Iris – Page 70 – goinggaijin.com

Misc.

I’ve just heard that Kazuo Ishiguro received the Nobelprize for Literature this year. I’m so thrilled! His books are wonderful, and even though he is a British citizen and had left Japan at age 5, his books have a very Japanese style. I wasn’t planning to, but since I have another review for one of his books ready, I’ll post it on Sunday.

In other news… it is getting really cold now, and I feel that it is much too early. Night temperatures are about 18 degrees, even though it can get quite warm during the days still. I need to close my windows at night now, and even during the days it is quite windy, which is not very conducive to open windows.

This might be the reason why I have developed problems with my left shoulder in the last three weeks or so. It’s very painful, although I have still the full range of movement – for now. A friend of mine thinks it may be “frozen shoulder”, a condition that starts out with shoulder pain that changes into immobility at a point. It may take up to one year, sets in suddenly, and also ends suddenly, and the cause is unclear. All that is known is that it starts out with an inflammation of the shoulder joint, but why…

I have now started to use an anti-inflammatory ointment during the day, and in the night I use “hot plasters” on the shoulder to keep the area warm. The pain seems to subside a little – I can sleep through the night again – and moving is still possible. So, maybe, with a bit of luck, it’s not frozen shoulder after all, but just some sort of cold from sitting in the draught for too long.

Review Meeting

As you may have forgotten by now, I am still writing posts for the facebook page of Kyotogram, a local business with the aim of bringing foreign tourists to Kyoto and Japan. By now, there is also a website, essentially a daily blog talking about Japan, but I am not involved in this one. Our group of four people meets once a week for two hours to talk, and most of the times, the meetings are nice and productive.

Although, the last two weeks, they weren’t. The reason is that Kyotogram will soon celebrate its first birthday and the big boss is starting to want to see results, obviously. In this case, the results essentially are the number of likes per post, and for some reason or other, this number has been going down the last month or two. It’s hard to say why because facebook doesn’t reveal the algorithms with which they provide people with our posts – and the more people we reach, the more likes we get, obviously.

So, two weeks ago, the team leader (let’s call him Junior because he’s a recent uni graduate, 23 years of age, with zero experience in anything) has started to search for reasons why the numbers are down, and, lo and behold, he has made it out: all the posts that are not scenery. Since those are all my posts, he was more or less attacking me and saying something that “we need better content” (not that he explained what that would be, of course). I let that go – until last week Junior attacked me again in the same way, and I couldn’t quite let that go twice in a row…

Fast forward to this week’s meeting: I was prepared to tell him I’d take a week off in case he attacked me again today. And I was definitely planning to ask the big boss for a meeting to talk about Junior and his attitude in depth. None of that happened, since there were preemptive strikes by both of them:

First of all, Junior apologised for his behaviour last week and the week before, right at the beginning of the meeting, which was totally unexpected. (I accepted.) And then the usual meeting was cut short because we two writers had an extra “review meeting” with the big boss! The three of us went to a cafe nearby where the big boss bought drinks, and then we were … what’s the term … airing our grievances. For one and a half hours. I don’t want to go into details here, but I feel that it was a constructive meeting, that the big boss was listening to what we had to say, and that he will try to solve the current problems.

I trust the big boss to come up with something we all can be happy with (even Junior). I wouldn’t want to leave because I still like the job (and I do learn a lot of things that can be applied to my own work), the people are nice (mostly), and I can definitely use the money… Let’s see where this is going.

The Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki

The Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami

Tsukuru Tazaki is an engineer in Tokyo who is living his dream: building railway stations. Recently he started to see Sara, a travel agent, and as they get closer, Tsukuru opens up and tells her a secret: 16 years ago, when he was a student in Tokyo, the tight-knit group of friends he belonged to in highschool abruptly and without explanation cut off all ties to him. Sara urges him to find closure, and he agrees to visit his four friends in Nagoya and get to the bottom of the issue. Tsukuru returns to his old world of friendship, dominated by unwritten obligations to protect the weakest member under all circumstances…

The novel’s title is an allusion to the names of the five friends: All except Tsukuru’s last name contain a color: red, blue, white, black. Haruki Murakami draws an image of deep friendship among the five highschool students which is destroyed forever on outcasting one of them, who, for lack of understanding, is himself reduced to utter despair that lasts for years.

