11 posts tagged “culture”

Two days ago, I was up very late talking with friends, and only got two hours of sleep. Yesterday, I was up very late because we had a closing JTW dinner, and then I had to finish packing, so I again got only two hours of sleep. I woke up at 5 AM so that I could catch a 5:30 AM taxi to the airport (and have my room completely cleared out -- sorry Mack!) for a 7 AM flight to Tokyo. My host mother and father were there to see me off, and my conversation partner meant to be, but he accidentally slept in.

When I got on the plane, I immediately fell asleep, and didn't wake up until it landed around 9 AM. I then bought train tickets to my friend's house, slept for most of the express train trip (until around 11:30 AM), and navigated the local trains until 2 PM when I finally found my destination. I should have been there at 12:30 PM, but I took the wrong train, then I didn't get off when the train turned around, and carrying around 4 bags was a huge pain. But I finally made it.

After that we tried to go to Mr. Donuts, but there wasn't enough room for my bags, so we waited an hour for a bus to his house, rode the bus for about an hour, then rode the bus back and had some とんかつ (tonkatsu) for dinner instead. Then we walked around for a bit and eventually wandered into a book store where he bought a joke book and I bought Harry Potter (!!) and a tiny English comic that had Japanese translations. Then, after stopping for some breakfast bread, we came back and, of all things, Facebooked until 11 PM. Then I couldn't take the lack of sleep and more and collapsed. I slept for 12 hours, and now I feel pretty refreshed.

I took a bath here, which means sitting on a stool and pouring water over yourself, which was a rather unique experience for me. Life in a traditional Japanese setting is still awkward for me.

There you go, you've made it to the present.

Well, you will be after seeing this: goodbyes from JTWers after the closing ceremony.

In the US, it's not uncommon to see young people on tiny bicycles---you know, the ones with the tiny wheels. They're eye-catching and make it easier to do certain tricks (hence the sale of bikes like these). Well, however entertaining it is to watch people rolling down the street on one of those, it's at least twice as funny when it's a Japanese businessman in a suit, presumably on his way to do something important. I see these people by chance nearly every week at various locations, and I can never help smiling.

Yesterday, despite knowing full well that it was a horrible idea given my impending deadlines, I visited a Yamakasa practice near home. Let me tell you, I have now seen enough nearly-naked butts to last me a lifetime. In fact, I never want to see that much skin on a guy again, though I may make an exception for the actual race because I hear that it's awesome.

Photos are forthcoming, so you will soon be able to enjoy it for yourself.

Highlight! There was a video camera crew recording the event---I assume for a news organization, though there were no logos---and I was lucky (?) enough to get caught on film a few times. In fact, there was one point where the camera was trained solely on a conversation between my host mother and I for 15 seconds or so. I guess my orange and black umbrella (gotta represent), our difference in height, the fact that I'm foreign, and my innate handsomeness gave the scene some interest. I just wish I knew where the tape went.

Just before the float started moving (which was a sight!), there was one kimono-wearing Yamakasa member who decided to stand directly in front of me and stretch. I wanted to watch the preparations, but oh man, if I looked even in that general direction, I had to deal with the fact that out of the corner of my eye there was a man shaking his nearly naked butt in my face. I'll never be able to rub those images from my mind.

As for the actual float-carry part of the practice, they basically ran down the street, ran back, then repeated the same down an intersecting street. It was really fun to watch, though, because there were 6 people sitting on the float barking out commands while there were guys on the sides repeatedly throwing entire buckets of water over the guys carrying it. The energy level was very high.

Here are some photos from previous Yamakasa (accompanied by some crazy music).

As I understand it, Gion Yamakasa is a traditional Hakata (Fukuoka) festival where guys wear skimpy outfits and carry gigantic floats around the city as fast as they can, to the delight of women and girls alike. You can tell a Yamakasa float-carrier in the days leading up to the race by his nearly modest loincloth and nearly-completely exposed rear end.

