Party Time! Famous Festivals in Akita

Like pretty much anywhere in Japan, Akita has a wide selection of its own, special, local, and in some cases (in)famous celebrations and festivals in addition to the national holidays recognized nationwide. Some of the Akita festivals are especially noteworthy, and they range from the refined and delicate (the beautiful Komachi Festival in late spring), to the unique (summer's awesome Kanto Festival), the ridiculous (the Hinai Chicken Festival in January)...to the downright absurdly violent and dangerous (the winter Takeuchi Festival).

Gannin Dance Festival: Every spring in Hachirogata Town on May 5th, local men dress up as women to perform unique dances and comical skits. Many of the skits are taken from popular kabuki plays. For the Grinnellians in the audience, this is sort of like Mary B. James meets Cinco de Mayo and open mic night at Bob's.

Komachi Festival: As mentioned in the last post, Akita is famous for its beautiful women. Legend has it that the greatest beauty of all time in Japan, Ono-no Komachi, was born in Ogachi Town here in Akita Prefecture. Ono-no Komachi (born 809CE, during Japan's Heian period) was said to be not only beautiful beyond compare, but also a prodigy in dance, koto (Japanese harp), calligraphy, and waka (Japanese poetry). At age 13 she travelled to Kyoto, the center of Japanese culture and politics in Heian times , where she was much acclaimed for her beauty and talents. Every June Ogachi Town holds a festival in her honor, selecting seven young women from the town to dress up in Heian period clothing and recite seven waka in Ono-no Komachi's honor. The women are chosen specially for their beauty and talents in music and poetry.

Sakura Festivals: Like everywhere in Japan, the spring blooming of the cherry trees is much awaited in Akita, and merits hanami, or special trips with friends to go and view the flowers. Akita is special in that, not only does it have the usual pink and white cherry blossoms, it also has yellow cherry trees, which bloom later.

Hinai Chicken Festival: To honor the famous Hinai chickens raised in Akita, people get drunk and do a ritual chicken dance for this festival.

Ushinori-Kumomai Festival: Held in Katagami and Oga every July 7th, this festival celebrates a legend in which a princess and her husband could only be united one day a year. Rather than focusing on this, though, this festival features a very drunk Japanese man riding a bull that hasn't been fed for a week. Evidently, focusing on the sidenote in the story where a god performs a ritual riding a bull around Tenno is more amusing than a Japanified remake of Persephone's tale.

Kanto Festival: Every August in Akita City, the main street is closed to traffic. After dark, teams of performers hoist large bamboo frames hung with flaming paper lanterns. To the sound of drum, flutes and roaring chants and calls from the audience, they balance the poles on their foreheads, hips, single palms, and pass the poles among their teammates. Sometimes as tall as two stories, and weighing over 150 pounds, these poles are no joke! Between all lampposts and street signs over the sidewalk are strung heavy-duty cables, to prevent wayward bamboo frames from squashing bystanders. This festival is to pray for good fortunes in the upcoming Akita rice harvest at the end of summer.

Omagari Fireworks Festival: Every August in Omagari, the top 30 fireworks makers in Japan compete for supremacy at the National Fireworks Championship. The displays are dazzling.

Oyamabayashi Festival: In Kakunodate (the samurai town) in early September, this festival involves elaborate floats driving around the city streets. The culmination of the festival is what amounts to oversized bumper cars, as the floats ram into each other as hard as possible. Yes this is dangerous.

Namahage Festival: Held each winter in Oga City, the Namahage Festival is a Japanese version of Santa Claus. Only instead of promising goodies as a reward for good behavior, swarms of men in elaborate namahage (demon-like creatures of myth) costumes come down from the mountain, in the dark and snow, and storm into houses and try to drag the terrified children out into the cold. The parents usually let this happen until the namahage are juuust about to leave...then intercede, for the promise of good behavior from their children. They then bribe the namahage with sake to leave their children alone. Thus do Japanese children learn that being bad gets you kidnapped, but you can buy off anyone, even the devil, with sake.

Kamakura Festival: Each winter in Yokote, famous for its copious snowfall, a number of kamakura, or igloo-like snow huts, are built. Some are big enough to hold multiple people; some are tiny, built only to house candles. You can go visiting from hut to hut, being served warm rice wine and sweet cakes by that kamakura's host, usually local children.

Naked Man Festival: Every winter, one man in town is chosen to be the Naked Man. This basically means he becomes a symbolic receptacle for every else's sins. He then strips to his birthday suit (and yes it is cold here in Akita that time of year) and runs through the streets, being chased by the other townsmen wearing nothing but loincloths. If you can catch and touch the Naked Man, you transfer your sins and bad luck to him, and will have a fortunate year. He keeps running until he reaches the shrine, where he undergoes an extensive ritual purification to make sure he doesn't die from all the bad luck donated to him by his entourage of naked neighbors. In some places, women and children stand on the sidelines throwing buckets of icewater or whacking the pursuers with bamboo sticks.

Takeuchi Festival: Basically, this is a drunken brawl with the addition of gigantic bamboo poles and a bonfire. Scores of hammered Japanese men gather in teams around a bonfire, grab a bunch of bamboo poles, and proceed to beat the living **** out of each other in three short, violent rounds. Not much more to say about that one.

There are many, many more local festivals throughout the prefecture, but this is a summary of the more interesting and/or bizarre or famous ones!

Here There Be Dragons

As you may or may not know, depending how dedicated a reader you are and/or how often you talk to me, I live in Honjo, which is in Yurihonjo City in Akita Prefecture. Akita Prefecture is a rural, isolated prefecture in Japan's Tohoku region - the northern end of Honshu, the main island. Akita is at about the same latitude as Vancouver B.C. in Canada. Its summers are hot, averaging well above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and very humid. Its winters are long, cold, and snowy - the average snowfall in Akita is one of the highest in Japan (though the snow is much deeper inland; towns like mine, on the coast, have considerably milder winters). The prefecture is on the Eastern side of the island, on the Sea of Japan. Before receiving my JET assignment, I had no idea Akita Prefecture existed - much less anything else about it. This is in no small part because Akita is one of the least well-known and least-visited prefectures in the country. Few foreigners ever see it; most Japanese never come here either. The prefecture ranks 6th in the country for its size, but 35th for its population. Like so many rural places in developed countries today, Akita is experiencing a "youth exodus". Despite a long tradition in Japan of people staying close to home and family, many young people are growing up and leaving Akita for the jobs, opportunities and general "scene" in big cities down South, like Tokyo and Osaka.

