Yabusame

Once every three years, Tokigawa holds a samurai archery festival called “Yabusame.” Luckily, this year happened to be a Yabusame year. I heard about the festival from multiple people shortly after arriving in Tokigawa and thus, have been looking forward to it for the past year and a half. I was able to finally witness the event this past Sunday, January 20th.

Two horse and archer teams participate in the Tokigawa Yabusame. There are numerous other Yabusame festivals in other parts of Japan of various sizes. The most famous one closest to Tokigawa is held in the coatal city of Kamakura. If you're interested, you can check out photos from the Kamakura Yabusame at the following website: http://www.deadhippo.com/photo_albums/Kamakura_Yabusame/index.htm

Here’s a rundown of the Tokigawa festival:

8:00am: The horse, archer and “pit-crew” start out from their respective stables to walk to the festival site. For the Tokigawa team, it meant walking about an hour or hour and a half through town to the festival site at the base of the foothills in the Nishidaira neighborhood. The second team came from Ogawa, a neighboring town. Their walk took them up through the foothills between Ogawa and Tokigawa, probably about a 2-hour walk.

Separate tents and horse-hitching posts are set up for the two teams and they make their camp there for the day.

10:00am: Two men dressed in white robes lead the horse and archer processions out of their respective camps through make-shift gates made of bamboo, string, and paper lightning designs.

The two archery teams merge together and walk to the archery site, which consists of a long dirt track. Spectators line one side of the track on the safe side of a simple wooden fence that reminds me a lot of what we see at renaissance festivals for jousting competitions. People are also scattered up a small slope that leads from the head of the track into the woods.

A short opening ceremony takes place, then the archers perform the only show of the morning by running their horses down the length of the track three times (gallop down once, trot back to the start, gallop down a second time, trot back, etc).

10:30am-3:00pm: After the “running of the horses” was finished, the crowd disbursed and were left to their own devices until the main archery performance at 3pm. The horses went back to their camps to “relax.” The archery team pretty much did the same except for a small blessing ceremony that took place at the nearby temple.

The temple is also where most of the festival attendees ended up after the brief morning show. They dutifully tossed their coins into the offering box, rang the bell to wake up the gods and said a quick prayer. Of course I was one of those dutiful minions.

The temple was also selling the New Year arrows I mentioned in my “Happy Year of the Mouse” entry, and (mass produced) embroidered charms. I bought my first New Year arrow and two charms, one for travel and the other for sports….mainly because I liked the pictures on them. Three of my current or former students happened to be manning the tent selling the charms (I think the family of the brother/sister pair I found working in the tent own and run the temple). The former student had the wherewithal to whip out his cell phone Japanese/English translator to let me know which charms were which. Most of the charms were for studying (not a surprise). Besides my travel and sports charms, there were also “normal” charms that covered everything else, and family/children charms. But the best part about it was that my students were wearing really cute white and red temple garb, so I embarrassed the heck out of them by trying to take a million pictures of them in their outfits.

There was also a local group of some sort up at the temple offering free servings of something called “amesake.” It’s a winter drink that’s somewhat akin to drinking a really soupy rice pudding. There is actually a little liquid Japanese sake in the drink, but for the most part it’s non-alcoholic. There’s some ginger in the mix (which I didn’t know about until I saw a lady grinding ginger at the amesake table), as well as what I’m assuming is the curd scraped off whatever they do with rice in order to make Japanese sake (rice wine). The amesake at this temple was really good, although if the lady at the amesake table hadn’t thrust the cup into my hands, I would have passed on it. I’ve definitely had less desirable amesake in the past.

At the temple there was also a small side house where masked dancers and musicians were performing traditional Japanese numbers.

Along the side streets around the festival sites, there were some food and trinket stands set up.

After spending a bit of time up at the temple with couple Japanese friends I ran into after arriving at the festival …as well as running into and having brief conversations with numerous students, teachers and Town Hall employees, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself, and figured I’d wander amongst the food stands, buy random things to eat and see how well I could entertain myself for 4 hours. I kept running into the same 2 JHS students, Mio and Mami, both of whom lived in the neighborhood where the festival was taking place, which turned out to be advantageous. It was right at the time when my other friends had disappeared and I was prepping to entrench myself somewhere to eat and pass the time that Mio invited me to go with her and Mami back to her house. So of course I did! I consider it an extraordinary gesture to have a student invite me to their house.

