All Things Japanese – Page 31

Japanese New Year Traditions

A New Year has begun, and again, I have tried yet a few more of the hundreds of traditions that surround this time of the year in Japan.

Unfortunately, I have been rather sick since Christmas, so instead of going out for the joya-no-kane ringing of the temple bells, I stayed in bed. I could hear the bells from there, however, and even so, it gives a wonderfully spiritual feeling to the quiet night.

I tried two of the food related Japanese New Year traditions though: On New Year’s Eve, I ate what is called toshi-koshi-soba, year crossing soba. Soba are buckwheat noodles, and depending on who you ask, you will get a different version of their significance in the dish: The noodles are long and symbolise a long life; but they are also easy to cut, so they make you let go of the hardships of the past year; and since the buckwheat plant is very hardy, this is a representation of strength and resilience (something I can definitely use right now).

For New Year’s Day, I had bought not a full Osechi menu, but only the sweets that come with it. The rooster is a symbol of this year, and the long flat thing is a paddle that’s used for hanetsuki, a type of old Japanese shuttlecock I have written about before. Interestingly, only half of the pieces had anko in it – I was very happy about that!

Besides that, I bought a rooster for my home. Not a real one of course, but a small ceramic statue that is usually displayed near the entrance. Since I don’t have space there however, I put it in my living room – one of the few things that are decorative there at the moment. It is my first such zodiac animal and according to a friend, you should not reuse an old statue (the zodiac repeats itself every 12 years), but always buy a new one, to attract new good luck to your home, so to speak. Well, this is a nice tradition to start in my home I guess, and it’s neither expensive, nor does it take too much space, so…

Nihonshu

As mentioned a week or two ago, at the end of November I went to a sake tasting. The person who conducted it was an American, and to be honest, I was slightly disappointed in the beginning. However, he turned out to really know his stuff and he was good at explaining things, so I was very happy in the end.

For example, I learned why on each bottle of sake there are two percentages given: The larger percentage indicates the milling rate, that is, how much the rice used was polished. The idea is that the smaller that milling rate (50% and lower, indicating more polishing), the more smooth the alcohol should taste. I say “should” because it is not always that clear-cut, or maybe my taste buds are not that refined. The smaller percentage indicated the alcohol percentage. Anything between 15 and 20% is standard, but recently, very light sake with around 8% alcohol only are produced as well, mostly to attract female customers.

Also, I have learnt that sake consists of rice, water, mold, and yeast. That means that the usual translation of sake as “rice wine” is misleading, it would be more accurate to speak of “rice beer”. Mostly, special rice is used for brewing, different to the one that is eaten. Interestingly, there is red rice that can be used for making sake. The result is something that has a very interesting taste – like European liqueur with a hint of soy sauce. It also has a distinctive red colour, most normal sake is colourless or at most slightly yellow only.

There are many sake breweries all over Japan, but Hyogo prefecture with the capital Kobe has the most. In Kyoto city, there are a number of sake breweries in Fushimi, and people claim that the water from there is especially good. Unfortunately, there are not many sake breweries that allow visitors, but every now and then, guided tours are offered. I will definitely look for one of those!

Sake brewing season is in winter when the rice has been harvested, from October to March. Over summer, the sake rests, and is afterwards bottled. The year and month of doing this is always noted on the bottle, and sake is best consumed within a month after bottling. It does not seem to age well since even our guide said the taste becomes “different” without going into details. That probably means it is awful for all but the biggest aficionados…

The most interesting information for me was that there are no sake sommeliers – you just drink it as you like it, hot or cold, with food or without… The most popular food to go with sake are tsukemono, Japanese pickles, apparently the equivalent to wine and cheese, or, more appropriately: beer and chips.

By the way: sake as we call it in the west simply means “alcohol” in Japanese, so if you want to order it here, you’ll have to use the term nihon shu, Japanese alcohol.

Reporting

When I was about 15 years old, I wanted to become a journalist. Since I liked writing and listened to music virtually all day, I thought music journalist would be a good match for me. Obviously my life didn’t quite turn out that way, but still, about 25 years later, I had my first journalistic adventure today.

Sponsored by Kyotogram (thank you!) I went to the Kyo-ryori exhibition that is held today and tomorrow at the Miyako Messe. The theme is Kyoto cooking, that is: kaiseki: expensive dishes with nothing but the best and freshest ingredients, styled to absolute perfection. It is the haute cuisine of Japan, and prices for dinner start at 15.000 YEN for the cheapest meals, drinks not included.

Since it is December, many exhibits were centered around O-sechi ryori, the meals you eat on the three holidays of New Year’s. Kaiseki already means exquisite styling of the food, but in O-sechi, the bar is yet raised a bit higher. The main ingredient of both kaiseki and O-sechi is fish and seafood of all kinds, and I think I saw only a single dish with meat.