This is probably because Akita Prefecture is one of the most isolated, least-known backwaters in Japan, possibly in the developed world. If you were putting Akita on a map, you'd more or less shrug and write "here there be dragons" and then move on to worrying about someplace civilized and remotely relevant.

So what's there to know about Akita?

Well, first a few trivia facts about what Akita is "known for". Akita is famous for its rice, Akita komachi, said to be the best rice in all Japan. Due to Akita's far northern location, there is only a single rice harvest a year in the prefecture. Akita is also famous for its beef and milk, though not as famous as the better-known Kobe beef. The Hinai-jidori chicken, believed to be one of the most flavorful and delicious breeds of chicken, is also an Akita product. (As a side note, the chickens are much celebrated here - every year there is a festival in their honor, at which people wear chicken outfits, get plastered, and go around the streets doing a ritual chicken dance.) Also well-known from Akita is the Akita-inu, or Akita dog. The famously loyal Hachi, whose statue now graces Tokyo's Shinjuku station, was an Akita dog sold from this prefecture to a family in Tokyo. Perhaps of great interest to the men and some of the women in the audience, Akita is also famous for its women (Akita bijin), who are consistently ranked by the Japanese as the most beautiful women in all Japan. Akita is also famous for its dialect (ben in Japanese), Akita-ben. Akita-ben is considered one of the most challenging dialects in Japan, and is linguistically unique in that it can be spoken without ever fully opening the mouth. The story goes that Akita-dwellers developed the Akita-ben because of the prefecture's brutal winters, which were so cold that they did not want to open their mouths lest their tongues might freeze.

Industry in Akita is primarily centered around agriculture, mining, forestry and fishing. The Sea of Japan off Akita's coast is rich in numerous fish species, and the area has an abundance of trees that can be harvested for lumber. Paddy fields, in addition to some fruit and vegetable farming, checkerboard the landscape. There is not much in Akita in the way of businesses like telecom, technology, or the automotive industry - it's probably comparable to the economies of places in the US like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho or Iowa.

So what's there to do in Akita? Well, if you like hiking or camping (though Japanese camping is more car camping than wilderness trekking), Akita is a great place. It is home to Lake Tazawa, a caldera lake that is the deepest in Japan (measuring 423 meters deep). Lake Tazawa is famous because of its depth, and also that because of its depth it never freezes, not even during the harsh Akita winters. Legend has it that Tatsuko, a beautiful maiden, drank the lake water in the belief that it would grant her everlasting beauty. Greedily, she drank so much of the water that she angered the goddess Kannon, who turned her into a water dragon as punishment. Then one day, Prince Hachirotaro from a nearby village went fishinge. He caught and ate a fish from one of the streams feeding Lake Tazawa. Suddenly, he developed an unquenchable thirst - he drank the lake waters for thirty-three days without stopping, and so he too was turned into a water dragon. Unable to return home in his condition, he slipped into the lake, where he encountered Tatsuko. They became lovers, and some say that it is the passion from their lovemaking that prevents the lake from freezing in the wintertime. Akita is also home to Lake Towada, the largest caldera lake in Japan. Also in Akita Prefecture is Mount Chokai, called the Fuji of Tohoku because of its classic conical shape. Many people hike Chokai in the summer months, though snow makes it impassable during the deep Akita winters. Near Honjo, where I live, you can visit the Walk of the Thousand Jizo, a short hike along a path lined with 1,000 stone statues clothed in red fabric. The jizo are said the be the guardians of children, in particular children who died before they were born or as infants. You can also see the golden Daibutsu, or giant buddha statue, in Ouchi Town. Kakunodate is also in Akita; it is one of the best-preserved samurai towns in the country, with many samurai houses open to visitors. There are numerous onsens, some of them natural hotsprings, and many are considered among the best in Japan. If you're really into geothermal hotspots, you can visit Hell's Gate, a large and dramatic thermal area.

Akita's history is long, and much of it is also lost in the mists of time. Because of its remote location, Akita remained isolated from the rest of Japan (and therefore free of Japanese governmental recordkeeping, etc) until after 600CE. The people of Akita at this time were largely hunter-gatherers, and lived a quasi-nomadic lifestyle. The first real record of Akita is from 658CE, when the Ezo tribes of the region were conquered by Abe no Hirafu. He built a fort, beginning the Japanese settlement of what is today Akita Prefecture. Roughly seventy years later, a castle was built in what is today Akita City. This would serve as the launch point for the Japanese push even further north, into what are today Aomori and Hokkaido, as they strove to conquer the native tribespeople there. Akita Prefecture has changed management numerous times; perhaps most significant for its current manifestation was the 260 year period it was ruled by the Satake clan under the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Satake clan established the agricultural, forestry, fishing and mining industries that are today still the pillars of Akita's economy. Akita's daimyos were among the last to fall to the Meiji restoration, persisting in the Akita tradition of headstrong independence and fierce isolationism. Eventually, though, the daimyos' hold in Akita weakened, and the Meiji Restoration redrew Akita's borders into what is modern-day Akita Prefecture.

Is the Japanese Educational System Better or Worse Than the American System?

Like I said in my original post, I teach at three schools; Yuri Elementary, Yuri Junior High, and Yashima Elementary. Of the three, I definitely find Yashima the biggest challenge. Nobody there really speaks English, and as far as I can ascertain, nobody is exactly dying to learn, either. Yuri Elementary and Yuri Junior High are exceptionally motivated and academically-oriented schools, and it shows; moreover, the original principal of Yuri Elementary, a wonderful man named Kinichi Sato (who, though now retired, visits Yuri Elem a few times a month to team teach with me), was a world traveler with a firm conviction that English is crucial to facilitating international education and exchange. As a result, Yuri Elementary is an absolute pinnacle of English achievement. Throughout the school, items and doorways like desks, classrooms, and cubbies are labeled in English. The school has multiple visiting English specialists who are fluent second-tongue speakers, as well as an English-oriented curriculum coordinator. Mr. Sato himself is 100% fluent in English, as is the visiting English specialist, the estimable Mr. Ryosuke Watanabe. Mr. Takano, the curriculum coordinator, speaks fairly well, and Mr. Sugawara, a random teacher at the school, is also 100% fluent. Yuri Elementary kids are clean, bright, energetic, polite, outgoing, motivated and adorable. They can also form sentences in English, and hold simple conversations.

