600 pictures during my 2 1/2 days there, so needless to say, this post will have a few more than my usual 10 pictures. But I tried to contain myself! If you want to see some other pictures, CNN has a gallery of pics from the festival.  

part of Odori Park, as seen from the tv tower

"Momotaru" (medium sculpture)

The main site is Odori Park, where snow and ice sculptures, plus food vendors and all sorts of other fun stuff, take up 12 blocks. The snow festival started on Wednesday, February 5. I arrived Monday evening, and although the large sculptures were blocked off, two of the four medium sculptures and all of the small sculptures could be viewed. Some people were putting finishing touches on a few of the small sculptures, which was interesting to see. 

Detail from Momotaru

By the following day, almost all of the sculptures were available for viewing, and tons of small children were going around in their school groups to see everything. The sculptures were all very impressive, with amazing detail. In addition to a bust of Masahiro Tanaka, the pitcher for the Rakuten Eagles (the baseball team that won the Japan League last Fall) who has now been signed by the Yankees for a huge amount of money, there were famous and beloved cartoon characters and various other cute, fun and inspiring things.

Did I mention that it snowed most of the time I was in Sapporo?  A lovely powdery snow, but it meant that after a while, the sculptures looked like this (below) and had to be swept off.

There were various and assorted characters scattered throughout the festival…

And there were even special cans of Coke in the vending machines!

We certainly can't forget the LARGE snow sculptures, including this one celebrating the 2014 Olympics!

"Winter Sports Paradise, Hokkaido!"

"be Ponkickies" (a tv show that has run for 40 years) 

"Sultan Abdul Samad Building"

And of course, everything gets lit up at night!

"Tomb of Itmad-ud-Daula (India)"

…And sometimes they have illumination shows!

…Or concerts!

"Traditional and Modern Taiwan" ice sculpture

In addition to the large ice sculpture above, there were also a few more ice sculptures in Odori Park, including these:

"Palace of the Heart"

But the main site for ice sculptures was a few blocks away at the Susukino Ice Festival, where ice sculptures were displayed for several blocks down the middle of the street.

At the recommendation of a colleague who grew up in Sapporo, I took a train out to the port town of Otaru for an afternoon. When the port was functioning, there was a whole industry associated with making glass floats. However, when the port shut down, they redirected their efforts towards stained glass and such. So now the town has developed the area around the canal, and it is full of places to buy beautiful glass work, plus a lovely clock/music box place, a Venetian glass museum and other fun stuff. 

And just for kicks, one final picture - this one with the NHK character holding an Olympic medal near the tv tower (and ice skating rink).  Happy Yuki Matsuri!

Happy Year of the Horse

Happy New Year, everybody! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays. I had a nice relaxing holiday season. December 23 is the Emperor's Birthday, so I took off work on the 24th and made a 5-day weekend out of it.  

I started the weekend going to see the lights at Midtown again. They were very pretty. The colorful tower in the background of this picture is Tokyo Tower, which also had a "2020" on it, in honor of Tokyo winning its bid to be the site of the 2020 Olympics. Combined with the fact that Japanese cuisine was just declared a UNESCO intangible world heritage, people in Japan are pretty happy right now. 

On that Saturday, I started cooking. I made two types of cookies, some peppermint fudge, pecan pie, apple sauce, cranberry sauce, cornbread stuffing, sweet potato casserole, and turkey. When combined with the salad that some friends brought, it was just about enough food for me and the five people I had over for dinner! So that was very nice.

One of the buildings on the Imperial Palace Grounds

For New Years, I took another two days of leave - making another 5-day weekend - so that I could see what I missed while I was the Embassy duty officer last year. January 2nd was the Emperor's New Year's Greeting, one of two days in the year when the public can enter the Imperial Palace Grounds and see the Emperor. The Emperor, his wife, and members of the Imperial Family make five appearances throughout the day, when the Emperor gives his New Year's Greeting.

It was a beautiful day, and I was able to see the Imperial Palace and catch a glimpse of the Imperial Family when they appeared - not to mention the tons of people waving Japanese flags - so it was fun.

