Akemashite Omedeto

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a delightful holiday this past week. I certainly did, and am now making the most of a weeklong break from school activities to get in a little travel. The kids themselves aren’t so lucky: the closing ceremony for the second semester, much like the first, is an opportunity for faculty members to remind the students at length about their various responsibilities, and to exhort them to resist the temptation to have any kind of fun. Of course, they have club activities except for on New Year’s and one or two days before and after (no Christmas holiday here), so it’s not like they have much time to get up to things, anyhow. But nevertheless, I will have to shoulder the burden of interesting doings in their stead, and take lots of pictures to show them when I get back. Oh, the many hardships one has to endure as an educator.

But, as you can guess by the actual days off for the students (stingy though the Ministry of Education may be), New Year’s far outweighs its nearest neighbor in both importance and special events. Christmas has made a big splash here, to be sure, but New Year’s is something that everyone does, and these traditions are so deeply ingrained that they blend seamlessly with the traditional rhythms of the Japanese calendar. Granted, when the country formally adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1873, it pushed forward everything on the traditional calendar by about six weeks or so. When you think about it, celebrating the New Year closer to the middle of February (like the Chinese Lunar New Year) makes more sense to welcome the spring, but people here throw themselves into the Western version with precisely the same spirit.

Before the New Year even comes, people in Japan perform a massive cleaning of both their homes and workplaces. Japanese tradition places a major focus on ritual purity, and it’s believed that crossing into the New Year with a clean household will help to welcome good fortune and to ensure continued purity throughout the year. Never mind that one has to clear out the same amount of dust and other junk every December; it’s a spiritual act of cleansing as much as anything else. Besides, it’ll only get worse if you wait longer. Luckily, the kids throw themselves into the work too, for one reason in particular: money. For the New Year, parents and other relatives give children a special allowance, known as o-toshidama, which is sometimes quite substantial. And as long as they’re keen on not getting on the family’s bad side, you can bet that the parents will just as eagerly exploit their offspring’s newfound work ethic. It’s a winning situation for all parties, really.

Once that’s done, you’ll see plenty of decorations about: elegantly decorated pine branches and sacred straw rope adorn previously bare (or previously Christmas-y) doorways, and if you are able to look inside, you can see two disc-shaped slabs of mochi (a sticky, glutinous substance made of pulverized rice) stacked on top of each other, with a bitter orange sitting on top. Once the New Year comes, the mochi is broken up and eaten, but don’t eat the bitter orange—it’s got that name for a reason.

While you’re getting into the festive spirit, it’s best to also send your friends, family, and associates New Year’s cards. Known as nengajo, you can buy them pre-made or make them yourself; they usually include images of the animal for the year’s Chinese Zodiac sign, and a set phrase wishing the recipient a happy new year (such as the title of this week’s article). The post office dutifully makes sure they arrive by January first. Don’t throw them out after that, though: if you’re lucky enough, one of the cards you receive might even have its number come up in the nationwide lottery held in late January. All the better reason to try and send—and thus receive—as many cards as possible. Charity is not solely for the sake of others….

Then there’s the specially prepared food. I spent New Year’s at a Japanese household in Tokyo during my last winter vacation, and I was completely flabbergasted at the sight of so many and varied foods that the family dutifully cooks—or perhaps orders ready-made—for the New Year. What’s really astounding is that it’s all done ahead of time, so that the family can be together and not have to bother with cumbersome culinary tasks during the holiday. So instead, everyone feasts on special o-sechi ryori (New Year dishes), featuring zoni (a soup with mochi and various boiled items, which, at the risk of confusing my audience with more foreign words, reminds me great deal of matzo ball soup; good stuff), toshi-koshi soba (noodles with which to pass into the new year), kurikinton (a chestnut/potato mixture), specially-prepared egg, and many others. They are presented in as decorative a style possible, and the sheer volume can be overwhelming. I personally find that not all of it is to my liking (many of the names are actually puns related to health and good fortune in the New Year, so perhaps the elements are not necessarily chosen for how they stimulate the palate), but the sheer effort that goes into making it all is much appreciated.