When I first read this novel, I found it incomprehensible how the four “color” people could ditch Tsukuru from one day to the other without explanation, without talking to him, without apparent remorse. Now that I lived in Japan for longer, I can see that this is a very standard Japanese pattern. It is done to protect the harmony of the group, which is paramount in Japanese society and thinking. And sometimes, it’s not the “guilty” person who has to leave, it is somebody else. Been there, had that done to me…

Haruki Murakami is probably the best known contemporary Japanese author. Born in Kyoto in 1949, he studied drama in Tokyo and became the owner of a Jazz bar. At age 29, he started writing, and since has become one of the most acclaimed writers world-wide. Even though many Japanese critics don’t like his work because they see it as “too Western”, he has won many prizes in Japan as well as abroad.

Interesting book – check it out on amazon.

Unexpected Gift

Yesterday I took a day off and went to an exhibition in Osaka. I enjoyed it very much, even though it was very crowded and even though everybody around me seemed to snap pictures all the time. Sometimes even without looking at the art in detail at all. I don’t get it…

Anyway, when I came back to Kyoto I was to meet a friend at the Takashimaya department store. Near their information counter – always a good meeting spot – there are a few seats available, and I sat down next to an elderly lady, who, in truly elderly lady fashion immediately struck up a conversation with me. (Elderly people love to talk to me!) It was the usual: where are you from, oh you live in Kyoto, what are you doing… kind of conversation which I can hold up quite well by now. And she asked if I come to the Takashimaya often, and I answered, well, sometimes, today I’m meeting a friend here. And she said that she was just done with her own shopping and then she began rummaging in her bag.

And then, suddenly and completely unprovoked, she took out her wallet and gave me a Takashimaya gift certificate for 1000 yen. Just like that. And then she shook my hand, mentioned in getting up that she was 80 years old, and then she left, never to be seen again.

I’m still flabbergasted. Why on earth would she give this to me? I never really know how to deal with these random acts of kindness, other than say “thank you very much” and roll with it. Anybody else got any suggestions?

Claim 2 Fame

Finally all the hard work paid off – I’m famous! Of course, I had already garnered international fame when somebody posted a video featuring me on youtube… But this time it’s local fame, which is really more important!

So, last Saturday I went to the Nishijin Traditional Cultural Festival with a friend of mine. Nishijin is Kyoto’s silk producers and merchants district, and there are still a number of fantastic old houses in which craftsmen live and do their work after ancient traditions. I have been there three times now, but there are still new things to discover. This time, my friend and I found a maker of exquisite – and very expensive – silver tea pots. And a bit off the beaten track there was the maker of samurai armor, who explained that one single suit of armor would take him one year to complete…

Anyway, the festival started at 10, and my friend and I were early so we could scour the stalls for cheap silken goods. In a corner behind the very first one, there was this guy who constantly took pictures, something I found rather creepy because I don’t like pictures of myself. At some point he approached us, explained that he was a reporter for the Kyoto Shimbun and if he could do an interview. I would have said no, but my friend was faster than me… So we answered a few questions and exchanged name cards. And on Sunday, the oevre below was found in the local newspaper, fully equipped with my name, age, occupation, and photo. (I edited the article a little to cut out my last name and half of the photo).

Kyoto Shimbun has a print run of 500.000 morning papers each day. My friend says there will be lots of people reading it, and it may be good for business. Well, people are indeed reading it (I got emails and calls from friends who did), but as for increasing business, I doubt that, since the information about me is too vague for anyone to find me. However, I will contact the reporter again and see if he would like to write about What’s Up In Kyoto. This might definitely drive some business… We’ll see.

