Kitto Katsu

In other words, a break me off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar!

This past weekend was round one of the Japanese college entrance exams. All the public universities are apparently on this system, wherein students take the first round, and depending on those scores, qualify to take the second round of various individual Japanese university entrance exam. It seems like a grueling two day marathon in a zillion subjects. There are a lot of superstitions governing success on exams, many involving food. For example, Katsu-Curry, or pork cutlet curry, is very popular among examinees because Tonkatsu sounds like Katsu which sounds like win!

So....Obviously...KitKats have got to be popular too. KitKat sounds like Kitto Katsu, which translates to Certainly Win.

I snapped a photo of the KitKar bar packaging here. The text roughly translates as: Picture your own dreams. That will certainly become your strength (probably translates idiomatically to "give you strength"). (Ok, that last sentence I'm still not sure about. You're welcome to clue me in on the correct meaning).



There's the cultural tidbit/Westernization of food thing of the day.


In other news, it's cold and rainy and gross. I skipped out on work because it was so darn cold. Then I decided to avoid getting depressed and/or freezing to death I should eat and study some Japanese at a local cafe. After walking there (in the rain) I discovered it's not open on Tuesdays! So I keep walking further (in the rain) all the way to Dogo Onsen hot springs area and pick another cafe. It's crowded, but I find a nice cozy spot to do my Japanese reading. Lovely classical music, nobody bothering or really distracting me. Until! Until! A group of 4 English speakers comes in for lunch. I think they were American from the accent. SO loud and obnoxious. So I cut my studies short and start walking back. Meanwhile, I stop by my favorite used kimono store and start drooling at the gorgeous silk kimonos (not literally, of course). There's a nice old lady there whom I feel compelled to explain how I'm studying here for a year and want to buy a nice kimono before I go home. Somehow or other we really get to talking (or she does, anyways) and end up talking about people understanding each other, Japan/Korea international relations, all sorts of things. Of course, we talked about kimonos too. It was really cool, even though I did a lot of uncomprehending smiling and nodding.

I feel like less of a waste of life now. Yay how human contact works sometimes.

time for another blog post

I don't know why I'm finding it so hard to keep up with the blog. Maybe it's that as long as I'm typing, I'm not knitting :-P Though, I did finally finish my major knitting project of December (check it out here). Also, I've been guiltily looking at knitting stitch pattern books. It's nice that they're all charted here in Japan, but also there are some that are very, very different from anything I've ever seen! Mostly the very complicated lace ones are quite fantastic. Suitable for small projects or panels though, because I tried using them in a pair of small-gauge legwarmers and got tired really quickly. I feel guilty to admit that I bought two stitch pattern books. They were actually surprisingly hard to find compared to the plethora of pattern booklets on the shelves.

Nothing especial has been going on, other than the general return to school and work. Sort of. It's been pretty cold (highs in the 40s) so I've been sleeping with my cute bunny-shaped hot water bottle. I got slapped with a ginormous electricity bill, nearly 5 times what it usually is at nearly $100. That was rather sobering, so now I'm trying to use my heat as little as possible and being extra vigilant about turning off the lights and various appliances. Boy is living without heat painful.

I finally finished learning my dance, Gion Kouta. I'm going to be performing it in February. Yay! Today I have another dance lesson, where I'll be starting a new dance, Oomi no Okane. This one is less well known, I think, but still very interesting. I'm not sure on what the background of it all is, yet, because there's not as much stuff on the web about it. But supposedly, it's about a woman who is super-strong. I saw some pictures where she is doing laundry or some other work, and just kind of yanking guys around with her super strength. Also, instead of using a fan (the usual prop), the dance uses sarashi, which are cloth streamers. They're a bit like Chinese dance streamers (same idea) but constructed differently because they are white, much wider, and the base is much heavier and wider as well. It'll be interesting to practice with those.

I'm procrastinating on hanging up my laundry. I HATE hanging up my laundry. Maybe I should stop doing such big loads and do laundry more often. I also think I should go grocery shopping on this fine Saturday morning, were it not for my inclination never to go anywhere in the mornings unless I have to.

