Doll Festival/Girl's Day
Now Playing: Hina Matsuri
A doll festival held every year on March 3, has its origins in a Chinese purification rite in which known or unknown evils were transferred to doll surrogates (katashiro), which were then cast into a river. However, since the modern equivalent of these dolls are now very costly, exquisitely-made works of art in themselves, no one would dream of even playing with them, let alone throwing them in the river.
A girl usually receives a set of hina dolls from her parents or grandparents at birth or on her first birthday, and these traditionally become a part of the bridal trousseau. The dolls are displayed on a five or seven-tiered shelf (hina-dan), with the place of honor going to the highly-valued emperor (odairi-sama) and empress (ohina-sama) dressed in ancient court costumes. In attendance on lower shelves are ministers and other dignitaries, court ladies and musicians. Miniature lacquered dinner sets, tea ceremony utensils, musical instruments, palanquins and other furnishings of court life are also displayed, and with a folding screen in place behind the emperor and empress and two lanterns on either side, the hina dolls are indeed a sight to behold.
However, as mentioned before, the dolls are now for viewing only and the day is celebrated in front of the display with white sake (shirozake) and rice cakes called hishimochi. A type of sushi without raw fish (chirashi-zushi) and shellfish soup are also traditionally eaten on this day. As leaving the dolls out after Mach 3rd is considered unlucky and might delay a girl's marriage, they are packed away immediately following the festival, not to be seen until the next Hina Matsuri.
Maybe we should have such a tradition with Christmas trees!

Put on Your Rose Colored Glasses
"I always hated the first day of school when I was a kid. The transition to first grade was the worst. I was petrified of "not knowing." Not knowing if I would fit in or if my yellow submarine lunch box would be considered cool or dorky. Not knowing where I would sit or who would talk to me. I wanted to be back in the familiar surroundings of Mrs. Hathaway's kindergarten class.
But after a few days (and a new lunch box), first grade was ever-so-much cooler than kindergarten and I relaxed into my second-row seat behind my new friend, Jorgen.
That same fear visited me when we crossed the border from Romania to Bulgaria. I crossed from a country where after a month of cycling, I felt very comfortable, to a country as daunting as Mrs. Burger's first-grade classroom.
In Bulgaria, I was demoted to the "slow learners" group. I didn't know my numbers. I didn't know how to ask for bread or properly say "hello." (I thought I knew how to say "thank you," but blank stares of incomprehension were the only response I got.) Hell, I didn't even know how to read, as Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic script. It was back to phonics lessons.
Bulgaria was hot, brown and dirty. I saw fields of dying sunflowers, trash on the side of the road, homes without flower gardens. Little kids and old women peered suspiciously from behind doors. The August heat beat down and reflected off the pavement and the communist-era concrete block apartment buildings.
I wanted to be back in the green hills of Transylvania where I knew how to ask for directions and order coffee (with milk). Where I knew my numbers well enough to haggle the price if need be, and where I could at least pronounce the road signs.
Then yesterday, after my twenty-third attempt at saying "thank you" in Bulgarian, the merchant grinned, almost smiled, as he handed back my change, and a family waved when I said "good day." I had been understood.
Soon thereafter I began to notice the beautiful groves of oak trees in between the brown fields. I enjoyed the unique sound the wooden cartwheels made as they wobbled down the rutted pavement. Looks of suspicion I now viewed as curiosity and flowers appeared where none had been before.
Just as in first grade, REALITY HADN'T CHANGED, ONLY THE WAY I LOOKED AT IT.
Today it is back to school. We are learning how to count. Our teachers are a group of Bulgarian school kids who laugh with us at our mistakes. Today we will learn to count to ten, and Bulgaria will be a cooler, greener, more friendly country for it."
From a book: "Spokesongs" by Willie Weir.

I hope this gives you an idea what it's like to live in a foreign country. Willie says it so much better than I ever could.

