Japan's New Emperor

Hi everyone!

This past week, Japan formally recognized its new emperor, and there were a few parades in Kyoto to celebrate. So, I thought I would give a brief explanation of Japan's ruling family as well as a little history behind it, and explain why the change to the new emperor is so important in Japan!

Japan's Emperor

A Japanese emperor in traditional attire. Pictured here is Emperor Nakamikado, who ruled from 1709 to 1735.

The imperial family in Japan has an interesting history. Somewhere between the third and sixth century CE, the emperor gained power and ruled in a similar way to how a king would rule, where his word was law, he had sole power over the military, and the title would be passed down to his oldest son. However, eventually the emperors started to become less interested in ruling the country and more interested in art and poetry, which created a power vacuum. Because of this, in 1199 an additional ruler known as a shogun (a sort of military dictator) took power. The emperors were still known as emperors and allowed to enjoy themselves in the capital city of Kyoto, but they were only figureheads with no real power. Instead, the person who held political and military power in Japan was the shogun. 

This arrangement continued for several hundred years, until the power of the shogun began to wane. At the same time, colonial powers such as Great Britain, Holland, and also America began to force Japan into one-sided trade deals, which make the shogun look weaker. Fearing they would be conquered and subjugated to a foreign power, Japan was forced to either rapidly industrialize and catch up with the rest of the world or be colonized by one of the current world powers. To do this, Japan needed a new governing system. To challenge the power of the shogun, Japan turned to its emperor to be a symbol of strength and progress. After a civil war for power, the shogun was overthrown and the emperor regained power as the leader of Japan in an era known as the Meiji (MAY-ji) Restoration, named after the emperor who took the throne in 1867, Emperor Meiji.

Emperor Meiji (1852-1912). Notice how he wears Western-style clothes, as Japan
wanted to become similar to Western countries.

In order to catch up to the current world superpowers, Japan rewrote its Constitution to make its government similar to Great Britain's, with a Parliament to write laws and represent the people of Japan and the Emperor to make decisions on what to do. Japan's government then started to copy the strategies that the current world superpowers used to stay in power; colonizing and taking over weaker countries for their resources and using those to make Japan stronger. This made Japan into a very warmongering country, as they began to conquer smaller island countries around them, as well as Korea and a large area of China known as Manchuria. This attitude strengthened within Japan, leading it to its role in World War II as a member of the Axis Alliance. However, upon Japan's defeat, America dissolved Japan's Meiji-era Constitution and drafted a new Constitution for Japan, which was debated on and edited until it was codified in 1947. This new Constitution reduced the power of the Emperor back to a figurehead, similar to how they were when the shogun was in power, and made it so that the Emperor could not influence politicians or the people of Japan in any way, giving the power of governing to Japan's parliament.

The Modern Emperors

The previous Emperor, Akihito (right) and the current Emperor, Naruhito (left)

In the modern age, Japan's emperors serve a similar role to Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, where they hold no political power but serve as a sort of symbol for the nation. For instance, Emperor Akihito, who assumed the throne after the death of the emperor that ruled Japan during World War II, Emperor Hirohito, made many trips to countries Japan had attacked during the war to apologize for Japan's conduct during the war and express remorse for the suffering that they had endured under Japanese rule. He also made trips to many countries around the world as a sort of envoy for Japan, worked as a marine biologist in his spare time, and was widely liked by the Japanese people. While there were some rumors that Hirohito had tried to influence Parliament even after the new Constitution was ratified, Akihito was content in his role as a symbol for Japan, and eventually abdicated his position as Emperor in April 2019 due to his age and declining health.

His son, Emperor Naruhito, then assumed the throne on May 1, 2019. There was some controversy in the government surrounding Akihito's abdication, as after the Meiji Restoration the only way that the title of emperor could pass was after the death of the current emperor, and some conservative groups did not want to allow the abdication. Akihito's popularity made this a difficult position to defend, however, and the abdication was allowed by Japan's Parliament. Though Naruhito became Emperor immediately after his father abdicated, he was still not officially recognized as Emperor until his commencement ceremony on Tuesday last week. Naruhito has made similar trips to other countries and issued similar apologies to countries affected by World War II as Akihito did, making many people believe he will be a similar emperor to his father.

Emperor Naruhito and his wife Empress Masako during the coronation ceremony

That's about all for this week. If you want to know more about Japan's relationship to its Emperor, please leave me a comment with your question!

Until next week,

またね！(See you soon!)

Photo of the Week #4

A typical parking lot in Kyoto. The small white van next to the green car is
pretty typical for how Japanese vehicles look, with a boxy frame and a
somewhat rectangular front.