But of course, no New Year’s would be complete without the customary trip to the local Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple on New Year’s Day. Called hatsumodé, this visit allows the individual to dispose of old, used-up talismans and amulet, buy new ones to help ensure health and good fortune, and to pray for a year free of worldly troubles. The larger of these locations can have lines going on for a mile or more, so maybe bring a book for the interim.

That’s the basic New Year’s playbook for life in Japan, but I’ve only really touched on the bare bones of it here: in more modern terms, the Kohaku Utagassen (Red & White Singing Competition) is a yearly televised tradition on par with New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in the States, featuring Japanese pop artists and well-known entertainers. And no self-respecting bargain hunter would be able to resist the New Year’s fukubukuro, or lucky bag, on sale at many establishments. For a (relatively) modest fee, you’re guaranteed a randomly chosen bag filled with merchandise worth at least what you paid, and often significantly more. Not too shabby, if I say so myself.

So, while Christmas in Japan may be a comparatively modest affair, I’d say that New Year’s in the Land of the Rising Sun actually outdoes its counterpart in the US by a healthy margin. In many ways, it incorporates the same themes as Christmas does in the West, but with a decidedly unique flavor. And that’s why I’m looking forward to this week. Right now, however, I should be going—I need to finish packing for my trip. Check back next week, where I’ll hopefully be back in one piece and able to tell you about it.

Merii Kurisumasu

Well, it’s that time of year again; some would even call it the most wonderful time of the year, though I always felt that the end of the school year gave it a run for its money in terms of general elation. Regardless, Christmas is nearly upon us, and that means that it is once again time for me to wonder in a mixture of amusement and general confusion at the version of the holiday that exists before my eyes. While the old story of a beaming, crucified Santa Claus proudly displayed in a department-store window is probably just an urban legend, I’ve seen enough unusual Christmas traditions here to more than make up for that.

The first thing that one has to get used to are the different Christmas tunes that play constantly on the radio and as background music in stores. While there are a few well-known carols that make it over (“Silent Night” comes to mind), far more numerous are the pop tunes that have cropped up over the years. These range from Japanese versions of well-beloved classics (“Makka no o-hana no tonakai-san”/“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Jinguru Beru”/“Jingle Bells”), to those by former members of the Beatles, to ones that I still don’t know the names of. There’s one Japanese ditty that keeps repeating “Silent Night” in a way that I’m pretty sure has little to do with the carol, but I still haven’t figured what it’s called. Such are the perils of catching snippets repeatedly when browsing in a convenience store.

But perhaps the most excruciating variety of Christmas song here is the novelty song, popular for all of a fortnight in its home country, but finding lasting appreciation here. The worst offender of this lot is, without a doubt, “Last Christmas” by WHAM! It is played to a nauseating degree every single Christmas here in Japan, and I really wish it would just go away. The song first came out for Christmas of 1984; it made #2 in the U.K. and an entirely undeserved appearance on the Top 40 in the U.S., but enthusiasm had justifiably cooled by the time I was born the following March. I hadn’t actually heard it until I came here, and that was probably for the best: just several listenings are enough to never want to hear it again. Even if you never had anything personal against George Michael, spending the entire Christmas season in Japan will have you contemplating, if not plotting, violence against the man—possibly involving the use of a time machine to go back to 1984, so that he will never have written it. The other perennial favorite here would seem to be “All I Want For Christmas (Is You)” by Mariah Carey. In this case, my annoyance doesn’t have to do with the song itself, so much as it does with my own personal dislike of the artist’s work. I sometimes wonder if maybe they like to play the song just to annoy me. Could be.

