Iris – Page 117 – goinggaijin.com

Foxes

When I took the photos of the newlyweds last Sunday at Heian shrine, something strange happened: At some point the groom took out a mask of a white fox and held it in front of the bride’s face. In her white robes, it had a quite striking effect: A bit later, he put the mask on the back of his own head. Not knowing what to make of this, I asked the father of the bride for the meaning of this. He explained that the (white) fox was the messenger of Inari, the god of rice (read: wealth, read: money) and as such, this gesture is meant to bring wealth to the couple. The main shrine dedicated to Inari – Fushimi Inari Taisha – lies in the South of Kyoto, so this explanation does make sense, but to be honest, I am unconvinced.

In Japanese folklore, the fox is generally considered a rather mischievous fellow, although he is capable of good deeds as well. A housemate said there was a story of a man marrying a beautiful woman – who in the end turned out to be a fox in disguise, with not so healthy consequences for the husband. The internet is surprisingly quiet about this though, I could find only find the old story The foxes’ wedding, but this is about a happpy wedding of two “real” foxes leading to lots of offspring – in a sense supporting the wealth theory. I could also find a saying that a foxes’ wedding takes place when there is rain during sunshine. Finally, a friend of mine from Tokyo sent an email to a local shrine asking for clarification, but there the custom appears to be unknown.

If anybody has a suggestion as to the meaning of the fox mask, please do let me know!

Glorious

Allow me to deviate a little from the usual weekend post format of “general interest”, because I’d like to tell you about the absolute glorious day it was today. Come, follow me…

I woke up at 7:30, much earlier than usual. It was completely quiet and I could see this silvery-white gleam through the window, which can only mean one thing:

SNOW

Let me admit that I am a very odd creature: I like it hot and hate being cold, I even try to avoid going out when it rains. At the same time I love when it snows and when there is fresh snow on the ground, as yet undisturbed, it awakens the little kid in me and from then on, the adrenaline starts rushing and resistance is futile…

Hence, I was out and about 15 minutes later. No breakfast, no brushing of teeth, I’m not even sure I combed my hair. I went to the other side of the hill to Shinyodo temple – and was actually quite upset that I had come too late – people were already starting to clear the paths. I went around the temple grounds through the ginsekai, the silver world as the Japanese call it, to take photos. The sun came out on occasion, but most of the time it was overcast. At some point, I started talking to an elderly lady about the snow and Japan and Austria… and she spontaneously invited me to a tea ceremony that took place in the temple. I told her I was not dressed appropriately, but she insisted, and even paid for me. So, I ended up sitting there in the beautiful (but unheated) tearoom with the gorgeously painted fusuma (300 years old or so) among the men in suits and women in kimono with my old faded jeans, four layers of T-shirts, and possibly unkempt hair, and felt totally out of place and was constantly worried of making a mistake – which was unavoidable because it was my very first tea ceremony… I guess life would be boring if you were always prepared. In the end, I got permission to take some photos of the Japanese garden surrounding that particular building – a privilege you usually have to pay for. Note the “borrowed landscape” in the background with the daimonji:Afterwards, I went down to Heian shrine. It was quite late, and the sun was shining much stronger by then, so much of the snow was gone already. Anyway, I decided to go to the shrine gardens and see if there was still the opportunity for taking decent pictures. Yes, there was, but the sun caused much of the exposed parts to be dripping already, and the ones where there was still snow were often too dark to take decent photos. I tried my best anyway. The best part of the Heian gardens, however, pictures of which I promised not to share so I have to leave that to your imagination, was: A newly wed couple in the clothes appropriate for a shinto wedding had their pictures taken in the gardens… They allowed me to take pictures too, and I can assure you that both of them looked stunning. The groom wore a traditional kimono-hakama-haori ensemble in black and white, while the bride was clad in an all white kimono with a white coat over it that was embroidered with cranes – a sign of good luck. In the end, when she took off her white watabōshi hood she revealed a coiffure with lots of hairpins which I have so far only seen geisha wearing. It was splendid.