July 1: Floats unveiled
July 9: Runners perform purification and blessing rituals
July 10: Afternoon practices in respective districts
July 11: Early morning practices
July 12: Rehearsal race
July 13: Floats are carried to City Hall
July 14: Evening "warm-up" (sounds like a drinking party)
July 15: 5AM race! The main event!

Oisa-oisa!

The dorm is right next to an elementary school and playground, so I'm becoming very used to never having silence with an open window during the weekend. They seem to have a game which involved one or more kids screaming at the top of their lungs something like "MOOOOOOOOIIIEEEEE!!!" and then everybody responds with "RRREEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYY!" It reminds me of Marco-Polo, but with words I don't understand.

P.S. I think the game just broke down. Now they're just screaming constantly.

We talked a little bit about food today in my "Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture" class. Here is a paraphrase of what someone said after a comment about accidentally getting fish sausages: "It's like they take fish and disguise it as all the foods that I want to eat."

Today was Monday: Field Study day. And for the first time in weeks, it lived up to its name: I finally got a break from spending my entire Monday on engineering campus researching for my ISP (independent study project). Today we went to a Zen Temple to practice meditation and veganism, and increase our fear of long, flat sticks.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?

Bright and early, 8:45 AM GMT+9. The scheduled meeting time for our trip. The bus was waiting patiently outside the 会館 (かいかん - kaikan - nickname for our dormitory). A good number of people were standing next to it getting ready to enter. I wasn't one of them. I was actually scrambling around my room, looking for my watch, and thinking about whether I should try leveling my level 30 Combusken with only two gym badges. I decided to wait until after beating another gym leader, which gave me a chance to finally evolve that Abra into a Kadabra, which tends to own nearly everything until the end-game.

So we got to the temple an hour later. I have photos forthcoming. It was pretty. It sort of reminded me of a castle we visited during Golden Week, but I think every traditional building will do that until I get used to it.

They really cut to the chase. We took off our shoes and were shuffled into what might as well be called the tea-serving room. We lined up on opposite sides of this long room, facing each other, with slightly interested looks on our faces. We were then taught the proper way to bow when our Zen Master enters the room, and where to place our teacups and cake boxes. The Zen Master dude entered, we bowed, returned from our bows, and were served cakes in boxes and tea in teacups.

By the way, I still hate tea. The cakes were good, but I'm already starting to tire of that semi-sweet jelly-like substance they seem to stick inside every pastry in Japan. Anyway, yeah. Good cakes, flat soda (tea).

Then, the magic started. College students started to float into the air, and bare feet suddenly started itch for no explainable reason. Actually, by magic, I meant "pain," because that's when we were taught how to meditate... their way. I'd always had this image of meditation being relaxing, and warnings against falling asleep during meditation seemed to confirm this suspicion. But when you have to curl your legs up into all sorts of directions God never intended, I don't see how you can concentrate on anything but the toe-curling pain.

In order to exacerbate the problem as much as possible, the Zen Master dude walked around the room for the entire 30-minute, whacking anybody who moved with a long, flat stick--four times. We were warned before the trip, of course. They didn't want anyone to be offended. They just never mentioned the immense size of the weapon, and tenacity with which it would be yielded. Thankfully, my tactic of focusing on a floor tile distracted me from my pretzel-pain for long enough that the session ended before I had an overwhelming urge to adjust my limbs. Only one person was smacked, and they actually requested that it be done (see below).

Then we had lunch. We went back to the tea-serving room turned lunch-serving room, and took our places. There were three rows this time because we needed more space. We kneeled behind some tiny tables that weren't there before, and waited until the Zen Master dude entered. We all bowed, at which point, virtually everyone switched to a cross-legged or side-straddle position. Thankfully, my spot on the tatami was sufficiently close to a pillar that I could slowly lean back and relieve my lower back without anyone with authority noticing.

Lunch was served, as was tea, by apprentices. There were three dishes: rice with fried tofu (delish), soup with tofu (meh), and lettuce/cabbagey things (surprisingly, delish). There was a pickled something (disturbingly, delish) with the lettucey something, but that tangy morsel has defied recognition to this very moment.