Venturing outside the world of the Christmas carol, you’ll find that Christmas in Japan is a time for… couples. The image of Christmas as the ideal romantic holiday to spend with your significant other far eclipses the idealized portrayal of families spending time together in tacky matched sweaters, if the latter image ever held sway here at all. You might think that Japanese business would have actively promoted Christmas as a time for buying gifts to give to everyone, but instead, all the ads for potential presents are tinged with romance. In Japan, gift-giving is practically second nature, so if the businesses don’t want to exploit it, it’s their loss. At any rate, rather than Christmas Day as a time to spend with loved ones and enjoy family-themed activities, Christmas Eve is the romantic night out for two. A few of my students were incredulous that the 25^th is actually more important than the 24^th in the English-speaking world. Crazy, I know.

For those who do decide to spend the big day—or evening, as it would seem—together with the family, there is at least a traditional holiday meal to share. This would, of course, be a bucket of KFC and a Christmas Cake. The latter, I can sort of understand: as an angel-food variety with white frosting and fresh strawberries, it bears little resemblance to the traditional cakes made around Christmastime in other countries, but at least the practice has some sort of precedent. The KFC, on the other hand, is just weird. I can get not cooking an actual bird at home when the oven can barely fit two drumsticks side-by-side in the oven, but if you’re going to do that, why not go that extra mile and actually get a whole cooked chicken? KFC, it would seem, has responded to that very question by promoting whole roast chickens for Christmas (which have to be reserved by the beginning of this week), but still: KFC? Why?!

The answer to all of this weirdness would have to be the simple fact that Christmas is a relatively late arrival in Japan. While Jesuit missionaries had visited Japan as early as the 16^th century, the Shogunate managed to effectively repress Christianity’s influence. Even now, less than one percent of Japanese identify themselves as Christian, which means that Christmas has mostly been absorbed through exposure to Western—and predominantly American—mass media. As a result, here they have fancy illuminations, trimmed trees, Santa-san, and flying reindeer; what they lack (or at least they did, initially) was a sense of the cultural and religious traditions that went along with it, so they created their own. I wouldn’t call it pure mimicry, exactly, so much as pragmatic adaptation. Besides, I rather like the ability to enjoy a secular Christmas on my own terms, without the perennial assertion from certain quarters that I really ought to subscribe to the religious beliefs that gave us such pretty Nativity scenes, even if the Winter Solstice celebration itself has been around for quite a while longer.

Of course, part of the reason for Christmas’s popularity in Japan has to do with its entirely coincidental placement right before New Year’s, which in Japan is a Big Deal—but more on that next week. For now, enjoy the spirit of Holiday Cheer with your family and friends—just go easy on the old George Michael singles, for everyone’s sake.

The Kids I Teach

As I’ve mentioned before, the end of the second term in Japanese schools is an extremely active time, and as I find myself rushing to finish lesson plans and get loads of peripheral things done in time to actually enjoy the upcoming holidays. But as the upcoming break approaches, I’ve also found myself amused by the foibles of my students. As an assistant, I work with all three grade levels (the equivalent of U.S. grades 7 to 9), so I have a lot of them, and nearly all of them have challenged my expectations about school life in Japan.

I suppose that maybe I had had a distorted perception of the kind of students I’d find here in Japan, based on decades of being told about extreme focus on studying, as well as legendary levels of discipline that, to me, seemed practically inhuman. These both served to make students in the Japanese school system seem like a kind of mythical object, nigh impossible in real life. And as it turns out, these views, if they were ever true, are certainly quite a bit different from the experience I’ve had.

Yes, the students are expected to learn a lot, and are frequently pressured to excel so that they can get into good schools. And yes, the rules themselves can seem unnecessarily strict, especially when it comes to keeping up a particular appearance. (Students are, to name just one example, forbidden from dyeing their hair, on the grounds that it draws unnecessary attention and serves as a distraction in the learning environment.) But at the same time, the kids are in many ways just the same as their American counterparts.

