New Years, Kaisen Sushi and Inari Torii Gates

I forgot to blog about the Oshogatsu (New Years) celebrations with my host family. It wasn't very big with them, really, despite it being the most important holiday on the Japanese calender - us students were let off from for winter break not for christmas like in the UK but specifically for New Years.

Kadomatsu are put outside the doors for decoration to welcome the new year

On the stroke of midnight we ate 'long noodles', in order to have a long life. My host parents were late in getting it ready and just about sat down with it when the countdown stated, and were quickly trying to get Tokishi to eat some before it was the New Years.

I've always known that ofcourse, for other time zones New Years Day comes later or earlier but it was the first time it really hit me, me experiencing and celebrating a new year that wasn't yet a new year back home kind of took away the 'fresh start' kind of feel I kind of got. So when my host parents were stressing out over getting Tokishi to finish the special meal I thought 'why stress? it's still not new years for another 9 hours in some places, you've got plenty of time'.

In the UK we just say 'happy new year', but in japan its more like 'happy new year, please take care of me this year too', which I like. Instead of any christmas cards at Chritsmas, the japanese equivalant are hundreds of specially made postcards for family, friends and work collagues for New Years greetings called 'Nengajou'. They are different from any other postcard because it will only arrive to recipients on the morning 1st January, not earlier nor late. The picture from families is usually a formal photo of the family, and the new years greeting is printed because of the sheer amount of postcards to be sent. They were all hand signed though. And of course my host family received a lot from the 300 they sent out - for any that they hadn't sent one to they had to quickly whip up another post card to send in exchange.

Nengajou - even family members under the same roof send one to each other. I didn't know that though T-T

On TV reports came of the various celebrations all over Japan, like colourful lights on the trees at Yokohama prefecture, or snow boarding with lighted torches with real fire in Hokkaido.

In Japan, despite few of the population being relgious at all, everyone visits the temples and we were no exception - we left early for Nakayama temple and paid our respects and got our fortunes. Mine was a bad one, so I had to tie it away to a tree with all the other fortunes, while my host mum got to keep hers. The temple was filled with people, shuffling foward up the many many stairs to clap and ring the bell and bow and pray. I was the only non-japanese holding Tokishi's hand, so I was concious of eyes on me and didn't want to bring attension to myself my taking photos of the occasion but Nakayamadera is a pretty, fairly small temple which apparently is good for a healthy, safe birth.

The best part of the celebrations came in the form of 'Osechi Ryouri', a special meal eaten on New Years. The different foods have different means, for example the giant shrimp you can see in the photo is like an bent over old person, so it's eaten for long life. 


Osechi ryouri for dinner on 1st January



Sometimes this special meal tastes plain and bad but this particular meal
because of my amazing host mum tasted beautiful.

And that was our quiet new years in.

After the holidays came the exam period where nothing much happened except that I passed, hence the lack of updates. Since then, me and Caroline made friends with Masaki, Tee-kun and Silvia (his new silver sports car) and went on a night time drive to the airport for the night time views and kaisen sushi.

A sushi resurant 100yen (80p) per sushi, just pull it off the conveyor belt

There was another party with Konan students who were either thinking of doing a study abroad or had done it. The party was what the Americans called a ‘pot luck’ (which is when everyone brings something to the table, which was a lot of snacks), and danced to music that Alister from Canada blasted from his i-pad through the microphone.

 

ryuugakusei and konan students

 On one of the weekends we met up with a friend of Lindseys in Shinsaibashi (a clubbing/shopping/restaurant filled place in Osaka) and went to Shakey’s, an American pizza buffet for only £15, which was very filling and although the selection wasn’t huge it was all very good food, with rice and curry and dessert and salad available too.

all you can eat ~

Namba

And then to ALL BLUE, the One Piece bar. It was small and expensive and looked more like the little den of a complete otaku, but it was cosy and up to date with the very latest episodes so I’m not complaining. Instructions on how to find it can be found on this very useful site: http://welovekansai.blogspot.com/2011/08/osaka-night-all-blue-caffe-bar.html.

I’ve been to Shinsaibashi plenty of times by now, the Cheyls birthday meal at the English pub called Hub, on a night out or just to meet people, but I’ve yet to go shopping there despite the amount of good stuff they've got there. It is still on my to-do list.

