experiences – Page 24 – goinggaijin.com

Going Out

Last Thursday, one of my English students took me out to one of his favourite restaurants in town. It was a relatively large restaurant in inner city, with three storeys of different sized rooms, and we took a small private compartment on the first floor. The restaurant (sorry, I forgot its name and didn’t take a business card either) boasts 100 different dishes, from the very simple kara age fried chicken available at food stalls at every festival to the most elaborate Japanese dishes.

We – or rather, my student, because I have no idea about Japanese food – chose a la carte and ate a seven course meal, together with a large bottle of (cold) sake. I wrote down the name of every dish, so I could remember it, and below I am sharing a few pictures. We did eat faster than I could take photos, sorry ’bout that.

We started out with sashimi, of course, and hari hari salad, a kind of vegetable. Then we had kara age, fried chicken, and, popular among the Japanese, beef in red wine sauce together with fried potatoes and onions (which were very tasty). My student also ordered tomorokoshi, fried corn, he said it reminded him of his grandmother who made this dish very often just for him. The most exciting dish, however, was tai no kabuto, sea bream’s head (literally: tai’s helmet). I love fish in general, and tai is one of the dishes that are served on very special occasions when people have reason to celebrate. That’s why this fish is sometimes jokingly called omedettai (omedetto means congratulations). As the final dish, we had ochazuke with salmon. Ochazuke is simply rice with green tea, and if you are served this soup by somebody in Kyoto, it is a more or less covert way of telling you to get up and leave. Obviously, the meaning is different if you order it yourself in a restaurant, but it is still supposed to be the last dish of the evening. I had a lovely evening, my student is very knowledgeable about Japanese history, and we had a lot of fun together. I really hope we can do this again soon, he certainly did promise…

Shutdown

Today, Kyoto has shut down much earlier than usual. I went to town in the afternoon, and many smaller shops on Shijo street – one of the main shopping streets downtown – were closed already, and many more closed by 17:00. The cafe, where I usually meet my English student, closed much earlier than usual at 18:00.

Why? A typhoon is approaching Kyoto, and people wanted to go home safely. In fact, there are two typhoons approaching Japan, one, number 20, from the southeast, that will make landfall some time tonight, and the other one, number 19, is southwest of Korea right now, also moving towards Japan (although there, Korea lies on its path first, so it may lose force there before hitting Japan).Right now, there is not much rain, but we have wind speeds of 30 km/h with gusts of at max. 55 km/h. It doesn’t sound good up here in 5th floor, and I think it is a better idea to close all my windows over night. I hope everything will be over tomorrow.

Compliments

Last Sunday, after a hiatus of about three months, I visited the soroban class in the Int. Community House (KOKOKA) again. I did not do quite as badly as I had expected, but I do need to start practising regularly again if I don’t want to give up that 1st Dan degree altogether…

Anyway, I was also very happy to see that one of my friends was working at the information counter that day, and because it was an unusually quiet Sunday, we had the opportunity for a long chat and even an extended lunch together. She had said it before, but she repeated it again: “You always look so happy. Every time you come here, you light up my day!”

Afterwards, on my way home, I dropped in another friend’s place. She owns a lovely cafe and sells hand-made chocolates (which was what attracted me to her cafe in the first place). Usually, I don’t visit her cafe in the weekends, because it is very busy, but it appeared to be a very slow day all over Kyoto, so I went in for matcha and chocolates and a chat. Again, I received a compliment: “You know, other people who have lived here for a while usually get bogged down by the mundane and it shows. You don’t – you still sparkle!”

Thank you so much – to both of you! It always surprises me when somebody says something nice about me or to me. I guess I don’t expect this because I don’t like people much myself – not as a mass phenomenon, at least. But maybe I’m learning how to pick the right individuals, those who don’t feed on bringing others down. It’s been long overdue anyway.

Pin – Badge – Wappen – Mon

To me, the Japanese language is fantastically frustrating and frustratingly fantastic. Especially their loan words, which are almost always written in Katakana, can be a challenge. This is mostly because the Katakana give no indication as to the origin of the word. It could be an English word spelled correctly (as far as this is possible in a syllabary) or a French word written phonetically. The fact that many of these words are abbreviated doesn’t really help either. And on top of that: false friends – words imported from some other language that took on a completely new meaning in the process.

The following is an interesting example of this. My Japanese teacher, whom I meet once a week likes to wear hats. His summer attire is a real Panama hat made from straw; he got it from his brother-in-law who once went on a trip to South America. Anyway, this week he pointed to a pin at his hat, and this is the conversation that followed:

“What is this called in English?
“A pin”, I said.
“Not a badge? That’s what we say in Japanese.”
“No, a badge is made from cloth and is sewn onto clothing.”
“Oh, in Japan, that’s called a Wappen.”
I laughed: “Wappen is actually German, and it means the crest of a noble family.”
“In Japanese, that would be called a mon.”

I rest my case.

Stress

I have been working on an update for my What’s up in Kyoto website: A brand-new logo, special landing page, updated calendar page with a new gimmick or two… I had planned to roll it out by August first, at the same time with the new highlight, but there are a few other deadlines in my way that need to be taken care of as well.

