christmas in Kyoto

So this blog has suffered a bit, partly because I've been knitting last minute Christmas gifts (can't knit while typing) and partly because of a bit of traveling.

Kay was in town (i.e., in Japan) with her family for the New Year's holidays, so we decided to meet in the middle in Kyoto and spend a day together. It was so awesome! Kyoto is about a 7 hr overnight bus ride from Matsuyama, so I arrived a day early and spent some time seeing some sights by myself. Because I'm just contrary, I went to a few places off the beaten track. One was otaginenbutsuji, a temple filled with thousands of statues of rakan, or Buddhist disciples. They are very cute (pictures on facebook). Another was Iwatayama monkey park, where I got to feed some wild macaques (pictures forthcoming on facebook). I was planning to go to Kinkakuji after that (the golden pavilion, actually a very famous tourist spot) but then I got on the bus in the wrong direction and ran out of time! Instead, I went to Nishiki-ichiba, a long food market, sometimes known as the kitchen of Kyoto. Apparently you can get all sorts of food there, anything in Kyoto you can imagine. Well, I suppose it was alright. I wish I had gone with some sort of food expert (maybe like my host dad) who could explain it all to me. Otherwise it was not quite as interesting as I thought. I did stop by a place called Aritsugu, a traditional maker of knives. It was really impressive, seeing all the knives on display. I bought the smallest possible thing from the store, which was a pair of small sewing scissors (you know, the kind that is all one piece, and you squeeze them together to make the blade come together? super sharp tips, to get at threads and pick out stitches). Then I discovered that they engrave your name on the blade for free! It was cool to watch. I went with my Chinese name since my English one wouldn't fit. (It later occurred to me I could have just gone with my initials, oh well.) After that it was an all-out shopping binge, mostly at the Gap (though also at an AMAZING bookstore called Random Walk). I never considered myself a GAP girl...until living in Matsuyama where it is damn near impossible to find clothes that fit me, are affordable, and not made totally of polyester or rayon! there was a big winter sale at GAP. Where else can you find 96% cotton sweaters for 1400 yen in Japan? or 98% wool pants for less than 3000 yen? As for Random Walk--just for this bookstore alone I could be jealous of the fellows placed in Kyoto and Osaka (I hear there's one in Osaka too). It's a gorgeous, gorgeous store, very graphic-artsy focused. They carry almost exclusively foreign books, in English, French, etc. And zillions of foreign magazines and newspapers. Though I think I gravitate towards the art books most of all...

The next day I spent with Kay, and we went to Sanjusangendo and Ginkakuji. Sanjusangendo is Japan's longest wooden building, and it is pretty much entirely filled with gold-leaf covered statues of Kannon Buddha. After seeing 1200 statues of Rakan, seeing 1200 statues of Kannon Buddha was quite a contrast (they all look pretty much the same, and are very serious!). No photos allowed, so I had to buy postcards instead. Ginkakuji (silver pavilion) was totally gorgeous. Or at least, the garden was beautiful. It was one of those Zen-type stone and sand gardens. There was even a conical shaped pile near one end supposed to represent Mt Fuji, and another stripy design supposed to represent waves. And the day was so sunny and gorgeous, it was beautiful.

christmas

I do miss Christmas. It's Christmas Eve today, which just so happens to be a national holiday here because of the emperor's birthday. There is a big Christmas tree in a shopping mall downtown...but I miss the lights, I guess? I miss Harvard Square looking all festive with the lights. (Of course, I'm glad I'm not actually there due to the huge amounts of snow.) Christmas spirit, perhaps? People here sort of celebrate it, but it's even more stripped of meaning here than it already is in the US. I was asked by a family how I celebrated Christmas. I said--I don't do much, spend time with family, eat a nice meal, etc. This family has a small Christmas tree, christmas placemats, chopsticks holders, cell phone ringtones, napkins, the whole works. When I asked how they celebrate Christmas, they said, not much! The far bigger holiday is New Year's, which I guess is their family time. But looking at a gallery of Christmas trees around the world, I feel a bit sad.

