Photo of the Week #9

Two  students of Kyoto University with signs inviting people to go to the haunted house. Most of the signs were similar to this, being made with simple cardboard and colored markers.

Kyoto University Festival!

Hi everyone!

Last week, I was invited to go to the November Festival at Kyoto University, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce you all to some not-so-well-known aspects of Japanese university culture! So, let's get started!

Circles （サークル）

One of the circles in Doshisha University. This group is one of the tennis circles.

Before we get into the details of the festival, I thought it would be important to teach you about "circles" in Japan. A "circle" is similar to a club or a group, and will usually meet once or twice a week to hang out together. If a circle is a sports-oriented circle, however, these meetings will usually be to practice whatever sport the circle is for. There are many different types of sports circles, which range from the aforementioned tennis circles to archery circles to karate circles. However, other types of circles, such as debate circles, English conversation practice circles, and circles that just meet up together and watch Disney movies, are also common. Some are more serious than others (many tennis circles are less for tennis and more to meet people), but in general the people that you meet and spend time with in your circle will become your friends through college and beyond. The reason that I wanted to bring up circles and explain them to you is because every part of the festival in Kyoto University was run by the university's different circles, from the announcements to the games to the festival stands. Speaking of...

Stands （売店）

An example of one of the stands at the festival. This particular stand sold chocolate-
filled mushrooms and a sweet egg dish known as maki.

At the festival, there were dozens and dozens of stands all selling different things. Most stands, like the one in the picture, sold some sort of food, but what kind of food was served was different between every stand. Some sold ramen or dishes that could be a full meal, while others sold sweets or small helpings of chicken or beef over rice. There were also stands that sold souvenirs or small handmade jewelry, but those were a lot more rare. The reason that there were so many stands and such a wide variety was that every stand was run by one of Kyoto University's circles. The members of the circles would open stands to either fundraise and support circle activities, to show off what the people in the circle could do and hopefully gain new membership, or both. Many of the people running the stands would call out to me to get me to go to them or would have a person standing in front of the stand trying to snag customers. That was fun at first, but after I'd had lunch and didn't really have any reason to go to the stands anymore got a little annoying, so if someone talked to me I'd give them a big smile and wave at them while pretending I couldn't understand Japanese to make them go away.

Performances （パフォーマンス）

A group of some of the performers from this year's festival.
About half the people in the dresses and skirts are actually guys.

Another large attraction of the festival was the groups of performers that would take the stage and put on a show. There was a large concert-style stage that was brought in to facilitate this, as well as a more informal area towards the middle of the festival area. The people that performed on the stage were for the most part well-practiced and professional groups that would sing songs and dance for the spectators. Many of the people did so in the "idol" style of performance, where a group (usually consisting of women) will rehearse a dance routine and sing a song (think late 90s-early 2000s boy band style concerts, but with more skirts). The people at the more informal area did more of a variety show, where instead of singing and dancing people showed off their jump rope skills and did short comedy routines. One of the most interesting groups was one that put on a magic show. It was a new experience for me, because at every other magic show I've been to there has been someone heckling the magician from the audience, but this time I got to see a full performance without unwanted audience participation. Like with the food stands, all the different performances were put on by members of the various circles.

Festival Games（祭の試合）

The archery game from the festival. The cost was 300 yen,
and I won a pair of plastic sunglasses worth 100 yen, but
the feeling of victory made up for any loss.

Another of the attractions at the festival were the different contests that some of the circles had set up. Generally, these attractions were put on by some of the more serious sports circles, and the game tended to match what the circle was for. For instance, the archery circle had a shooting contest, shown in the picture above, the baseball team had a speed pitching contest where the fastest pitcher won a prize, and so on. There were also some games that resemble American festival games, like a game where you tried to scoop up the most superballs out of a pool of water, a target shooting game, and a game where you take big chunks of tofu and throw them at a guy with his face exposed in a cardboard cutout. Many of these were also fun to just watch, especially the tofu one.

Haunted House （お化け屋敷）

The circle in charge of the haunted house kept people from taking any pictures
of the inside, but they left a bulletin board where people who went through it
could leave comments on it like "Fun!" "Scary!" and "Quin left me behind!"