By that time, I was completely elated – and freezing, so I decided to return home. I went past the Budokan and just wanted to sneak a peak at the archery range to see if there was any training – there wasn’t – but there was Aikido training in the main hall, which I just had to see. I got the dojo’s address, so I may go and watch normal training there some time soon. Finally, I bought some sushi for dinner – a perfect ending for a perfect day.

And all that because of a little bit of snow (which has melted by now, sadly…)

Exhibition

Last Monday, when I was wandering around Heian shrine taking pictures of unsuspecting young people in their wonderful kimono, all of a sudden a woman approached me and gave me a ticket for an art exhibition at the Kyoto Municipal Museum which is nearby Heian shrine. It came completely out of the blue, I was very surprised and thanked her with many arigatou’s and bows. I am not sure if she had given tickets to other people as well, but it was nice to have the foreigner bonus this time…

Anyway, as I had nothing better to do and needed to find a topic for yet another blog post, I went to the museum this afternoon, where the 45th Nitten Kyoto Exhibition takes place until Sunday. This exhibition is organised by the Japan Art Academy, an organisation that was founded in 1907 and is considered the highest ranking artistic organisation in Japan. The JAA, with its at most 120 members, elected for life, advises the Minister of Education and promotes art in general. There are three distinct categories: Music and Drama, Culture (essentially literature) and Fine Arts, the last being divided into Japanese and Western painting, sculpture, crafts, and calligraphy. 300 works of Fine Arts from Japanese artists travel around Japan in this exhibition and at the Nitten Kyoto Exhibition another 300 works from artists based in or around the Kyoto area are added. You can find all works of art that are exhibited on this Nitten page, you need to do quite some clicking to get to the pictures unfortunately.

I did not bring a watch with me, but it must have taken me close to two hours looking at all the art, and that although I did not go into the calligraphy section. Sadly, I don’t know what to look for in calligraphy beyond the meaning of the words – which is obscured by my lack of vocabulary. I can see that the writing is beautifully executed and certainly better than anything I could produce, but the finer details escape me.

I am a big fan of sculptures though, and although there was only one room dedicated to them, I spent quite some time there. The nude female body obviously still inspires many artists, but ultimately I found many of them comparatively static in posture and thus uninspiring. My favourite was this sculpture by Kuwayama Yoshiyuki, the angle of the photograph is not well chosen; the hands are holding a puppet in traditional Japanese dress, it is facing away from the camera, so it is hard to recognize.

The whole second floor of the museum was dedicated to paintings and crafts. I am not a huge fan of paintings (I like Dali though), but some of them struck a chord within me, and I bought a few postcards at the end. My most favourite piece of art from this exhibition however, is the following “painting” by Namiki Tsunenobu. Actually, it is not a painting, but a piece of exquisit lacquerware (urushi or shikki) with inlaid pieces of gold for the stream at the bottom and a golden moon on top. Once again, the photograph does not quite do it justice, the stream appears more golden than silver in reality. It is 162 x 112 cm large and of perfect craftsmanship, the black lacquer is flawless. It must be worth a fortune.

Omiai

Last Saturday, after our Soroban class in the Kyoto International House, our little group came across a flyer that was displayed there, and which caused quite some hilarity… It said, with a pretty heart on top:

Marriage Matchmaking in kokoka

Come and meet lots of people from diferent cultures at our fun and casual matchmaking at kokoka. We’re hosting this event for singles, Japanese and foreign alike, as an opportunity to meet in an exchange of language, culture, and friendship. We encourage you to leave your worries behind and open the door to a new future.