Mio’s cousins were visiting for the festival, and one of her cousins, Ai, was a university student, which meant she was still studying English too. Mio and Ai were both very inquisitive as well as attentive to my questions and comments, so we had a good time eating the food Mio’s mother and grandmother had made for the festival, sitting under the heated coffee table and practicing both English and Japanese. Both Mio and Ai’s mothers joined us for long stretches of the conversation, and Mio’s sister, who is now in high school but was one of my JHS students last year, popped in and out of the little gathering. Talk about a lucky opportunity. :-)

3:00pm: The second half of the festival got underway. 2-3 times as many people were present for the afternoon portion of the festival as for the morning part (understandably). The archery teams were paraded onto the archery track again, this time with tall, wooden, numbered targets in tow.

The first thing the archers did was spend a couple minutes shooting arrows up into the air for the crowd to catch. The arrows have blunt ends, but you still wanted to make sure you were paying attention to where the arrows were going because they were quite long and made of bamboo, so when gravity took hold, they came down heavy.

This is probably the most popular part of the festival. As I understand it, catching (or nabbing off the ground as the case may be) an arrow is supposed to bring you good luck for the 3 years between festivals. A lot of elementary and junior high school students were positioning and repositioning themselves around the grounds to have the best chance to catch an arrow. I figured it would be like U.S. parades where maybe even the grown-ups want the candy tossed from the floats, but they give way to the smaller kids. Not the case with Yabusame. I saw middle-aged men and women emerge victorious from the bottom of piles of bodies that had pounced on a fallen arrow after wrestling it away from the competition, including elementary school-aged children. It’s definitely a no-holds-barred event. I made a comment about this to a Japanese colleague the week after the Yabusame, and they acknowledged that Japanese people get a little crazy during festivals. :-)

(Not only the archers were wearing costumes.)

After a couple of minutes of shooting arrows into the crowds, the archers made their first run down the track one at a time at full gallop to shoot at the first target.

They shot at one target at a time, trotted the horses back to the head of the track, spent a couple more minutes shooting arrows into the crowds, then made a run at the second target, and so on.

After finishing their three runs at the three targets, it was over, save the 2 closing runs where the riders waved hand-held Japanese fans with the Japan flags on them in some ceremonial style across the necks of the horses. The archery part of the festival lasted about an hour.

I’m still kind of trying to figure out the reasoning behind the separate morning and afternoon events with a 4-hour no-event lag inbetween (I'm sure it's just part of the 800+ tradition of the Yabusame), but nonetheless, it was an interesting experience. I just heard the event was broadcast on cable TV too. Whether that’s only a local cable channel or a broader cable channel, I don’t know, but I’d be dumbfounded if someone in Tokyo told me they watch our Yabusame on TV. Stranger things have happened though. Someone from Tokyo DID tell me they saw a news broadcast about the opening of the outdoor skating rink in my town…..eh?!?!

It’s yuki-ing!

Written January 23:



It snowed all day today! It’s the first snowfall I’ve witnessed in Tokigawa in the past year and a half, and I’ve heard tell that it hasn’t snowed around these here parts for a few years.

Last night I went out to eat with some Japanese friends, and they mentioned how worried they were it was going to snow today. I’d heard the same story at least a dozen times during the past two winters and believed each time in the snow forecast, because so many people wouldn’t bother telling me about the forecast in English if it wasn’t really going to happen, right? Nothing ever came of any of the previous snow predictions, so I smirked off my friends’ concerns last night. How happy I am that Mother Nature chose to prove me wrong!

It was a soft, fluffy snow today. I had very few classes and my desk faces the large pictures windows of the teachers’ room, so I spent a good majority of my day watching the snow fall. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the midst of a proper snow. It really does make winter more peaceful and serene.