Besides the food exhibits, there were sellers of food related items like expensive ceramics, kitchen utensils, etc. as well as tea, sake, and beer. There was also a place where you could take part in a (simplified) tea ceremony and a food court where you could order some lunch, standard Japanese fare though. There was also extra entertainment: The portioning of a whole tunafish (I came to late for this one to get decent pictures, but I had seen it once before), an extremely interesting demonstration of the ritual cutting of fish without touching it (something religious I guess, I’ll have to look it up), and a maiko dance performance (can’t go without that in Kyoto).

I did not have time yet to sift through all the pictures I took, but here are two of the most striking ones: a seafood rooster for New Year since next year is the year of the Rooster, and below: a fugu phoenix… Mind you: this is not plastic, this is real fish! How can anybody eat this!

The Chocolate

One of the things I still find slightly frustrating in Japan is that they do not share my idea of “sweets”. Whenever I think of “sweets” or “dessert”, it involves chocolate. Or at least ice cream. I guess this is part of my Austrian heritage? Admittedly, it is not nice to eat chocolate in summer when it is so hot that it melts halfway between your fingers and your mouth. But still…

So, imagine my delight when I found Meiji’s new brand The Chocolate. It is their first bean-to-bar chocolate as far as I know, and it comes in four different varieties, depending on the amount of cocoa. “Velvet Milk” with 49% cocoa is the one I like best. It indeed tastes very smooth and velvety although it is still darker than what I usually prefer. The price is a bit of an obstacle, with 220 YEN for 50 g more than two times as expensive as the red Meiji Hi Milk I usually have. But then again, a girl’s to indulge herself every now and then, no?

Nengajo Intricacies

I am getting ready to writing this year’s nengajo, New Year’s cards. I was planning to write to 10 people only which is surely manageable even though I can write Kanji only very badly and slowly. However, I just received a mochu hagaki card, which means there is one less nengajo to write this year.

Mochu hagaki are mourning postcards sent at the beginning of December, and essentially they say “I had a death in the family, please do not send me nengajo this year.” The idea is first to pay respects to the deceased, and second, when your father just died, for example, how can the New Year be a “happy” one. This seems to apply to closest family only, however, and just for one year.

Another friend told me that many old people for whom writing dozens of New Year’s cards becomes too burdensome, will write something like “this is my last nengajo” onto the card. This not only means that you will not receive any more from them, but also that you are not allowed to send them any! Doing so anyway is considered rude! I have not received any such card yet – my friends are not that old – but isn’t it interesting how many rules there are for something so simple as a New Year’s card?

The Old Capital

The Old Capital (Koto)
Yasunari Kawabata

Chieko is an adopted child, found one winter morning on the doorstep of Takichiro and Shige. Now Chieko is 20 and settled into the life and routines of a kimono wholesaler’s in Kyoto’s Nishijin area. But on a visit to a shrine during Gion festival, a young girl she has never seen before excitedly begins a conversation with her. It is Chieko’s twin sister Naeko who was raised by a poor family in Kitayama after the death of both their parents. Their unexpected meeting brings inner turmoil and outward complications to both sisters. But also the obi weaver Hideo, Chieko’s childhood friend, must choose between the two.

The book is set in Kyoto in the 1950s, and it provides interesting insights into the life of that time, where many people still wore traditional kimono when riding the modern tramway. What I found particularly interesting was the rigid class distinctions that existed between the girls, and which especially Naeko could not overcome – she keeps calling her sister “Miss” throughout the novel. In typical Japanese manner the ending is left open, but as Naeko departs from Chieko one still hopes for a happy ending for both sisters.

Yasunari Kawabata (1899 – 1972) was the first Japanese to win the Nobel prize in Literature, in 1968. This book, Koto, was one of only three cited by the Nobel committee for their decision – and that although the first (official?) translation into English was published only in 1987. Kawabata was orphaned at an early age and eventually lived with his mother’s extended family. When he graduated from university in 1924, he had already published some stories and quickly rose to fame; still he worked part-time as a newspaper reporter. He died under unclear circumstances, most people consider his death a suicide though.

Check out the book on amazon – have fun!

Advent Calender

As today is the first of December, advent has begun, and it is time for an advent calender. I do the same thing as last year – I draw something to indulge myself every day – so that’s nothing new there.

However, one of my students from Germany is visiting Japan right now. Apparently, he makes an online “Advent Calender of Curiosities” each year, and this year it’s all about those curious things he found en route in Japan. The doors open daily at midnight (European time) and he already started off with something … oh well, do have a look yourselves!

Unfortunately, the calender entries are in German, but there are pictures to go with the description and if all else fails, there’s always google translate. Enjoy!

(And big thanks to Sebastian for allowing me to link to the calender!)

