Author: Iris

Cat Apparition

In Japanese folklore, cats occupy a special place. While often depicted as beloved pets and protector of “their” humans, they are also thought to have an affinity for ghosts and the other side. And I’ve just had an eerie encounter of the feline persuasion myself.

Since it’s quite cold in the house at night, Pumpkin sleeps in my bedroom. The other day I had been in bed reading when I needed to go to the toilet. I didn’t want Pumpkin to follow me – it takes him ages to settle down again – so when I closed the fusuma, I made sure the gap was small enough so he couldn’t slip through.

However, just a couple of minutes later, I found him behind me in the bathroom after all, and when I asked “Hey, how did you get out,” he disappeared in the direction of the entrance. So far, so good.

Imagine my surprise when I got back upstairs and Pumpkin sat in the bedroom peering through the narrow gap of the fusuma with a peeved look on his face because I left him behind. But I had seen him downstairs just a minute earlier.

What happened? I have no idea.

Maybe he did get out after all, but as I said, he disappeared in the direction of the genkan and certainly didn’t pass me on the stairs. Maybe it had got too late and my tired mind played tricks on me.

Or maybe, just maybe, my dear Pumpkin knows how to create astral projections. That could come handy, actually. Sadly, I doubt h would tell or even teach me how to do it.

“Little New Year”

Today, January 15, is koshogatsu, the “Little New Year”. Traditionally, koshogatsu coincided with the first full moon of the year, and while this is not the case any more since switching to the solar calendar, there happened to be a full moon yesterday. And I managed to get a semi-decent photo of it, sadly it doesn’t show the lovely pale orange color it had among the clouds.

Anyway, koshogatsu still marks the end of Japan’s New Year period, so people are supposed to remove their New Year decorations. Some people bring them to their shrine in the neighborhood where they are ritually burned in a ceremony.

I’ve never decorated my entrance for the New Year – other than putting up the current zodiac animal – but I had an old ofuda charm from last year. So, I dutifully returned it to the shrine, but there was no ceremony to get rid of such items.

Instead, I walked in on a private ceremony. A couple was sitting in the closed-off part of the main shrine building, where usually only priests may enter, and they received a blessing. Afterwards, they were putting a green branch of a special bush in front of the deities. I am not sure what kind of ceremony it was; both of them were dressed in black, so it might have been related to a funeral, perhaps? Since I didn’t want to intrude, I left after having watched so far.

I always thought that all funeral ceremonies were Buddhist in nature, but I recently learned that this is not the case. Apparently, there are families who practice Buddhism according to one of the many sects, and there are a minority of others who practice Shinto. Obviously, serious believers would not change to the other religion for any occasion, and the ceremonies and rituals for childbirth, coming of age, marriage, death etc. are very different. I have not delved too deeply into this – talking about religion is difficult even in English – but it’s certainly a topic I’d like to learn more about.

Hyakunin Isshu

For you,
I came out to the fields
to pick the first spring greens.
All the while, on my sleeves
a light snow falling.

Emperor Koko, 9th cent.

This is a poem from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, probably the most famous of all collections of Japanese poetry. The name can be translated as “One hundred people, one poem each” and this anthology of waka poetry was collected in Kyoto’s Arashiyama district. There, at Mt. Ogura, was the home of Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241), himself considered one of Japan’s greatest poets.

He selected many poems by his contemporaries, but also by famous older poets whose work had been handed down for many years, among them 20 women. While there are many other anthologies of waka poetry, it is believed that this one became so famous because of the fame of Fujiwara no Teika – and because he had just the right connections to the Imperial court.

Writing waka poetry was one of the courtiers’ favourite pastimes, and to this day, the emperor himself gives out the prize for the best new year’s poetry. Most of the poems contained in the Hyakunin Isshu are love poems, and many of them allude to a time of the year using words like “cherry blossoms”, “full moon”, “crimson mountains” and others.

The poems and their writers have garnered lots of attention over the years; both feature prominently in woodblock prints or are alluded to in other Japanese works of literature. Since the Edo period, they also have a connection to the New Year in the form of the karuta game.