Coming of Age Day

In Japan, becoming an adult happens at the age of 20. Coming of Age Day is a national holiday in Japan, so I’m sure the following happens all over the country, but I can only vouch for Tokigawa.
This year, Coming of Age Day fell on January 14th. Each year on or around Coming of Age Day, Tokigawa holds a Coming of Age Ceremony for all the young men and women of the town who will be turning 20-years-old during the New Year. Quite a cool concept, I think. I was given permission to crash this year’s ceremony so I could see what it was all about. Really, I just wanted to go for the costumes.

The young men and women dress in their finest. Most of the men wear ties and black suits, but a few cool (in my opinion), brave souls wear a type of mens’ kimono. I counted about 9 guys in kimonos at this year’s ceremony. You don’t see guys in kimonos nearly as often as you do women, so the chance to personally witness the male kimono was arguably the primary reason I went to the ceremony. Those 9 individuals definitely made my day. :-)

The young women of course wear traditional silk kimonos complete with the gigantic bow/bubble of extra fabric from their waist-band “obi” done up in the back (none of them could sit with their backs flat against the seatback; they all had to sit on the edge of their seat so they didn’t crush the bow/bubble). A good many of them also wear a white, fur collar accessory that I never see worn with a kimono at any other time (but I don’t know why it’s worn for this ceremony). It would also be my guess that the girls probably spend as much time as a bride or bridesmaid might at the beauty salon on deck-out hair-dos. Some of the hairstyles are amazing, and include things interwoven or stuck into the hair that I’ve ever only imagined using to enhance gift-wrapping or as a table centerpiece. That said, now that I’ve been exposed to such hair-accessory possibilities, I might have to try it myself sometime. ;-)

Come to think of it, a lot of the guys had pretty fantastic hair-dos too. Think Beattles length, but layered, moused and gelled up by Paul Mitchell himself.

The ceremony is definitely a feast for the eyes. The site is simply awash in color and design. It’s really marvelous.

The actual one-hour ceremony is a bit less enthralling than the costumes. About 2 dozen of the town’s top officials also donned their finest black suits and ties (there was only one woman in the group) and sat imposingly on the stage for the duration of the ceremony.

After the ritual introductory greetings and calling the ceremony to order, and singing the national anthem, the names of all the soon-to-be-20-year-olds were read out individually by the emcee, and each person had to stand up to be recognized. There were between 150-200 celebratorees in attendance this year. After that was finished, the Mayor and Vice-mayor made speeches. Respectively, one of the girls and one of the boys in attendance then had some sort of presentation on the stage with the Mayor. Exactly what for, I’m not sure. A lady dressed in an extraordinarily sparkly black evening gown took to the podium and under spotlight, with the auditorium lights dimmed, she performed two readings of poems or stories. Before the end of the ceremony, all the officials present on stage were introduced one-by-one and individually called out their congratulations to the young adults. And that was that.

Of course after the formal ceremony had ended, professional group photographs had to be taken to commemorate the event. After snapping a few photos myself while they were trying to corral the first group together, I had to take off. From what I understand though, after the photos are finished, there is a small party held in separate room to toast the new adults (but of course without alcohol because the majority haven’t actually experienced their 20th birthday yet and 20 is the magic legal-drinking-age number in Japan).

After the town’s ceremony, the story I heard is that the nearly-20-year-olds take off to after-parties with their friends for the rest of the day. Whether or not they run-around in public donned in their regalia like we do for prom in the States, I don’t know, but it does make a funny mental picture…19-year-old Japanese boys and girls in kimonos out bowling and taking over the local McDonalds.

Happy Year of the Mouse

Happy New Year!

The past two New Years I've hung out in Japan and had the good fortune to experience the Japanese New Year with families of friends. For the 2006-2007 turn of the year, I was invited by my former Boston roommate, Saori Matsumoto (who is Japanese and now lives in Tokyo), to join her in Kobe to celebrate New Year at her family's house. For New Year 2007-2008, my neighbor, Futaba Nemoto, invited me for New Year at her family's house in Hachioji, a city that is part of the Tokyo-metro area. The style in which the New Year is celebrated in Japan, at least from what I’ve experienced so far, is nothing like the party/fireworks/general craziness that represents the U.S. New Year. New Year in Japan is much more reminiscent of the way we celebrate Christmas in the States. I’ll attempt to explain some of the aspects of the Japanese New Year here and now, but beware…this blog is EXTREMELY long (but hopefully interesting).