For one thing, they chafe at the rules constantly. While they have uniforms, some students seem to make it their mission to wear them as sloppily, or as inventively, as possible, following the letter of the regulations while subverting their spirit as far as they can get away with. The boys in particular seem to enjoy flashy belts, coloring the buttons on their jackets, and wearing colorful t-shirts underneath; the girls hike up their skirts to a worrying degree, then wear their PE shorts to preserve modesty. The teachers frown on all of these illicit modifications, of course, but can do little besides chide the students as long as they’re actually wearing the things. The main uniform infraction that teachers can actually punish—not wearing it—is of course not an issue the teachers ever have to deal with.

Also, the classroom and hallway chatter is pretty much the same as it is back home. Students pass notes, gossip about who likes whom, complain about school and schoolwork, talk excitedly about their favorite TV shows and bands, and engage me with all sorts of conversation. This last is probably the biggest difference from home, since my school didn’t have a native-language assistant for French or Spanish, but it certainly reveals more similarities to home.

The students who regularly talk to me divide fairly cleanly into three main groups. The first are the students who are serious about learning English. A few of them are quite skilled as a result of serious self-study and after-school prep classes for high school entrance exams, while others have little going for them besides enthusiasm and sheer dogged determination. I try to reward their effort as much as possible, while guiding them towards grammatical sentences without getting them too frustrated, but it seems like the opportunity to speak to a real live Anglophone helps keep them trying again.

The second group is the ones who want me to teach them all the interesting vocabulary English has on offer. Many of them are second-year boys (equivalent to eighth grade in American schools), who are at that critical age where curiosity about the anatomy and human… relations has hit its peak. Some of them are unsure of how to respond to the question “How are you?”, but they can certainly say some items that would make a sailor blush. I most certainly did not teach them those things; I blame the Internet. Nevertheless, I try and steer them towards more appropriate subjects, while feigning ignorance of the words they really want to know. After all, I don’t want them to blame me if they get beaten up by irate locals on their first trip abroad.

The last main group of students seems to relate to me chiefly out of curiosity about, well, me. They are intensely interested in where I’m from, what life is like back in the U.S., what my family is like, and more. While I appreciate the desire to learn more about life overseas, some of their questions can get uncomfortably personal; I’ve invented some answers out of whole cloth to keep from too much awkwardness (“I have lots of girlfriends!” with a big goofy grin and a thumbs up is silly nonsense, but is an effective rejoinder to “do you have a girlfriend?”). I sometimes wonder if they know I’m not really serious about those answers, though.

More than anything else, my daily interaction with these students, both in and out of the classroom, has helped put a human face on what I once regarded as remote and perhaps even a little forbidding. No matter where you go, kids will be kids, and the ones that I teach here in Matsubara are no exception. But of course, I’ve only scratched the surface here, so expect far more on the subject in the new year. But it seems we’ve got some special occasions coming up, so why I don’t I take a couple of articles to explain those, first?

Round, Flat, and Good with Mayonnaise

It’s finally happened: my Japanese test has come and gone, and while I’m certainly relieved that it’s over, I can’t exactly rest easy. The grammar and listening sections weren’t too much trouble, but I’m pretty sure that I made a fool of myself in the kanji section, which counts for a quarter of the grade. I suppose it’s possible that I managed to squeak by with a score in the low 70s, but I won’t know until February. Guess I should start studying for the next session in July, just in case.

That aside, school is also proving to be a handful, thanks to the end of the second term. The old lunar calendar calls the twelfth month Shiwasu, meaning “teachers run,” and with the presentations, meetings, random lesson schedule shifts, and review preparations, my legs are starting to get tired. I’m buoyed by the thought of soon being able to use a computer that doesn’t make horrible grinding noises when it ought to be asleep, as well as the upcoming New Year’s-related festivities, but they seem like such a long way away from now. On the bright side, I can at least indulge my appetite for some good Japanese-style cooking.

