English language networks between Japan resident bloggers, Japan wiki projects and Japan related websites are spreading like fungus. A spore made its way to me when Daily J interviewed South of Reality about the English teaching market in Japan.
Tori of Daily J contacted me and we have shared some linkage and memes, and Tori kindly put the meme post I wrote on JapanSoc, a bookmarking site specifically for Japan-related topics.
Do you know about this pan-fried dish that is common in Japanese home kitchens? Okonomiyaki means "Whatever you like, fried", and has a simple base that every Japanese person knows. Usually, okonomiyaki has a batter made of flour, water, beaten egg, and a sticky potato called yamaimo. After that, whatever you want goes into it. Tonight, mine is pork on the bottom with Korean spicy kimchi in the batter.
自分の家庭料理でお好み焼がき出来ました。
I can't really tell you my recipe. I just eyeball it. One egg, well beaten, a tablespoon of flour, a handful of chopped cabbage, a bit of grated potato if you have it, a tablespoon of water if you don't, a teaspoon or so of grated or pickled ginger, and a few grams of pork or bacon. Then I threw in some Korean kimchi. If you want an authentic recipe, see this awesome bilingual blog. I like how this recipe uses daishi fish stock to make up the liquid part of the recipe. There are many regional variations of okonomiyaki, and nearly as many recipes as there are okonomiyaki afficionados.
お好み焼き生で Here is my own home-made okonomiyaki naked.
やっぱり私は青いのりとソースとかつおぶしが乗せています。 そのあとはmayonnaise ですよ。Here is okonomiyaki dressed the way I like it - mysterious brown sauce, Kewpie brand mayonnaise, nori seaweed and katsuo fish flakes. This keeps me warm in the winter!
Last week, listening to CBC Radio over the 'Net, I caught an interview with Lisa Kateyama, author of Urawaza.
Urawaza, secret ways of doing things, are all over the media in Japan. Pick up a copy of Orange, Croissant, or any homemaking magazine, and the pages are filled with clever alternate uses of everyday household objects to provide solutions for little niggling problems. It's like a nation of MacGyvers.
I've got a few of my own tricks in winter - hardboiled eggs in the pockets are environmentally friendly hand warmers, and we have one for me, one for you at tea time. Before bedtime, I fill a 2 liter plastic drink bottle at the foot of the futon to keep my toes warm. By morning, it's still warmer than body temperature.
Some urawaza are merely efficient ways of doing things. My first year in Japan, I picked up some ideas from my neighbour lady. She always folded her plastic and cloth shopping bags the way you fold a flag. First, you fold it in half to make a long narrow rectangle, then you fold it in triangles, and finally fold the end into the pocket made by the last triangle. The bags are neatly stowed and easily counted.
Thomas Hjelm shares these time- and money-saving urawaza on his blog, Nihon Hacks. These hacks often result in reduction or reuse of materials, saving money and reducing garbage.
The next urawaza is my favorite human behaviour hack in Japan. I must admit that I've done this in the street, ringing parked bicycle bells to achieve the same effect - 人間が持つベル Pedestrian Bell.
I jogged today from home to 柏市民体育館 Kashiwa Municipal Gym down by the park. I've never done this before. Correctly, I've never jogged before. It just kind of happened. I needed to get my shopping bike #1 from the parking lot there, and I was under some time constraints. I don't even own running shoes. I guess I have to get some. I'm kind of chuffed to know I'm in good enough shape to jog that stretch, though it's only a few kilometers. I had no idea I could do that.
This new year is a new world for me.
I had no idea I could return a lot of plastic to point of purchase. Today's discovery is that 長崎屋 Nagasakiya department store, on the food floor, has recycling boxes that handle milk cartons, styrofoam trays, and the plastic trays that tofu, veggies and various other produce come in. My garbage bags get lighter every time I find another way to reduce the load going out. I'm not sure what this styro and the like gets recycled into, but the Yes! Tokyo website's English guide to environmental solutions and experiments in Tokyo gives some insight into how garbage is being handled in Tokyo proper, which may indicate how the 'burbs are handling it.
Ideally, I want to get the plastic consumption down.