Yuri is a rare, rare diamond twinkling and rising above the butchered English cesspool that is apparently much more normal for elementary schools in Japan.

Yashima is definitely not a diamond in the cesspool, much less above it.

Honestly, to me the whole atmosphere in Yashima is oddly depressing, but that's besides the point. Let's face it; I think the current public education system in America is pretty bad. The system here in Japan is definitely different, so the real question is, which one do I think is better?

Like almost everything here in the Land of the Rising Sun, that's not a simple question. The main thing I can say with certainty here is that the two systems are definitely different - which I guess means that they succeed and fail in different ways. One major strength of the Japanese system is that, unlike the US system, it's not being co-opted as a channel for religious evangelism. Japanese schools are very secular. On the other hand, US schools do encourage individuality, personal identity and free choice - by letting students pick their own classes, say, or having open-format reading assignments where the student can choose their own book for a report. Japan, in contrast, creates a homogenous educational pool. Since there is no such thing as elective courses, and since all students have the same rotation of teachers due to the whole teachers-change-rooms thing, every student at a given school receives exactly the same eduction. This has its advantages; no student, for example, ever has three teachers schedule major projects due on the same day, nor does anyone have a heavier workload than their peers. In effect, these systems reflect the core values of the cultures in which they exist. The US values independence, personal identity, and out-of-the-box thinking. Japan values conformity, social harmony (called wa), and unquestioning obedience to precedence and tradition. "Why?" is a very dangerous question in Japan; in the US, it's something we're expected to ask. To a degree we rarely contemplate at home, the United States is indeed a nation of ferocious individualists. I didn't quite comprehend this until I moved to Japan, to find myself in a country that values conformists as highly as my own values individualists.

Also, the US system is one that is much more inclined toward teaching critical thinking and analytical skills. Not so Japan; though famed for their math achievement, that achievement is the result of the same process by which all information here is imparted; by rote. Japanese teaching doesn't consist of teaching so much as it does of saying things and having the kids repeat it back to you. This results in an amazing wealth of memorized facts and formulas, but little to no ability to think critically or apply that knowledge in any context other than that in which it was originally presented. This, obviously, is not a plus. On the other hand, many American students lack a sufficiently broad base of factual knowledge - also not a plus.

In the end, I think both systems are imperfect, but are shaped by and (more or less) appropriate to the cultures they serve. (I'd like to see changes in both, personally, but I don't run the zoo.) At any rate, being American, I'm always biased to leap toward saying the American way is "better" or "right"....but I'm not sure that's true. If Japan wanted to be more American, then maybe a more American approach to teaching would be right. But for Japan, especially a Japan that is and evidently wants to remain Japanese, the Japanese system with its accompanying strengths and weaknesses seems best suited to producing solid, effective Japanese adults - and the same goes for the American system. American thinking and attitudes are as out of place in Japan as Japanese ones are in America, and I think that's something that's important to come to grips with as an expat here. Schools, I'm finding, do much more than teach us reading and arithmetic. They condition us to become functional adults in the culture we live in - they shape our manners, thinking models, knowledge bases, biases, and worldview. And in that sense, the rote system here - which receives plenty of criticism in the foreign media - is actually pretty darn well suited to the rigidly conformist, communally oriented world in which Japanese adults dwell. To an outsider, it looks boring, unimaginative, stifling, and impractical, but maybe that's because we can only see it through our own (foreign) eyes.

So which system is better, American or Japanese? Both have their advantages and drawbacks, both have flaws, both could probably be improved - but in the end, I think it's a wash. I will say though, that American schools are better for Americans than Japanese schools would be; the same is true in reverse. Better? Worse? No, just different. Though I would definitely not object to less time spent rehashing the humanitarian tragedies inflicted on this nation by mine as seen through the eyes of an old tree. Thank you, New Horizon English Course.

Festivals and Holidays in Japan

This weekend was the Honjo City Festival, which is celebrated over two days (Saturday and Sunday). The city streets are hung with colorful paper lanterns, and in empty lots stages and floats are set up. The festival is basically like a city-wide block party. On Saturday night, children perform dances and taiko drumming that they've been practicing, and families meet up, eat tasty festival food, watch the performances, and play the usual goldfish-catching and target shooting Japanese festival games. On Sunday, starting pretty dang early in the morning (those taiko drums are LOUD!), teams of people pull the floats through the city streets, playing drums, shakuhachi and shamisen. They stop at various points along the routes so the kids can dance some more, and old men circulate with bamboo flasks and cups, trays of dried squid, and boxes of Popsicles. If you're me, you might get special attention because you're foreign, and find yourself invited to sit/squat with a group of old guys who are very friendly, force-feed you sake and squid, and can't really communicate with you because they only speak Akita-ben ("ben" means dialect, and the Akita one is infamous - it makes regular Japanese look like learning to count to ten). Families mill around chatting, kids play in the streets, and it's generally a very sociable occasion - not unlike the great American block party, only this one goes for two days and involves alcohol at 9am. But, interestingly enough, festivals and holidays are two different things in Japan! Festivals don't qualify as holidays, because you don't get time off from work. Holidays are observed nationally and the whole country shuts down, including the ATMs. (Those close every night, too.) Festivals are usually local, and can be as brief as a single evening or as long as several days. Festivals usually have events to attend, like fireworks displays, dance or musical performances, or parades. Holidays are usually observed privately, with family and friends. Although some holidays, like Girls' Day in the springtime (Hina Matsuri), will feature public displays - in the case of Girls' Day, elaborate displays of traditional dolls with ritual sweets as offerings to the gods for good luck - most holidays won't have any visible public observance other than a lack of postal, banking and ATM service. Curiously enough, unlike the US, most retail businesses and restaurants continue to operate on national holidays. It seems that the Japanese have festivals almost every weekend - if your town isn't having one, there is probably one within an hour or two happening in a neighboring town. In addition to all these local celebrations, Japan also has more national holidays than any other country in the world. They also have a policy that if a normal day falls in between two holidays, the intervening day also becomes a holiday! It's gotten me wondering what role all these celebrations play in the fabric of Japanese society.

