ひなまつり (Hinamatsuri)

Hinamatsuri (Girls' Festival, also known as Dolls' Festival) and formally called Momonosekku (Peach Festival) occurs on March 3rd and is an occasion to pray for young girls' health and growth, good marriages, and happiness. Homes with girls as well as schools display dolls for the festival and dedicate to them peach blossoms, rice cake cubes, hishimochi (special colored diamond-shaped rice cakes), shirozake (sweet white sake), and other items. Leaving the hina display out too long is said to delay marriage. So it is customary to put them away soon after March 3rd.

The origin of the hinamatsuri is an ancient Chinese practice in which the sins of the body and misfortune are transferred to a doll and washed away by setting the doll in a river to drift away. When this practice spread to Japan, it was linked to girls playing with dolls and in the Edo Period (1603-1867) was developed into the hinamatsuri. Originally, the dolls were made of paper. Today, the dolls and the displays are quite intricate and can cost upward of 330,000 JPY (over 4,000 USD using today's exchange rate) for a seven-tiered display, such as shown in the top picture, which contains (from top platform to bottom platform) the emperor and empress, three court ladies, five musicians with different instruments, two guardians with hishimochi, three fellows, the bride's dowry, and transportation and obento boxes. The emperor and the empress alone can cost 85,000 JPY (over 1,000 USD).

To learn about this traditional aspect of Japanese culture, two friends and I attended an international communication society event. There we made our own origami hina dolls and ate hinamatsuri cuisine. I think I did a pretty good job making my lady, if I do say so myself. As a gift for all 30 of us in attendance, our origami sensei made each of us a lord for our lady.

The hinamatsuri feast was quite good -- an informal style of sushi whose name I can't remember along with specially-prepared cucumbers, strawberries, and amazake (a sweet, non-alcoholic drink made from rice). But my favorite part of the feast was the sakura mochi dessert -- pink-tinged mochi (sticky rice cake) with anko (red bean paste) wrapped in a preserved sakura (cherry) leaf. Many foreigners, as previously mentioned, don't like anko. And the flavor of the sakura leaf is quite sharp. But I love it!

To learn more about the hinamatsuri, I strongly recommend reading about it on Wikipedia.

'Til next time...

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

There is an aspect of American culture that I know only through TV and movies -- the practice of bringing a plate of cookies or some other such gift (such as the beer one of my former coworkers gave to her new college-aged neighbors) to welcome a new neighbor into the neighborhood. In my (shhh!) years of living in the U.S., I don't remember experiencing this practice myself. However, I don't have the best memory in the world. So if you're someone who brought something to my home(s), please forgive me for my forgetfulness. And if you're one of the many people to whom I never gave a welcome gift, please forgive me for my rudeness.

Today I've just experienced something that I'd known only through my language textbook. In Japan, the new neighbor doesn't receive gifts but gives omiyage (gifts) to all his/her new neighbors to introduce him/herself and to lay the groundwork for any future interactions they might have. The omiyage doesn't have to be large in terms of size or expense and is usually practical (e.g., hand towel) or delicious (e.g., sweets). I don't know if neighbors in five-story apartment complexes like the one I lived in last year buy omiyage for everyone in the building or just those who live on their floor. And in a neighborhood of houses, I don't know how far the neighbor-radius extends from one's house. But as my new apartment building is only for four tenants, thankfully my new neighbor didn't have to spend a lot of money to give us her omiyage.

As I already have plenty of hand towels, I was happy that my neighbor opted for delicious omiyage (cakes, cookies, and a surprise)!

'Til next time...

Funerals

Weddings and funerals are a big deal in Japan. If a coworker or a coworker's family member gets married, while you may not get an invitation to the ceremony and/or celebration, more than mere congratulations is expected. And if a coworker or a coworker's family member dies, words of consolation aren't enough. Attendance at the funeral is highly encouraged if not expected. So when I arrived at school today to learn that the father of the 3-3 (3rd grade/3rd class) teacher suddenly passed away last Thursday night/Friday morning, I wondered what was expected of me, considering that I'm a foreigner and don't know all the formalities of paying my respects.