The place that I had the most fun at was the haunted house that the swimming circle had set up. In Japan, there are haunted houses that are similar to the ones that we have in America around Halloween, but most of the ones in Japan are open year-round. The one at the festival was a sort of maze-like course that was set up in an emptied-out lecture room, with cardboard lining the walls of the maze. Oh - and all the lights were turned out, making the room pitch-black. To help people get through the maze, the circle had some of their members guide visitors through the room, with only a tiny bit of light from a small glow-stick to follow. As you go through the maze, the guide narrated the stories of the various ghosts of the maze, who, would jump out of nowhere and join in on their story, trying to spook you. Many of the costumes weren't particularly scary, but the sudden appearance of the specters (circle members in costumes) would be enough to spook people going through the maze. There were many twists, turns, tunnels, and one section that reenacted the scene from the movie The Ring where the girl crawls out of the television screen and chases you, so I had a great time there. I recommend trying a Japanese haunted house if you ever have the chance; they're really fun.

A painting from the festival that says "Kyoto University is interesting."

That's all for this week, but I have a quick announcement to make. Next week's blog post will be an interview with a Japanese student that is about the same age as all of you! So, if you have any questions that you want to ask them about living in Japan, Japanese middle school, or just what their favorite color is, please comment to this post and I'll ask your question when I do my interview with them! I'll be asking some questions of my own, but I really want most of this interview to be from questions that you all have, so please be sure to give me a lot to ask!

Until next week,

またね！(See you soon!)

Photo of the Week #8

One of my favorite restaurants in Japan, named Ichijyoji Boogie. They serve excellent
ramen and soba (another type of noodle), and they specialize in spicy foods.

Food in Japan

Hi everyone!

It's finally time - today the subject is going to be all about food in Japan! I'm going to go over some of the most common dishes you can find here, and some of the varieties they can come in!

Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き)

Okonomiyaki, topped with mayonnaise and seaweed

Okonomiyaki is a sort of Japanese-style pancake. It is commonly found in Osaka and the Kansai area of Japan, which is a little bit south of Kyoto. Okonomiyaki is usually made with ground flour, eggs, and cabbage as the main ingredients, and often contains some sort of meat to help accentuate the flavor, such as pork belly or shrimp. Due to the influence of the nearby Kansai region, there are a lot of okonomiyaki shops in Kyoto, but my favorites are the ones where you can make your own. These shops provide a large skillet built into the table in front of you while you eat, where you can cook the okonomiyaki much like you would cook a pancake or an omelet. When it's done, you top it off with a large helping of savory sauce and mayonnaise, making it look like a sort of strange pizza. Many Japanese shops lean into this look, and advertise their okonomiyaki as "Japanese Pizza". One of the bigger problems I have in Japan is finding food that has enough calories to keep me from getting hungry again later in the day, but if I eat a nice big okonomiyaki, I certainly don't have to worry about not eating enough.

Bento Boxes (弁当)

A somewhat prettier-than-usual bento box. They're usually a lot smaller.

One of the most common lunches for people to have in Japan is what is known as a bento box. Many bento boxes are homemade, but it's also common for people to go out to a 7/11 or similar convenience store and pick up a pre-made one since they're fairly cheap (almost never more than 500 yen, or a little less than $5) and decently nutritious. Most bentos contain a form of protein, such as meat or eggs, some vegetables, rice, and sometimes flavorings such as soy sauce or wasabi. Homemade ones often have a little extra, such as more meat, some sushi, an onigiri (rice ball), or something of that sort. Some people take a lot of pride in making their bento boxes very neat and appetizing, with lots of fun colors, shaping the rice into a heart, and writing messages with sauce onto the main dish. However, don't expect that sort of treatment if you buy a convenience store bento.

Yakitori (焼き鳥)

Some different types of yakitori. Of all the foods I've seen in Japan, yakitori
has the most varieties.

Yakitori is very similar to what we in America call "kebabs". It's a very common food in Japan, and can be found at almost any restaurant that serves Japanese food, making it a safe food to fall back on if you haven't tried anything else on the menu yet. It comes in way too many variations to list here, but the types that I have eaten include chicken, steak, vegetable, shrimp, prawn, beef entrails, chicken heart, pineapple, and many more. There is even a restaurant near my dorm that sells 10 mystery yakitori, where the cooks will give you a completely random assortment of yakitori and leave you to it. Most yakitori is marinated in some sort of teriyaki sauce, but it's usually not a meal by itself, since it tends to be just meat with some cooked vegetables. It's a good idea to get some tofu, edamame, or salad to make sure that you have a balanced meal.

Sushi (寿司)

A sushi board that gives an insight into the vast amount of types of sushi available in Japan.