Tanuki

One of the most ubiquitous creatures that can be found all over Japan is the tanuki. Statues of the tanuki – translated as raccoon dog – are often seen outside restaurants or shops to beckon customers, just like the Japanese maneki neko cat. Unlike the maneki neko, however, tanuki can also be found at entrances to private homes or around the precincts of Buddhist temples. They are also the subject of many woodblock prints from the Edo period, and they feature in numerous stories, the oldest ones dating back to the 8th century.

Long before that, tanuki were revered as gods or at least godlike creatures, who ruled over Japanese nature. However, that changed with the introduction of Buddhism and tanuki were relegated to divine messengers and local guardian spirits. They are still seen as magical today, mostly as pranksters and mischievous little beasts, who, even though they may mean no harm, can wreak havoc to the minds and bodies of their unsuspecting victims.

The most amazing feat any tanuki can perform is shapeshifting. Shapeshifting into anything, really: stones, trees, statues, things as extraordinary as the moon and as common as household items… There is a cute story about the latter: A tanuki wanted to repay a farmer for a good deed and transformed into a beautiful tea kettle, which the farmer sold for a good price to a rich man. But the first time the tea kettle was put to use and heated over a fire it sprouted head, tail, and legs, and returned to the farmer. In the end, the farmer earned a lot of money for showing people the tailed and snouted tea kettle, so there is a good ending to the story after all.

Tanuki also enjoy taking human form, in particular that of Buddhist monks, in which they received the special name of tanuki-bozu. In this shape, they are out to cause mischief by imitating – more or less perfectly – human activities like attending funerals, or working as a scribe. Of course, sooner or later the disguise will be discovered and the poor tanuki is thrown out of the temple, but there is one legend of a tanuki-bozu that was allowed to become a page at the temple after his discovery, and was even buried in a regular grave. Most of the times such a favourable treatment is not the case though, and the tanuki must leave, which means that all the things he has bewitched during his stay – something else they are capable of – will return to their real shape, piles of money will then turn to leaves, for example.

As mentioned above, statues of tanuki can be found all over Japan, and although they come in various sizes, they all essentially look the same. The reason for this is, that these statues go back to a single artist called Tetsuzo Fujiwara, a potter who lived in Koga, a village in Shiga prefecture, that one day was visited by emperor Hirohito. Since Koga is known for pottery, the streets were lined with tanuki statues waving flags and the emperor was so amused by this, that the wrote a poem about it – and the rest is history.

Since tanuki have been ascribed with eight special traits supposed to bring good fortune, many of the statues depict at least some of them:

friendly smile
hat (protecting against bad fortune and weather)
big eyes (help making good decisions and perceive the environment)
sake bottle (representing virtue, often with the kanji for 8 written on them)
big tail (strength and steadiness until one is successful)
promissory note (representing trust or confidence)
big belly (stands for decisiveness)
big scrotum (symbolising luck in money matters)

Especially the final trait may seem a bit odd, and indeed, the origin story behind it is quite interesting. In fact, tanuki are real animals, properly translated as Japanese raccoon dogs. Sometimes, the word tanuki is falsely translated into English as badger or raccoon, but those are different species. The mistake is not surprising, because even within Japan, there are differences in naming the animal; even though tanuki is the official name, mujina is a regional variation. The confusion goes back to the kanji, which originally mostly referred to wild cats. But since there are no wild cats native to Japan (other than in Okinawa), the kanji began to be used for the tanuki. Tanuki are widespread in Japan. They live mostly in forested areas, but have also been seen scavenging in cities even as large as Tokyo.