Pop quiz!

Take a look at the following pictures:





So, is the jar:
A) Somebody's science experiment being preserved in paraformaldehyde?
B) Something to get fabulously drunk off of?


Right. When my friend brought it in, I was sure it was something being preserved in paraformaldehyde. And then he said it was a drink. I thought he was maybe kidding and trying to poison me. Then, somebody had a sip, and appeared to be still alive. Aha! Apparently, it is a drink, after all. Apparently, it is a drink from China that a student made himself, about 5 years ago. Apparently the lizard-like thing inside is quite expensive, which I don't doubt...

My host dad filled me in on the rest of the background information. Sometimes it is also made in Japan in the countryside. He has seen and tasted versions where the animal inside is a snake, or giant bees. He says that although the lizard floating in the jar appeared to have been gutted first, in Japan in the countryside they are typically put into a jar of shochu (a very strong clear liquor) while still alive. Then, marinated for a year or so. Gahh! And, it's used to disinfect wounds (!) and to drink when sick. It's about 40% alcohol.


So...did I know all this when I tasted it? No. But I probably would have had some anyways. I had a taste, and true enough it was strong enough to burn and make me quite warm. It also had a pretty strong medicinal taste, like Chinese herbs. And after I had a taste, I had half a glass. It was surprisingly...good? I liked the after warmth. And the medicinal taste made me feel a bit like I was drinking something good for me (which, now knowing how it's made, is probably not true. But hey, who knows?)

finally, a bike accident

Finally, after 3 months of near-misses with other bikes and pedestrians, I managed to fall off my bike today. Ironically, I wasn't really close to hitting anybody/thing else at all! I was biking on the side of the road (no sidewalk here) and slowing down for a red light. There were a bunch of cars lined up behind the red light, and I figured to avoid them (and also to get near the crosswalk in order to cross) I'd bike through a small puddle (it had been raining earlier in the day). Lo and behold...the small puddle turned out to be a really deep and steep. As soon as I hit the puddle, I realized my mistake but of course by then I was sailing through the air...and landing belly down on the ground. Next to a bunch of cars. How embarrassing! So of course I jumped right back up like See? it never happened, I'm okay. I righted my bike, pushed it along, parked it to go back and get my hat which was thrown to the ground, and finally made it across the street. I went a few blocks before thinking, Gee! Maybe I ought to check if I'm bleeding anywhere. So at the next stoplight I check and realize that my left knee is indeed bleeding, and so I stuck on one small band-aid I had in my backpack. It looked kind of pitiful.

I was on my way downtown to go shopping, so I figured I'd just park and find a drugstore there. I found a very tiny drugstore with two middle-aged ladies, one of them in a white coat. Not knowing the Japanese word for band-aid, I just lifted up my capris and showed her my clearly inadequate bandage and said, Do you have this? She did, and I asked her if she had medicine (looking for something neosporin-like). And of course she found that too and I made sure by asking her, If I put this on, will it heal faster? Again, not knowing the word for "antibiotic" or "disinfect" was kind of annoying. So I paid for my bandaids and my neosporin, and I was all ready to leave the store to go nurse myself, but the lady in the white coat actually told me to sit down. She then proceeded to use rubbing alcohol to disinfect my skinned knee (I didn't buy the alcohol), put the neosporin on the bandaid and the bandaid on my knee. And then another one, crosswise, for good measure. She told me to be careful, and that I could shower with the bandaid and didn't need to change it for two days. Amazing. This was at a drugstore! I don't think any pharmacist or Walgreens cashier would apply bandaids and neosporin to their customers. I'm just...shocked and amazed and really pleased too. Probably worth the skinned knee, just for the story to tell.
Other things I learned: carry a supply of adequately sized bandaids while biking. And avoid biking through puddles when you can't tell how deep or steep they are.

