Last week, I mentioned that there is no good place in my new bedroom for a Western-style wardrobe. When some of my friends came over a while ago for a very belated house-warming, I told them the same thing, to which one of my Japanese friends responded with the following:
When he was a child, he read the Narnia books. There, the whole adventure starts when the kids step through an old wardrobe. My friend said that he couldn’t understand the concept of “wardrobe” at all. And indeed, Japanese people – at that time at least – didn’t use wardrobes like we know them.
Instead, there was thetansu, a traditional chest with drawers – but obviously, it’s a bit hard to “step through” to the other side. Then, there are oshi-ire, built-in closets that are found in almost every traditional room. But they have a shelf halfway up as well, and are used chiefly for storing futons during daytime – also not very convenient for a quick “stepping through”, although it would be conceivable for a small child to do it.
Anyway, this then led to my question: How did you store things that are usually put on hangers, like suits? Answer: Neatly folded inside the box they came in, inside a tansu or oshi-ire. Just like kimono, hakama, and other traditional garments. All of them require a special way of folding before they are wrapped in paper and stored for the next time.
Thinking about this, I found it interesting how our own cultural experiences shape the understanding – or lack thereof – of other cultures, and that from a young age, apparently. Even though I read stories from all over the world as a child, I can’t remember any grave misunderstandings like the above. I wonder if it never happened (maybe there were always plenty of illustrations at hand) or if my mind just filled in the blanks with familiar shapes, clothes, sounds… It’s probably the latter, but I’m not sure if this is a good thing.
What a day! An Austrian friend of mine visited Kyoto just in time for this year’s hanami. We did a lot of walking together, only partially avoiding the crowds (and on a Wednesday, too!)
We went along Philosopher’s Path, passed Eikando on our way to Nanzen-ji, then took a somewhat hidden path from the aqueduct to Keage Incline (one of my favourite places for many reasons). After a short break for lunch at the steps in front of the Kyocera Museum, we walked past Shoren-in and Chion-in and through the crowds at Maruyama Park. Onwards, upwards, and towards Kiyomizudera, we stopped at the Sannenzaka Museum for their current exhibition on Edo/Meiji metalworks. Afterwards, we were both exhausted and decided to call it a day, even though my friend initially wanted to see the evening lightup at Kiyomizudera.
It was a glorious, sunny day with lots of people everywhere, both Japanese and foreign tourists. The rest of the week looks promising as well, and I already have my first (thankfully mild) sunburn of the year. I’ll add a photo tomorrow, for now, I’m off to bed.
Sorry for not writing on Sunday, I went all the way to the other, western, end of town and back – on the bicycle… We were having some great sunny days lately, and it’s warm and pleasant all around, the perfect spring weather. Rainy days are still cold and nights, too, but Pumpkin now sleeps on top of the duvet during the night, so it’s warm enough for him at least.
Anyway, while I was out and about, I was looking for signs of cherry blossoms. It’s a bit too early, yet there are blooming trees here and there. This one caught my eye, for example:
I took several photos from the street, when the lady of the house appeared and invited me inside! She said that this so-called benishidare zakura – weeping cherry – is a very early bloomer every year, and I could see how proud she was of it. And rightfully so!
As I mentioned, I gave myself a 10 mm buzz cut about a month ago. And just the time I save every morning by not having to style it or wait until it’s dry has me convinced that I’ll keep it this way for a long, long time…
So far, reactions were split across the gender divide.
Men don’t seem so care, really, although I did notice some stares from across rooms and even streets. Only my doctor, whom I’ve been seeing for 10 years now every three months, seemed to be genuinely shocked. First thing he said at our last appointment was, “so… you got a haircut…” to proceed to the practicalities of the how and to finally end at the why – and if the cliché of women changing their lives with a haircut is true. I told him to pay attention if his wife ever shows up with something drastic like this; the next thing she may want to change may be him… He also asked the best question of them all with “Isn’t it cold?” (It’s indeed a bit chilly on the bicycle.)
Women on the other hand are almost vicariously excited about it, in particular younger ones. I’ve heard “that’s so cool!” several times now, and just today, I got compared to Annie Lennox. Of course, Annie is even now, at almost 70, so much more beautiful than I’ve ever been and ever will be. No contest. And now, I have her “Little Bird” fluttering around in my head…
Two weeks ago, I was invited to a Japanese drum class to review it for What’s up in Kyoto (I love my job!) Japanese drums are generally called wadaiko, but there are many different sizes that all have specific names. I’ll do a bit more research on this – looks like a weekend post on drums is coming up! But let’s talk about the lesson.