I’m sure that most of you are familiar with sushi, teriyaki, and ramen. These are well and good, but they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to food here in Japan. This is especially true in Osaka, which is known as “the Nation’s Kitchen”, where you can “Eat Till You Drop”. While Tokyo is known for its high-end restaurants, and the ancient capital of Kyoto for its haute-cuisine and traditional Japanese sweets, Osaka has good, old-fashioned, artery-clogging comfort food.

For starters, there’s takoyaki: this is a fried ball of gooey batter that contains, at its center, a chunk of octopus tentacle. It’s far better than it sounds, and it’s sold by street vendors and dedicated takoyaki sellers alike. It tastes a lot better than it sounds, and is easy to snack on while you walk down the street – just make sure to let them cool off first, though. They can burn the tongue straight off the griddle, as I learned the hard way.

There’s also yakisoba, which is a stir-fry consisting of noodles in a tangy sauce, cabbage, a variety of meat (pork, shrimp, and squid are popular here), and some other ingredients I’m not exactly privy to. Nevertheless, it’s quick, cheap, and not difficult to make – all plusses in my book. But my favorite Osaka food is the round, flat, and apparently untranslatable okonomiyaki.

Literally meaning “cooked favorites”, “okonomiyaki” is often rendered in English as “Japanese pizza” or “Japanese pancake”. While the first sort of conveys the interchangeability of ingredients, and the second the general shape, it’s really not that close to either. At its heart, okonomiyaki is a pan-fried batter-cake where you can choose the ingredients that go in it. Generally, this means cabbage, a kind of meat (or several), sometimes cheese, and occasionally shallots.

When it’s done, you smear okonomiyaki sauce on top, crisscross that with some mayonnaise (Japan loves mayonnaise) and then sprinkle over that bits of seaweed and tuna flakes. These last seem to dance in the heat of the freshly-cooked food, which is both oddly fascinating and disturbing at the same time. If you’re at the right kind of restaurant, it gets served directly onto a heated pan in front of you, where you can then use a special spatula to cut it up and heap it onto your plate. Some places even let you make it yourself. (Japan is less litigious in general and thus seemingly untroubled by the thought of burns or food poisoning from letting hapless customers do their thing.)

There are regional varieties, too – Hiroshima, out west, prides itself on a layered (rather than mixed) version with only a thin kind of batter, while Tokyo has monja-yaki, which is like okonomiyaki but runny. My personal preference, however, is for modan-yaki, a homegrown Osaka favorite that includes yakisoba noodles right in the mix. It’s like the best of both worlds in one, and a high-calorie guilty pleasure I can justify by the fact that I go to the gym. As long as I don’t have it too often, anyway….

At any rate, Osaka provides a wealth of less-than-healthy food for me to sample, and eating out with friends is a sure-fire way to ease the pre-holiday blues. I mustn’t forget, however, that Japan has a variety of regional specialties, which is why I also intend to travel during the upcoming holiday. After all, someone’s got to eat that food, right?

Dazzled by technology

December is here at last, and with it, I have taken up a new hobby: shivering. While winter temperatures in the vicinity of Osaka never get anywhere near what they’re like back home, there is a whipping wind that comes down off the mountains and helps make everything feel colder than it really is. The lack of insulation also helps with that. Anywhere in this country south of Hokkaido has an annoying tendency to skimp on materials to prevent the temperature outside from getting in, which leads to near-unbearably hot summers and – wouldn’t you know it – freezing winters. Schools are likewise unheated, though the teachers’ room ought to have heat; it’s just broken right now. And so, I throw on an extra layer, hoping to keep out the chill of what would otherwise be above-freezing weather.