Culturally, the Japanese draw very distinct and harsh boundaries between the inner, private world and the outer, public world. Personal life is rarely if ever brought into the office - you may not know your deskmate is seeing anyone, until she takes a week off to go on her honeymoon. Even more so than this sort of public-private division, Japanese are discreet to the point of being secretive about their true thoughts and feelings. In Japanese, this is described as honne, or or true thoughts, and tatamae, which translates as somewhere between "social veneer" and "white lie". The language facilitates this, as most words and sentences are wide open to interpretation - sometimes so much so that the possible interpretations may be direct opposites. Compounded by the fact that directly saying "no" isn't the done thing in Japanese, untangling the intended meaning of a sentence can be tricky enough for a foreigner - and forget wading through to grasp the original feelings or thoughts of the speaker. What does this little linguistic detour have to do with festivals? Well, I've been pondering that myself recently. You see, another Japanese cultural institution that is often shocking to Westerners is their use of alcohol. In the West, Japanese drinking (which, I can hardly deny, is both frequent and copious) seems like a horrible national case of alcoholism. But I think this may be overlooking an important point.

In Japan, there is a belief that "Before alcohol, all are equals". Alcohol levels social barriers and hierarchies that are normally insurmountable - an important release in such a strictly delineated society. Alcohol is the key to the gate when an inferior needs to communicate with a superior, but is normally prohibited from doing so by Japan's rigid status hierarchy. Moreover, what is said over drinks is rarely held against the speaker; it won't be forgotten, so it's not a total get out of jail free card, but when drinking you can say many things in Japan, and to people, that you could never do when NOT drinking. Living in Akita, I have begun to wonder if what looks like alcoholism in the West isn't, in fact, an elaborate social ritual that is important to maintain balance in a distinctly Eastern society. Over drinks, and nowhere else in Japan, can a bit of that internal honne infringe on the external world where, at all other times, tatamae, that uniquely Japanese polite fiction, holds sway.

Godzilla Might Be Real

Based on the size of Japanese grapes and bread slices, the notion of a giant city-smashing lizard might not be so far-fetched after all. Note hand in photo for scale.

Bronze: Live

At the Honjo Festival this summer, we caught this group live. Way to rock that sax in a yukata!

Kanto Festival

This video is from this summer, when I went to Akita City for the Kanto Festival. During Kanto festival, gigantic bamboo frames are hung with paper lanterns. First, participants march down the Kanto Odori street with their bamboo poles, accompanied by floats and musicians. Then, they raise the poles into the air. They balance the poles, lanterns ablaze, on various parts of their bodies - including their hips, chins, foreheads or the palm of a single hand, passing them around among their teammates. The poles are many meters high and can weigh up to 150 pounds. For viewers’ safety, heavy-duty cables are strung between streetlights to ensure that no wayward bamboo poles squash the bystanders.

What Do Our Textbooks Really Teach Us?

These books are the devil's educational instruments.

When I was in high school, I participated in a homestay exchange in Japan. When it came my turn to host a Japanese exchange student in America, my guest brought with her a bizarre habit that I, and my entire family, have been wondering about ever since. It’s a well-known fact around the world that the Japanese do not wear shoes indoors. Even in many restaurants or workplaces (including my three schools and Board of Education office) you must wear indoor shoes or slippers, leaving your outdoor shoes in the genkan (entryway location for shoe-switcharooing). Despite this, throughout her stay with my family, this Japanese girl INSISTED on wearing her shoes in the house. My family, let it be noted, doesn’t wear shoes in the house. We take ours off and leave them by the door, as evidenced by the Amelda Marcos-worthy heap of footwear adorning our entryway. We could never figure out just why, in light of her cultural background and our obvious habit of removing our footwear, just why this kid refused to take her shoes off.

Now that I have moved to Japan and begun working as an English teacher, I have finally solved the mystery. Its answer is lurking on page 44 of the New Horizon English Course Level 2 book. This particular lesson is about doing a homestay in America, and offers cultural advice and rules. It also states flatly that in America, you must wear your shoes in the house. I have concluded that, thanks to New Horizon English Course, this kid arrived Stateside with the fear of God instilled in her about going sockfooted indoors in America. Because, you know, not tracking dirt through my house on an ongoing basis would most definitely amount to an egregious and offensive cultural sin. God bless the Japanese educational system.

This little gem, however, is far from noteworthy in the context of New Horizon. Along with a few other absurd moments (‘Oh no! My cola!’), the main lesson that most JETs will warn you about - and legitimately so - is Freddy the Leaf. If you’re considering becoming a JET, or already are one, take your senpai’s advice and read Freddy the Leaf before you get into a classroom situation. If your first encounter with the sheer absurdity of a six-page narrative revolving around a neurotic leaf’s struggle to come to grips with death, terminating in his inevitable frost-bitten autumnal demise, comes in front of 30 middle schoolers - trust me, you will lose it right there in front of the class.

Sadly for all of us, Freddy the Leaf is NOT the biggest doozy awaiting you in the treacherous pages of New Horizon. That award most likely has to go to the innocuously-titled ‘A Mother’s Lullaby’. Do not be fooled as I was. When I saw the title, I suspected nothing.

For some reason, my JTE decided that this day, it was appropriate to begin class by springing an impromptu karaoke session on me, sticking me in front of the class with a boom box and making me sing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Why? That three-letter word, friend, should probably just be wiped from your vocabulary in this country. So we finish up with Mr. Lennon and proceed to start the class. Today’s lesson was a reading lesson, the story entitled ‘A Mother’s Lullaby’. I foolishly assumed it had something to do with kids, parents, and maybe bedtime. My JTE asked me to read aloud to the class, as usual, and so I blithely began.

‘A big, old tree stands by a road near the city of Hiroshima.’

I will give you three guesses where this is going.

