Category: experiences

Wow! I have just had the most eventful (and stressful) week in a long time! All week I’ve been out every day going somewhere, something I usually don’t do because it stresses me out, but this week was so much to do and see that I just had to go out of my shell a bit more.

It started last Saturday when I went to see Kyogen at Shinsen-en, a small temple near Nijo Castle. Shinsen Kyogen were started in 1903, and there are 30 different pantomimes, each taking about 50 minutes. I saw two of them on Saturday. One was about a thief being punished, the second one about a spider monster being caught somewhere in the woods. Especially the second one was very dynamic with spectacular fight scenes – imagine my surprise when the black spider jumped from the stage at first floor, and the two samurai with their drawn swords right after them!

On Monday I went to Fushimi Momoyama in southern Kyoto to a sake tasting. It was a three-hour event where in total I tasted 10 different types of sake, the first sip solo, the second sip paired with food. It was more a lesson than a tasting, and it was so good, I feel quite confident of being able to go to a shop and buying not just any sake, but choosing one that I like. I was invited to a private tour because the company doing it wants to increase their online presence; I promised to write about them both on What’s Up In Kyoto, and on this blog as well, so stay tuned!

I had two work meetings on Tuesday, so nothing special, but yesterday I went to Kibune in northern Kyoto to see the Hitaki-sai Festival at Kifune Shrine, one of my favourites. During the Hitaki-sai, wooden prayer sticks gathered over the last year are ritually burned as supplication to the gods, and the ceremony was very interesting and fun – in the end, visitors were invited to throw sticks into the fire as well. Kibune town was badly hit during typhoon Jebi in September, on the road to it, many trees were uprooted, and my favourite house in somewhat European style is gone – I heard it was hit by fallen trees, but nobody got injured.

And today, I spend in Ohara, a small town north on Kyoto, with one of my English students. We do these trips occasionally, and I asked her to come along to see the Ohara-me festival. Ohara-me were women in special dresses, who would walk all the way to Kyoto carrying firewood or sometimes flowers in baskets on their heads in order to sell them in town. Unfortunately, although the festival is said to be held for two weeks, we couldn’t find any sign of it – probably the big things happen only in the weekends?In any case, we did make good use of the time we spent in Ohara, because we went to Sanzen-in Temple, a huge Zen temple where in the olden days, retired emperors would go to and live. At the moment, it is a little bit too early for the momiji, even though some of the maples had already colored leaves. Of course, there are many shops lining the little lane to the temple, and on the way back, we made it our goal to visit every single one of them! I did buy a few presents for friends, so it was a very successful day indeed!

As you can see, I’ve had a very successful week – and it’s not over yet! Tomorrow I’ll visit a friend of mine, and on Sunday, there is the “Tengu Festival” at a temple far out in the mountains of Arashiyama. I’m not sure about that one because the week was very tiring and I do have to get some work done as well, but I am very, very tempted indeed…

Folding fans are a popular summer accessory in Japan, for both men and women. There are literally hundreds of designs that may even depend on the exact time of the year you are using them… For a long time, these sensu have been a target of individual artistic expression, and many renowned ukiyo-e artists have not been above making designs for both sensu and uchiwa (non-folding fans).

So, even though I have no artistic fibre in my body, I went with two of my English students to a little sensu studio where we could paint our own fans with water colors. I was a bit reluctant at first, but they got me when they said “it’s a machiya, probably 100 years old…”

So, we went to the shop/atelier and sat down on a long table on the floor where everything had been prepared for us already. First, we had to choose the color of the paper (already in appropriate shape, then the design. You could either make your own design, or choose from dozens of already painted fans to trace over to your own paper and then color in according to the model. One of my students had come up with her own design (which is probably easy after 40 years of doing watercolors), my other student chose to copy a given design.

And then, we painted. For quite a long time because my students made a design that would cover both sides of the finished fan. I only had a simple design on a single side, so I was finished quite quickly (and then had lots of opportunity to be shown around the house ;-)) In the end, we had to choose the wood for the fan from three options. The shop would take it from there, fold our paintings properly and then insert the wooden part of the fan into the paper.

That was 4 weeks ago. Finally, last weekend, I received the result of my labour in a very beautiful package (and smelling a bit like incense), and actually, now that I see the final result, it is not as bad as I thought (you don’t have to agree, that’s fine!)

I really don’t know how the shop did it, but the wood is indeed inside the paper, so it seems they have spliced the painted paper somehow to insert the spokes of the fan. Interesting, I did not think this would be possible. Anyway, I did have a fun afternoon, and even though the result looks like a child’s drawing, I am satisfied since it does represent my home back in Austria.

Tuesday mornings I have Japanese class. Aiso Sensei is a retired English teacher who takes time out of his busy retiree life to teach Japanese to foreigners. Of course, he would not really say so, instead he phrases it as “we are studying Japanese together”. Lately, we have been talking about complex sentence structures, and although the topic is a bit too advanced for me, I am having fun and do learn a lot of new vocabulary and expressions.