The apprentices came in groups of two with a large serving pot of a single dish. At each group of three people, they repeated the same ritual:

• They each held out their hands; one in the direction of person A and another toward person C. Person B, the middle person, waited.
• Persons A and C picked up the bowl of the right size for the dish and handed it to their closest apprentice.
• Persons A and C put their palms together as a sign of respect until they received their bowls back.
• Then Person B was served.

Thus, we slowly, but surely filled our bowls.

Anyway, after we'd finished eating, the serving apprentices made several passes at serving us more food. They were purely ritual: we were all told not to request any food from them as the meal was effectively over. It was basically a chance for us to give them one last thank-you bow before they left. After we did that, there was one more Japanese mystery prayer and we all stood up to go back to the meditation room.

Mind you, I was still hungry at this point, but there was no amount of that food they could have served me to fill me up. Some foods are just designed not to be filling. And most of them probably include tofu.

Unfortunately, this next 30-minute session was my unlucky one. You see, there were two ways to get smacked by the Zen Master dude: you request it, or you do something that ticks him off. And if there's anything that ticks off a Zen Master, particularly ZMd, it's moving while you're supposed to be meditating. While not actually angry, and probably not even ticked off, this dude was carrying a big stick.

You request to be beaten, for whatever reason, by bowing to ZMd as he passes. He would bow in return, gripping the stick with both hands. You then bow again, stay down, and lean to one side to put one shoulder within easy reach. After a soft warning tap, he slams that baby down twice more. The room echoes with "Whack, WHACK! WHACK!" Then, you present the other shoulder for a repeat of the same ritual. You and ZMd bow once more, and you're done.

The only difference between that and what happens when you screw up is that when you mess up, he drops the first bow. So when he's walking by you, turns, and makes you feel all respected with that 90-degree bow of his, what you should really be feeling is a deep fear. You just screwed up!

And so I did. As I said, the recommended sitting position was an inversion of both the normal cross-legged form and my legs' normal range of motion. After the morning meditation session and the kneeling at lunch, my feet were looking for any reason to deprive themselves of blood. When they froze up, they really started to hurt, so when ZMd left the room, I unfolded a little piece of space-time and pulled out my legs into something resembling a normal sitting position. Little did I know, the left side of my body was still visible from where he was standing.

60 seconds of mixed relief later (I was still sitting cross-legged, after all), he came strolling in, no doubt imagining the joy he would have smacking some meditation lessons into my back-side. I thought I had pulled off the caper until just as he was about to pass by, he turned and bowed. And I cried a little inside.

But no hard feelings man, if you're reading this. I can forgive.

But to speed up the rest of this article so I can get to my homework:

• I was hit.
• It hurt.
• I survived.
• We took a small break and did it again. That's about 90 minutes total, more than any previous year's fieldtrip.
  
• We had a little tour of the rest of the temple. The most ornately-decorated room, in my opinion, was the one with the enshrined names of previous Buddhists. There was also a gigantic Chinese character mural in one room which apparently cost ￥１０，０００，０００ (~$82,000 USD), and probably made an even better meditation focus than my floor tile.
• We rode the bus home.

What a great day.

Oh, my Combusken is level 32, and doing just fine.

I did squat this weekend, and when I feel like doing squat, I have an amazing habit for not giving a second thought to my todo list, which usually recommends I do anything but. So I never wrote "A Hostful Morning, part 2," the sorely unneeded sequel to "A Hostful Morning, part 1." Since so much has happened since then, and I still have hundreds of Golden Week photos to document, here is that sequel, in bullet-time.