Daily Life in Japan

Hi everyone!

Been a bit of a slow week - classes and homework have been keeping me busy, so today I'm going to go into a few topics that are too short to each have their own blog, but are still important.

Yen (円)

A sample of the various denominations of yen

As some of you probably know, the money in Japan is known as yen. There are no dollars and cents, so when you're using yen, you don't have to worry at all about something being worth $3.18 or $24.87, because everything comes down to a single yen. However, this also means that one yen is worth far less than one dollar, so even though there's a bunch of 5000 yen and 10000 yen bills in the picture, that's not actually that much money. Currently, one US dollar equals about 108 yen, but it's easier to just think of it as about 100 yen to 1 dollar when you're trying to calculate prices. So, the bill that says 5000 yen is about $50, the 10000 yen bill is about $100, and so on.

Most Japanese people will pay in cash as opposed to credit cards or checks, so it's almost required to carry lots of cash around. When I was in America, to be safe I tried not to have more than $20 in paper money in my wallet, but now I frequently carry more than four times that on a daily basis. Additionally, Japan uses coins much more than America does, so much so in fact that I had to go buy a special coinpurse to carry them around in after I ran out of space in my regular wallet. Another difference is that although America has dollar coins, Japan's 100 yen and 500 yen coins are used much more frequently and have no paper money counterpart, which means that the lowest denomination of paper currency in Japan is equal to about $10.00. Coming from a place where I almost never used coins to a place where I have to use them every day has taken a while to get used to. 

My current collection of coins and my lovely coinpurse. If you look closely, you can see how much each coin is worth.

Commuting in Japan

A little more crowded than an average day at a train station, but not by much

Japanese people have a variety of ways to get to work. Like in America, there are some who will walk, but in a country where typhoons are a common occurrence and where summers consistently get to 95 degrees and 100% humidity, most people prefer other options.

Some people choose to bike. However, almost nobody who does so wears a helmet, which I found strange in a country that otherwise has a strong emphasis on safety. It's not uncommon to see someone bike past in a full suit on their way to work, with their bag loaded up into the basket on the front of their bike. In cities like Kyoto, however, where there are many narrow streets and few to no actual bike paths, cyclists will usually ride on the sidewalk if they have room, or otherwise hug the very edge of the street. It also seems like the laws surrounding cycling are either not very well-known or well-followed, as my university had a mandatory assembly to discuss the rules of the road that turned out to be a thirty-minute long video of bike accidents.

Cars are in an interesting position. Much like in America, people who live in urban areas tend not to use cars or own cars as often as people in rural areas do, but Japan takes this concept up to eleven. Simply renting out a parking space in a major city like Kyoto or Tokyo can often end up costing more per month than rent, so people that live in cities will rely on subways or trains to get places. Japanese cars also tend to be smaller and more box-shaped than American cars, which fits in with the Japanese ideal of conserving space wherever possible. Additionally, the United Kingdom has apparently been a bad influence on Japan when it comes to driving, as people in Japan will drive on the left side of the road instead of the correct (right) side.

A parking lot in Japan. Drivers tend to back into parking spaces instead of turning straight into them.

However, the most common method that people use to commute is almost certainly trains. Cities have extensive rail networks, with subways, express trains, and regular commuting trains weaving in and around each other. Some of you have also probably heard about the Japanese bullet train that can travel at around 200 mph and take you from one side of the country to the other in about 2 hours. So many people use the trains here that commuters will often be jam-packed into train cars like sardines in a can, where some days you have to muscle your way into an already above-capacity car to be able to get to where you need to go. It's nearly impossible to find a seat in the mornings and when work gets out, so some people have learned to fall asleep standing up during their hour-long ride to and from work. The subway that I take to get to school can be like this in the morning, but the crowd will usually thin out by the time I am coming home.

Most mornings look similar to this.

Photo of the Week #3

It's a little hard to tell from this picture, but after the typhoon ended,
the sky outside turned a beautiful shade of red.

Typhoons in Japan

Hi everyone!

Some of you may have seen this on the news, but last Saturday a large typhoon hit Japan. So, I decided to make this week's topic about typhoons, as well as some information about Typhoon Hagibis.