This entire lesson is about the sad deaths of innocent young children in the holocaust of the Hiroshima bomb. To help the kids follow the story, the teacher put large picture cards up on the board, featuring such glorious images as mushroom clouds and a post-apocalyptic wasteland littered with corpses and scorched, shrapnel-peppered wounded staggering around with blood all over them and bones jabbing out. In the meantime, I’m standing in front of this feel-good picture show repeating words like ‘bomb’, ‘bodies’, ‘burned’, and ‘dying’ for pronunciation practice.

During a quiet moment while the kids were filling in a worksheet, I spoke privately to my JTE off to one side. I told him this lesson was a little awkward for me, as an American (the previous ALT was British), because my country dropped the bomb. I intended this as a gesture of sympathy and understanding. For whatever reason, my JTE interpreted it as a request to turn around and shout ‘Everyone! Attention please! Miss Amanda’s country dropped the bomb on Hiroshima!’.

Sofia Coppola’s choice of movie title to explain Japan could hardly be more apt. And for the icing on the cake? This lesson is really long. It will probably take us four or five class sessions to get through it.

Since beginning to work with New Horizon, I’ve begun reflecting quite seriously on just how many different levels our textbooks influence our thinking, understanding and assumptions about the world around us. From the shoe rule to the presentation and context given to Hiroshima, I think New Horizon is a more powerful tool than just a mediocre English text. I think it is also a means of cultural indoctrination and a reflection, for outsiders, of the internal Japanese mind. On a related note, it will also give you the impression that the Japanese really, really, REALLY like giving moral lessons through stories told by anthropomorphized trees. I have come across no less than three lessons so far featuring the emotions of talking flora.

Machismo, Japanese Style

This car is a MONSTER by Japanese standards. Also although there is a bumper sticker on the lower right that reads “Mr. Man” (you can’t really see it), I would like to note that the seats have lace and gingham upholstery covers and there are cute fluffy decorations dangling from the rearview mirror. Welcome to the Japanese cultural translation of being a “man’s man”.

Shoppingu: What's It Like to Grocery Shop in Japan?

This post is not comprehensive, because I was getting even more stares than usual as I went round snapping photos in the supermarket. The camera, if possible, compounded the gaijin effect for rubbernecking. At any rate, hopefully these images give you an idea of what a mundane grocery shopping experience is like in Honjo!

On a related note, I would like to mention how surprised I was that I was surprised at all by Japanese grocery stores. After all, I consider myself a pretty well-versed diner with a broad palate - I like Asian food, I eat it often in the States, I’ve gone shopping at Uwajimaya, I’m a worldly sort of person, right? Wrong. Twenty seconds in a Japanese supermarket in Akita was a wonderful education. It demonstrated to me in short order just exactly how ethnic a diet I actually eat - and the notion that I eat ethnic, friends, is a far cry from my vision of myself as an internationally savvy diner with a broad palate.

As it turns out, I eat an American ethnic diet. What, you might say, is so American about your diet, Amanda? You frequently eat Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, etc, etc ad nauseum. You’re from a Pacific Rim state; fusion cuisine is what you’re all about.

Yah that’s what I thought too.

…

On my first shopping trip, one of my senpais (a returning JET assigned basically to assist the n00bies; senpai in Japanese means upperclassman, a relationship that in Japanese school culture usually denotes an older student who acts as a mentor and guide for underclassmen) took me to the Takayanagi. Happily I picked up my basket and began shopping.

I thought I had this on lock.

Well, I did successfully acquire spaghetti noodles, some sort of pasta sauce (probably Japanified and therefore wrong, but functional), salt, pepper, eggs, etc. with no difficulties. Then I turned to my senpai.

“Where’s the cereal?” I asked innocently.

He laughed.

Welcome to Japan, kids. The list of foods that are unavailable here is long, but the ones that most surprised me are as follows:

• Breakfast cereal. It is ridiculously expensive, and usually the only options are plain, frosted or chocolate frosted cornflakes sold in tiny bags. Forget about your Cheerios, Dorothy, we’re no longer in Kansas.
• Bread. The only bread here is THICK, FLUFFY, and WHITER THAN WONDERBREAD. What they make it out of, I do not know. But if you were expecting a choice of wheat or white, never mind oat, twelve grain or rye, good luck.
• Deli meat. Ham is the ONLY option. And it’s processed ham, not the sort of sandwich meat I prefer. Moreover, as it turns out, turkey is exceedingly rare in Japan (85% of the Japanese population has never eaten turkey), and beef is too expensive to waste on sandwich meat. So I hope you like ham sandwiches, because turkey or roast beef ain’t a happenin’ thing here.
• Salads. In the US, I am a huge fan of those Fresh Express! salad baggies they sell in the grocery store. They do not exist here. Nor, so far as I am aware, do croutons or any sort of standard salad dressing. You can buy pre-made salads in the convenience food section of the store, but they usually consist of 90% cabbage (ick), 5% shredded carrot, cucumber and lettuce crumbs, and 5% something like baby tomatoes, corn, or tuna. And usually they don’t come with dressing. Not exactly your classic Caesar.
• Cheese. This one wasn’t really a surprise, but it is weird how easy it is to find “Japanified” cheese - sort of like a white, mild version of American cheese - and how impossible it is to find anything that actually deserves the title of cheese. The French would probably have an aneurysm if they knew. You can buy string cheese, but it only comes in packs of two, they are huge, they are often flavored (think things like “pepper” or “smokey”) and they’re not really like American string cheese.
• Potato chips. A whole new spin on you say potato, if you will. Potato chips in Japan taste NOTHING like American potato chips. I have managed to find Pringles, but most of them are in weird flavors like “Beef Kebab”, “Rich Consomme”, and (WTF) “Night Cheese”. As a result, though I was not overly fond of them in the US, the relatively normal-tasting Sour Cream and Onion Pringles (which are available) have become my standby.
• Honey roasted peanuts. These are very uncommon here. One store near me sells them, but who knows how long that will last - stocking here seems very erratic. I can never figure out why one day is Canadian Bacon Day, with big slabs of Canadian-style bacon/ham sitting in the meat case, and the next day nothing but tofu skins.