HOLIDAY TIMEFRAME AND PREOCCUPATIONS
I might have these days wrong, but generally December 29-January 3 is a national holiday period in Japan (all I know is I didn’t have to go to work these days). It's tradition for people in Japan to celebrate the New Year with their family. Regardless of what part of Japan they are currently living in, people return to their parents’ or grandparents’ homes for the New Year. If both sides of the family are nearby, both the mother's and the father's sides of the family are usually visited during this timeframe. For the New Year holiday week, families go shopping, watch TV, play card games, “youngsters” coming back from university or out-of-town lives catch up with their old friends….pretty much what we do for Christmas in the States – hang out and occupy ourselves with random activities.

TRADITIONAL NEW YEAR FOOD
Just as with Christmas in the States, there are traditional foods eaten in Japan for New Year.

At midnight on New Year’s Day, it’s tradition to eat long, thin “soba” (Japanese buckwheat) noodles. Apparently the long, thin aspect of the noodles represents a long and uncomplicated life.

On New Year’s Day, whenever everyone is up and functional, they eat something called “osechi.” It’s difficult to describe, so I’ve included a photo of the “osechi” the Nemoto’s had me make. :-)

The food put into the osechi boxes is representational also. There is a fish product (I’m not sure exactly what fishy stuff it’s made of and I probably don’t want to know) that is sold in two colors – white and (dyed) pink, and are supposed to go into the osechi box together in alternation. White and pink (it’s supposed to be red, really), are symbolic celebratory colors in Japan. The sweet black beans used in osechi represent hard-work/studiousness. I can’t remember the meaning behind any of the other osechi food, but I’m sure you get the point.

Arguably, the most famous New Year food in Japan is mochi. For lack of a better way to describe it, mochi is a pounded rice cake. And I mean pounded in the literal sense. On December 29 or 30, it's tradition for families to get together to make mochi. While it is popular nowadays for people to use mochi-making machines (which I have yet to see personally, but I assume they are quite easy to use), there are still some families who like to do it the traditional way. The traditional method requires at least one very large wooden mallet and a hollowed out tree stump that together more or less serve as a pestal and mortar. The first step to the process, rice cooking, starts roughly around 8am. 7 batches of rice are cooked in all. As the rice finishes boiling, one pot at a time is dumped steaming into the tree stump “mortar” where the wooden mallet is used to grind the rice into the initial stages of a paste. Once the paste has begun to take shape, the mallet is used to whack the begeezus out of the rice until it looks more like dough. It’s a heck of a workout, as the mallet has to weigh at least 10 pounds and it takes at least 10 minutes (probably more) to pound the rice into a proper paste.

The pounding process is a team effort. One person swings the mallet, in a fashion kind of like in the movies when someone is hammering railroad ties. The second person adds water to the rice and turns/mixes the dough. It takes some precision though. The person turning the rice dough has to try to do it in sync with the hammering so the person with the mallet can keep their rhythm. With every swing, it ALWAYS looks like the mallet is going to come down right on the turner’s head, but I suppose that’s half the excitement of the event.
(Mr. Kaneko taking his turn with the mochi mallet.)

My first traditional mochi-making experience was December 2006 with Mrs. Tanaka’s family (she’s the janitor at one of my junior high schools). Her family used 2 mallets at the same time for the mashing process (see photo), which seemed very dangerous for the hands of the turner, but Mrs. Tanaka’s daughter was an extremely skilled turner, even with 2 1st-timer foreigners manning the mallets.

This past December 2007, I joined Futaba and our other neighbor, Mr. Kaneko, at their co-worker friend’s house for the traditional mochi-making. I got to try my hand at the mallet again, and this year I had a chance to be the rice-dough turner. For some reason I hadn’t expected the rice dough to be so hot! Now I know why the turners move so fast…not out of fear of having the mallet smash their hands, but instead not to burn their fingers!

After the rice has been pounded into proper mush, it’s either pulled directly from the massive blob and rolled/pinched into smaller balls, or it’s dissected into quarters and rolled out in long rectangles for drying.

(Futaba and Mr. Kaneko rolling out the mochi for drying.)