To be honest, I had mixed feelings somewhere between excitement and apprehension. I have zero musical talent and couldn’t hold a tune if my life depended on it, and after I had to quit the recorder (flute) in primary school, all I’ve been playing were LPs and later CDs. So, there was a base level of embarrassment to begin with, which grew exponentially when I entered the classroom and saw that it was set up for a single student only. Yay.
Thankfully, we started easy: raise the drumsticks high and just drop them onto the drum. Tap the edge of the drum. Play loudly and then very quietly. Interestingly, the stance to play wadaiko with slightly bent knees and straight back reminded me of the basic stance in Aikido. I wonder if this is because the strength for playing should not come from the arms and shoulders, but from the hara, the centre of the body (just like in Aikido).
In any case, the class moved to basic rhythms and, finally, to a real song (is it a “song” if it’s just rhythm? Serious question) with a beginning, middle and end. My teacher and I played together and took turns with improvisations in the third part, and although I wasn’t very good at those, it was fun to watch him play.
The lesson took one hour, in which I had great fun thanks to the teacher who was very encouraging. Unfortunately, I felt quite conscious of my body throughout the class, partly because I was the only student as mentioned and thus felt under constant scrutiny, but also because I was facing a huge mirrored wall all the time… Overall, however, the fun definitely outweighed my body issues and I felt extremely energized after the class, so much so that I couldn’t sleep at all that night.
Things that surprised me: the drumsticks were very light; apparently, there are different weights and sizes, not just for smaller and larger drums (obviously), but heavier drumsticks make it less tiring to play for longer periods. Also, where the drum is hit makes a difference – dead centre sounds different from closer to the edge. Now that I had time to think about it, the reason is probably the added interference/overlay of the soundwaves near the edge, but that wasn’t clear to me at first. Finally, you need to hold the drumsticks quite tightly to avoid them bouncing and hitting the drum twice – no wonder I ended up with blisters on both my thumbs.
Before I tell you my final verdict, I must mention the teacher: it was Kuro-chan (real name Shugo Kurosaka), the blonde frontman of Bati-Holic. (Since I’ve fangirled about the band already.several.times, I’ll spare you today, but do check them out, they’re great!) We got to talk after a concert, and he mentioned that he’s teaching too, and I jumped on the occasion. He began learning taiko when he was 12, and when he entered university in Kyoto, he started a taiko club there (which still exists today!) He said he quickly found out that there was money in this, and since he wanted to do something music related anyway… The rest is history. Because he has so much experience teaching and also works with kids, he’s very patient, and we were both laughing a lot during the lesson, which speaks for his relaxed attitude.
Final verdict, or: Where is this going? Well, one of my goals in Project 50 by 50 is to “start a new hobby.” And because this whole music thing is so far out of my comfort zone, it may just be the right challenge – and I’m here for it. For various reasons, I can’t start right away, but I hope I can make it happen after summer at the latest. I’ll keep you posted.
With my 48th birthday just around the corner, I have decided to make a few changes in/to my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with how my life turned out so far. When I was stuck all the way back in my deepest teenage angst & depression, I couldn’t have imagined any of this. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. So, I’ve done two things:
I chopped off my hair. I’ve been wearing it short since living in Hong Kong in 2007, but now it’s a mere 10 mm long. Doing that felt extremely liberating, and once the deed was done, it energized me for the rest of the day. So far, the reactions were mostly surprise, but people were positive, and I’m feeling less stuck already. There really seems to be something to the old trope of “women who want a change, first change their hair”.
Project 50 by 50: 50 goals to reach until my 50th birthday. This was inspired by somebody whom I admire and who made massive changes when turning 50. I already started last August by setting the first 20 goals; 15 more at the beginning of this year, and another 15 are due next year. (That’s deliberate, you never know how life turns out, and there may be new things to focus on.) I don’t want to go into details here since this is obviously a very personal project, but some of the goals are to go out more often and make friends, save enough money to renovate the rest of the house, take regular days offline, stop neglecting this blog… Overall it’s a quirky list ranging from the mundane to the almost esoteric, but all the goals are meant to improve my life in some way and/or to make me a better human (if only in my mind).
Already, I have been making progress on some of the goals, one of them being “study Japanese and take the JLPT every December”. I mentioned taking the test, and the results are in: I passed, with 160/180 points!
Now, this was the easiest test covering only the very basics, and had I failed this after all these years in Japan, it would’ve been very embarrassing. The next level will be more difficult, and it will already include keigo (respect language). I’m worried… Best to go and study more.