I’ve finally visited a sight always advertised everywhere to do with Japan, though. You may recognise these Torii gates at Inari in Kyoto:



lots and lots of stairs



the faces on the foxes were really cute and varied

 



snacks and souvenirs lined the road on exiting


passing through them is a re-birth into the next world, and they go up and up for a good 30 minute trek to a wonderful view. Sometimes monkeys can be seen up there too but we were probably too loud and scared them off. There are a lot of stairs but you get to see this beautiful symmetry, rows and rows of bright red gates for free! It’s so peaceful and a refreshing walk, too.

Later everyone went to Gion to see the maiko (trainee geisha) in the old entertainment district, but I went to visit Calyx for some more kaisen sushi and talked briefly about where we’re going to live in Leeds this year.

Recently me, Lindsey and Caroline had been catching up on the Korean drama Coffee Prince in preparation for us going to Korea:

It's a romcom about a financially poor, hard-working tomboy called Go Eun Chan who has to pretend to be a boy to trick her manager into letting her work in his all-men coffee shop. It's been a lot of fun getting Caroline hooked on the series - we’ve been watching it on Lindsey’s mac every break we get. I’d brought the DVDs to Japan just for that purpose, and I’m so glad I did now!

us watching the cute coffee prince in Carolines tatami bedroom in Takarazuka

(WARNING, I got carried away on this part so skip this bit on my current japanese classes if you only wanted to check up on me, the following is quite boringly just a taster of my thoughts on a film I watched and minorities in japan...)

In the new semester my part time jobs have ended and I have time to catch up on some much needed studying, and we’ve started new classes. The classes I've chosen is Literature on Ethnic Minorities in Japan and Japanese Cinema.

We watched the black and white film Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, and the following week a documentary on him as a director, and if you don't know him he's the director of Seven Samurai and the movie Ran - and the guy sounds so interesting, he lived through so much! For example he lived through the great Kanto earthquake as a child and his older brother showed him the wrekage, where he said he saw corpses which had died in 'every way humanly possible', and he came from a family of samurais. He did propaganda films during World War II and once the censor on films was lifted after the war (which he regrets not contributing to and thought it was his duty therefore to accept the gift of freedom to film whatever he liked and be bold), he made even better films commenting on the human condition and japanese society and on their history. He won the Golden Lions award in 1951, he sounded like a really perfectionist but his films are so beautifully presented, like his quiet later ones 'Dreams' and even Rashomon really, which has murder and rape in it. The director really left an impression on me, I want to watch all of his films now.

And in Japanese Literature the readings on minorities in Japan is interesting to see the points of view, but I must admit that I personally am starting to feel sick, just really sick of reading about discrimination and prejudice and racism and homophobia and just all that crap that shouldn't exist in the modern world. It's just full of hate and ignorance and it's just downright sad - each week it seems like a themed outsider, like the first week it was the japanese view of black people then and now (apparently because of western influence), then it was the foriegner in Japan (whose experience was pretty much exactly like our own even today), and another week it was on religion and japan being sterotyped and reduced to a primitive society, which just makes me sad.  Everyones responsible, putting another culture down to big oneself up. What makes me feel the worst is when I read about how the Japanese tried to look and act western, with big eyes and pale skin - when you hate yourself for being what you were born as and see yourself as a lower person I think that's the ultimate defeat on your part, it's a type of pathetic that is just so blatantly obvious and embarrrasing and depressing, and yet sometimes it seems like the only way to survive in societies some times...

So I like the class because it's keeping me aware, but I'm also sick of prejudice in our world history, wish it never existed, wish it doesn't exist.

 Caroline's major is anthropology and at the moment she's interviewing japanese people for her project on minorities in japan, and apparently every japanese person she's asked so far has denied the existance of minorities in Japan. Which is very interesting, since for years and years they've been made up of koreans, the chinese, brazilians, the ainu etc etc. I know they have the illusion of homogeniaty because they give off that impression, but actually they sort of brain washed themselves into thinking that way during occupation of japan in order to try and forge an identity for themselves, what with western influence and wanting to be a powerful, accepted country...

I thought before that the whole 'japan is only japanese' was limited to the older generation, but from that class and a direct experience at my work place when a student, seeing me pull out a bento exclaimed 'you can eat sushi?' and 'sugoi (amazing), you can use chopsticks?!', I acknowledge that it's still pretty prevalant. 

 It's very complicated and not really blogging material, but I just wanted to share that little taste of my current classes with you.

- Rant ended -

I’m going to separate this blog from the weekend that followed the trip to Kyoto because a lot happened in it and if I don’t, this entry will get too long.