Famous!

Around this time last year, I told you that a friend of mine and I had been engaged as extras for a Japanese movie. Well, I can now officially talk about it since I just found out that it was released last Saturday! The movie is called Koto in Japanese (in English: The Old Capital) and it is a sequel to the novel of the same name by Yasunari Kawabata. Now the two sisters of Kawabata’s novel are grown and have children of their own who have their own struggles with Japanese society. Part of the movie is set in France, while the novel takes place entirely in Kyoto and its northern outskirts.

I have not seen the result yet, but another friend went to the cinema on Saturday, and he said that both my friend and I are featuring very prominently in a scene that is set in an old house in Kyoto. If you take a look at the poster to the right, we were in a scene with the actor in the blue kimono to the far right. Apparently he is very famous in Japan – does that mean I’m now officially famous too? 😉 We should be in at least two more scenes in the movie, somewhere in the background, but I cannot tell for sure until I have seen it – and this will take a while. My Japanese is not good enough to watch movies or TV yet (and fully understand what’s going on), so I will have to wait until there are English subtitles. The movie has already won a prize in the Kyoto Historical Film Festival (I think), and it may be sent to international Film Festivals as well – and that’s usually where the subtitles are made. I will see it eventually though, I’m sure.

Hakusasonso

Kyoto has lots of beautiful Japanese gardens, and there’s only so much time to visit them all. Last week, in the peak of the momiji season, I took time out to visit Hakusasonso, a private garden near Ginkakuji temple. I had passed by there many times before, but now I finally went in.

The Hakusasonso is the former residence of Kansetsu Hashimoto, a nihonga painter of the Taisho and early Showa period. He bought the site in 1913 when it was nothing more than rice paddies. Until his death in 1945, he worked on the 7400 square metres that make up the gardens now and most of it – including the buildings – are unchanged. Today, the garden is still in possession of the Hashimoto family.

There are five old buildings in the garden, two small tea houses, one private Buddhist temple, and the old residence that is now used as an expensive kaiseki restaurant. The most interesting building is called zonkoro, it is essentially one very large hall that Hashimoto used as his studio. All four walls have large glass windows, and you can see almost all of the garden from the studio.

Not only did he paint, Hashimoto also designed the buildings and the garden himself. He collected stone lanterns, pagodas, and Buddha statues (many from China) and placed them throughout the garden. Especially lovely is the little hill where Buddha statues meditate underneath large bamboos.

At one end of the garden there is the museum, a modern, two storey building where Hashimoto’s works are displayed. From the second floor of the museum, one can overlook the whole garden, and with the borrowed landscape of Mount Daimonji in the back, the scenery is made perfect. In the late 19th and early 20th century, Nihonga was a special style of painting that combined Western painting methods and ideas with Japanese materials and aesthetics. Nowadays, most Japanese painters work in truly Western style, and the distinction to Nihonga has all but disappeared.

Novelties

Last week, a friend visited Kyoto and we spent some time together. We went to Kurama and Kibune in the north of Kyoto and we went to Nara in the south. I had never been there before (and I will write a weekend post about it).

The nicest part about his visit was that I got to try a few things that I did not dare on my own. For example, we went to a Korean-style grill restaurant where we ate cow’s stomach, among other (less exotic) things. And we went to a pachinko parlour together… A pachinko place was something I always wanted to try, but the whole idea was rather daunting: The large halls with loud music, the flashy atmosphere, the unknown everything… But now I know that playing pachinko is not that big a deal, in any respect.

When you enter, you choose a machine and you feed it with money; bills from 1.000 – 10.000 YEN are accepted. For each yen you enter, you receive a small steel ball. You then shoot each ball into the machine where it should enter one (or more) openings at the bottom of the display. Every time you hit one of those openings, a game is played automatically, where 3 numbers should match – like at a one-armed bandit, but with the difference that you don’t have any way of influencing this part of the game. When the three numbers match, you have won a jackpot, meaning that you get more balls to play with.

Of course, this only scratches the surface of the whole pachinko idea, I am sure there is much more to it. Since we did not win any jackpot, I cannot tell you about the game in more depth; and since I don’t have the money to spend – or the need to be addicted to yet another silly game – you will need to find more information elsewhere.

What was interesting to me was the lack of control you have. Other than regulating the speed with which you shoot the little balls into the machine, there is nothing else you can do, it is indeed a game of luck. It was also interesting to see the people around us. We went on a Friday night, and there were lots of people, even those that looked very distinguished and well dressed. A friend of mine told me that many people play pachinko as a way of stress release.

We did not stay very long, only spending 1000 YEN each. But when we left, we were half deaf. The noise is incredible! Each machine has noisy programs and all of them run on full blast, regardless of whether somebody is playing or not. This is unlikely to become one of my preferred pastimes.