This afternoon, I had to go to Arashiyama to take photos of next month’s highlight temple on the What’s up in Kyoto website. And here’s the first plum blossoms that I see this year:
And that after a day of on-and-off snowing in my (eastern) part of town, where, when I left, there was still snow on Mount Hiei. There was no snow anywhere in Arashiyama (in the western part of town), and in fact, it was a lovely day with sunshine and blue skies – and lots and lots of tourists at the usual haunts over there.
It was fun to go out, I sat at the river for a bit, too. I hope spring will come quickly this year.
How is it that as soon as I promise to post more diligently here, things get away from me again…?
At least I finally finished a little weekend project. A friend of mine gave me a large furoshiki with a print of one of her favourite woodblock print artists, Clifton Karhu. As it is gorgeous, I didn’t just want it to sit in a drawer somewhere. Therefore, I made a cheap wooden frame, so I could hang it on the large wall in my office. Here we go:
Of course, furoshiki are square, so I trimmed the image a little at the top, which is just sky and more leaves. “Trimmed” is not the right word here, I just folded the fabric to the back of the frame. Usually, you would staple the fabric to the wood, but since I didn’t want to destroy the furoshiki, I only sewed it to the back. This makes the picture less stable and a bit wobbly to be honest, but overall I’m happy with the result. And with the bold colors, it fits into my office perfectly.
Thanks for your kind messages: I’m almost back to normal, only a few sniffles remain and a persistent cough that mostly manifests in the mornings and scares Pumpkin out underneath the covers. My hot water has reappeared too, just as surprisingly as it was gone. Probably it wasn’t frozen pipes, but just a frozen valve in the water heater itself (which is outside). The first hot shower after a few days of washing my hair in a bucket felt like a treat!
There were a few other treats in the last 3 weeks I should be reporting on. First, the Bati-Holic concert on the 14th, which was probably the reason why I got that nasty cold to begin with: I was pretty sweaty after the concert and then bicycled home; even though it was a fairly warm night, it was probably not the best of my ideas…
Second, the Tuesday after, my friend from Tokyo invited me to a kabuki performance in Osaka. It turned out not to be “real” kabuki, but a mix of kabuki and noh theater together with taiko drums. The first half was a bit disappointing – I had seen “Hagoromo” several times before – but the second half with a famous lion dance performance – one father and two son lions – made it all up to me. Performers were Bando Tamasaburo, a kabuki actor famous for his onnagata female roles, and the taiko group Kodo, which I’ve seen before in joint performances like this. It was a great afternoon, even though I got violently sick on the way home and in the end had to cancel our plans to see the Andy Warhol exhibition on the next day.
Last week I was up and running again (mostly) and I visited Daigo-ji temple for work on Thursday. I took some lovely pictures of the snowy temple, and if you don’t mind me repeating myself (or rather: this month’s highlight on What’s up in Kyoto), I’ll write about Daigo-ji next Sunday.
And finally, because I finished all my work and then some relatively early on Monday, I treated myself to another Bati-Holic concert… Sadly, there were not many people, but it was fun anyway. Interestingly, the guys seem to know me already. When I entered, I bumped into one of the members on the way to the dressing room, and he said “Hey, nice to see you again, thanks for coming!” It’s not as if they only have three fans or something, so I find it almost embarrassing when something like this happens…
Anyway, this time, the group was complete, no Corona-necessitated substitutes this time, so my signatures are now complete as well. So happy!
It started snowing yesterday in the late afternoon, and I even took a walk around the block last night, when it was still snowing. It must have stopped in the night already, that’s why we only have 15 to 20 cm, but for Kyoto, this is very unusual. Looking at the news, there has been snow and cold temperatures all over Japan, and most people in the cities are not used to dealing with it.
For example, trains were stranded everywhere, and there was an article telling of people shut in a train for 5 hours just outside of Kyoto’s Yamashina station while personnel tried to free the switches from snow. I also read that some convenience stores and smaller food shops had to close because they had been sold out – the article implied a run on the shops. I’m wondering: WHY? Sure, I get it, probably a lot of the supplies scheduled to come in last night were stuck somewhere; but you don’t need to go shopping every day to survive. It was very quiet up here, I think the post man didn’t come at all, so I didn’t see any of the usual kamikaze drivers (people who park their car outside and don’t bother cleaning off all the snow before driving), but there must have been plenty in town.
I did have a problem of my own: No hot water. There was plenty of cold water, and the gas was working as usual – but they didn’t combine to produce hot water. I am guessing that the hot water pipes are frozen shut, and since the temperatures hovered around 0 degrees all day up here, they didn’t thaw yet. This night is forecast to be very cold again (-4 degrees), but it seems that the next days at least should be warmer. So far, I haven’t called anybody, but it seems that the pipes, while frozen, are still intact. If something changes one way or the other, I will have to do something about it. But that’s a problem for tomorrow.