And of course, nothing will happen if I have to spend half days at the hospital. Unfortunately, I have developed shingles (herpes zoster) on my back. At first I thought I had scratched myself somewhere, but when I noticed the blisters yesterday, I decided to see a doctor as quickly as possible. He confirmed my Wikipedia self-diagnosis and put me on medication for one week. I hope this will do the trick, apparently shingles can be very painful (in some cases even requiring opiates for pain management) and this is nothing I need to experience myself! For now, the affected area is about as big as my thumb and feels more itchy and irritated than truly painful.

I’m not entirely sure what caused this outbreak, it may be stress related, even though personally I wouldn’t say I feel overly stressed, and I had worse stress during the final days of my PhD, for example. Currently, I do have problems sleeping in this heat though, and in the afternoon, when I usually take a nap because it is too hot to work anyway, there is the noise from the nearby construction that doesn’t let me get much rest. I hope that the weather will cool down soon, so at least I can get enough sleep again.

Summer Festival

Last Sunday a friend of mine took me to a local shrine’s summer festival, a new opportunity to meet the neighborhood! It was a small festival, where the neighborhood association prepares food and drinks for cheap prices, and there was some entertainment as well: First a taiko band (Japanese War Drums), then Hawaiian Dance (yes, I found this a bit odd too, but it was nice), and finally, when the evening got a bit later, the perennial Japanese pastime: Karaoke. We left at this point, but it was fun, mostly because my friend knew a lot of people there.

I always enjoy going to the things that are not geared towards tourists. People are friendly and forthcoming as ever, but it’s just this little private charm that makes all the difference.

Genkan

I’ve been living in this apartment for about three and a half years now, which, now that I think of it, is the longest time I have lived anywhere since I left the students dormitory to move abroad.

Anyway, finally after all these years, I have gotten tired of the state of my genkan. The genkan is the entrance to a Japanese home, it is usually very small and a little bit lower than the rest of the house or apartment. It is considered somewhere between the inside and the outside, and the place for people to take off their shoes.

Talking about shoes… I’m a woman. I love shoes. And even though I only have 30 pairs of shoes altogether (which means I’m practically walking barefoot), they do take up a lot of space. So far, I have put the ones in season in the genkan for easy access, the others were stored away out of sight. Well, easy access… with 15 pairs of shoes, things do get a bit tight and messy in a small entrance. But last week, I’ve finally had enough: I went to the Nitori and bought a shoe rack!

And it was delivered yesterday. At first I thought Nitori was just a Japanese version of IKEA, and in a way it is, with a subtle difference: The furniture comes almost assembled, and if you pay for delivery (only 1000 yen), it will be put up for you. So, when the two delivery men came yesterday around noon, they unpacked the shoe rack and put it right where I wanted it. All I had to do was to put in the shelves at the right position – and to apologise profusely for not having an elevator to get into my 5th floor…

Anyway, this is my genkan, before and after shoe rack: I am very pleased with the result, my entrance is now less cluttered and much easier to clean, and: I could fit almost all of my shoes into it! So: another room finished after office, kitchen, and bedroom. The biggest room is still a “work in progress” though: my livingroom. I’m getting somewhere with it though: A couple of months or so back I finally installed curtains. You see, I am indeed settling down!

Ofunehoko

Yesterday was the second yoiyama, the day (and night) before the second grand parade of Gion Matsuri. As I have mentioned last week, it was a very special yoiyama for me: I was invited to volunteer at the Ofunehoko, the large boat-shaped float that always ends the Ato Matsuri parade.

Now you’re probably wondering how I, as a foreigner (with very bad Japanese to boot) can help out at one of the most important Japanese festivals! Well… it was all really by accident… I am a member of the Miyakogusa, a volunteer organisation of Kyoto where people of all ages (mostly women of a certain age though) do a variety of activities: From visiting shrines and temples, to cleaning up the Imperial gardens, to presentations on Kyoto’s history, this is all volunteer driven and organised. How I got to be a member of this is an even more unbelievable story, I’ll tell it some other time.

Anyway, the leader of the Miyakogusa is a very energetic woman (!) and she seems to have many sundry connections and know everybody, including the people from the Ofunehoko, which has been restored only a few years ago. About a month ago or so I received a phone call from her where she invited me to take part this year. Of course, when Gion Matsuri calls, you don’t say no. And thus I ended up working yesterday, selling chimaki charms and books and little tenugui hand towels…

It was a very interesting experience. Two weeks ago there was an introductory meeting where we were explained the history of the Ofunehoko, little details to its size, weight, number of men to pull it… Then there were the practical things: How much was each item, where would we get lunch, where is a toilet for us volunteers… Everything was planned to the last dotted i – including what to say when selling something and asking for the money – actually, we were “giving” things to people, since “selling” is a dirty word when it comes to items blessed by the gods…

The level of detail that went into the planning made the whole thing yesterday run very smoothly. When I arrived at the spot, I was set up with two Japanese into one team – we were to do everything together and change stations regularly. There were three stations for us: The small northern and big southern tent, where we sold the chimaki and other things as well as entrance tickets; plus the entrance to the house, from where you could enter the Ofunehoko and take a look at the street from above.