It is scheduled for the beginning of March, and in the best case there will be 100 people, half women, half men, all between 30 and 50 years old. Foreigners can live all over Japan, but the Japanese must be based in Kyoto. In four hours there will be a workshop (how to conduct a good marriage?), a quiz (what are you looking for in a partner for life?), games (grab our favourite now?), and a party – and you can be sure that everything will be finished on time. Although there are 15 companies sponsoring the event, you still have to pay 3000 YEN for admittance, but you’ll get snacks and drinks – it’s a party, remember.

What we found so funny about it was that it was so clearly targeting foreigners. Among Japanese, these kinds of meetings are quite common, especially in the age bracket mentioned. As a Japanese woman you are expected to be married by the age of 25, as a man you have five years more time. If they did not succeed in securing a husband or wife by that time, many people resort to matchmaking like the above.

These meetings are called O-miai, literally see-meeting. Omiai are strictly conducted for the purpose of finding a partner to marry, and their history dates back to the 16th century. There are many rules, and often the whole family on both parts is involved, and an additional go-between.

Anyway, I may write a more detailed post about this at a later stage, maybe after first hand experience? While I have to admit that I was intrigued, I will not attend the party – the application deadline had already passed by the time I made up my mind…

Seijin no hi

Today was a holiday, the seijin-no-hi, Coming of Age Day. In Japan, you become a legal adult at the age of 20, and seijin-no-hi celebrates all the young people who turned 20 in the last year. That this is a special day can even be deduced from the language: 20 years old is irregularly named hatachi instead of nijusai as would be normal.

All over Japan, there are official celebrations at government offices, and groups of youngsters dressed up in their best finery (i.e., kimono with sleeves to the ground for the girls and hakama and haori for the guys) can be spotted everywhere all day long. The young people are obviously having a blast, and the atmosphere is lighthearted, joyous, and festive, despite the low temperatures. The nice thing is, that they are all happy to have their pictures taken, and both Japanese and foreigners seek out the best places for a photo opportunity.

One part of the celebrations – besides official and family parties – is to go visit a shrine for a quick prayer. So, I went down to Heian shrine this afternoon to take some pictures of my own. I took more than 250 photos, even though I only stayed one hour until my fingers froze to the camera… Here are a few of my favourites:

Okonomiyaki

Okonomiyaki are savoury Japanese pancakes, and there are probably as many recipes out there as there are people who cook them. Essentially, there are two styles: Osaka style – put all ingredients into the batter and fry them – and Hiroshima style – the ingredients are carefully cooked layer by layer. As I live in Kyoto, I will probably end up with more Osaka style recipes, but in the end, both are delicious anyway!

Okonomiyaki à laTokumura Sensei
(for 15 pieces)

– 250 g flour (ideally one half wheat flour and one half okonomiyaki flour)
– 250 ml water
– 3 eggs
– 2 teaspoons of salt
Mix together to a batter with a somewhat liquid consistency.

– 1/2 cabbage
Cut into pieces of roughly 1×1 cm; omit the hardest part of the stem.

– 150 g of sliced raw pork (some fat is good, think bacon)
Cut into pieces of roughly 3×3 cm and fry them in olive oil with salt and pepper.

– 150 g of raw shrimp
Wash and clean the shrimp, remove shells, heads, and guts.

Add the cabbage, fried pork and shrimp to the batter and mix thoroughly.
Grease a pan with olive oil and let it get hot- put a ladle full of okonomiyaki mixture into the pan, flatten it a little and fry it like a pancake from both sides until it is done. It takes about 10 minutes for one piece that is 1 cm thick and 10 cm in diameter.
Serve with special okonomiyaki sauce and dried tuna flakes (traditional) and/or mayonnaise and parsley (optional).

Connections

Mid December I came across this great job online. A university in Nagoya was looking for somebody…

… with a PhD from an internationally recognized, reputable university (field irrelevant) …
… a strong track record of working in international environments …
… native level fluency in English …
… willing to travel overseas and to relocate to Nagoya …

… to fill the position of director of their international relations office. Foreigners (i. e., non-Japan residents) welcome, speaking Japanese nice but no requirement… and then there was a list of those blah-blah things everybody can claim: organisatorial and people skills, team oriented, eye for detail, flexible, whatnot. Mind also that the majority of the international relations of said university are situated in Germany, The Netherlands, and France; except for the last one all countries I have lived in and the languages of which I speak fluently. Hence, I thought: Hey guys, here I am! and applied.