The dried mochi can be eaten over a period of many days/weeks and is usually toasted in the toaster or boiled to soften it up again. The wet mochi balls are eaten the same day. Both styles are eaten with a variety of toppings or fillings. The most common toppings/fillings are sweet red bean paste, a sweetish soybean powder called “kinako” (my personal favorite), shredded white radish called “daikon,” or soy sauce.

(Drying mochi slabs.)

The mochi-making process is a lot of fun. It’s messy, it’s tiring (in a good way), it’s a fun bonding experience, and it’s basically just one big party. Food and drinks are served all day long. Even in the morning, those who enjoy beer or Japanese sake don’t hold back. Everyone has their job too, whether it’s rice cooker, mallet pounder, rice-dough turner, roller, radish shredder, drink-pourer or manning the post-mochi-making stew pot in the backyard.

(Enjoying udon noodle soup after mochi-making.)

TEMPLES AND SHRINES
It is common practice to visit a shrine or a temple sometime between midnight on January 1 and the end of the first week of the New Year. The idea is to pray for whatever it is in the New Year you want good luck. Most 3rd year junior high school and high school students pray to pass their high school or university entrance exams. Other people pray for good health, or a successful business year, etc. Everyone goes to a shrine or a temple for the New Year, regardless of how religiously active they are during the year or even what “denomination” they are, similar to the massively increased church attendance on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the States. Buddhists might go to a shrine (which are Shinto buildings of worship), Shinto-followers might go to a temple (which are Buddhist buildings of worship), and the minority of Christians in Japan make sure to visit either a temple or shrine for New Year too. And of course foreigners like me who have no idea what’s going on.

At the temple or shrine, there is a coin collection box into which you can toss any coin, but if you have a 5-yen coin, you should toss that in as 5-yen coins are considered good luck. On any old average day at any other time of the year, you can usually walk right up to the box, toss your coin in from close proximity, clap your hands twice or ring the bell at a shrine to make sure you have the gods’ attention, say your prayers for whatever (short) length of time you need, then be on your merry way. However, the story is quite different at New Year. If you go to a popular temple or shrine, or are in a highly populated area, you shuffle along as best you can with the pulsing crowd, and as soon as you’re close enough to the coin box to feel like your pitch will get the money near the funnel walls that have been built around the coin box to extend “access” to the coin box back to at least a 10-yeard distanced, you chuck your coin, say your prayer really quickly while trying to keep your balance against those pushing behind you then high-tail it out of there (that’s what I do anyway).

On the temple/shrine grounds, at the larger shrines/temples anyway, there is one main larger temple/shrine (where you can usually find the main coin box), as well as a couple of other temples/shrines of varying sizes. I think the smaller buildings are usually devoted to something in particular, like children or couples or good health or such. So if you’re in the mood to stand in line and pray for multiple singular things (ha ha), you have the option. For New Year, there are also many food and miscellaneous New Year trinket stands all over the temple/shrine grounds, so it’s kind of like a mini-festival/carnival (without the games or rides). One of the more common trinkets is a large, wooden arrow that has a wooden sign hanging from one end with a picture of the New Year’s Chinese animal branded into it. I finally asked about it this year, and I was told that the arrow represents hitting the target of something you wish for for the New Year. You keep the arrow in your house all year, and next New Year when you visit that same temple again, you bring the old arrow back, thank them for letting you “use” it, and get a new arrow. I’m pretty sure there’s still a purchase fee involved, but it’s kind of a cool concept.

It’s actually not uncommon for people to go to a shrine or temple in the evening on the 31st and stay all night until after midnight on the 1st. I think it’s at the temples (shrines and temples are so interchangeable here, and are often even built on the same grounds, that it’s difficult for me to remember the aspects that differentiate the two), one of the priests swings a giant log at a large bell 108 times, which is supposed to forgive or ward off the 108 sins of man according to Buddhism. This bell gonging either happens sometime during the night of the 31st or at midnight on the 1st.