I'm getting some inspiritation from Change Everything, an intiative of Vancity, Vancouver's community-based financial institution that gets behind many positive changes in the way we Vancouverites live. Wow, they're inspiring me waaaay over the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Pretty good!
The banner on the wreath is a blessing of safety within the household. Lots of businesses and homes hang these 注連縄 shimenawa rope decorations in front of their doors. For safety, mine us hung in the genkan of my apartment. The landlord doesn't allow decorations on the door.
Why do I have a shimenawa wreath? It's a habit I learned from the year I lived in rural Ehime Prefecture, when my dear neighbour, the kimono teacher, madea wreath by hand and hung it on my door. She said I and my apartment could do with the blessing for the coming year.
This guardian deity meets you at the gate when you walk up to 布施弁天 Fuse Benten where I did my お参り omairi, a first visit to shrine or temple,
Benten is represented by the flow of water and the beauty of flowers. The temple is often very quiet when I visit any other day of the year. I sometimes make the 20 minute bike ride on a Sunday, and often have the whole place to myself. Once, the priestess invited me in to see the hand coloured devotional paintings made by parishoners. But this time, there was a line of people waiting to ring the gong in front of the offering box. There was a performance of 獅子舞 shishimai, the lion dance accompanied by drums and flutes played by children.
Resolution #3 is to make a one-day pilgrimmage between the three famous Bentendo temples. Fuse Benten is one of the three significant ones belonging to a branch of Shingon Buddhism. The other two are on Enoshima Island in Kanagawa and the Bentendo in the middle of Shinobazu Pond in Ueno. I'd have to start early. The trip is over 100 kilometers.
Every time you go out for a bowl of ramen in Tokyo, you likely pick up a pair of 割り箸 waribashi, the disposable wooden chopsticks that you split with a crack before you eat. Waribashi are so ingrained in Japanese culture that there are manners specifically for their use. Break your chopsticks holding them horizontally, never vertically. Don't sand them against each other or roll them like pick up sticks. This implies that the waribashi are cheap and insults the wait staff. When you want to set them down, place them on the paper wrapper which you have artfully folded into a 箸置きhashioki chopstick rest. And when you're done, put them back in the paper wrapper, folding the end of the wrapper diagonally.
How many times does the average salaryman eat a takeout bento or eat in a noodle bar? The waribashi add up in a year to 200 pairs per person, making the total a scary 25 billion sets a year. China has slapped a surcharge on waribashi sold to Japan, which has resulted in some shops looking for alternatives. I've been really good, turning down proferred waribashi, plastic bags and other disposable unrecyclable stuff.
But what could be simpler than carrying your own? I surprised myself when I went to lunch this afternoon and, when my meal came, I automatically reached for the waribashi on the counter. No, no. My own hashi are pretty bamboo with woven handles and a sturdy sheath. I'll get used to it in no time. I have already eliminated plastic register bags from my shopping routine, so I figure I won't miss waribashi.
Laundry's done, sent my new years greeting cards to the family, puttering in my pjs at home. This is homework avoidance at its finest.
All this domesticity is a cover for organizing my notes and writing reports. Ideas percolate while I'm doing other tasks, of course. A strange effect I attribute to living outside my first language community... I'm frequently at loss for words. My literacy in Japanese is weak, sure, so I can't blame my lack of verbiage on Japanese crowding out my language skill. It's more likely that I simply haven't used these words frequently enough, and I'm not reading English regularly outside of my university reading packets.
Listening to National Public Radio on the Armed Forces Network this evening, I heard a report about Free Rice, a website that combines vocabulary practice and a donation of rice to The World Food Program. Go play! Get rice! How cool is that!
Okay, back to homework...
Civilization has come to my Armory-cum-bedroom in funky Kashiwa City - I have a 'Net connection at home! The first attempt left me bewildered, and with a whiff of surreality. A little man came to my door, armed with official looking name tag, clip board, and mysterious gadgets, looked my apartment up and down, whilstled through his teeth and said No, can't do it. The flex ducts wouldn't accommodate such a thing, he claimed. Besides, your air con unit is in the way of the one inlet for ducts, he said.