Karuta is a game of memory, where, when hearing the first half of a poem, the players must find the card with the second half as quickly as possible. There are karuta clubs throughout the country, and therefore, the poems of the Hyakunin Isshu are known by practically every Japanese. At home, it’s usually played as a team of three people – one who reads the beginning of the poem, and two who are trying to find the other half of the card as quickly as possible.

Since 1904, there is also competitive karuta, with the main tournament being held at Omi shrine in January, and roughly 50 other tournaments being held throughout the year. In Japan, there are more than 10,000 competitive players, and the game is even considered a sport.

The Hyakunin Isshu has been translated numerous times into a number of languages. Each translation brings a new aspect to the poetry, yet, there are many hidden meanings that are not only hard to translate, but may fly over the head of the unsuspecting foreign reader. For example, would you have guessed that the “first spring greens” in the above poem (translated by Peter MacMillan) are the nanakusa – seven herbs that are gathered and eaten on January 7 for a healthy winter?

I’m back!

Happy New Year again!
I hope you had great holidays and time for some rest.

It’s been a while since I posted, so I have fully recovered from my cold/COVID by now. Unfortunately, I had to deal with other health issues. It seems that I picked up a habit of needing a doctor just before week-long holidays.

This time it wasn’t cat-induced, but instead a tooth that caused pain in half of my lower jaw – never mind that said tooth has been dead for decades… So I had to see my dentist just before he closed for the New Year to get antibiotics, painkillers and a height adjustment of said tooth’s ceramic crown. Everything was fine by New Year’s Eve, thankfully.

The other thing that happened was last Saturday, when I woke up with a shoulder so painful that I couldn’t lift my arm all day. I’m not sure if Pumpkin chose to sleep on it or if it was simply exposed to the cold room all night. It took two nights with hot patches applied to the sore spot to get better. And I’m now sleeping with a (summer) scarf, just in case.

What else happened… A group of my English students bought me a new eto, a little zodiac animal; it already lives in my genkan. It’s super cute, isn’t it?

For hatsumode this year (the first shrine visit of the year) I went to nearby Hachidai Jinja where I bought a lovely goshuin stamp with snake motif and an omikuji fortune slip. Apparently, I will have excellent luck (dai kichi) this year (I’ll need it, trust me.)

The rest of the time I spent sleeping and reading and puttering around in the house. And now real life is back: My accountant paid me a visit on Monday; on Wednesday, BATI-HOLIC had their first concert of the year (with a great crowd this time).

And today, we had hatsuyuki, the first snow of the year. No pictures because I had an early appointment, but there wasn’t much snow anyway. At noon, when my appointment was over, it had all melted away again. Obviously, the house is very cold now; when I got up today at 8:30, it was zero degrees in my bedroom.

Sadly, my plans of spending the afternoon working at some nicely heated cafe were scuppered: The ones in the city were crowded (it seems other people have cold houses too) and the one near my house was closed after it was open during New Year. Oh well. Next time.

A Death in Tokyo

Keigo Higashino

On a typical evening in Tokyo, a man staggers onto Nihonbashi Bridge and collapses in front of a policeman. However, he isn’t just drunk, he had been stabbed to death. Not long afterwards, a young man called Yashima is hit by a car nearby. In his possession he has the wallet of the dead man on the bridge.

When eventually a connection between the two men is found and Yashima dies from his injuries, the police close the case. But inspector Kaga is not so easily satisfied, and when he digs deeper into the murder victim’s life, the unearths a motive tied to the man’s strong belief in justice and taking responsibility.

An enjoyable read about two good men who have to pay the ultimate price – one for sticking to his principles and the other for letting go of them in a moment of weakness. Even though I felt that the mystery element wasn’t as strong as what I have come to expect from Higashino, I liked that there was a larger team involved in the investigation. This is closer to reality than the usual lone wolf detective of fiction.

