Saturday In The Park... and Monday By The River

On the weekend I went for my first sakura (cherry blossom )hanami (flower viewing) session. A few friends and I decided to venture down to Nagoya, which, being slightly further south, is a little further along in the sakura blossom stakes. I was assured of that last week when I checked out somewhat bizarre, yet strangely touching 'cherry blossom front report' at the Japan Meterological Agency's website: http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/en/News/sakura3.html

Before arriving at the park, I envisioned a huge expanse of green lawn dotted with cherry trees and groups of people sitting under them. Reality was a little different. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but the 'lawn lounging' I was anticipating turned out to be more like a 'crouching-in-the-garden-beds' scenario.





This wasn't simply due to lack of space, but because Japanese public parks always seem to incorporate more concrete walkways than grass. Nevertheless, there were plenty of cherry trees and you can never fault sakura for their beauty.

Now that I've had a bit of time to think about it, what really strikes me about hanami is what it reveals about the Japanese culture and mindset. Plenty has been written about Japan's reverence for the natural world and how this is reflected in Japanese art, fashion, music, ceremonies, religious beliefs, and numerous other cultural practices. But this awe of nature was so much more apparent on a personal level on Saturday. People of all ages and all societal demographics were there; young families with chidren, wannabe yakuza, older couples, suited-up salarymen and office ladies attending the company hanami party; even a few men who might have been homeless. All there to absorb the spring atmosphere and appreciate one of nature's most beautiful displays. And the expressions on some of the people as they walked down paths under a canopy of petals were like something out of a Disney movie- there is no other word to describe it but awe; faces upturned, mouths half-open, eyes lit up.


And like I say, these were people of all ages - not just children. You have to admire a society that encourages that kind of unselfconscious appreciation of nature.

I think it also comes out in the Japanese fixation with kawaii (cute). Although this is mainly the domain of high school girls, the appreciation for cuteness apparently knows no boundaries in Japan: I remember seeing a construction worker with a tough-guy expression using a mobile phone with a teddy-bear keyring dangling off it. Almost every company here has at least one cartoon-character mascot that features in its advertising, logos and signs. For example, my bank's corporate image is based on Tom and Jerry. They're on the cover of my bankbook. The epitome of cuteness here in Japan is little furry animals, and it's not uncommon to see a full grown man taking a small toy-poodle-type dog (dressed in a skirt, t-shirt and 'hair'/fur clips) for a walk.

But I digress. Today I took in some more hanami- in my own town. The sakura here are possibly Gifu's best-kept cherry-blossom secret. The Sakae river, which runs through this town, is lined with cherry trees. When the trees are blooming, they create a canopy over the river. When you walk down the path next to the river, it really is - to quote my colleague - "like another world"...

Spring Has Sprung

Spring has come to southern Gifu, and the signs are everywhere.

1. It's warmer- finally! No more huddling in front of the heater, no more wearing my ski jacket on the way to school, no more frozen puddles to slip on when making my way into the school building. It's amazing how the body adapts to temperature though- I feel positively warm now that it's just above 15 degrees outside. When that hit me back in October, I was shivering my ass off!

2. Flower blossoms are out.
Last Sunday I went to a plum（ume, うめ、梅）blossom festival in Gifu city (at Baiorin Koen, or ‘Violin Park’, no less). It was just a small park but filled with lots and lots of plum trees. Apparently plum flowers are the first to bloom of all the fruit trees here in Japan, and while they are not quite as delicately beautiful as cherry blossoms (sakura, さくら, 桜 － the blossoms most favored by the Japanese, which won’t emerge until the end of March), they are still a very nice treat for the senses after winter. The park smelled like spring and there were plenty of Japanese families out enjoying their first ‘official’ taste of spring for the year.

Seasons here are generally welcomed in very prescribed ways- through festivals focusing on something representing the natural beauty of that season. And I have to say that of all the seasons, spring is the one I’ve been looking forward to most.