Oh, what else. I just got some details about the midyear conference I have to attend in Tokyo. I get a half-hour courtesy visit with my grant sponsor, Toyota (Yes, THAT Toyota). Meaning, I meet with the executive director of Toyota, together with various directors of the Fulbright offices and alumni associations of Japan. When I read the email I started hyperventilating. I need to practice my Japanese to prove to them I haven't wasted all their money!! AHHHHH!!!

Well, I've calmed down a bit since reading the email. Maybe the meeting with be in English. One can only hope. But anyways, I DO need to start studying from my Japanese textbook (the one that I brought with me) some more. I've now generally completed Lesson 4, suitably on Japanese consumer shopping. The next one is about weird customs of Japan--sounds interesting.

new year's activities

Because I've been so lazy, I've let almost two weeks go by after new year's before saying anything about it. So this is going to sound so old.

My advisor arranged for me to spend new year's with a friend of his and his family. The dad is a doctor (very successful! owns his own clinic!), the mom is a pianist/housewife, and they have three kids one of whom is college age. So from Dec 30 to Jan 2, I spent every day with them.

Dec 30 was the mom's birthday so we went out to dinner at a restaurant. Highlights of the evening include fried uni (sea urchin) on top of fugu (puffer fish), a live lobster-type thing, a fish eye, and fish testicles. Need I say more? Lots of pics on facebook.

On December 31st, I played with the kids and their newly purchased Wii. Fun stuff! I don't know what the original ones in the US were like, but I remember reading articles about Wii's escaping and cracking plasma tv's, or Wii's in unruly toddler's hands. Well these Wiimotes came with a handy wrist strap and were pretty much totally encased in silicone (sometimes silicone nearly an inch thick!). After dinner we then all went to Dogo onsen, the really famous onsen in this area (the oldest onsen in Japan, and also the model for the onsen in Spirited Away). It was my first time in any onsen, and it was quite interesting. And insanely crowded. I guess having a bath for new year's is something of a custom? We also went on a little tour of the building and got to look at the emperor's special room, bath, and garden. Emperor only!

On January 1st, the mom came to pick me up at 10 in the morning. She had mentioned before about lending me her kimono to wear, so I thought that meant wearing the kimono like for dance--by oneself. I mean, I know the basics. Well, I was surprised when we ended up at a special kimono-wearing salon. I got my hair all done up huge (took an hour and a half) and dressed in my kimono by a kimono professional. Wow! Yeah, a nice kimono is more complicated than for dance. It was fun and unexpected. So, I went the rest of the day feeling a bit ridiculous and conspicuous since none of the rest of the family were dressed up like that.

For lunch we had osechi ryori, which is special Japanese new year's food. The family had ordered it and it came in a box in three tiers. Osechi ryori was traditionally made to last for 3 days, so a lot of it is heavily salted, vinegared, or otherwise preserved. I have to say, it's not my favorite food but it was certainly interesting.

After lunch we made a trip to Gokoku shrine, the major shrine of the area, as well as Ishite-ji, a somewhat famous temple in the area. I don't know how old Gokoku shrine is, but Ishite-ji is certainly old. Maybe even a thousand years old. A fortune I got from Gokoku told me that I would have a slightly good year, and that I should believe in the gods. There goes that. I hadn't been to either places before then, so it was a fun experience.

On January 2nd, the family took me on their visit to the grandparents. The grandparents live about 2 hours drive southwest of Matsuyama, pretty much in the countryside. We were going through a cold snap, so as we approached the town we saw a good 6 inches of snow. Snow is rare for this area, so the kids were really excited. They could hardly wait through lunch to start building snowmen and have snowball fights in the yard.

On the whole, it was a good new year's experience. Being with their family, though, made me really miss my family. Perhaps because of the persistent language barrier, things are always a bit awkward. They are well-meaning and try to talk to me, but somehow it always seems like there is not much we can really get going on wrt conversation. I would be content with blending into the background as the family talks among themselves and relaxes, but that doesn't seem to happen either. Meals are by and large very silent, as are car rides. Such silence for such a large family just sort of made me feel a little awkward. I wondered if they're always that way, or if they're shy in front of me or something. So anyways, I guess that's just that. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to spend new year's with them--they were so incredibly kind to me and I know they went out of their way so that I could experience a "real" Japanese new year's. All the same though, it left me a little bit morose and nostalgic, though I was relieved to be alone again afterwards.