If the funeral had been held during the weekend, all the staff of my school would have been expected to attend. However, because the "prayer" funeral was today and the "real" funeral is tomorrow (if I correctly understood the distinctions as explained by the teacher who sits next to me), not all teachers are expected to attend due to work conflicts. So one teacher from each grade went as a grade representative to today's prayer funeral, taking with them the offerings of ¥3,000 (about $40) from each teacher who is unable to attend either funeral. (I believe the money is used to offset part of the cost of the funeral. And the same practice occurs for weddings, only the amount each person gives is significantly higher.) And another small group of teachers will attend the second funeral service that occurs tomorrow.

I asked the teacher who informed me about the death and explained to me the funereal customs if I should go to the funeral. Since I am a Christian, she said, and the funeral will be a Buddhist ceremony, she told me that I didn't have to go. However, as I wanted to offer my sympathy to my coworker and her family as well as witness a Buddhist-style funeral, I told here that while I wouldn't participate in the actual ceremony I would still like to go. Unfortunately, she didn't respond to my comment, which, having lived here for almost a year and a half, I understood to be a polite way of declining my suggestion. So all I could do was offer my ¥3,000, which just doesn't seem to be enough.

Until next time...

**UPDATE (10/6/11): Waiting at my desk for me when I arrived at school on Tuesday was a recognition gift from the 3-3 teacher's family for my ¥3,000 condolences -- ocha (green tea), nori (baked seaweed sheets), and saké (rice wine). So I asked my next-desk teacher who had told me about our coworker's father's death how to say my sympathies in Japanese for when the teacher would return to school next week. Unfortunately, she told me it would be too difficult to do politely. (I'm not sure if she meant that it would be too difficult for her to teach or for me to learn/say.) Needless to say, I was a little frustrated by this response; so I planned to ask one of the teachers at my Japanese class that night how to express my condolences. But I forgot. So I was surprised and felt unprepared when I saw the 3-3 teacher at school today. Since I could say nothing in Japanese, I told her, in English, how sorry I was and asked if she and her family needed any help. When she looked at me quizzically, I explained the U.S. custom of bringing food to the home of the bereaved and told her that if she needed help, I would like to make some food for her family on the condition that they were okay with American food, to which she laughed. It certainly wasn't the concerted Japanese-style interaction I'd been hoping to have. But when communicating inter-culturally, I've learned to take whatever successes come, regardless of their profundity.

Say what?!

Japanese people are very private. Despite working together for years, many coworkers never learn much about each others' personal lives. As a private person myself, I appreciate that the teachers at my school tend not to ask many invasive questions, for more than once I've been asked by American coworkers both here in Japan and in the U.S. some very nosy questions. (Funnily, though, when it comes to being sick, Japanese people are not shy about sharing exacting details of their sickness.) So, needless to say, this tendency toward extreme privacy has led to some surprising discoveries on my part.

At the April 2010 welcome enkai for all new teachers, one of my coworkers complimented me that I use ohashi better than his wife. (A grossly overstated kindness on my ability to eat with chopsticks, I know.) However, it wasn't until December 2010 when another teacher and I were riding in his car to the end-of-second-term enkai that I learned he has a baby, which the car seat sitting conspicuously in the back seat couldn't hide. But it was only last week at the undoukai (sports festival) enkai that he shared that this "baby" is three years old. Maybe next year he'll tell me if his kid is a boy or a girl!

One Friday this summer, the teacher who sits next to me, who also happens to be the teacher with whom I talk the most since she speaks great English, told me that she was leaving school early and that she wouldn't be back until midweek the following week. That evening, when I went to visit an AET friend who'd been in the hospital for a couple of weeks, who should I run into at the hospital but that same teacher whose husband had had surgery that afternoon.

Then today, I received my third and most surprising bit of information about one of my coworkers. When I was talking with the jimuin (teachers' room manager) about what was happening with the youchiensei (kindergarteners) on the playground this morning (as I was supposed to teach them English and hadn't been informed of the change in schedule), she told me that they were learning how to run properly from a famous Japanese sprinter. When I asked if he was an Olympian, she told me that, while he isn't/wasn't an Olympic-level runner, apparently he's not too far from being/having been at the top of his sport. Then, quite out of the blue, she told me that the school nurse's husband was an Olympian and that he'd won a bronze medal at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. I was floored! Last year when the school nurse's desk was next to mine, I'd told her that I wanted to visit Nagano before I left Japan. And she showed me the hockey puck that she'd bought in Nagano when she visited there in 1998 and now uses as a paperweight. Not once did she say that she bought it when she went to watch her husband compete!