The advert also said that if you are not contacted within two weeks, you can consider the application unsuccessful. My landlady suggested that with all Christmas and New Year celebrations and such, I should be patient until the end of this week. So, patient I was – none of my key virtues, I have to admit – until I did some further job searching last night. Where I found the very same advert for the very same job from the very same university except for one little detail; in fact, only three little words added to the requirements: Native in English.

Fuckers.

I talked about that to two friends of mine. The first said that it is likely that the position was filled from the beginning and they just needed to do something official and show that their candidate is the best one fulfilling points 1, 2, 3. When somebody else came along (I’m not even suggesting this would be me) fulfilling points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, they decided to extend the search period, and add point A to the advert, something only their candidate can fulfill. The disaster of having to hire somebody else prevented, everybody was happy.

The other friend of mine, who has been in Japan for 20 years or so, said that the Japanese society as a whole is very insular and closed off and that trust is everything here. If A knows and trusts B, and B recommends C, then A will hire C even if there are better qualified candidates out there. Hence, it’s not about who you are or what you can do or what you know, it’s about whom you know.

Thinking about this for a while, this is actually true in a lot of places and companies, not just in Japan. Since my Masters degree, I have worked in 5 different places, and I only had an interview for the very first and very last position. To all the others I have been introduced by somebody in the know; but to be fair, I don’t think those positions were officially advertised anywhere and thus potentially wasting the time of somebody. And, especially for mid level university positions (assistant/associate professor), it is known that the adverts are tailored so the desired candidate will just so happen to fit it perfectly.

I should have known better than to hope for a decent job here without any connections. But I’m still angry. So, I have made up my mind to look into other ways of coming to Japan. All I need is a stop gap solution for the beginning…

Layers

Today was the coldest day in this winter so far, with the maximum temperature at 6 degrees only. It was raining all day, not improving the temperature at al. So – a good reason to snuggle up at home. Technically at least, because the “snuggling up” part would imply that it is warm at the place where you’re doing it…

Which it is not. I probably said it before, Japanese houses – old and new alike – are made for summer, where every breeze is a relief, and not winter. Here, the walls are maybe 10 cm thick, essentially made out of dirt on a wooden frame. Here and there are cracks in the walls through which you can see the outside, and the windows – single glazed – don’t close properly. I’m glad I live on the top floor though, because the floors on the ground floor below consist only of simple wood boards laid down without any further insulation. The tatami do help a little, but not enough – there remain the cracks between them.

Of course, there is no central heating in the house. Every guest room has a small electric space heater, but it is more to take off the worst edge rather than to heat the space properly. Something else I do have in my room is an electric hot carpet, similar to an electric blanket, just for underneath. I put my futon on top and turn the carpet on (reading this again it sounds very funny, but that’s the way it is…) before I go to sleep for that extra toasty feeling. As the cold seeps in from the top, however, I am now using four blankets – a thin sheet, a thin blanket and two thicker winter blankets. I feel like a veritable princess on a pea – just in reverse. So far, I can still sleep wearing only a T-shirt and socks, but I have a thick pyjama ready for the really cold nights.

Except for the computer room, the other rooms in the house have no heating at all – and that includes the bathroom… I have taken to very long and very hot showers, a big relief. One of my housemates – her room is on ground floor – essentially wears the same stuff in- and outdoors now. I’m not quite there yet, but I spend a lot of my time either in bed or with a thick blanket wrapped around me. Occasionally, I wear gloves to keep my hands warm when typing. My other housemate says it will get worse in February – I wonder how far I’ll have to go to stay warm…

Start

Today – January 6th is not a holiday here like in Austria – was the first working day in Japan again after the week long New Year’s holidays. It’s time for everybody to get back into the rut – and so it is for me. I have decided to start looking for a job even more aggressively than I did up to now, and I will go and print out a number of my CV’s to personally hand in at companies in town. There is one application I sent off in mid December, but according to their guidelines this is probably the last week I can except an answer from them, so I can just as well get started rightaway.