1. After lunch, we went back to their home. It's an apartment way up high (10th floor or so), with a kitchen, office, Japanese-style おふろ・トイレ (ofuro/toire - ofuro/toilet) combination, living room, balcony (interestingly wide), and bedrooms. It was well-decorated and very cozy. We sat around the living room and watched a little TV, and お母さん (mother) served an orange-flavored tea. I could write a whole post about just the TV, but I'll leave it at "awesome."
2. After tea, we went to a natural disaster museum which serves the area by teaching tiny schoolchildren about what to do during natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis, and their after-effects like burning buildings. Despite my age, it was entertaining. I was struck by their eagerness to participate with me: imagine your parents covering their faces with clothing so navigate a burning building with you, or climbing under a kitchen table with you during a simulated level 7 earthquake.
3. After that, we took a walk on the beach. The weather was beautiful. There was a group of freshman/sophomore-aged girls drawing pictures in crayon, and even though I don't believe she knew any of them, お母さん (mother) walked up and started asking them about what they were doing. Not three minutes in, she turns and introduces me, and suggests that we all "play." Whoa, there. Either this was normal, or they were really good at playing along: one of them took out a volleyball and nearly dragged me out onto the sand and we started passing back and forth. A few others joined, and it was fun, but incredibly awkward. お母さん and お父さん just sat down and started taking pictures. I don't have these photos, I don't want them, I won't get them for you, and you will never see them.
4. Then we walked around to a nearby restaurant district, which happened to have an expansive arcade (a staple around these parts), and since I'd said that I loved games, we walked through. お父さん (father) had some coins burning a hole in his pocket, so he put some in one of the shooting game machines. I picked up a gun and offered him one, but he shook his head, and stood for the next ten minutes just watching me play. And when I died, he put in another coin and stepped back. And then again. It was fun, but I wondered why he was suddenly so passive.
5. We stopped at a grocery store called "Red Cabbage" (or something like it: Google shows nothing). お母さん (mother) started asking which foods I liked, picking them up as we went. I think we left with a bottle of water, a box of crackers, and a box of cookies, which I ended up taking home at the end of the day, much to my surprise. I wasn't expecting to take home such a bounty. I thought we were shopping for their apartment.
6. Lastly, we went to dinner at pseudo-Italian restaurant. (If I ever describe a restaurant or food in Japan with a word like "Italian" or "Mexican" without a "pseudo-" in front, just add it for me. I must have forgotten.) I got spaghetti [sic: it was fairly authentic] There was パン食べ放題 (パンたべほうだい - pan tabehoudai - all the bread you can eat) and it was some delicious bread. おいしかったよ！もう一回行きたいね。
7. Then we went back to their apartment to get the car, and they dropped me off back home (with delicious goodies in tow).

Unfortunately, confining myself to bullets didn't make this article any shorter, only harder to read. しまった！ You'd better enjoy every letter!

Two interesting things that have tripped me up since arriving.

1. World maps have Japan in the center. (This one didn't originally, but I edited it to show what I mean.)

World Map

I thought that joining a university karate club would be more scary. I hardly speak their language. I hadn't practiced karate for more than a decade. I was way out of shape. But my experience has been very positive.

I heard that Japanese university students are defined by the clubs they are a part of. I took this to mean that clubs were like cliques, and would be hard to join. Perhaps I would have been a harder sell if I didn't have my Japanese speaking partner to introduce me. As it is, I was welcomed and people started voluntarily guiding my movements when I was obviously confused. They also invited me to the club dinners from the first night, despite having two social strikes against me:

1. I don't drink.
2. I don't smoke.

I'm asked about the former every time I meet a new person around dinner-time. Every time. But all my answer seems to mean after karate is that we make an extra stop at a コンビニ (konbini - convenience store) for some お茶 (おちゃ - ocha - tea) before we eat. And other people drink the tea too, which is great. (Sorry Boz, I still don't really like tea, but after the dinners we tend to eat, I usually can't taste it anyway.)

The most awkward experience with them so far (yes, even more awkward than changing clothes in mixed company) happened just yesterday. A club member who I hadn't seen before showed up to practice and started conversation with me.

Very early in, he asked the (now familiar) question, "Do you have a girlfriend?" No, I don't. "Have you ever had a girlfriend?" No, never. The next question I didn't really understand, but it was okay, because after seeing my confusion he started excitedly thrusting his hips. The best English speaker then translated it: "Have you ever had sex?"

And I'd just met this guy!

Fellow club members are very... familiar.

Karate club is awesome.