That aside, I am studying like mad for my Japanese test, which is now less than a week away. As the date inexorably approaches, I am feeling less and less prepared, and more and more certain that I’ll have to take it again. Maybe it’s just pre-test jitters, and maybe it’s a reflection of the steep jump between level 2 (which I passed last year) and level 1 (which I’m taking on this coming Sunday). Either way, I’m wedded to a near-daylong test that I won’t find out the results for until February, so I might as well make the attempt.

Nevertheless, my thoughts are buoyed somewhat by the thought of the approaching holiday season. While Christmas in Japan pales in comparison to the version back home – a topic I will discuss more in a week or two – stores are still brimming with decorations, and there’s still something of that festive cheer floating about, thanks to the equally enthusiastic embrace of New Year’s as a time to eat, drink, and be merry. Just knowing that multiple end-of-year parties will be coming along after a busy month is a much needed respite from the continuing grind.

And while Christmas shopping may not be quite as big, December is still a big consumer season in Japan, for one reason in particular: the winter bonus. Salaried employees in Japan usually receive a rather substantial part of their regular yearly income in semi-annual chunks, and one of those comes right in December. Naturally, stores are keen to take advantage of this, offering sales on all sorts of items, from luxury goods, to household appliances, to gifts for that special someone. (You’d think no one told them about the recession.)

As fate would have it, though, my major purchase for this season is already determined, thanks to an ailing computer creeping ever closer to its last gasp. It gave up trying to read CDs and DVDs ages ago, and of late, it’s been making some pretty scary noises and throwing up the occasional cryptic error message. (And as I was typing this column, the sound went. I wonder if it knows what I’m planning.) But while my contribution to the Japanese economy is born of necessity, it’s still really neat to walk around and see what’s on offer.

Nowhere is this more clear than at the major electronics stores in Osaka: Bic Camera in Namba and Yodobashi Camera in Umeda. Both are sprawling, multi-storey behemoths, and both contain far more than just cameras. Yodobashi Camera in particular has not only its own food court and multiple clothing stores under its roof, but an entire floor dedicated to computers; another for peripherals and other accompaniments; one for A/V equipment; one for household appliances (and furniture!); one for toys and games; one for cameras, watches, and jewelry; and a basement level dedicated to bicycles, luggage, and other odds and ends.

Strolling through a place like this is nearly surreal, just seeing what’s on offer, but I am continually struck by the ingenuity that goes into household technology. Manufacturers are continually shrinking both the space and energy requirements of their appliances, and to stack them against their American counterparts would make ours seem big and clunky by comparison. (If that sounds familiar, it’s because it also applies to Japanese cars; I’ve simply noticed since coming here that the mindset that drives vehicle philosophy in Japan applies equally to other things, as well.) This is quite nifty, of course, but I always gravitate towards the electronics. Flat-screen HDTVs are on offer here at sizes that wouldn’t let me sit far back enough to watch them in my tiny apartment, with a host of features I don’t recall ever reading about back home. Even the stuff that’s comparatively normal seems to have a futuristic sheen about it.

Maybe time has marched on in the US, too, since I left, but when iPhone has been criticized here for lacking many of the features common to Japanese cell phones, maybe not so much. That features viewed as nifty back home are taken for granted here says a lot about the way that technology like cell phones has so completely permeated the public consciousness. And by the time that level of “standard” features reaches the US, Japan will probably have moved on to something better. The pace of development just seems that quick.

One thing that surprised me, though, is that high technology here seems at par, if not a bit more expensive, than back home. I had always thought that since so much stuff is made in Japan, it would have to be cheaper here, but that tends not to be the case. Instead, in a country where things are usually 1.5 to 2 times as expensive as in the US, it’s about the same. This makes it practically a steal if you live in Japan, though not so much for anyone hoping to find a discount by looking to the Rising Sun. In fact, it probably would work out to more money to have something shipped back, so, more likely than not, it’s best simply not to bother. Even so, I can’t help but be captivated by all the shiny things. If I can’t have it, at least I can bask in awe of its sheer awesomeness. A guy can dream, can’t he?