I think I was premature in my last post in saying that I will never again be surprised by anything in Japan . At the plum festival, we witnessed for the first time a very Japanese custom. The seasonal photo model. A Japanese ‘maiden’ (actually she was probably in her thirties) wearing a ‘Spring’ outfit was posing for photographers amongst the plum trees. And when I say posing, I mean it. The expressions on their faces were the fixed, vacant, spacey smile of housewives in 1950s magazine ads. There was a crowd of male photographers gathered in front of her taking pictures.

We found the whole situation hilarious and kind of bizarre. So we decided to copy her, in an ironic way, of course. Julie was braver than me, and it wasn’t long before a couple of the photographers had made their way over to where we were to take photos of this ‘gaijin sakura girl’! (Not that this was anything new to us; every time we go to a festival, someone will inevitably take a photo or three of us, without our permission and with no attempt to be discreet.)

3. Following on from the blossom theme, shops and department stores have brought out their spring merchandise. That is, you can now purchase an array of very realistic plastic sprigs of cherry and plum blossoms, beautiful sakura writing paper, postcards featuring cute furry animals frolicking among flowers, and blossom-covered dishware. And if you stop by a combini (convenience store), you can literally taste spring- in the form of a sakura-flavored Kit Kat!

4. Starting this week, at 5pm every day, my neighbourhood is treated to the sweet notes of ‘Sakura’, possibly Japan ’s most famous traditional Japanese folk song. You’d probably recognize it if you heard it.

http://classic-midi.com/midi_player/uta/uta_sakura.htm

Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms/Blanketing the countryside/As far as you can see./Is it a mist, or clouds?/Fragrant in the morning sun./Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms/Flowers in full bloom./Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms/Across the Spring sky/As far as you can see./Is it a mist, or clouds?/Fragrant in the air./Come now, come/Let’s look, at last!

I knew about this tradition of playing a special song – either the official town song, or a seasonal tune - over the loudspeakers in towns all over Japan , but until now, I hadn’t heard it in Kakamigahara. As corny as it sounds, it does stir the heartstrings- I look forward to hearing it again this afternoon! Am I turning Japanese?!

5. It’s ‘dust storm’ season in East Asia .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7274718.stm

From late February to April, huge dust clouds from the Gobi Desert in China blow over to the east and collect pollution as they go, carrying it to Korea and Japan . When I first heard about this, I thought it was just another example of Japanese xenophobia (Chinese dust causes illness in Japanese!), but maybe I need to be less cynical because apparently it’s a real phenomenon. Gifu isn’t spared- over the past week I’ve noticed thick haze in the air and last night riding home I could feel and smell that the air wasn’t clear. All of this has meant an increase in the proportion of people wearing white surgical masks as they go about their business here in Japan . (In case you didn’t know, it is a Japanese custom to wear white masks covering their mouth and nose - like the ones surgeons or very very sick people wear – when they have a cold or allergies. Sometimes it makes you feel like bird flu has actually broken out here.)

While I can’t deny that Melbourne’s mild climate is nice (well, except for the drought!), I can’t help but feel that we are missing out on something by not having four distinct seasons. By Australian standards, Melbourne is ‘European’, so they say, but being so mild, we don’t get to experience the burst of spring after the relative hibernation of winter. So it’s a novelty to be here in Gifu and to experience my first full northern hemisphere calendar year and all the seasonal changes that come with it.

Let's play catch (up)

Whoops. It's been over a month since my last post and I didn't even write anything about my trip to Shirakawa-go, or Nara, or Halloween, or Hida, or... or... So, time for a quick run-down:

Shirakawa-go
I got to spend a weekend in a UNESCO World Heritage-listed village in the mountains of Japan. AND, I got to appease all my senses by witnessing traditional festival celebrations. AND, did I mention this was a SAKE festival?! It's called the 'Doburoku Matsuri' and it's named after a type of unfiltered sake. Unlike the clear sake you might be familiar with, it looks more like oatmeal because the rice grains haven't been completely filtered out. Doburoku tastes a whole lot more bitter than the mainstream version. Actually, it was hard to get down but it didn't take us long to acquire a taste!