Other Japanese grocery store surprises included:

• The price of fruit. Really, this is kind of appalling. Most fruit is sold by the piece, and the prices are pretty steep. For some melons, you can expect to pay as much as 2,000 yen; for peaches, more in the range of 300-500 yen is normal.
• The variety of things which I had no IDEA what they were. I thought I was pretty savvy about Asian food, including numerous Uwajimaya shopping trips. Yah, well so much for that one too. Japan specializes in destroying my self-image and my delusions about my own worldliness. I routinely wander past the shelves or coolers full of slimy-looking god-knows-what and remember just how much I don’t belong here.
• How CHEAP the fish was! Really, if you like fish, Japan is a good place to be. It makes sense I suppose, though I live in a fruit and vegetable growing area and produce is expensive as all get out, so who knows. I will never understand Japanese pricing or supply chain procedures.
• The availability and affordability of “conbini” (convenience) food. It’s not always the healthiest stuff, often being short of protein, vegetables, etc, but onigiri, sandwiches, fried chicken, croquettes, yakitori, and bento sets of sushi, tonkatsu and so on are easily available at any conbini (convenience store) or grocery store for a very affordable price.
• Markdown pricing! In Japan, expiration dates come up very quickly because the government is very uptight about preservative use in foods. So, fresh foods are rarely resold the next day. If you go to the supermarket an hour or two before closing, you’ll get some great deals on meat and produce. Since they won’t be resold the next day, they’ll be marked down by 20-50%.
• Bagging your own groceries! Most stores in Japan do not bag your items for you. They will ring you up, then return your shopping basket to you with an appropriate number of bags for your items. You will then proceed to the Bagging Station and bag your things yourself. This is true for general merchandise, like filing boxes, dishes and wrenches, as well as for grocery trips.

In short, don’t get too confident about how international you are as a person. Sometimes, 30 seconds in a supermarket is all it takes to realize that you’re just as bound to your own nationality as the next person - and that you can’t escape the tendencies and habits of where you come from.

Some Random Photos

The street outside the Takayanagi, my local supermarket.
This salt shaker explains a lot about communicating in Japan. But it is on the positive end of the bell curve, mind you. Read the blue label carefully.
This is Yuri Elementary (Yuri Sho), and it is sort of like a big English-learning playground. This school rocks my socks.
This shrine is right outside Yuri Elementary (Yuri Sho). The stairway to the shrine up the hill is REALLY steep!

Not Quite Iambic Pentameter: Amanda's Middle Schoolers Write Poems

Today, one of the in-class assignments for my Yuri Junior High students was to write a poem. The poem was pre-formatted, a certain number of words per line, and a set number of lines, but the kids each made up their own poem. Some of them were pretty cute!!! The titles are my own invention.

Examples:

“Dolla Dolla Bill”

Money

Very Important

Buying, eating, living

I don’t have it

Sad.

“Treehugger”

For the world

Stop wars

Made peaceful countries

Don’t lose the forest

Absolutely.

“Don’t Stop”

Game

Push push

Push game over

Sad ritray push push

Achieve.

“Zen Master”

Zero

It’s beautiful

One and all

Zero is connecting always

All.

“Notetaking”*

Scrawl

Corner notebook

Born and vanish

Where is vanish scrawl?

Repeat.

*This poem was written by the girl who is my entrant for the upcoming Yurihonjo Speech Contest! She will be reciting a speech about Martin Luther King. She’s pretty awesome.

I hope you found these as charming as I did! My kids are really great, and I love reading the things they write to me. I’m planning to start a weekly optional “Letters with Miss Amanda” program so they can write to me if they feel like it, and I’ll return their letters with corrections and a reply written by me!

Visions of Yuri

Yuri Junior High School
View of Mt. Chokai over Yuri JHS sports fields
Lots of rice between Yuri and Honjo!
View on my morning commute

Japanese Schools: How Are They Different?

As Japan continually reminds me, many things that we take for granted in our home countries are very different once we leave our own borders. What do I mean? Well, among numerous other examples, let’s look at Japanese schools.

In the United States, students arrive at school either by school bus or by their own transportation (on foot, by bike, or driven by a family member or themselves). In Japan, many students walk or bike, some are dropped off by parents, and the rest use public transit. The American school bus system is, to my knowledge, rare to non-existent.

In the United States, students move from classroom to classroom for different periods. In Japan, the teachers move from room to room. This system promotes greater class unity, and guarantees uniformity in courseload. In the US system, one kid might be taking basketweaving and another might be taking advanced chemistry. In Japan, students are assigned to a class (ie, 1B, 6A, etc). Each class has a designated room, and at any given period the teacher assigned to that class visits that room. Consequently, there is no concept of elective courses (downside, IMHO)…but on the positive side, no student suffers from having taken a more challenging course load than their peers. All 6A students have the same amount of homework, the same number of class hours, etc. This system has its obvious pros and cons, including things like camaraderie between classmates (pro), equal course load from student to student (pro), lack of educational diversity (con) and total lack of customization or individual choice (con).

In Japan, since teachers move from room to room, they don’t have their own classroom. Instead, there is a “teachers’ room”, where every teacher has their own desk. To enter the teachers’ room, students must announce themselves by knocking, bowing and saying “shitsureshimasu” (basically “excuse me” or “I am intruding”). When leaving, they must bow and say “shitsureshimashita” (again, “excuse me”, or “I have intruded”). They have to say this even if they are coming into the room to do an assigned duty, like collecting interoffice memos or similar tasks.

In Japan, there are no school janitors. At the end of each day, all of the students participate in “cleaning time”. In this way, they are responsible for the caretaking of their own school facilities. As you can imagine, this encourages everyone to be clean and tidy and respectful, from their desk areas to the bathrooms or the lunchroom. In the US messiness vanishes when the janitor comes through; in Japan, the student or the student’s own classmates will have to deal with any mess. There are few messes and no food fights in Japanese schools.

In Japanese elementary schools and junior high schools, students are not permitted to bring their own lunches; moreover, lunches are prepared by the students themselves on a rotating basis. There are no lunch “options” - everyone receives an identical tray of food. (See post on kyushoku.) Lunch is considered an educational time as much as any class, and teachers eat with students to teach good manners, dietary habits and social interactions. It is my personal opinion that this system discourages odd dietary habits like veganism, as well as discouraging wastefulness or eating disorders - at the end of lunch, all diners must line up to empty their trays, and scraping too much food into the waste bucket will be observed by not only teachers and fellow students, but also by the students who actually prepared the meal. This provides a heavy social disincentive to be a picky, excessively light, or otherwise abnormal food consumer. It also sucks if you don’t like the school lunch.