After the Greeting, some friends and I went to Ginza for something to eat, where I saw these fun posters under the train tracks.

On Martin Luther King Jr's Day, a few colleagues from work and I went skiing in Niigata. There's a really nice deal where you can get a shinkansen ticket and a one-day ski pass for only about $84. I've never been downhill skiing (only cross-country), but I figured that if I was ever to try, Japan would be a good place. So I rented the ski equipment (including a children's helmet, since that was the only size small enough for my head), and the guys each kindly spent a portion of their day trying to teach me to ski. At first, the silly people thought I should just head down the bunny hill, and they could just give me tips. HAHAHA. I very quickly lost control. They very quickly gave up yelling "V!" and switched to yelling "FALL!". Meanwhile, I spent some time trying to figure out how best to fall and decided upon flat on my face. (I later chose different approaches to falling, but this was a first effort, after all.) After I assessed body parts and they worried that I wasn't moving and maybe they'd broken me already, we decided that a better teaching method might be to show me how to make turns so that I could go slowly back and forth down the mountain.

Part of the bunny hill - I swear, it's steeper than it looks! 

At first, I could not figure out how to turn right. But eventually I was able to make a turn without involving a snow drift, and I could slowly, slowly work my way back and forth across the bunny hill. I even made it down a couple times without falling at all! I may have looked like a little old lady working my way slowly down the hill while 5-year old children zipped by me - and really, that's the age to start death-defying sports like this, not when you're approaching 40 - but I did it! 

Of course, after lunch, the snowboarders were out and busy falling down my bunny hill. My first run after lunch, I had to turn a little earlier than I would have liked in order to avoid a group of fallen snowboarders, which meant that I started going faster and feeling like I was going to lose control. So I carefully thought about how I could turn again, but then I'd be going even faster, and there wasn't a big fluffy snow bank on the other side, but there was a big fluffy snow bank on this side, so I just skied straight into the snow bank. It was a big snow bank. I was so far down in that snow, I had to take my skis off to get out. But it was soft!

So after a couple hours of learning to ski in the morning, lunch and then another hour or so in the afternoon, and about the time I ran over a snowboarder (or more precisely, the back of his snowboard) while yelling "SUMIMASEN!" ["sorry"], I agreed that it was time to take a break and get some hot chocolate. 

After skiing, we made a quick stop at an onsen, and then went to a little Japanese restaurant that had the sumo tournament playing on a small tv, the family cat wandering about, and lots of small food dishes and local sake. It was a very fun day! I'm hoping to try it again around President's Day. 

On a closing note, below is a funny sign that I saw in the train station when leaving to head back to Tokyo. I suspect they meant to say "Until Next Time" or "Come Again" or some similar sort of well-wishing. But this made me laugh.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everybody had a good day with friends and family. I was blessed to have Thanksgiving dinner with two families here on the compound. And now I am enjoying the extended blessings of the holiday - nibbling away at leftovers and eating pie for lunch.

I took Friday off work so that I could have the long weekend. Pretty much the only productive thing I did was to wrap up and box up most of the Christmas gifts so that I can put them in the mail next week. 

PSA for the day: If you have a loved one at an APO/DPO address, you need to get the gifts in the mail next week (the first week of December) if you want them to arrive before Christmas. I suspect this year will be particularly important to be on time, as the Postal Service shut down several of their APO/DPO handling facilities.

PSA#2 for the day: Be careful what tv shows you choose to binge watch. I'd already learned that it’s not a good idea to watch too much Doctor Who at one time. After one day when I watched a whole bunch of Doctor Who, I was pretty much useless for work the next day, thinking only of Daleks and Cybermen and oh-my-gosh-why-would-they-get-rid-of-Rose. Regardless of that experience, I watched 4 episodes of Doctor Who on Thanksgiving Day. I thought it would be okay, since I took a four-hour break in the middle. And it pretty much was okay, except for the really odd dreams. Of course, then I topped it off by discovering Once Upon a Time yesterday and watching 7 episodes of that show. So yes, I’ve been watching too much tv. And yes, I’ve had some strange dreams the last few nights. 