Today we were talking about the “use of adversative conjugations” or, to put it more simply: How to use the word BUT. It sounds easier than it is, and if you think about it, even in English there are different expressions for “but” like “though, although, still, nevertheless, yet, however” and probably a whole bunch more, all of which have a slightly different connotation. We were talking about the following five different Japanese “buts” today:

• monono or tohaimonono (ものの,とはいうものの): and yet, but still, that said…
• toittemo (といっても): tough… 
• nimokakawarazu (にもかかわらず): in spite of…
• nagara (ながら): though I admit…
• karatoitte (からといって): just because…

The last two are easy: Though I admit that chocolate makes me fat, I will not stop eating it. and Just because I speak English doesn’t mean I’m American. The first two are much more difficult to distinguish, because after both there should be a phrase “contrary to expectation”, which does depend on the context and the speaker. For example, the sentence: Although I am sick, I will go to work has a connotation of because it’s not that bad, really when using toittemo; and it implies an I’m feeling terrible, but I’ll do it anyway with monono.

So far, so complicated… The fun thing about today’s lesson were the exercises at the end of the chapter: ten sentences for five expressions, so each one was correct exactly twice (the instructions said that much). Since my sensei and I are studying Japanese together, we did the exercises together – and we promptly ran into issues where my sensei wanted to use decidedly more toittemo‘s than was expected… It was quite fun to watch him go “I’m sure this is the right answer here, but we already had it twice, so… where did we put the other two exactly?” In the end we did manage to use each expression exactly twice though. But I do wonder: How am I supposed to ever learn Japanese if the natives have problems already?

Within three days, two of my English students have shared their evening routine with me. And it is surprisingly similar: “First I have dinner, then I go have a bath, where I watch TV, and then I’m off to bed.” And I’m going: What do you mean – have a bath AND watch TV?

Apparently, there is a sizeable number of Japanese homes that has a television installed in their bathrooms, so that people can watch TV while having their evening bath. Of course, both of my friends live in apartments or houses that are newer than my place, but still – a bathroom TV? Remember that in Japan, you are supposed to have a cleansing shower before entering the bathtub – which is usually quite small with not even enough place to stretch your legs. And still, there are people who take enough time in the tub to watch TV.

I don’t understand this. Wouldn’t that be the one time of the day (especially after a hard day) when you would want to have some peace and quiet? I don’t even understand having a radio in the bathroom, but some people find it practical, especially in the morning. How many of you have a TV or radio installed in their bathroom?

Sorry for not writing in the weekend, I’m pretty swamped with work right now (more smartphone descriptions) and I need to watch my priorities…Things should be better next week, I hope!

Other businesses are swamped with work as well, in particular Kyoto’s builders have their hands full with repairing the damages from typhoon Jebi from September 4th. For example, Kurama in the northern part of Kyoto is still not accessible by railway, and I have heard that the temple in the mountains there has suffered severe damage. Here in town, things are ever so slowly improving. Only yesterday, the roof on the neighboring building that had been closed with a plastic tarp and a bit of duct tape has been fixed.

Other things that are less critical will have to wait. For example, in my building, there is something wrong with the drain pipe at the building entrance. The water does not drain through the pipe anymore, but it accumulates somewhere and finally seeps through the walls. This has been going on for a couple of months now, it is not related to Jebi. However, there are no builders to be had right now to fix the problem, even though I hope something will be done quickly. Just the thought of having to replace the whole roof there because there is more serious underlying damage annoys me. I have talked to several people in the house, and I have been assured that the property management is aware of the issue and has taken steps – even if that step means that we will have to wait until somebody is not busy elsewhere anymore. We’ll see how long it will take in the end.

Today, I had to take the bus to my weekly appointment in the city. On the way home, an old man sat next to me and started to chat, as they are always eager to do. He spoke quietly, but in a very good English, and after a bit of back-and-forth, he said that he had lived in California for four years.

It turned out that this man was a scientist, whose research was about the physiological influence of zero gravity. I could hear how proud he was to tell me that one time, he had sent his rats into space for 18 days and see what would happen to them. And, in passing, he mentioned a colleague of his, who just a few days ago was awarded with the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Small World indeed…

I haven’t complained about the weather in a while, have I? It’s too cold. Way too cold. In September, we should have temperatures in the high twenties, we are about 5 degrees below that. It’s been raining too often, especially in the night, and although tomorrow should be a nice and sunny day, the next typhoon (# 24 this year) will arrive in the weekend already.

Unfortunately, weather like this makes me depressed, which is not good at all. During summer, I started to go out once a day in the evening to escape my stuffy apartment; I would just walk along the river, cross at the second bridge and return home. But now, with all the rain I have all but stopped doing that because it’s no fun walking in the rain at the mud path along the river. I really hope this is not a sign of a terribly cold winter. Two months to find out…