Typhoon Hagibis nearing Japan

Typhoons in General

So, what is a typhoon? It's actually very similar to a hurricane - both are powerful storms that begin in the ocean and can cause damage due to the power of their wind and rain when they reach land. Typhoons and hurricanes share the same classification methods, where a Category 1 is the weakest and Category 5 is the strongest, as well as the same intensity scale, which I will post a little later on. In fact, the only real difference between the two is where they occur. A powerful tropical that strikes the northeastern Pacific Ocean or the northwestern Atlantic in the Caribbean or the southeastern United States is what we call a "hurricane", whereas a similar storm that occurs in the northwestern Pacific near East Asia is called a "typhoon". There is actually a third name for this type of storm, for ones that occur in the Indian Ocean or the southern Pacific, which are known as "cyclones". Many scholars debate about where the word "typhoon" came from, but most believe it came from either the Urdu word ṭūfān or the Chinese word tai fung, with the English name being a corruption of the original pronunciation. However, it most likely did not come from the name of the monster from Greek mythology known as Typhon, despite the similarity in spelling.

A map of how tropical storms are named

Since typhoons and hurricanes are two words for the same weather phenomenon, with the only real difference being location, typhoons look very similar. They manifest as a swirling mass of rainclouds and wind that form a spiral pattern, with several "arms" that come from a central body. The strongest of these storms have a clearly visible "eye" in the center, where the winds and rain are calmer in comparison to the rest of the storm. Typhoons are created from tropical storms, but a tropical storm will not always grow large enough to be called a fully-fledged typhoon, with most dying out before they can become powerful enough to cause damage on land or even reach land in the first place. In order for a tropical storm to become powerful enough to become a typhoon, it requires six things:

1. Warm ocean temperature
2. Atmospheric instability, or in other words rapidly changing weather
3. High humidity
4. Low vertical wind shear (wind stays the same speed no matter how high up it is)
5. A low-level focus or disturbance in regular weather patterns
6. Enough force from wind to develop a low pressure center

If all these conditions are met, then the tropical storm can intensify into a full typhoon. This chart form the Japanese Meteorological Agency shows the different classifications a storm can have.

"kt" stands for "knots". A tropical storm becomes a typhoon when it reaches a wind speed of 64 knots (74 mph)

Japanese Taifuu (台風) and Typhoon Hagibis

The Japanese word for typhoons, "taifuu" is derived from the Chinese word tai fung, with the pronunciation changed to make it fit the Japanese lexicon. As you can see in the earlier map, Japan is very prone to being hit by typhoons. Usually, when a typhoon hits Japan, it starts at the southern island of Okinawa and travels up the western side of the country, keeping its strength up by traveling along the sea between the islands of Japan and eastern China. This western coast includes Kyoto, so when people living here got word that a typhoon was going to be hitting the country, everyone started bracing themselves for the storm. Many people bought bottled water and nonperishable food from grocery stores in case they lost power for a few days. Additionally, someone suggested to me that I should stock up on plastic bags as an alternative for if my apartment couldn't get fresh water for a few days and my toilet went out. (Ew.)

However, the storm, named Hagibis after the Tagalog (the native language of the Philippines) word for swift, had a different destination than usual. Instead of the western side of the country, the storm's course took it towards the eastern side of the country, making landfall on Saturday, October 12 in Tokyo and the surrounding areas. Evacuations had taken place prior to this happening, but unfortunately Tokyo and the area around it was not as ready to weather the storm as Kyoto had been. There was extensive damage to much of the area due to the high winds, and around 30 inches of rain fell in a single day, causing widespread flooding and infrastructure damage. Around 270,000 homes lost power, which was made worse by a magnitude 5.7 earthquake in Chiba Prefecture at around 6:22 pm that caused further damage and landslides. Sadly, dozens of people were killed by the typhoon, with hundreds injured.

Flooding caused by Typhoon Hagibis

I realized after I heard the news that I had been taking the weather in Japan too easily. In Portland, the worst weather we get is a thunderstorm once or twice a year, which are usually over very quickly and don't cause nearly as much damage as a typhoon does. On Saturday, even though Kyoto didn't get hit nearly as hard, I still ended up stuck in my apartment for the entire day, unable to do much except watch the rain and wind outside until the storm passed. In addition, many of the stores and restaurants in my neighborhood closed down for the day, and the classes at my university were cancelled. People who live in Japan have to pay close attention to weather forecasts, and many people have an app downloaded to their phones that will warn them of emergency weather conditions and how to avoid them. This isn't to say that you should be scared of going to other countries or places that have certain conditions that you wouldn't face at home, but it's important to know about these things in advance so that you can be responsible for yourself when you go there.

This blog took a bit of a darker note than some of my other ones, so I'll try to make next week's topic a little more lighthearted. Until then,

またね！(See you soon!)

Photo of the Week #2

This is an example of one of the smaller shrines in Kyoto, which I just happened to
stumble upon while I was on my way somewhere else. This was just on the street,
next to a Seven-Eleven!