Sushi is one of the most iconic Japanese foods, and with good reason. The base of sushi is generally  a small amount of rice rolled into a ball, but once that is made, there are a wide variety of ingredients that can be used to make it. A common ingredient is seaweed, which is used to wrap the rolled up rice and to give it some flavor. Many types of sushi also include seafood, most of which is served raw. Raw fish, shrimp, or other seafood is very common in Japan, and can sometimes be served by itself in a dish known as sashimi. Most sushi also includes pickled vegetables, and is served primarily with soy sauce and wasabi to give it a bit of an extra kick. For a long time, I refused to eat sushi after I had a bad experience with it when I was two years old and thought it was cake, but I've since come around to liking it a lot more. Since sushi is a little more difficult to make, not as many restaurants serve sushi as ones that serve yakitori, so if you want to find sushi while you're in Japan, it's best to search for a place known for selling it.

Ramen (ラーメン)

An example of Japanese ramen. This particular kind is known as Kararamen, or
spicy ramen (I like spicy foods)

If someone mentions Japanese food, the first thing that comes to my mind has to be ramen. For a long time, I had thought that ramen was a food that only starving college students ate, and always came in a Styrofoam cup filled with dry noodles and freeze-dried veggies. Top Ramen especially stood out to me as a food where I wondered why anyone would ever eat, until I started paying for my own food and realized it was 39 cents per bag. However, while that sort of ramen got me through the first couple years of college, it pales in comparison to the real thing. Ramen is taken to an art form in Japan, with restaurants of all shapes and sizes putting their own spin on noodles, vegetables, and meat slices in a hot broth. Anything and everything can change from restaurant to restaurant, from noodle width to amount of meat to types of vegetables used in the dish to spiciness, the combinations and varieties are unique no matter where you go. Additionally, in Japan there aren't any set manners against how loudly you eat ramen, which made me very surprised when the middle-aged man in a suit sitting next to me in my first ramen store started slurping up his noodles like a three-year-old trying spaghetti for the first time.

Japan's food is probably the most well-known and widespread aspect of their culture. Even if you don't know much about Japan's history or its landscapes, there's a good chance that you're familiar in some way with Japanese food. This week's blog was a lot of fun for me to write, and I'm excited to keep writing these up for you all!

Until next time,

またね！(See you soon!)

Photo of the Week #7

The road next to the old Imperial Palace in Kyoto. Traditionally, gravel roads were
used to make it harder for assassins to sneak into the palace grounds.

Japanese Folk Tales and Ghost Stories

Hi everyone!

A few weeks ago, one of you asked about urban legends and ghost stories, and if they were real. So, I spent some time going around and asking people what their favorite ghost story or folk tale was, and today I'm going to share a few of them with you!

Urashima Taro

Long ago, there was a kind young fisherman who lived by the ocean named Urashima Taro. One morning, he noticed some kids being mean to a turtle, so he saved the turtle and released it back into the sea. A couple days later, as he was fishing, the turtle he'd saved swam up to the boat next to him, and told Taro that it wanted to take him to the undersea Dragon Palace as thanks for saving it. Taro agreed to go, and the turtle gave him a ride to the bottom of the sea. There, Taro met the princess of the Dragon Palace, a beautiful woman named Otohime, and the two spent what seemed like a few days having fun in the castle. However, Taro began to get homesick, and wanted to go home to let his parents know that he was alright. Otohime tried to convince him to stay a little longer, but Taro insisted, and so she agreed to help him get back home. Before he left, Otohime gave Taro a magical box, but told him that he must never open it. Taro said goodbye and returned to his village, but what he saw there stunned him. Everything had changed - the buildings were different, none of the villagers were the ones Taro knew from growing up there, and his mother and father had already passed away. In desperation, Taro opened the box that Otohime had given him, and the magic of the box turned him into an old man, sitting alone on the beach.

This kind of story, where things end suddenly and badly for the main character, seems to be pretty common among Japanese folk tales. I asked people what they thought the moral of the story was, and none of them really could give me an answer. I think that a lot of Japanese stories are just stories, instead of how a lot of our fairy tales try to teach us lessons.

Kobutori Jiisan

Long ago, in a small village in the mountains, there lived two old men. They were happy and healthy, but both had a problem - one had a huge lump the size of his fist coming out of his right cheek, and the other had a similar lump, but on his left cheek. They tried everything to get rid of the lumps - doctors, exercise, and praying to the gods to take away the lumps - but nothing worked. One day, one of the old men walked up the mountains to go pray at a shrine to ask the god of the shrine to take it away. When he got there though, he was shocked - a big group of oni (Japanese monsters kind of like ogres) were having a party in the shrine! The old man tried to sneak away, but one of the oni heard him, and ran over and caught the old man. The old man was terrified, but the oni were in a good mood because of the party, so they pushed the old man into the center of their circle and said "Dance for us!" Some of the oni started to play music (badly), and the frightened old man started to dance. It turned out, though, that the old man was a great dancer, and the oni cheered him on and applauded his performance. 