Anyway, back to the scrotum: Real tanuki already have a large scrotum, but this alone would probably not be enough for comic depiction. The background here is that in the old days, metal workers in Kanazawa who were charged with producing gold leaf, put their gold nuggets into the skin of tanuki scrotums before hammering. It happens that this skin in particular can be stretched extremely thin – allegedly to the size of eight tatami mats – which makes it very useful for producing gold leaf. Moreover, tanuki scrotums were made into wallets, and surely the connection between kin no tama – small gold balls – and kintama – slang for testicles – helped the legend along quite a bit as well.

There are many stories about tanuki and their mischievous behaviour, but not many of them involve their kintama. This particular trait was picked up by ukiyo-e artists of the Edo period. There, tanuki are depicted using their scrotums as sails for boats or even boats themselves, as fishing nets, umbrellas, cloaks… Nowadays these depictions are rare, but the statues are still very popular throughout Japan, and the tanuki also functions as mascot for a number of Japanese companies. And who knows, maybe that jolly old Japanese you just met is nothing but a tanuki in disguise waiting to make a fool of you…

Weekend Plans

The following few days will be very busy for me, and not all of the stress is work related, so I’m not sure I should be complaining at all.

Tomorrow morning I want to go to Nijo Castle. Besides Nijo Castle being one of my favourite places in Kyoto, this weekend there is a special exhibition of Bonsai trees commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Meiji restoration. Apparently, some of the trees exhibited there are 150 years or older – certainly something I cannot miss!

Saturday will be my day off (instead of the usual Wednesday). Together with a friend of mine, we will go to the Nishijin Traditional Cultural Festival. Nishijin is the name for both an area of Kyoto where, in the old times, the silk weavers and merchants had their (work-) shops, as well as the name of a weaving technique for cloth, that was used to make kimono in particular. My friend and I have been to the Hina Doll Festival there in March, but we are expecting even more exciting events this time around.

old soroban school, miniature version as toy Sunday morning I will go and try – again – to pass the soroban first dan test. I don’t think I will be passing this time either; in fact, I didn’t want to go at all, but when I told sensei, he had already registered me and it was too late to bow out. So, despite being very, very busy, I was training soroban for about an hour each day. Sensei said that I should focus on the “additional” exercises – dempyo, anzan, word problems, and roots – this time because those were relatively easy to pass. And if I could pass all of them now, I could focus on the “basic” exercises – multiplication, division, addition – for two times in a row. I am not convinced this will work, but I trust sensei’s judgement, so that’s what I’m doing now.

Between all this I will have to work, of course. And, as a bonus, I will have to choose whom to give my vote in the upcoming Austrian governmental elections. I received my absentee ballot letter today – probably the earliest I ever got it – and have about a week maximum to decide. Of course, some parties are out of the question, but other than this I never felt so unsure as to how to cast my vote. We’ll see if it makes a difference.

Seiryu-e Festival

I’m so busy these days with all sorts of stuff, so even though I finally know about many of the cool events in Kyoto, I barely have time to go there anymore… However, last Friday I managed to take a few hours out of my schedule and visit the Seiryu-e Festival of Kiyomizu-dera Temple.

The Seiryu-e Festival is the festival of the blue dragon, where an 18 m long dragon is carried through the temple precincts and later though the streets below Kiyomizu-dera. In the beginning, the dragon emerges from the 3 storied pagoda near the entrance of the temple. It is accompanied by three women in front and a group of men (monks?) behind it. Of course, a number of people with shell trumpets must be there as well to announce the coming of the dragon.

The blue dragon enters Kiyomizu-dera There is a very short ceremony in the main hall of the temple before the dragon moves on to the newly renovated stage where it performs an elaborate dance to the chanting of the monks that have followed it earlier. Afterwards, the dragon moves through the temple precincts and back to the pagoda, which it circles once before leaving the temple through the main gate and going down to the streets below to bestow its blessings onto the town.

The blue dragon is believed to be an incarnation of Kannon – the goddess of mercy – and it is said that it visits the waterfalls of Kiyomizu-dera each night to drink. To Western minds it may sound a bit weird, but in Asian culture, dragons are associated with water instead of fire, and many temples and shrines have wells with a dragon-shaped spout. Also, the translation of Kiyomizu-dera is “Clear Water Temple”, so it seems natural for this temple to have a festival like this.