Sightseeing in Japan

Hi everyone!

I arrived in Japan about three weeks before my classes started, so I used some of that time to find interesting places to go to in and around Kyoto to share with you all. Here's some of the highlights!

   Fushimi Inari (伏見稲荷)

The famous orange gates of Fushimi Inari, known as the Senbon-torii

A map of the shrine--and yes, that's an entire mountain!

Fushimi Inari is an enormous Shinto shrine built into the side of a mountain in the center of Kyoto. It gets its name from its location in the Fushimi district of Kyoto as well as the name for the Shinto god of rice, Inari, who is often depicted as a fox. If you want to see everything that it has to offer, you'd better get ready for a really long uphill hike to get to the top, as the path to get there takes about 2-3 hours! The trail was very crowded when we first started walking, as you can see in the first picture, but we noticed that there were less and less people the farther up the mountain we went, until eventually there were long stretches where we were the only people on the it. The shrine was built even before Kyoto was the capital of Japan, with the earliest structures being built in 711 CE. The complex also contains over one thousand of the orange gates known as Senbon-torii. The reason that so many have been built is because people used to construct them to either make a wish come true, or as thanks for one that did. If you wanted to build a gate, would you make it for future luck or as thanks for the past? What would your wish or thanks be for?

   Kinkakuji (金閣寺)

Kinkakuji, seen from across the small lake that surrounds it

Kinkakuji (in English, Temple of the Golden Pavilion) is a Zen Buddhist temple located in the northwest area of Kyoto. It was constructed in 1397 CE by the then-military leader of Japan, the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. The complex was built to showcase three of the prominent building designs of the era; shinden, samurai, and zen, with each floor being built in one of the styles. The first floor is built in shinden style, meant to represent the imperial aristocracy of the era, and is the only floor not painted in the gold leaf that the temple is famous for. The second floor is built in samurai style, meant to represent the military aristocracy, and has somewhat of a more simple design when compared to the other two. The third floor is built in a Chinese zen style, which reflected the dominant religion of the era, Zen Buddhism. This floor is the most ornately designed of the three floors, and the roof of the temple has a statue of a golden phoenix stretching its wings out.

A closer look from the back of the temple

If you noticed, both Kinkakuji and Nishi-Honganji share the same "ji" at the end of their names, which is even more apparent when they are written in Japanese - 金閣寺(Kinkakuji) and 西本願寺(Nishi-Honganji). If you look carefully, the last character of both names is 寺, which means "temple" and is read as "ji". But be careful, because Japanese can be tricky! If you see 寺 on its own, then it's read as "tera" instead. A good way to know if the place you're going to is Buddhist or Shinto is to look for that "ji", as usually Buddhist temples will be named "-------ji", whereas Shinto shrines won't have that as part of their name.

   Arashiyama (嵐山)

A bamboo forest in Arashiyama

Arashiyama ("Storm Mountain" in English) is a district in the western side of Kyoto. It is home to a large bamboo forest, as well as some of the oldest shrines in Japan (even older than Fushimi Inari!). Because of this, it is a popular tourist spot for people who want to see these things, as well as for Shinto people who want to pray at the shrines. Funnily enough, it also draws in companies that make miso soup, a common food in Japan, as well as sake (Japanese alcohol) companies, who both pray at the shrines for the success of their various products. The main street of the district is lined with restaurants and tourist shops that sell omiyage, the Japanese word for "stuff you bought to give to your friends after you get back from a vacation". The practice of giving omiyage is more culturally relevant in Japan, though: it's considered expected to bring something to your friends and family if you go on a trip somewhere or if you go to visit them, like bringing something from Portland if you wanted to visit your grandparents in Ohio. What do you think a good omiyage from Portland would be?

Some furry friends in Arashiyama

However, probably the most famous part of Arashiyama is its monkey sanctuary, known as the Iwatayama Monkey Park. This sanctuary is home to over 170 monkeys (猿 or "Saru" in Japanese), which walk freely on the paths around the sanctuary and play around in the areas next to the main structure. There were several times when my friends and I had to stop walking while a monkey crossed in front of us, or keep our distance when monkey drama started happening nearby. They may be cute, but be careful around them - monkeys are known to attack people who make direct eye contact with them, or those who try to mess with them while they go about their monkey business. It is possible to feed the monkeys, but you have to do so within the caged building with the food that is provided there. 

These three places barely scratch the surface of all the places to go and things to see in Kyoto; it's a very unique city when it comes to landmarks! If you have any questions about some of these places or want to know more about what Kyoto has to offer, please let me know in a comment! Until then, though:

またね！(See you soon!)