Kocho-sensei
Mood:  blue
Kocho-sensei is our principal at Masago. He is such a wonderful person. Always cheerful and happy with a joke to tell, and a kind word for everyone, staff or student. We had an assembly this afternoon for the whole school and he sang two songs to the san-nenseis (third graders). It was a touching way to say "goodbye." (They are graduating next week!)
How sad to go back to the office and find out that all four tires on his car were slashed today. I don't get it. He does absolutely no discipline that I know of so I can't understand why anyone would want to do harm to him. The U.S. does not have a corner on the market for stupid, insane acts.

Buddhism in Japan
Mood:  special
Sunday afternoon on a lazy day in Japan. It's been raining all morning. This afternoon, Yokoyama-sensei was so gracious to drive down the mountain and pick me up. She took me to her home and newly built Tendai temple just above my apartment. She is a true inspiration and we got to pray together in her temple and then sit and drink tea and converse. I got just a taste of her truly remarkable life. First as a married woman with children teaching Japanese to foreigners with the YWCA. She amazingly found Buddhism by studying the Bible. It's a long story but she is now a married woman, Buddhist monk, with her own temple (the only Tendai temple in Nishinomiya). The temple which she built herself just two years ago sits next to a wonderful old 3-story home that houses her sister and husband, herself and her parents. I feel so honored and lucky to be able to talk with someone who is living the Buddhist tradition so thoroughly. I hope to attend some services at her temple in the future. They are on the 1st and 18th of every month, so I must watch for when these dates fall on a weekend so that I can go. wow.

Spring time is here!
Mood:  happy
Yesterday i was fortunate to view my first Japanese plum blossoms of the season - pink and white and gorgeous. Miki and i went to lunch at a sushi bar where the sushi just circles around on a conveyor belt and you can pick whatever suites your fancy. (They tally your bill by the number and color of the plates at the end of the meal.) We had scallops, salmon, tuna and more. Very delicious. Then a stroll through the streets of Miki's city, Takatsukishi, and a pleasant surprise of finding a festival going on. We enjoyed some remarkable Japanese music and song. Sampled a new-for-me taste sensation, ichigoame. That's a candy coated strawberry, a bit awkward to eat, but oh so yummy. They also have ringoame which are candied apples. A stroll through the festival brought us to a Shinto shrine with pink and white "ume" plum blossoms everywhere. A booth set up next to the shrine was serving samples of a sake drink that i hadn't heard of before. Amazake, or sweet sake, is made from rice. It goes through a fermentation process and the sake is extracted. The remaining pressed rice is then put in a pot and water added and a hot milky beverage is served and the rice paste is eaten. The paste definitely has a mild fermented flavor and the hot liquid is pleasant but not what i would choose for a favorite warm drink. We were just killing time so that we could go to view "The Last Samurai" that i had heard so much about. Sorry to say that this was not the highlight of our day. I understand that to portray the samurai culture that violence has to be part of the tale but i still think that graphic violence with blood spurting everywhere is not necessary to tell the story effectively. In my opinion violence for violence sake and to sell tickets at the box office is a shame and diminishes us all. The other disappointment about the movie is despite many positive comments; i didn't think that it portrayed the culture well at all. It seemed rather unrealistic. Ah well, it was a great day and a pleasure to be able to spend it with a newfound friend.

JAPANESE PHILOSOPHY 101

This text is from the "Chrysanthemum and the Sword" by Ruth Benedict published in 1946.
"In the English language we used to talk about being 'heirs of the ages.' Two wars and a vast economic crisis have diminished somewhat the self-confidence it used to bespeak but this shift has certainly not increased our sense of indebtedness to the past. Oriental nations turn the coin to the other side" they are debtors to the ages. Much of what Westerners name ancestor worship is not truly worship and not wholly directed toward ancestors: it is a ritual avowal of man's great indebtedness to all that has gone before. Moreover, he is indebted not only to the past; every day-by-day contact with other people increases his indebtedness in the present. From this debt his daily decisions and actions must spring. It is the fundamental starting point. Because Westerners pay such extremely slight attention to their debt to the world and what it has given them in care, education, well-being or even in the mere fact of their ever having been born at all, the Japanese feel that our motivations are inadequate. Virtuous men do not say, as they do in America, that they owe nothing to any man. They do not discount the past. Righteousness in Japan depends upon recognition of one's place in the great network of mutual indebtedness that embraces both one's forebears and one's contemporaries." Think about it!