I wonder what other interesting biographical bits of information my teachers are hiding.

Until next time...

Kukkiman (Gingerbread Man)

When people ask me about my hobby, I'm always hesitant to answer because it's not exciting, unique, or accomplished. In fact, I'm especially embarrassed by my hobby here, as it seems like every Japanese person is able to do at least one thing extraordinarily well. So I share with you, somewhat sheepishly, that my hobby is reading. But my hobby is particularly useful in my classes.

Since the books that I read are large and colorfully illustrated and they don't understand much of the English, many students pay more attention to the pictures than the story. While I'm not an actor by any means, my love of books makes me want to get animated when reading to kids because my sudden maniacal laughter or jump into the air catches them off-guard, makes them laugh, and perhaps helps them start listening for words they know rather than just hearing my words as noise.

This month with sannensei (third graders), we've been studying the verb can. So last week I read The Gingerbread Man to them. The Gingerbread Man escapes from the woman's oven and runs through a field past a farmer and through the woods past a dog before finding its journey toward freedom impeded by a river. (Perhaps there are variations on the story because the version that I read to my students last week didn't draw forth any hazy recollections from my long-term memory.) Anyway... the Gingerbread Man spies a crocodile in the river and asks it for help in fording the river. When I got to the part where the crocodile stops in the middle of the river [SPOILER ALERT], I opened my mouth wide, snapped my jaws shut, and swallowed audibly before reading, "SNAP! GULP!" The kids were stunned into silence before one boy shouted out, "Kawaisou! (Pathetic!)" and everyone started laughing. Apparently, Japanese fairy tales aren't quite so sinister.

Until next time...

Summer Training Is Oishii (Yummy)!

Today we completed our final day of summer training. While there were many great presentations throughout its eight days, the cultural aspects of training were most enjoyable for me. This year we made pottery, learned how to write our addresses in kanji (Chinese characters), made potato stamps, learned about old ways of maintaining the home, and made desserts. (No, N.P. and I didn't plan to be matchy-matchy for our cooking lesson.) If you've been reading my blog for the past year, then you remember that last year's food lesson was making sushi rolls, something most of us had never done. This year we again learned how to make something new -- traditional Japanese sweets made with anko (red bean paste). While anko is unappealing to many foreigners, I actually like it. It's an indescribable flavor, since it's unlike anything I'd eaten prior to moving to Japan. But it's only slightly sweet, since Japanese sweets contain much less sugar than American and European sweets. And it's found in a variety of desserts.

The first sweet that we made was a flower blossom. While the pink of the flower was not supposed to be variegated as mine ended up, I was quite pleased with my first attempt.

Unfortunately, my second sweet was less successful than my flower. Don't you think it looks more like a turtle than a maple leaf?

Until next time...

Backhanded compliment or just backhanded?

One day last year when I was sick for the seemingly gazillionth time and decided that perhaps wearing a mask was the appropriate thing to do, I decided to go au naturel in the makeup department, since everything but my forehead, eyes, and sides of my face would be covered by the mask. Unfortunately, I forgot that I would need to remove the mask in order to eat lunch. So when I took off my mask, the teacher of the class with whom I was eating kyuushoku (school lunch) told me how horrible I looked. Since eyes are supposedly the window to the soul, I decided to be charitable and think that she noticed the beating my soul was taking from all the new Japanese germs. However, I also avowed I'd never go without makeup again.

This summer, while not as hot as last summer, has been a scorcher nonetheless. So I decided to break my vow and have been wearing makeup off and on during these days when I don't have to teach. So imagine how taken aback I was today when this same teacher said loudly in the shokuinshitsu (teachers' room), "Rebecca, hisashiburi makeup!" (literally, "Rebecca, it's been a long time since makeup!"). I laughed along with a couple other teachers and replied to her, "You or me?" However, I was mortified. Is my "before and after" as horrible as that of the news anchors from Batman (1989) who look downright hideous in their makeup-free broadcast thanks to The Joker's scare-inducing cosmetics tampering?

The juxtaposition of today's comment following Wednesday's blog post referencing Japanese politeness is not lost on me.

Until next time...