I hate cornstarch

Seriously. If it weren't so useful I'd swear it off forever. Today I managed to successfully make sweet and sour fish (tang2 cu4 yu2). Last time I tried, I failed abysmally because in substituting tomato puree for ketchup, I ended up with something that was wayy too tomato-ey and not sweet enough. So this time, I wised up and only added a dash of tomato sauce and more dashes of sugar. But the cornstarch! Okay, so this time I didn't screw up the cornstarch as badly as last time, but it was still pretty bad. I've come to the conclusion that there is no good way to handle cornstarch, particularly over here where it universally comes in plastic packs. Whatever happened to those useful cardboard cartons that you can just tip to the side and sprinkle out starch? Aargh. The starch gets EVERYWHERE and sticks to EVERYTHING...except for the stuff I actually WANT it to stick to. Like, the egg-yolk covered fish. I ended up with yolk and starch covered fingers instead, and fluffy white starch all over the kitchen counter and the sink. And...only pathetically starch-covered fish after all that effort. And because I didn't have enough foresight, I had to put the pathetically starch-covered fish down in a tray while I got out a frying pan and heated up some oil. I lift up the fish and what do I see? NO STARCH ON THE UNDERSIDE OF THE FISH!!? Why, might you ask? ...Obviously, the starch is stuck to the tray instead! aallll of it!! Arrghh. I gave up and just fried the fish anyways. It still turned out alright, but I don't think I'll be able to solve the cornstarch problem anytime soon. Unless I'm missing something really obvious about cooking with starch.

On a positive note, the Japanese news informs me that starting today, the sun will set later. Yay! Longer daylight hours! I'm tired of it being dark at 5pm.

I met Dr. Grip!

No kidding! I really did. Well, his name isn't actually Dr. Grip, though he did invent those amazingly popular pens. He was at the welcome reception for a conference my advisor organized tonight, so I got to meet him. I understand that he is a bit different from the others (in that he has a sense of humor, and wears a leather jacket rather than a suit). I didn't know until afterwards that he invented Dr. Grip pens, and then suddenly the fact that he studies ergonomics made so much more sense. I think I'm going to have to go buy one of those pens now. :-D Although I understand that he is not so rich as one might think. Tomoko tells me that he invested his money in other research or ventures that didn't do quite as well as the Dr. Grip pens.

I also met my advisor's boss, whom I take to be an important person. He's 65, but looks wayy, wayy younger than that. I thought he was not much older than my advisor. The striking event of the evening was that he knocked a glass over onto the floor, spilling red wine everywhere. Immediately, 3 neighboring women rushed to the scene, picking up broken glass and wiping up wine with tissues. And...he just stepped back and observed. Amazing. Didn't lift a finger. Didn't even hear him apologize! One of those cultural things...If Larry Summers (while still president of Harvard) dropped a drink, would 3 female grad students/professors/what have you academics scramble over themselves to clean up after him? It was kind of painful to watch. Hmm, maybe Larry Summers is a bad comparison. If the department chair of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard dropped a drink... Argh.

the story of a spider

So last night I was talking with Tomoko and somehow the topic of cultural images of animals (and insects) came up. And somehow, we ended up talking about spiders, which reminded me of Anansi the spider. I asked her if there were any famous legends about spiders, and she told me this one:

Once upon a time, there was a very evil man. He did lots of horrible and bad things, including theft and murder. There was only one redeeming deed in his whole life, and that was that once he saved the life of a spider. Eventually, he died and he went to hell.

He suffered in hell for awhile...something about a pool of blood. The spider eventually died too, but since the spider was a good spider, it went to heaven. The spider looked down from heaven at hell and saw its once upon a time benefactor. Taking pity on him, the spider asked Buddha to allow him to come to heaven. Based on the spider's strong recommendation, Buddha decided to allow the evil man one last chance. So, the spider began to spin its silk, so much that it fell all the way from heaven down to hell. The evil man found the spider silk and began to climb up the silk to enter heaven. He was almost all the way up when he looked down behind him and realized that many other denizens of hell were also climbing up the spider silk. He was afraid that the silk would break before he reached heaven, so he cut it, letting everybody else tumble back to hell. Alas, Buddha was watching him and seeing him act so selfishly, cut the spider silk above him. He had squandered his last chance, and so he fell back into hell for all of eternity.