At the end of the party, the oni told him "That was great! You have to come back tomorrow and dance for us again!" The old man was flattered, but really didn't want to spend the rest of his nights dancing with monsters. Seeing his hesitation, a huge red oni said "Fine, to make sure you come back, we'll take something very important of yours so that you have to!", and then reached out, and without a drop of blood or any pain took the lump off the old man's cheek. The old man was overjoyed, but pretended to be disappointed, and said "Of course, I'll be back tomorrow" and returned to his village. When the other old man saw him without the lump, he asked how in the world he'd been able to get rid of it. So the old man told him, and the other old man resolved to go to the shrine and get the oni to take his, too. But when he got to the party, he wasn't as good of a dancer as the other old man, and the oni were disappointed. So the big red oni said "Here, take this, and never come back again!" and put the lump from the first old man onto the cheek of the other, making him now have a lump on both sides.

I like this story, because it shows how Japanese people think about monsters differently than we do. Nobody goes to slay the oni in this story, and the oni aren't really bothering anyone, just having parties up in the mountains. Of course, some are bad and just want to eat people, but some just want to have fun, and don't really mind people that much. It reminds me of some of the stories I heard growing up about Irish and Scottish fairies, where they weren't always bad, just had different morals from humans.

Botan Doro - The Peony Lantern

Long ago, there was a man named Ogiwara who lived in Tokyo. As he was out late one night, he saw a beautiful woman walking with her servant as she held a lantern with a flowery design of peonies on it. Ogiwara, immediately smitten, started talking with her, and the woman told him that her name was Otsuyu. The two had a long conversation, and Ogiwara invited Otsuyu to come back to his house and dance and sing with him, which she did. One of Ogiwara's neighbors, hearing the noise, looked through a window and saw that Ogiwara was dancing with a grinning skeleton, which was nodding and hissing replies when Ogiwara spoke to it. The next day, the neighbor told Ogiwara what he had seen, and told him to go to the temple. There, Ogiwara found the grave of the long-dead Otsuyu, which had an old, tattered peony lantern resting on it. He realized that Otsuyu had been a ghost all along, and asked the priest for advice on what to do. The priest gave him a charm that would ward off spirits, and sure enough, the ghost of Otsuyu did not come back. However, Ogiwara began to miss Otsuyu. After a long time, he could not bear being without her, and returned to her grave at the temple. There, the ghost of Otsuyu was waiting for him, and reached her hand out to him. The next day, nobody could find Ogiwara. Fearing the worst, his neighbors and the priest went to Otsuyu's grave and dug it up, and found the skeletons of Ogiwara and Otsuyu lying there in each other's arms.

I like this story more than some of the other ghost stories that people told me. Sometimes the ghosts were murderous, sometimes they wanted revenge for the things that happened to them in life, but I like how in this one, the ghost of Otsuyu just wanted to find someone nice to spend the afterlife with. I think in a lot of ghost stories, ghosts and the living end up being enemies for some reason or another, but in this one, the couple were able to bridge the gap between them and find happiness together.

There's so many more ghost stories and folk tales than I was able to write here, and there's a lot that are way scarier that you guys can look up (if you're brave enough!). It's interesting to me how the stories that people tell can be wildly different, but are still familiar enough to be enjoyed by people from a different culture or background. Let me know what you guys think about all this!

Until next week,

またね！ (See you soon!)

Photo of the Week #6

A small canal in Kyoto. There are many of these throughout the city.

Japanese Politics

Hi again everyone!

Last week, I mentioned how the Emperor is not the ruler of Japan in modern times. Instead, the country is run by a parliamentary system that is very similar to Great Britain. To help you understand how Japan does politics differently from the US, this week's blog is going to be about Japan's political system!

Japan's parliament, pictured in their meeting place, the National Diet Building.

Japan's Parliament

During the Meiji Restoration, when Japan realized it needed to catch up with Europe and America and it needed to do so NOW, Japan sent people to the various powerful nations of the time, such as France, Britain, and America, to study how their governments worked. Since France had recently gone through the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and seemed to be having trouble deciding how it wanted itself to be run and since America had never had to deal with the balance of power between royalty and elected officials, Japan decided to model itself after Britain's government. To do so, Japan set up its Constitution to allow for a democratically elected representative Parliament to create and debate over laws and policies, but with the understanding that everything they did had to be in alignment with the Emperor's will. If the Emperor did not want a certain law to pass, it didn't. If the Emperor wanted a Prime Minister to resign, they usually did so within the day. And if an Emperor wanted to go to war with another country, it was up to Parliament to figure out how to win it.