NEW YEAR’S EVE TV COVERAGE
New Year is what feels like the one holiday in Japan where fireworks aren’t used. When I was in Kobe, at midnight on the 1st, on TV, instead of showing the fireworks displays around the country/world, they show scenes from shrines and temples all over Japan. Some shrines/temples hold local traditional dance performances. Of course there’s footage of the bell gonging. Other scenes are purely still shots of quiet shrines/temples resting in the snow in Hokkaido or northern Honshu, or shots of people praying or wandering about the shrine/temple grounds. It’s the quietest New Year TV footage I’ve ever seen.

On New Year’s Eve, there are a bunch of TV specials, but one in particular that is quite famous.; it brings together a boatload of famous Japanese musical talent and pits the men vs. the women. They rope in enough national talent to span a nearly 5-hour time slot, each singer or music group singing 1-3 songs at a time for a 1-off performance. I got the feeling that the show can be a bit boring for Japanese people, and I imagine they see the same people perform the same songs year after year. But for me it’s a great way to learn more about Japanese pop-culture. A list of the order of performers is printed in that day’s newspaper, so you can plan your TV agenda around the performers you actually want to watch.

With the Nemoto-family, we switched back and forth between the music show and a comedy show that was really pretty funny, even thought I couldn’t really understand the verbal aspect of it. The comedy show took 5 or 6 male comedians, dressed them up as female nurses (old fashioned pink nurses dresses, white hats, shoes and all) and ran them through a comical “day-in-the-life” of a hospital, but they never knew when a gag was coming or what to expect around the next corner or in the next room. They were simply told where to go and what route to take to get there. The challenge was that they were not supposed to laugh. If they did laugh at a gag, ninjas would run into the room and whap them on the rear with “bats.” The ‘spankings’ were supposed to look like they hurt, but I’m pretty sure the bats were made of foam (can’t fool me, ha ha). Of course the comedians failed miserably at keeping a straight face and the highest ‘spanking’ tally at the end of the show was ironically for the most famous comedian at something like 276 whaps.

Another annually televised New Year event are marathon relay races run on January 1, 2 and 3. The January 1 marathon relay is for company employee teams. The January 2nd and 3rd marathon relays are for university teams. We watched the January 2nd marathon relay. The 4 universities attended by the 4 members of the Nemoto family were all in the race this year (15-20 teams total participated), so the family had a fun time keeping track of who was ahead, who was falling behind, and giving each other crap about their university’s performance compared to the other family members’ universities. The university marathon relay is run around/near one of the 5 lakes near Mt. Fuji, so the backdrop for the race is stunning. I think there were 5 members to each team and each member ran roughly a half-marathon for a team total of 108km. The last group of runners had the misfortune to have to run uphill for their entire ½-marathon portion (basically up a small mountain). No thank you. Although I have to admit, the lead runners made it look so easy I caught myself thinking more than once, “I wonder if I could do that?” HA! Double HA at that!

That’s the Japanese New Year holiday in a nutshell! A rather large nutshell, but nonetheless. I have to say, I enjoy the relaxed-style of the Japanese New Year more than the crazy atmosphere surrounding the U.S. New Year. If I ever move back to the States, I might have to start my own Japanese New Year tradition there…eat some soba, build a shrine in my backyard, do some Japanese traditional dances, gong the shrine bell 108 times at midnight on the 1st….you'll all be welcome. :-)

'Tis the Season

Because Japan has a very minority Christian population, most people (myself included prior to coming to Japan) assume Christmas is not celebrated here. Living even a short time in Japan very quickly taught me otherwise, and this year, through full and mini-lessons I taught on Christmas in the U.S. at both the elementary and junior high schools, I learned quite a bit more about the novelties of the Japanese Christmas.

Of course for most Japanese, Christmas is not a religious holiday. I reckon you'd be hard-pressed to find a non-Christian Japanese citizen who knows the story of the birth of Jesus and how it is related to Christmas. On the other hand, you'd be equally hard-pressed to find a Japanese citizen who isn't familiar with Santa, the song "Jingle Bells," Christmas trees and the concept of giving presents. The Japanese have completely adopted with great enthusiasm the commercial aspects of Christmas. So depending on your outlook on Christmas in the States, the Christmas season in Japan is almost exactly the same as it is in the States.