Well, this week, Harry Tuttle times two arrived at my door, a young fellow who wouldn't look me in the eye, and a terribly friendly older, wiser fellow who talked my ear off. It took them about 15 minutes with tea break to snake a line from what looked like an oscilloscope to find the portal and fire the proton pack to collect incorporate Sumerian deities...Wait, wrong movie. Well, they plugged me in and installed a cable modem ( and now I've got 'Net 24/7). At home, anyway.
This is my consolation for a week of being so tortuously close to Daikomyosai, but obligated to be at work and write stuff for school projects. The only chance I'll get anywhere near training is tomorrow night, if Shiraishi sensei is on for a post-game review.
Many wonderful moments with people happened in the last few days. we took pictures of visiting ninjas under gorgeous flaming maple trees at Kamakura; fortuitous timing put me on a train with two slightly lost kunoichi who I helped navigate the spaghetti that is the JR East rail system, then joined them on a shopping expedition (fabric and stationery!); some kind train passengers on the Joban Line consoled me when I dropped my mobile phone which exploded on hitting the deck; a slightly tipsy salaryman on his way home wished me a happy life before tottering off the train at Matsudo Station; the noodle guy on the Shinagawa Station platform slipped me an onigiri in thanks for my patronage (I hit him every week on the way to Ayase training); the Kashiwa Information ladies treated me to yuzu citrus marmalade and got me up to date on Kashiwa events so I can inform visiting ninjas; my sempai came over for dinner and spoiled me with a belated birthday present despite the fact that his isn't finished yet (gomen, ne!).
See? I can't complain.
Back in 1999 when I lived in southern Ehime Prefecture, I lived at the foot of a mountain at the edge of the sleepy little city. Crushed against this mountain were houses, temples, cemeteries and some crumbling "public works", legacies of the bubble economy when huge amounts of cash were squandered on public art, culture halls and hideous sculptures.
Above my place was a neglected lookout tower with a rusty jungle gym that no kids played on. Only the local grumpy old men with their Onecup Ozeki sake would sit on the benches. A short walk from the abandoned beauty spot, there was a decrepit farm house built in the old style, clay over bamboo on a cedar frame. The plaster was falling away exposing the bamboo ribs of the walls. It looked like a half-eaten carcass to me, the roof a ratty mane of reeds and invading kudzu vines.
Metropolis this week features the phenomenon of ruined places in Japan. The splendour of the bubble economy of the late 80s is faded, the birthrate is falling off, and the rural population is mostly old farm people. That leaves a lot of abandoned, ruined buildings. Sometimes whole communities or recreation areas are forgotten. Check out Gunkanjima, once a thriving island city, now completely abandoned.
I used to marvel at how Japan's rail system could get you anywhere, or at least within striking distance of where you want to go. I was stunned when I saw the photos of the Okutama Ropeway which is within Tokyo proper. There are places the tracks won't take you.
I just tell it like I see it. Here's the latest on Nova.
The Independent out of Britain reports on the plight of ex-pat English teachers stranded by collapse of Japan's Nova schools. The Nambu Foreign Worker's Caucus is soliciting donations for a relief fund for Nova teachers and a "Lessons for food" campaign. Former company president Sahashi is being questioned by the ministries regarding failure to pay staff. The Japan Times in an opinion piece describes how Nova failed due to recklessness on the part of the executives.
If you look at the books, it appears that Nova was sinking all that money from student fees into real estate investments rather than back into the company, human resources and overhead. Some analysts are pointing to the huge advertising costs Nova incurred for it's television ad campaign as a budget killer. Meanwhile, research companies show that the conversation school market became saturated and actually declined since the early part of the decade.
What it all boils down to is that Nova was run badly in a saturated market and failed. It's a shame so many students, teachers and support staff are being hurt by the fallout.
I'm seeing the fallout in my daily life, too. Nova's Kashiwa branch looked deserted this week, my business English student who I tutor on Sunday says his conversation tutor, a Nova worker, went home last week, and the company I work for is innundated by email from former Nova workers looking for full time jobs.
Recent Comments