Violence in Japan
Mood:  blue
And i thought it was only in the U.S. We have had our school gates closed during the day and there have been rumors about kids being hurt on the way to school as well as attacks in the schools. A few weeks ago, a girl from our school got slashed in the face at a mall over a weekend. A week later, as she walked to school in the morning a man on a bicycle jumped off and grabbed her. She got away, luckily. There have been other assaults in other schools. Today we were informed that another junior high school girl near here was grabbed this morning on the way to school and cut with a knife (not seriously). There has been an arrest. I don't know all the details. Sad to hear that it's happening here too.

Educational Trivia
Mood:  surprised
Here's a nice benefit for new teachers: I don't know if this is true for all of Japan, but it's standard procedure in Nishinomiya. When a new permanent teacher is hired so is a retired teacher on a temporary basis. The retired/master teacher is allowed up to 70 days to fill in when needed by the new teacher. This means that the new teacher has a "permanent substitute/master teacher" whenever he/she desires. If there are training sessions to attend or even if the new teacher needs some help at first - he/she can request the substitute any time for up to 70 days. We said goodbye to one of these people last month. He spent much more than the 70 days I think. What a deal!

Used Panty Trade?
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: This is NOT a joke!
I have been hearing rumors about this, but i thought that it was a joke. Today in the Japan Times here's what the Kyoto News agency reported:

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has prepared a bill to ban trade in schoolgirls' used underwear. The bill seeks to punish violators with fines of up to 500,000 yen. It would be the nation's first local government ordinance to include such provisions.
The bill, part of a revision to the ordinance on the upbringing of youth, also seeks to ban and punish scouts who solicit girls to work in the adult entertainment business.
It calls for complete ban on trade in used panties, accepting requests to sell, and introducing buyers to sellers. It also seeks to punish those who provide space for such trade, including sex shops were girls can sell directly to customers.....
Good grief.

Mugwort?
Mood:  quizzical
I'm always game to try new things so at the bakery this weekend I hardly hesitated to spend 350 yen (over 3 dollars) on four slices of green - really green - bread. It's called mugwort bread. It tastes rather "weedy" but pleasant. I researched it on the internet and found out that it's probably called black sage. Nice, but I probably won't spend that much money on it again.

More exciting is the discovery of these little tiny oranges at the supermarket. They are about an inch in diameter. They were cut up and a salesman encouraged me to pop the whole thing (rind and all) in my mouth - no hesitation again! Wow, they are delicious. I've been told that they are Chinese quince but when I looked on the internet the quince that I saw were more like apples than oranges. If anyone knows what little bitty tasty oranges are called, I'd love to hear what they are in English. Unfortunately they cost about 500 yen for 8 of them. That's about 60 cents a bite! yikes. AH, HA, THEY ARE KUMQUATS AND I NEED TO PLANT A TREE WHEN I RETURN TO THE STATES!

Quien Sabe!
Mood:  quizzical
I've watched a work crew dig up the same strip of road SIX times now. They dig up the dirt and fill trucks with it down about 5 feet deep. Then they work on some telephone, gas, and/or cable lines for a few hours. Then they fill the whole thing in and asphalt it over. Then the next morning they dig it back up and start over. VERY, VERY WEIRD.
Hard not to criticize. Who knows, maybe there's a good reason. Mine is not to question why, but I sure am darn curious.