Mostly the work was easy, there were hardly any foreigners requiring assistance, and the Japanese I talked to were easy to satisfy. Part of the smooth ride was surely that I took the morning shift from 10:00 to 16:00, I could see a sharp increase of visitors towards the end of my shift. Then especially the entrance to the house got busy: We were to take the shoes of each visitor, clip a number onto them and hand an identical number to them, so we could find their shoes on returning and give them back. The later the afternoon, the more people wanted to go upstairs, and even though they were only admitted in groups of 10, it sometimes became quite overwhelming when just as many came down the stairs also.

Anyway, I had great fun and I made a couple of new friends. Some of my old friends visited me at work as well, even though it was very hot. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures from the inside of the stalls, it would have been an interesting and rather unique view on Gion Matsuri! After 6 hours of standing only (there were seats but not enough for everybody) I was exhausted! Not so much from the heat – we had enough free drinks and cold patches to stick underneath your clothing – but because my feet hurt so much…

Fun incident: All of us volunteers had to wear yukata. It took me about 45 minutes to get dressed; first the spanx and the towels (long story), then the yukata itself, and then I needed 20 minutes just to put on the obi! By the time I was done, I was soaked in sweat – definitely a good start for the day! After all that work, I was mightily proud of myself, but obviously it was not good enough still. At some point, one of our yukata-wearing customers looked at me disapprovingly and said: Turn around! She then proceeded to pull hard on the back of my yukata – the part that reaches down below the obi, and after a few minutes, she was satisfied: the pulling had produced a better neckline in front – and in fact, other women passing by later did comment on this! Only in Japan…

Busy Again!

Whew, I had a busy day yesterday… Much of it was fun though, for once.

Very first thing in the morning I visited the Eki Museum in the Isetan Department store next to Kyoto station. The museum is small, but it has excellent exhibitions. Until the end of July, they show early shin-hanga woodblock prints, featuring the works of several artists. However, the exhibition focuses on landscapes, in particular those of Yoshida Hiroda and Kawase Hasui. Most of the times, I only buy postcards at the museum shop, but this time I splurged on a book of prints by Hashiguchi Goyo (my favourite shin-hanga artist) and a somewhat larger reprint of a scene at Kuroba River by Yoshida Hiroda. I bought it because it reminds me of Austria…

Afterwards I went to Nitori, a kind of Japanese version of IKEA. They sell furniture and all sorts of home furnishings… I didn’t buy much, but I love walking through the aisles of such shops wondering “what is THIS thing good for?”

Next stop: bank. I needed to pay expenses for my grandmother’s funeral, which means: international bank transfers… This is always a painful experience with silly questions like “where did you get all that money from?” and “what the hell are you going to use it for?”, which is really not anyone’s business – it’s MY money after all. However, this is the Japanese government’s way of trying to curb money laundering and illegal immigration (the latter by making it hard for immigrants to get money back to their countries) as if those people wouldn’t have a way to forge documents etc. This is not my first time to transfer (my) money abroad, so I came prepared, but the Australian lady on the counter next to mine wasn’t quite so patient. I guess after spending two hours at the bank and getting nothing done because they keep asking for yet another document, I wouldn’t be cool anymore either…

On my way home, I dropped by at Yasaka Shrine. There were no more food stalls unfortunately; the speed with which the Japanese clean up after their festivals always amazes me. Nearby, I bought some cheese cake from a famous bakery. I haven’t tried it yet – it’s really too hot to eat anything – but I’ll have it for breakfast tomorrow.

After a full day out in the heat, I was exhausted. The next three days I have no meetings, but still plenty to do in the office and at home. And then, on Monday, my very own Gion Matsuri, I’m very excited already… I’ll tell you all about that on Tuesday!

Heat Wave

Have I complained about the heat already this year? It’s hot. Very hot, and as you can see, it will stay like this for at least another week: Well, this is quite usual around the time of Gion Matsuri. In fact, during the Gion Ato Matsuri, where the highlight will be next Tuesday, there always seems to be a peak in the heat wave. Speaking of Gion Matsuri: I went last night to the yoiyama, where the inner city changes into a party zone. This year, I wanted to see the kagura – a sort of sacred dance/theatre – performed in Yasaka Shrine. I was not disappointed, even though I came a bit late and had to watch from way far back. Kagura is a bit like Noh when it comes to the masks and costumes, but much more dynamic. I think half of the plays I watched consisted of people mock-fighting each other with swords, and dancing around each other for the main part of the play. And that at more than 30 degrees – the actors must have been exhausted at the end!

I certainly was, so when the performance ended at about 9:30, I decided not to go further to the inner city. Crowds are not something I enjoy, and there were enough food stalls at Yasaka Shrine already to eat my fill. The only thing missing were the baby kasutera that I love so much, but there will be another opportunity to get those, I’m sure.