A general diagram of the balance of power under the Meiji Constitution. This setup
allowed the armed forces to have a high level of control over lawmaking and even influence
the Emperor's decisions, which was one of the factors that led to World War II. 

However, after WWII America removed the Emperor from political power by scrapping the Meiji Constitution and convincing Japan to accept a new constitution, which is today known as the Postwar Constitution. This meant that Parliament, which the Postwar Constitution upheld, would now be free to create laws and make decisions about what the country should do without being under the influence of the Emperor.  Because of this, Parliament remains the main driving force behind Japanese policy. There are two Houses that make up Parliament, similar to how the US has the House of Representatives and the Senate. The first, which is the larger of the two and considered to be the more powerful, is made up of 465 members and is also known as the House of Representatives. The second, known as the House of Councillors, is not as powerful since it only has 245 members, but can override the decision of the House of Representatives and force them to reconsider, much like how in America the President has the power to veto bills that come to him from Congress. Additionally, the Prime Minister of Japan is able to dissolve the House of Representatives, but cannot do so for the House of Councillors.

It is comprised of not just two, but nine different parties that all represent different ideals for how Japan should be. The largest and most dominant is the Liberal Democratic Party, a right-wing group that has held power through an overwhelming majority in both the House of Representatives (currently 285 members) and the House of Councillors (currently 113 members) since its foundation in 1955 through today, only losing power for four years out of the 65 total it has been around. The other eight parties often have to rally together if they want to oppose a decision the LDP wants to make, but since they each have different goals, this happens very rarely in recent years. Other prominent parties include the Constitutional Democratic Party, which is a left-wing party that is the LDP's main opposition but has less than a quarter of their membership, and the Democratic Party for the People, which sometimes agrees with the LDP and sometimes doesn't. My favorite party out of the nine parties is The Party to Protect the People from NHK, a party that consists of one member in the House of Representatives and one member in the House of Councillors, and whose sole purpose is to end the mandatory fee that all Japanese people have to pay for access to the public television company known as NHK.

Top image is the House of Councillors, bottom is the House of Representatives.
The seats held by the LDP are shown by the dark green dots.

The Executive Branch

Under the Meiji Constitution, the Executive Branch was made up of the Emperor and a small group of advisers that was known as the Cabinet. However, while nowadays the Emperor is still technically considered part of the Executive Branch, because he holds no political power the Executive Branch is now simply the Cabinet, a group of nineteen people consisting of the Prime Minister and the people he chooses to be on the Cabinet with him. The job of the Executive Branch is to make sure that everything goes smoothly in governing the nation and to be in charge of foreign affairs as representatives of Japan. Prime Ministers are traditionally chosen based on the leader of the party with the highest majority in Parliament, which means that the Prime Minister is almost always the leader of the LDP. Currently, the Prime Minister of Japan is a man named Shinzo Abe.

Shinzo Abe giving a speech. Interestingly, though he is the Prime Minister, Abe is
part of a group that wants the Emperor to become the leader of Japan, like it was
during World War II.

The Judicial Branch

When compared to America's Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Japan has much less power and influence. Whereas America's Supreme Court will judge controversial cases in a way that affects laws and policy across the nation, Japan's Supreme Court does not. According to the Postwar Constitution, Japan's Supreme Court has the capability to have a similar level of importance in governing the nation as America's does, but in practice, the Court only judges cases that reaffirm already existing policy. In the entire history of the Postwar Supreme Court, it has only judged a total of eight cases as unconstitutional, despite explicitly being designed to rule on the constitutionality of laws. Germany's post-World War II Supreme Court, which was established several years later, has struck down over 600. Members are appointed by the Cabinet, and are on the Court for as long as they are mentally and physically fit to carry out their duties. This means that since the Cabinet (i.e. the Prime Minister) appoints judges, judges on the Court are chosen by whatever group has the majority in Parliament, which may explain their record when it comes to shaping the nation through judicial practice. Currently, the Court consists of fifteen members, led by Chief Justice Naoto Otani.

Japan's Supreme Court, in session.

There are many similarities between the governments of America and of post-WWII Japan, but there are also as many differences. It's astonishing to me how one party is able to totally dominate the political process in Japan, especially when compared to British Parliament, the model for the current government, which changes leadership constantly. I hope I've been able to give you an introduction to how government works in another country! Until next week,

またね！(See you soon!)

Photo of the Week #5

A temple named Todaiji in the prefecture Nara, the home of Japan's emperors before they moved to Kyoto.
Todaiji contains the Daibutsu, which means Giant Buddha Statue.