Christmas lights (called "illumination" here) are very popular, especially for businesses, even in small towns like mine. Driving through town, you'll also come across at least house every minute or so that is decorated with Christmas lights, lawn and/or house ornaments. In the windows of even more homes, you see lighted mini-Christmas trees and other interior decorations. Large cities go all out in decorating large, public Christmas trees and coordinating large-scale Christmas light displays. Of course Tokyo Disneyland is absolutely lousy (in the slang sense) about Christmas and is commonly referenced by the Japanese to help their peers better understand certain (commercial) concepts of Christmas (love it!).

Christmas is very popular amongst the younger generations because of the present concept. Some ideas know no boundaries. :-)

Here are some of the differences however:

--There was a lot of uncertainty amongst my students as to the exact date of Christmas. There were guesses ranging from December 23-28. Not completely unlike Christmas in the States, families seem to celebrate on whatever day roughly around the end of December works best for them.

--Kentucky Fried Chicken does exist en mass in Japan and at some point in the past created a fabulous marketing campaign that has made it extremely popular for people to eat KFC chicken for Christmas. KFCs are often sold out between 12/24-26. A lot of students, as well as some teachers, were very surprised to learn that we don't eat KFC for Christmas in the States. Turkey is very rare in Japan, so I had fun in the schools introducing turkey as one of the main Christmas dishes in the States. They were flabbergasted at the size of our Christmas hams too, and the amount of food that is traditionally served for a U.S. Christmas dinner.

--Somehow "Christmas Cake" has sunk its claws into the Japanese Christmas subconscious as what one should eat for dessert for the holiday. It's a yellow, round, short-cake about the same size as your normal cake, covered with white frosting topped with strawberries. There's a chance the concept came from Europe, but it's completely possible it was an invention of some cake company in Japan (which seems to be a common national theory). Students and teachers were equally surprised to learn that we eat Christmas cookies and pie in the States and never eat Christmas cake (at least not in the Midwest....or Arizona....which is essentially the Midwest anyhow ;-) ).

--Christmas cards are not done in Japan. Instead, New Year postcards are sent out, not to arrive before January 1st. The postcards almost always contain images of the Chinese animal symbol for the new year.

In case any of you are wondering, I didn't bother celebrating Christmas in either Japanese or American fashion (except for eating the famous Fort Dodge Loretta's Cookies my dad sent me, the Munson family traditional Caramel Chex my brother sent, and opening the thoughtful presents and cards some of you sent - thank you very much!). Instead, me and two of my Japanese friends worked up a group of 12 to eat dinner at our favorite local Indian curry restaurant on Christmas Day. Naturally. :-)

Oh, and one of my JHS English teachers was adamant about putting up a Christmas tree in the school's main hallway, so Sharron, know that the tree and decorations you bequeathed to me were put to good use this year and enjoyed by many!

For all of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful holiday filled with good food, good company and good health. Merry Christmas! (Belated wishes, true, but sincere nonetheless.)

Weekend Update: November 11

Sunday, November 11: County PTA Soft Volleyball Tournament

It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year since I arrived and Tokigawa and was instantly swept up into the crazy world of PTA soft volleyball. November 11th was my second trip to the county PTA soft volleyball tournament with the PTA team from one of my elementary schools, Tamagawa Elementary School (a.k.a. Tamasho). It’s the same team I played with last year, but here’s what happened last year (I’ve now come to realize): Almost all the members of the PTA SV team at Tamasho are on the town Womens’ (normal) volleyball team and are AWESOME players. Last year, the Tamasho team won the town PTA tournament (before I joined their team, which is why I didn’t realize this until now), but the county PTA tournament ended up being on the same day that the town womens’ volleyball team had a tournament elsewhere, so the Tamasho PTA “A” team couldn’t show for the PTA tournament. The other mothers stepped in and did their best as reserves, but volleyball was obviously not their favorite hobby. We lost our first match and went home. This year we got lucky and all the crazy-awesome volleyball mothers were available for the PTA tournament.