Students are at school ALL THE TIME. Many of them arrive before school starts, most of them stay long after school ends for sports or club activities, and many of them even come to school during breaks or weekends. As a result, most Japanese school teachers work long, hard hours! School in Japan encompasses much more than just book learning; in many ways, it is closer to the US concept of parenting than it is to the US concept of schooling.

Japanese schoolchildren wear uniforms for junior high and high school. Girls wear skirts and boys wear pants and everyone wears identical clothing for their gender, even down to their shoes (both outdoor and indoor), socks, and gym clothes. Girls’ uniforms are sailor-inspired, and boys’ uniforms are based on Prussian military garb. In stark contrast, Japanese elementary schoolers can wear pretty much anything they want to.

In Japan, education is only mandatory through middle school. High school is optional.

These are just a few of the differences that have struck me about Japanese schools compared to American schools! More to follow I’m sure!

Kyushoku: Shall We Runchi?

Kyushoku - much consternation has this cultural tradition caused me. Kyushoku, or school lunch, is a major social meme in Japan. Kyushoku began originally as a governmental response to mass malnutrition among Japanese children in the post-WWII era. At that point, poverty and malnutrition were rampant, so a government-subsidized lunch program was introduced to combat the issue. Originally, kyushoku consisted of such simple foods as milk (from powdered milk solids), bread, and so on. Today, it is a daily changing menu, prepared by the students themselves on a rotating basis, usually consisting of a soup or salad, a rice or noodle dish with some meat like curry, katsu, or stir fry, a carton of fresh milk, and a dessert - sometimes a sweet like pudding, sometimes a piece of fresh fruit. Kyushoku is considered as much a part of schooling as any class - teachers eat with their students, monitoring their nutritional intake, table manners and socialization. In middle school and elementary school, no students at my schools pack lunch from home - everyone eats the school lunch.

This has actually caused me a bit of consternation. I asked if it would be alright if I packed a bento from home, not being overly fond of cafeteria food in any form. The immediate reaction was NO!…except from my one elementary school where nobody really speaks English. A day later, a wonderful English teacher from my middle school approached me, telling me that the non-English-speaking elementary school was very concerned about the idea of me packing my lunch as all previous ALTs (my job title - Assistant Language Teacher) had eaten school lunch, and would much prefer that I eat school lunch than bring a lunch from home.

Not wanting to cause trouble, I conceded to eat school lunch - which while healthier than American school lunch is still nothing to write home about - and so it was settled.

Or so I thought.

My first day of work, my boss at that school walks up to me and says “So what did you bring in your bento today?” I said I didn’t have one, I was eating school lunch, and he acted horrified.

My reaction: this guy was so opposed to the idea that he called teachers at my other school to tell them exactly HOW much he opposed me packing my own lunch. Now that I have conceded to doing things his way and eating the semi-gross school lunch, he wants to know where my bento is and is acting like it’s a major imposition that I am expecting to eat the school lunch? This is a classic WTF Japan moment. Clearly something here got lost in the cultural translation. Regrettably, I am now apparently committed to an entire year of Japanese cafeteria food. On the upside, it’s quite funny if you think about it. Above is a sample of what my daily luncheon might look like - this one was some kind of meat stir fry with a soft-boiled quail egg over rice, a salad of some sort, and a big slice of watermelon (suika in Japanese). All school lunches are served with milk, and if you eat in the teacher’s room as I do at my elementary school, also usually with hot green tea.

Google kyushoku if you’re curious - it’s certainly an interesting cultural notion that the government has a responsibility to ensure not only the provision of one nutritionally complete and balanced meal a day to every student at a subsidized price, but also that that meal should include adult supervision, student responsibility in preparation, and throughout good manners and responsible cleanup behaviors. The phenomena is directly a result of World War II, so it may be of particular interest to history or sociology buffs.

The Strangeness of Being Away From Home, and Why I Loathe Old Japanese Men

Sometimes, when you’re living far from home, the strangest things feel like major crises. For example, this week my parents informed me that the family cat (who is closing in on her second decade) was ill. For whatever reason, being so far away, that felt like a real blow. I think there is always some sadness that comes with a pet falling ill, but for whatever reason it’s exacerbated by feeling distinctly like that which is familiar at home is changing beyond your control while you’re abroad. Maybe that’s because even the familiar is unfamiliar in Japan - things like ATMs pose major language study crises, what you buy at the supermarket expecting to be hardboiled eggs turn out to be WATERY, RUNNY softboiled-like eggs, people drive on the wrong (I’m American, give me a break) side of the road, nobody EVER makes eye contact and forget physical contact, if you ask a question probably nobody will understand you and if they do you won’t get a straight answer, familiar foods have been Japan-ified with the addition of things like seaweed, mayonnaise, odd ingredients (the classic example being corn and squid on pizza), or simply by having had their essential flavors (particularly spicy foods, cheesy foods, or foods involving peanut or coconut) modified to suit the mild Japanese palate. I don’t even LIKE spicy food and I’ve been missing it since getting here, that’s how mild everything is.

When you’re planning a move to a foreign country, I think you assume that it’ll be different, but kind of think in the back of your mind, how different could it be, REALLY? And then you get here to Japan and realize that among other things that make you a weirdo here, you also eat a massively ethnic diet because there is no breakfast cereal (people eat rice, miso, natto - a particularly unfortunate culinary invention if I may say so, fish and so forth), no bread other than fluffy, processed white bread, no cold cuts to speak of, no deli cheese, etc and etc.

In particular Japan seems to have made a distinct effort to remain un-globalized, resisting the pull of American media and influences even with access to cable TV and the Internet. Despite these phenomena, Japan remains, amazingly enough, a remote, isolated, and insular nation having little contact with or concept of the world beyond its borders. Although Japan is a modern, first-world and developed nation in almost every way measurable on any kind of graph or index, it is, truthfully, no more open to the world in any significant sense than it was during the years of the Sakoku Edict. The Sakoku Edict famously expelled all foreigners from Japan and sealed the nation’s borders. In some ways it feels like such measures are still in place today - familiar and ubiquitous brands and social norms or memes are absent, all print and visual media is Japanese in origin and presentation, and Japan eschews most foreign celebrities (including Hollywood) in favor of its homegrown talent stars and movie or TV personalities.