Wish me luck!

PS: Oh, by the way… Yesterday I went to Heian shrine, and in the spirit of both the country and the season, I was thinking of buying a good luck charm. I wanted something useful and asked if they had anything to do with finding a job or job related to begin with. The salesman pointed at the most expensive charm (of course), which bore the English description: Against general evil. Do you think that’s a sign?

Japanese New Year Traditions

In Japan, the New Year is the most important holiday. It is celebrated with efforts the West reserves for Christmas. There are lots of routines, rituals, and traditions surrounding New Year’s in Japan, so I will focus on the two things I did myself this time.

Joya-no-Kane
Like in Austria, where the large bell of the Stephansdom in Vienna rings in the New Year, temple bells play an important role in Japanese New Year’s Eve. In a ceremony called joya-no-kane, Buddhist temples all over the country ring their large bronze bells. It depends on the temple how formally this is done; for example in Kyoto’s Chion-in, one of the most famous spots for the ceremony, the bell is rung exclusively by the monks of the temple, whereas in many smaller temples, even normal people can ring the bell. In any case, the bell is struck 108 times at New Year’s Eve – once for each of man’s earthly desires which, according to Buddhism, cause suffering. Each time the bell is rung, one desire is eliminated from those who listen, so they can start the New Year with a clean slate.

A Buddhist temple bell is a huge affair, the one in Chion in being 3.3 metres high, 2,7 metres in diameter, and 70 tons heavy. It is rung – or rather, struck – from the outside with a large wood beam, and it takes 17 people to do so. The sound of such a temple bell is very loud and deep, it carries a long way and when you are close enough, it resonates deep within your body. Only when the tone has completely stopped, the bell is struck again – so, the larger the bell, the longer the joya-no-kane will take. The starting time depends on the temple. In Chion-in it is timed so that the 108th strike happens in the New Year. Other temples have different rules. This time, I could year temple bells from around 11 pm to 1:30 am approximately.

Hatsumode
Once the joya-no-kane is over, it is time for your hatsumode, the first shrine visit of the year. People go and make their first prayers, buy new Omamori charms of various types (from general luck charms to getting married and easy delivery), and buy O-mikuji, their “personal” fortunes for the New Year. Those fortunes are either paper strips directly pulled out of a jar, or you draw a piece of wood with a number on it in exchange for the fortune strip. There are both luck and curse fortunes of various degrees, and a neutral one. No matter which one you draw, it is best to leave it at the shrine, tied to a pine tree if possible. A curse will stay at the shrine and wait for your return, and a good luck will multiply for you at the shrine. Especially now this is popular, I have never seen such masses of O-mikuji tied to twigs around shrines…

In Kyoto, the most popular shrines for hatsumode are Yasaka jinja, Heian jingu, and Fushimi-inari Taisha. As you should perform your hatsumode as soon as possible after New Year, these places are packed with people. I have heard that Fushimi-Inari alone drew 2.5 million visitors in the first three days of this New Year…

My New Year? I went with my housemates to Shinyodo temple where we were allowed to ring the temple bell. I did not count, but we must have been cleansing ourselves of desire #35 or somesuch, hopefully something serious. After having some of the hot tea served there by the monks (it was freezing…) we went to Yoshida shrine for our hatsumode. I did not buy a charm, but I prayed for a new job – you’ll never know. Anyway, as fireworks are forbidden in Kyoto, the New Year came very quietly, without making a huge entrance like in the West. I liked it, it very much matches my own style…