As long as we’re talking about fantasy… Have you seen the buggies that look like they’re for babies, but they’re actually for dogs? Japanese love their pets – cats and (small) dogs especially! They dress them up in outfits, take them out in buggies, carry them while hiking in the mountains. You can see some great pics here. Sadly, I don’t think my cat would tolerate me putting her in outfits. I’m tempted to try though. But I do love having a pet, and it’s nice to be in a country that loves pets. In so many places, when people learn that I don’t have children, it seems like they can’t think of a thing to talk to me about. But here, I’ve been known to say, “no, I have a cat” – and besides eliciting a bit of a laugh, it can also lead to conversation. Yes, I know cats aren’t the same as children, but she does have some qualities that remind me of some of the kids in my life.

- She loves to cuddle, but will only do it according to her own timing.

- She occasionally bumps against my leg before walking off, just to show she cares.

- She can handle small variations to the schedule, but too much variation will result in either racing around the house like a maniac or planting her feet and yelling at me.

- If she doesn’t like the video/music I’m playing while she hangs out on the back of the chair, she’ll whack the top of my head repeatedly.

- She’s not too interested in the food on her own plate, but she’s very interested in mine - particularly if it’s something in the dairy family.

But really, it’s just nice to have a little living being that cares about whether or not I’m home and that runs to greet me at the door. Of course, I’m about to cause drama in her life, because it’s now time to decorate for Christmas! But she will appreciate having the big tree to sit under and the low hanging ornaments to bat at. It's going to be a really busy week next week, so I'm kind of resting up, but maybe while I'm out tomorrow, I'll go see some of the light displays around town.

However you are spending your holidays - whether it’s watching tons of tv, braving the malls, or whatever - I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you will have a blessed holiday season!

My first look at Hakone

Hakone has been on my list of places to see for some time now. I've been hearing about how beautiful it is and about the great onsens. There's a touristy pirate ship that you can take across the lake and a ropeway up to a volcanic crater where you can eat an egg that's supposed to add six years to your life. 

Outside the Hakone-Yumoto train station

Although I think it will require an overnight trip eventually, last weekend I made a day trip with a friend to Hakone shrine to get a first look at the area. Two different weather sources told me that it would be in the mid- to high-60s and partly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of rain. That sounded like pretty good odds, so off we went.  

First, we took a train to Hakone-Yumoto. There was a light rain when we got there, but it was quite lovely nestled in a valley.  

Then we took a bus up the mountain to Moto-Hakone, where the shrine is located. When we arrived, both weather apps told me that it was 70 degrees and partly cloudy. And I looked out at the lake only about 30 yards away… and couldn't see any of it for the fog. With the wind as strong as it was, it most certainly wasn't 70 degrees. And then there was the constant changing between mist, light rain, heavier rain and back again. Of course, having grown up in western Washington state, a little fog/mist/rain wasn't going to stop me from enjoying my trip! But I apologize if any of the pictures are a little blurry. I didn't want to get my nice camera wet, so all the pictures were taken with my phone while juggling an umbrella.

We stopped at a restaurant for some tonkatsu and then walked along the lake to the entrance to the shrine. While the fog totally disrupted our view of the lake, Mt. Fuji or any of the surrounding countryside, it did make everything look sort of mystical and lovely. According to the tour guide I had read online, the shrine is particularly beautiful in the mist. The fog gave us a chance to confirm that!

After walking around the shrine, we walked down to one of the torii that leads to the shrine - the Peace Torii - which is actually situated in the lake.

Then we walked back along the lake, appreciating how some colors - like the orangey-red of the shrine or the blue of my umbrella - pops out in the fog. 

We finished the day by looking at a few shops and then took a bus back to a train station. All in all, it was a very nice day. I will certainly need to go back for an overnight trip so that I can appreciate the onsens. Maybe I'll even see the lake next time!