Photo of the Week #1

Nishi-Honganji, from the outside and inside

Hello everyone!

This is going to be a smaller section than my usual posts, where I just share a picture or two with you all. These were taken at the temple across the street from me, known as Nishi-Honganji (written in Japanese as 西本願寺, which means Western Temple of the Primal Vow). This temple is actually one of a pair; there is also an Eastern version of this same temple, known in Japanese as Higashi-Honganji (東本願寺) only a few blocks away.

Introduction to Kyoto

 こんにちは、皆さん！(Hello, everyone!)

Thank you all for taking the time to read my blog! To start off with, I would like to take some time to introduce myself as well as the city of Kyoto, Japan to you all. If any of you have any questions that you would like to ask, please feel free to leave a comment, and I'll try to answer it as soon as I can!

Me and the Kyoto skyline

    My Background

When I was growing up, I never expected that I would be studying Japanese. I never had a main idea of what I wanted to grow up to be, so it was difficult for me to be interested in school. During high school, I knew that I wanted to go to college, but wasn't sure what I wanted to study. My school's Career Adviser told me that since I was good at math and physics, that I should try studying engineering at our town's local university. However, after graduating from high school and starting on a Civil Engineering major, I had a lot of trouble keeping up with my coursework and understanding what my teachers were talking about in class. In addition, my program was very competitive; our teachers used to tell us that probably only 50% of us would ever graduate with an engineering degree, and it was hard to get help for when I was struggling in classes. After a year of trying and failing to keep myself focused on something that I had never really wanted to do, I proved my teachers right, and became part of the 50% that never got an engineering degree when I left the program.

For a year after that, I didn't go to college. I worked in a restaurant as I tried to decide what direction I wanted my life to go in from then. I knew I didn't want to go back into engineering, but I still had never really considered what direction I wanted my life to go in. Would I go back to college? Would I try to find a job that didn't require a degree? Would I stay working in restaurants? What did I enjoy doing, what would be something that I could look forward to go to every day for the rest of my life? I tried to think about what interested me, and I realized something. When I was in high school, I had studied German for four years, and always enjoyed my classes and the process of learning a new language, where suddenly you can understand someone you wouldn't be able to otherwise. And even though math was my main focus, I had also enjoyed helping edit my friends' essays or reports for class, fixing grammar, word choice, etc. So, was there a job that I could do both of these things at? The answer was translation, or the process of taking written works from one language and rewriting them in another. 

The question then, was what language I should specialize in. I wanted to make sure that I could find work after I finished studying, and since German is a relatively easy language to learn for English speakers, I thought I should try for something more difficult. After thinking about it for a while, I decided on studying Japanese. The language was difficult to learn, which would mean I had a better chance of finding work once I was able to speak it. Japan and America also have a strong cultural connection, with many companies such as Toyota, Nintendo, and Mitsubishi being based in Japan but having a large presence in America. So, I went back to college, but this time at Portland State University, and began my major in Japanese. I've recently finished my third-year studies, and in an effort to get more familiar with the language and culture, started a year-long study abroad program at Doshisha University.

A map of Japan, with Kyoto highlighted in red

     The City of Kyoto

Shijo-doori, a busy street in Kyoto

Kyoto is a large city in Japan. It's so large, in fact, that it is its own prefecture (the Japanese equivalent of a state). With a population of about 1.45 million people, Kyoto is a thriving metropolis, but also has a strong connection to Japan's history and arts. In 764 CE, Kyoto, or Heian-kyo as it was known back then, became the home of the Emperor of Japan, and therefore the capital of the whole country. Emperors continued to live in the city until 1869, when Emperor Meiji moved the court to the now-capital of Japan, Tokyo. During this period of over 1100 years, many temples and shrines were built in the city, many of which still exist today. These places are dedicated to either Buddhism, Shintoism (the native religion of Japan), or a mixture of the two, and draw in many sightseers and tourists to the city. In fact, the dorm I currently live in is right across the street from a place called Nishi-Honganji Temple, which is recognized as one of the national historic landmarks of Japan. It is very common to walk down a normal street and happen to find a small shrine in between shops and houses.

Life in Kyoto is very different from life in Portland. The layout of the city, the way people interact with each other, the modes of transportation, and even the weather all differ greatly from what I was used to in America. Over the next few months, I'll be sharing with you about these differences, as well as some of the similarities. If you ever have any questions or want to know more about some of the different things I will be telling you about, please comment on the post and ask! I'm excited to work with you all and Mr. DuPont going forward!

Until then,

またね！(See you soon!)