Apparently the story may be by Akutagawa Ryunosuke. I will have to look it up...though I am warned that it is difficult. But I love these sorts of fairy tales and parables. Simple and elegant.


On a totally unrelated note, I had another dance lesson today. I finally finished learning all of my dance, Gion kouta (Ballad of Gion, or Little Song of Gion). The last section is really complicated, with me turning this way and that. Hopefully I can remember! Since I finally learned what the name of my dance was, of course the first thing I did was Google it. Unfortunately, I found at least three other versions of the dance, and innumerable midi files of the song. At least now I know the lyrics!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRPRWZLXlI4

Here is a version of the dance for an idea of what it sounds like and what this type of dancing looks like (though mine is faster and the song is not a solo version).

I'm going to perform in February!

some fall travels and jazziness

I haven't updated in awhile because I've been out and about. Specifically, this past week I've gone to Osaka and Kyoto for a very short whirlwind tour. Well--mainly, Osaka for shopping, and Kyoto for pretty fall foliage and some touristy sightseeing. It was fun and exhausting.
The hugeness of Osaka was staggering. It's more or less like Tokyo, except that this time I was better equipped to deal with it. In the Osaka Station area alone, there were at least 5 huge buildings (I hesitate to call them skyscrapers, but how else would you call a building with 27 floors?) dedicated to shopping and eating. And all the people in the subway stations at 5pm!
Kyoto, in contrast, was less crowded and much cleaner. But it was also less easy to get around, or so it seemed at the time. I took a walking tour around the station area, which lasted 5 hrs and made me very tired. And then I walked some more! Whee!! After a few aggravating detours caused by bad map-reading and bad street signs, I finally made it back to the station to go back to my hotel in Osaka. But it was gorgeous :-) Pictures are on facebook.

Tonight I went and saw some jazz at a bar downtown with my Nepalese friend (the one who is studying American literature). It was fun! It was more or less like an open mic type of deal, where people signed up to play or sing. There were lots of vocalists singing jazz standards ("All of Me" came up twice!). There was one group of 5 women who were very good with the harmony and all that. They started by singing The First Noel/Silent Night a cappella. But, I have to say, the pronunciation was quite distracting. "Za fast Noel..." particularly of note was "Joy tsu za fishes in za deep brue shee, joy tsu you an' me" I had to cringe every time "heaven" came out as "hebun," though after awhile they were jamming so upbeat to Joy to the World that I wanted to sing along and nearly sang it as "hebun" myself! Bad pronunciation is infectious! Then there was also "Fry me tsu za moon..." And a lady sang White Christmas, which simultaneously made me want to cry for reasons unknown, and laugh because she sounded so inescapably Japanese: "wheah za toreetops grissen, and childoren rissen / to heah sreigh bellzu in za snow...." Well, enough of that. I'm sure I butcher Japanese regularly, so--it's forgivable :-D They were generally very good singers :-)

Anyways, most ppl were really great and having a blast. There was one man in particular that I really liked--a middle aged skinny man in a dark grey suit. He sang "goody goody" and "i can't give you anything but love." He was the only male vocalist, which I thought was kind of strange. Of all the vocalists, though, he seemed to be the most relaxed and natural and most genuinely enjoying himself. He smiled through all his songs (as far as you can smile while singing--maybe he only gave the impression of smiling, or maybe you really can smile with your eyes). I thought it was so oddly incongruous, the man in the gabardine or grey flannel suit jamming to the subversive notes of jazz. Cultural transplantation, things become oddly removed from context.