So, at 8am on 11/11 we caravanned to Yoshimi City, about 45 minutes from Tokigawa, to meet the other top PTA soft volleyball teams from the towns/cities in our county. In our first game, we had a rematch with the town that booted us out of last year’s tournament in the first round, Ranzan Town. One good turn deserves another, I guess. We sent them packing in 2-straight sets. Redemption. I’m not sure who we played in the second game, but they were unfortunately more of a recreational team and our attackers made quick work of them. Suddenly we’re in the final! Yipee! Our final match is against Namegawa, and the taller-than-6-foot teacher I happen to work with at one of my other elementary schools (her children go to school in Namegawa) is on the opposing team. We made a good comeback in the first game to win and take the lead, but between some funky playing on our part and some solid playing on the Namegawa team’s part, they took games 2 and 3 to win the tournament. So close! A couple of my team members’ husbands were playing in the PTA softball tournament that same day in Yoshimi City, and they happened to make it to the final too. The wives reckoned they’d never hear the end of it if the softball team won their final and we lost, but I supposed you could say as luck would have it, the softball team came in second also. :-)

It’s too bad we came in second when we had a really good shot at winning, but it was a lot of fun and the play was really solid. It made me realize how much I miss playing competitive volleyball.

First photo: Play is on and I'm in the setter (middle front) position. For those of you I've told time and time again how odd soft volleyball looks with 9 players on one side of the court, now you have a visual.

Second photo: I'm up for the block!...and apparently not doing a very good job.... ;-D

Third photo: Holding the 2nd place trophy. Oddly enough, the lady over my shoulder with the boy in the blue shirt is the really tall elementary school teacher I mentioned previously.

Fouth photo: "Almost winners" team photo.

Weekend Update: November 10

Saturday, November 10: Prefectural “Ekiden” Track Meet

62 girls teams and 62 boys teams from junior highs schools around Saitama prefecture gathered at the Kumagaya (a city about an hour’s drive from Tokigawa) Sports Park to compete in a 6 x 3km “marathon” race. I pestered the track coach, who also happens to be one of the English teachers, during the week beforehand for details about the meet until he invited me to ride on the bus with the track team.

It was a miserable day weather-wise, raining pretty steadily since early morning, and it was chilly too. Nonetheless, at 9:45am, the girls teams took to the track. Unfortunately our girls ekiden team didn’t make it to the prefectural meet, so I used the girls race as a chance to figure out what the heck this thing was all about. I didn’t realize until that morning that it was a relay race (not because I’m completely unobservant, but because watching our team practice, they always ran together, never in relay-style). I have no idea what distance the girls ran, but the boys each ran 3km (1.8miles), except the first runner, who ran 3.26km (2.02miles).

Our team took to the track at 11am and finished about one minute after 12pm in 31st place, which I think is really good for a small-town school of only 230 students total. To put it into a bit more perspective, at the county-level ekiden tournament, the city 20-minutes over called Higashi-Matsuyama, because of its size, was allowed to qualify 2 teams for the prefectural ekiden meet, whereas only 2 other teams from the entire county were able to qualify for the prefectural meet, Tokigawa Junior High School being one of them (the other JHS in my town unfortunately didn’t qualify, but that would have been a feat and a half considering it has about 170 students and no track team).

Of our 6 runners, 4 were 3rd year students (14-16 years old) and 2 were 2nd year students (13-15 years old). All the members of the boys track team, plus a couple friends of the ekiden runners went to cheer on our team, and the track coach, Mr. Hayashi, said I shocked all the boys by showing up at 6:45am at the school and subsequently getting on the bus with them. I was hoping for that effect. Despite the rain and despite the language barrier, I had a good time. It was great to have a chance to cheer on and spend time with the students outside of class/school. Most of the students were still too shy to try to speak with me very much, but there were a number of students, including ones who are usually really quiet in class, who were quite outgoing at the track meet. It helped a lot, I think, that a couple of 1st grade boys who are clowns and don’t care at all about the language barrier were there making me laugh with their horsing around.

First photo: The start of the boys race.
Second photo: The outside course; cheering on our runner (supporters = purple jackets, white pants in the center of the photo).
Third photo: Our team’s final runner, Ryota Sakashita, heading for the finish line.
Fourth photo: Ekiden runners, boys track team members and track coaches, (left), Mr. Arai and (right), Mr. Hayashi.
Fifth photo: Final thoughts and words by the ekiden runners and the coaches