Basically, the weekend looked like this: Me and a couple of other JET friends from down south (Gifu) took a 3 hour train north to Takayama (an incredibly beautiful town in itself, dubbed 'Little Kyoto') where we were picked up by another friend who just happens to live in one of the most picturesque villages in all of Japan. (Nice to have friends like that.) Unlike his predecessor though, who was the 'experienced woodsman' type, I don't think Jordan particularly enjoys the 'roughing it' aspect of his situation, which involves things like helping the townspeople thatch the roofs of generations-old houses, and in winter, digging a tunnel through the snow to his get to his car. ;P Anyway, from what I can tell, his situation looks like the 'storybook JET experience' and I hope he realises how lucky he is.

So what's all the fuss about Shirakawa-go? Well, it's home to 'gassho-zukuri' houses, which have a 'prayer-hands construction' style. To put it in English, the houses look like cute little gingerbread-house woodsy-mountainy village houses that you'd find in the Swiss Alps. They're actually designed that way so snow can't accumulate on the steep roofs in winter. The upper part of the building was traditionally used for things like producing silk, so the silk-worms lived up in the attic. And my friend's students live there!

Back to the festival: We followed the parade (involving a lion/dragon, a drum, a red devil, a green devil, lots of boys in white, rainbow streamers and a respected elder riding a rickshaw) up to the village temple, watched a lot of lion dancing, and tasted sake. We were impressed when the officials laid down two long mats in front of the temple and let everyone sit down on them before they came by with pots of sake and served us all-you-can drink proportions. Needless to say, most people were dead to the world on the bus-ride back to Gifu...

Halloween
I have to say I am getting a little annoyed at the Japanese versions of American holidays. And I haven't even lived through Valentine's Day yet! The Japanese don't know much about the REAL meaning of any of these holidays. Of course, most holidays have lost their significance in the West as well, what with commercialization etc... but in Japan, the sole reason they adopted these holidays is because they think the decorations are cute. I don't want to sound like Scrooge, but it makes me feel a bit sick. The minute Halloween was over, out came the Christmas decorations. And if you think it's overkill in America or Australia, you'd better not set foot in Japan. The malls and supermarkets have been playing Christmas carols since the first week of November. And I'm not particularly religious, but the whole Christmas thing being completely devoid of any references to Jesus, Mary, etc, is a bit wrong, I think.

Having said all that, Halloween was fun. The ironic thing, though, is that despite the plethora of Halloween merchandise available in Japan, the Japanese people seem to have a big problem actually wearing any of it come Halloween-eve. My friends and I went to the 'Nagoya Friends' Halloween party- supposed to be a chance for 'foreigners' and Japanese people to have fun together. It was 80 percent 'foreigners', and the Japanese that were there wore cat-ear headbands (girls) or the work suits they had been wearing all day (men). The Japanese guy we talked to said he had come as 'the British PM'. Because he was wearing a suit. Ha. I guess I can see their point in not dressing up. It can be chotto embarrasing. My friend Julie and I decided to go as Hello Kitty and My Melody (another similar character, a pink rabbit). Seeing as all we had to do was buy a headpiece and gloves for 20 bucks, it seemed to make sense. Except unfortunately for me, Halloween evening happened to coincide with the official bankruptcy of Nova, Japan's biggest English language school. This story was huge in the Japanese media. Nova's mascot is a pink rabbit. Who looks a lot like My Melody. And I was wearing a pink rabbit costume on the night of the day Nova went under. JET is like the 'rival' way (and I must say, the superior way) to go teach English in Japan. Anyway, lots of people thought I was making fun of Nova. So I felt bad, but not until the next day when I was sober enough to work out what all those Japanese people had been saying: "Nova usagi!" (Nova rabbit). That night we had fun trekking back to our hotel for 45 minutes, bringing joy to groups of Japanese businesspeople and traffic officers along the way.