Slowly, Japan is opening its doors to the outside world - gestures like waving or shaking hands are becoming more acceptable, though the traditional bow still prevails - but the reality is that coming to Japan with the intent to live and work here is a bit like stepping off a space shuttle onto Mars.

One example is the bizarre Japanese garbage collection system, which I have yet to untangle. This results in me smuggling my garbage out of my house to collection bins under cover of night, hoping to avoid being scolded by angry old Japanese people. For whatever reason, Japanese trash is very carefully sorted into different categories, each of which is only permissible to dispose of certain days of the month. I cannot read my all-Japanese trash collection instruction pamphlet, so I just guess. One day I made the error of attempting to deposit my trash in the light of day. As I was preparing to pedal away on my granny bike, an old man ran up and began digging through the trash bin, removed my bag and began yelling at me in Japanese. It was to say the least uncomfortable, and since I had seen him two nights earlier with a woman I assume to be his wife rifling through the garbage bin with flashlights inspecting the bags, I think he is the self-appointed local Trash Police. At any rate, I now dispose of my garbage after dark, very sneakily.

Another creepy old man episode happened as I left a Lawson Station (convenience store, or conbini in Japanese) after paying my electrical bill (yes, you can pay your bills 24/7 at any convenience store in the country). This old guy was going down the bike rack trying every bike in an effort to find an unlocked one he could rip off. Crazy old goat, mine was locked but he took the unlocked one parked next to it. Who says all Japanese people are polite? Henceforth I am skeptical of all elderly Japanese men, having thus far seen them demonstrate relatively poor manners.

In Which Amanda Sits On A Chair, And Other Main Stage Adventures

Today was a day of pomp and circumstance; the opening ceremonies, and my welcome ceremony, for this trimester. Now, although I was forewarned that I would need to have a self-introduction prepared (and also that my supervisors would like it if I made my speech in both English and in Japanese), I was NOT forewarned that such common niceties as my family and my hobbies were taboo subjects. I was informed of this as I was walking toward the stage, being told I was not to tell the students any of those sorts of things as they were supposed to ask me in my classes about them. Thanks for the heads-up, guys - I mean really, what else would YOU write about in a self-introduction to elementary school kids than your hometown, your family and your hobbies? So much for that speech. Instead I just rambled a bit in English and sat down. The curriculum coordinator, who had corrected my Japanese in my speech for me in advance and so KNEW WHAT IT WAS ABOUT, then looked at me and said “And now in Japanese?”. Yah right buddy, with thirty seconds to do it on the fly? I’m winging this in ENGLISH now, fat chance I’m making it up in two different languages as I go. I flat refused.

The next school welcoming ceremony saw me sitting alone, on a chair, on an empty stage, while a parade of Japanese people took turns standing in front of me and talking. In addition to the fact that this is sort of awkward by nature, coupled with the fact that I look rather distinctly different than almost everyone in Akita Prefecture, there was yet another compounding factor. All Japanese have similar coloring; they’re all in the Winter palette for coloring, meaning they look good in true white and true black. I however am an Autumn, and do not look good in true white or true black. And so it came to be that I was wearing the only non-neutral tone shirt in the entire school - a vibrant jade green blouse, in fact - sitting on a chair alone on stage under spotlights. Stellar. While I realize this was intended as a welcome ceremony, all I can say is that something got lost in translation between the Japanese phrase used and the intent implied by “welcoming” in the English language. If anything, it felt like an ostracization ceremony, or at the very least a zoo exhibit, as every student and staffer gawked at me on my little chair on stage.

Yet again, thank you Japan for your ever-confounding yet ever impeccably polite “hospitality”!

View from the Yuri Junior High School Teachers' Room

WhyTFs About Japan, As Previously Seen on GrinnellPlans.com

In Japan, WhyTF do they…

1) Always back in to park, never frontways?

2) Love mayonnaise but hate cheese? Both are rich and creamy and I think cheese is better!

3) Only pay cash? Even for big things like houses and cars?

4) Close the ATMs?

5) Sell the large and small sizes of food and drink for the same or almost the same price?

6) Always ride bikes, but not have any bikes with gears or shocks?

7) Have so many vending machines everywhere when you can’t eat or drink walking down the street?

8) Take naked communal baths, but think tank tops are super scandalous and slutty?

9) Wear skirts so short you can see their butt cheeks but think tank tops are scandalous and slutty?

10) Deliver mail on Sundays, but close the post office?

11) Sell sashimi-grade, gorgeous marbled salmon fillets for 200yen but charge 2000yen for a melon?

12) Use the post office to take care of banking? Why do you have a bank then?

13) Pioneer the hottest tech gadgets, while running Windows XP and IE 7 on a ten-year old Toshiba brick and thinking that’s normal computing?

14) Eschew religion, but call in the priests to do an exorcism on the house when something bad happens?

15) Pride themselves on subtlety and discretion, then weave all over the road rubbernecking when a white person goes for a jog?

16) Pound beer, sake and liquor like it’s going out of style, but keel over drunk after one glass of real wine?

17) Eat anything and everything that goes round with its back to the sky, frequently with limbs or eyes still on, sometimes still alive…and then get squicked out by peanut butter?

18) Pretend like you can’t understand what time they’re going to pick you up tomorrow, instead using BabelFish, then hand you the phone when the Japanese-only car dealership calls expecting you to arrange the details yourself?

19) Obsess about bathing, and have no bath towels softer than sandpaper or thicker than Kleenex?

More to come, doubtless, as Japan continues to amuse, delight and confound this hapless gaijin.

Some Summer Moments in Akita

Kanto Festival in Akita City in August
Weirdest Overlake moment of MY life, and that’s saying something. Brett Rawson ‘03 and Amanda Spiegel ‘04, Reunion in Akita Prefecture, Japan. WTF.
The Daibutsu, or Giant Buddha, near Honjo
Next Stop: BFI and Nekobus!
Walk of the Thousand Jizo near Honjo, my home.