The blue dragon of Kiyomizu-dera Interestingly, this is one of the newest additions to Kyoto’s festival calendar. The first Seiryu-e festival was held only in 2000, and although the dragon is quite spectacular, it appears as if not many people are aware of the performance. I had the impression that most people who were visiting Kiyomizu-dera – which is one of the most popular tourist spots in Kyoto – didn’t know about the festival and were taken by surprise.

Because of this, the ceremony was not overly crowded, and I managed to get a first row spot to take photos; and I even managed to receive a special blessing including a paper talisman that was given out by the women accompanying the dragon through town. If you like, you can have a look at a short video of the Seiryu-e Festival at the homepage of Kiyomizu-dera: http://www.kiyomizudera.or.jp/en/visit/seiryu-e/

Business Update #3

Whew, I’ve been busy last week updating the What’s up in Kyoto homepage. I have added an archive for the monthly highlights I have done so far, and I am about to change the getting around page about Kyoto transport in a day or two. A page about shopping in Kyoto and Japan is in the works, and I am planning pages about Kyoto sights. The biggest change is that I made the main menu more friendly – meaning: smaller – for mobile phone users, it shouldn’t take up all screen anymore. I have never been a good programmer – I’m much better at designing algorithms on a somewhat higher level – so this took me a while. The sense of accomplishment I am feeling now was worth it though!

Also, I’m getting more active on social media: I started tweeting! For now, there’s only one tweet per week (please follow!), mostly because there are not enough events each day to not duplicate what I put on facebook. Or maybe I shouldn’t worry about that? Also, posting on social media takes up a big amount of time! I am slowly beginning to understand why bigger companies have their own social media manager. The facebook page is also doing well. Even though it doesn’t have many likes yet (please like!), there are about 20 times more people than that who see my posts each day. That’s a good start – now I have to lure them over to my website…

Unfortunately, at this point I am still spending money on What’s up in Kyoto, instead of earning anything with it. At this point, I am approaching mainly local galleries and museums, but there is not much coming back in return. Of course, I am in this for the long haul, but it would be nice to see the fruits growing, at least. Until that happens, I will have to do other, less fun jobs, to keep the company going, my accountant happy – and to secure my visa for the next year.

Sharing

Busy day today, even more so than a usual Tuesday: Leave home at 10:00 for Japanese class, then from 14:00 a business meeting. Home at 18:00, just to go out for a special soroban class one hour later. Finally exhausted home for good at 21:00.

The day had an interesting and very unexpected highlight though: lunch time. These days, I have my Japanese class at the Kyoto Rohm Theatre, where there are public spaces to sit and meet for free. After the class I usually stay and have lunch, do some writing or other offline stuff, and then I move on to my meeting in town.

During lunch, there are always more people coming and having their bento boxes, but today it was exceptionally crowded, and with lots and lots of old people. I found out that there was a special concert today from 13:30, which explains why there were no empty seats to be had around lunchtime. As usual, I had finished lunch and started writing, and it was busy enough that within a short time span, two old ladies (who apparently didn’t know each other) sat down at my table. Japanese people avoid doing this, and both of them completely ignored me, the second one even demonstratively turning her back at me. Oh well, I just kept writing.

But then, the first one left – and the second one promptly turned around and started chatting with me. And then she put her own bento box on the table (hand-made vegetarian maki sushi) – and offered me some of it! She went so far and put the food right in front of me and because it would have been rude to refuse, I had another lunch with the old lady, who was very happy to have somebody to share her food with. She said something like Shared food is always delicious, but eating alone is so sad…

Japanese people never cease to amaze me. I know that the elderly – old ladies especially – have some sort of fool’s license, they can get away with many things younger people would be immediately punished for. But this was certainly a new facet of Japanese society that I have never seen before, and probably will not see again.