Nara
It might not have been the best plan to go to Halloween festivities the night before a big trip to Nara, one of Japan's cultural and historical capitals. But it turned out ok anyway. Except for the fact that we made the mistake of actually taking advice from a train conductor, and ended up spending 6 hours on trains when we only meant to spend 3. Note to self: never ask for advice if you think you know what you are doing. Inevitably, it will throw you off course. I'd spent a good hour online planning which trains we should take, etc, and it was all undone by the advice "the other train will get you there faster". We got there in the end, with enough time to meet the deer and see the Todai-ji and the Daibutsu, a huge Buddha statue. Yes, that's right, meet the deer. They're left free to roam all through central Nara because they're considered messengers of the gods according to Shinto beliefs. They're cute, especially the young ones, but some can be pretty aggressive in their search for treats. We also got to see Kasuga shrine, where the deer seem to be more peaceful, perhaps because they're more religious. This shrine has lots and lots of lanterns and is really beautiful. To finish off the trip, we considered buying omiyage (souvenirs) to take back to our colleagues, but I wasn't game enough to buy the 'deer dropping' cakes! (chocolate, of course)

Hida
Two weekends ago I was lucky enough to be a special guest of the Hida Tourism board. Along with 4 other JETs and other 'foreigners' (there's that word again), I experienced an all-expenses paid overnight tour of northern Gifu-ken. I feel it's my duty to now convey to all my friends and family how wonderful Hida is as a tourist destination. And it really is; it's a very traditional, mountainous area of the prefecture, where a lot of old crafts are still practiced. We had to fight our survival instincts to actually board the tour bus, having read the itinerary stating that the tour will require "ten foreigners to execute". Our first stop was an apple orchard where we did some pickin'. Unfortunately, because it had rained a little that day, the 'Country Walk' was cancelled (for me, it felt like a frustrating example of Japanese-ness, but that's probably being unfair). Instead, we got to see a town called Kamioka, which had some beautiful autumn leaves and a funny-but-not-really sign on a bridge that said "Think again. There's a brighter future" in Japanese. The guides told us, through their laughter, that it was there to stop people committing suicide, since it commonly happens on that bridge.After the strenuous hike, we were dropped off at an onsen to soak our aching muscles. I love onsen but I don't think my body is quite used to being immersed in 50-degree-celcius water for minutes on end. Finally, it was off to the hotel, and a beautiful traditional Japanese dinner with local delegates. My friend and I were seated with the Head of Tourism for Hida (I think that was his title, anyway), and of course, managed to drink enough sake to help him confirm every misconception of 'foreigners' he ever had. Actually, it wasn't me who was so drunk, but my friend, who was christened a 'champion' at the end of the night. Oh, and by the way, I overheard one of the delegates commenting on how we 'ate everything' (zenbu tabeta). To which the other replied, 'their bodies are big' (karada ga ookii). Of course they must have thought we couldn't understand, but I did! The delegates also treated us to a couple renditions of the Hida song and taught us the Hida dance. You must understand that in Japan, whenever alcohol is offered, it's expected that people will drink until they're making fools of themselves.

The next day we had our choice of soba noodle-making, paper-making or lacquering. I chose to lacquer, and of course, you can't do that in two hours, so we only got to do the first layer. Our bowls will be sent to us when they're done. After a tour of Furukawa town and another amazing meal, we only had to spend half an hour filling in a survey and we had 'paid' for our trip. Of course they served us coffee and snacks while we worked on the surveys, to make us feel even more guilty.And that's what I've been up to, fun-wise, over the last month or so. Next time I'll write an entry that's more representative of my daily life!