Keigo Higashino, born 1958 in Osaka, started writing while still working as an engineer for a Japanese automotive company. His first novel won the prestigious Edogawa Rampo Award for crime fiction, which led him to become a professional author. Since then, he has written more than 65 novels and 20 short story collections, many of which have won awards or have been turned into films or TV series. About 20 of his books have been translated into English.

At the end of this book, there is an unexpected moral lesson that is timeless and transcends the boundaries of culture and language. Find out what it is and get the book on amazon.

On (Sick) Leave

While I was complaining last week about the cold weather, the temperatures plummeted even further, way below what’s normal around this time of the year. And I promptly got sick. I spent the weekend in bed with Pumpkin, but when I almost didn’t make it back upstairs after going to the toilet on Sunday night, I decided to get up again if just for a few hours on Monday.

Maybe it’s a flu, maybe another run-in with Corona, in any case I’m still having dizzy spells at times. This might also be because I don’t really feel like eating much, even though a friend of mine was kind enough to buy sweets and other easily digestible (and preparable) foods for me.

Anyway, I’ll be lying low for a while and this too will pass. And since it’s very close to Christmas and my usual holidays around this time of the year, I thought I’d just bow out a bit early – Sunday post is already prepared.

Take good care of yourselves, enjoy the holidays…. I’ll see you next year.

Preparations for the Cold

The autumn colours are over, and the temperatures dropped accordingly. In turn, Pumpkin and I are cold even indoors – I’ve mentioned the lack of insulation before, I believe…

So, time for my usual preparations for the cold: Once again, I’ve moved my bedroom to the smallest room on the second floor, facing south. My thick woollen duvet is in place, as well as the fleece blanket on top of it. Pumpkin may now sleep with me, not that he needs permission, really. It’s not freezing at the moment – we’ll keep those moments for February – so he’s in and out of my bed throughout the night. As long as he doesn’t wake me up doing so, I don’t mind.

There are also a few new things I have done this year to try and keep the house (and me) warm: First of all, I shut off the ventilator in my bedroom and nailed a board over the opening. Since I’ve moved in here, I never once used it, so I felt confident in my decision. There’s not much insulation in the hole that’s left, but I mainly boarded this up to decrease draught. With a bit of luck, this also prevents certain crawlies from coming inside…

Second, I asked for help from a neighbour’s contractor to put up a curtain rod in my genkan. There is now a heavy curtain in front of the entrance to the rest of the house, and I keep it closed in the nights. To be perfectly honest, neither of these improvements will make much of a difference with respect to the actual temperature in the house. Nevertheless, there is something to be said for the placebo effect, and that alone might just do the trick. 😉

However, one third thing that already made a difference in the nights: A friend of mine gave me an old hot carpet as a gift. Since I don’t use my living room much, not in winter, anyway, and I’m not sure whether it would withstand my heavy office chair, I came up with another use for it. It now lays between the two futon I use in my small bedroom.

It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to heat up the bed nicely, and my pyjamas to boot. Once I’m going to bed, I turn the carpet off again; I don’t mind the rest of the room being cold as long as I feel warm myself. I might need the heater still, but only to warm my hands when reading before I turn in. We’ll see how this goes in the long run, and how expensive this will be. For now, I’m very happy with the arrangement, and Pumpkin is too.

Happy 1. Advent

Christmas is not a big deal here in Japan, for obvious reasons. Even though many couples get married in a (fake) Christian ceremony with all the related trappings, the number of actual Christians in Japan is very small.

Thus, Christmas is more of a commercial thing, where people exchange gifts and friends go out together. Naturally, there is Christmas food, KFC chicken and strawberry cake, both of which feels super weird to me. To be fair, more and more Christmas-related sweets are for sale every year. I even saw chocolate Santas (aka: Nikolaus) from Europe in a popular shop selling foreign foods.

Until I get an oven and can bake my own Christmas cookies, this is the kind of fare I’ll have to make do with. And advent tea, of course. My friend from Tokyo has once again sent me an advent calendar filled with a surprise selection of tea. Today’s flavour was “Santa’s Secret”, a perfect fit to my chocolate and the strawberry cake I had for breakfast. Happy advent indeed!