Snow Dragon

一月にだれか駅前に雪で竜を作った。
Back in January, someone made a dragon out of snow in front of the station.



格好いいと思ってたけど、ちょっと雨が降ったら変な形になちゃった。
I thought it was pretty cool until rainfall changed the shape into something a little strange.

2 AM This Morning

It snowed a lot last night. This is the view from my flat at 2 AM.

This is what things looked like in the morning.

This is what I was looking at a little more than a week ago. I'll post more about that later.

七夕: Of Stars and Separation

七夕

Tanabata
(The Seventh Evening)

July 7th is is "Tanabata", a day in which we recall the star-crossed fate of a heavenly princess and her beloved cowherd and celebrate that most Japanese perspective on romance, "love means never actually having to see each other".

Orihime (the star Vega), daughter of the King of the Heavens (the Universe), used to weave beautiful clothing next to the Heavenly River (the Milky Way). She was so busy with her work, however, that she was unable to meet a good man and fall in love. Concerned, her father decided to arrange for her to meet Hikoboshi, the cowherder (the star Altair). The two hit it off instantly and fell so much in love that they no longer performed their duties. Orihime no longer weaved her beautiful clothes and Hikoboshi allowed his cattle to roam freely across the sky. This upset the King of the Heavens, so he separated the two across the Heavenly River and forbid them to see each other. Orihime became despondent, however, and her father, not wanting to see her so sad, told her that if she did her work dutifully she and Hikoboshi could meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh month.

It is said that the first time they tried to meet, the Heavenly River prevented them from being able to draw close to each other. Orihime cried so fervently that a flock of magpies overheard and came to build a bridge with their wings for the lovers to cross. This is why people say that if it should rain on Tanabata, the magpies cannot come and Orihime and Hikoboshi will have to wait another year to see each other.


Various places in Japan hold Tanabata festivals, but the most common way to celebrate is simply to write a wish on a piece of paper and hang it on bamboo. I get this impression that this custom is most popular with children in primary schools, but that doesn't mean that you won't see older people making wishes too (The 2008 Hokkaido G8 Summit, for example).



Somehow, it seems very appropriate to me that a festival about separated lovers should fall in July. Our contracts with the Fukui Board of Education expire this month, and most of those who have chosen not to continue working here will leave before August. Summers are always strange in Fukui. At the same time that we bid farewell to our old friends we welcome in a new crew of people - most of whom we will probably have to say goodbye to this time next year, anyway.
Sunrise, sunset, ebb, flow, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Love Grows Under my Umbrella

相合傘

I learned a fun Japanese expression the other day. When two people share an umbrella it's called, "ai ai gasa" (see above). The characters basically mean something like, "coming together under an umbrella". We get a lot of rain here. In fact, the entire month of June usually falls under the category of "rainy season".
"Ai ai gasa" isn't limited to shared efforts to stay dry. As one of the teachers at my school informed me, "little girls like to think that when a boy and a girl share the same umbrella it means romance". He told me this after half of our classroom rushed to the window to see a single female teacher sharing an umbrella outside with a man.

In the romantic instance of "ai ai gasa", it's possible to employ a common Japanese word play method and use different characters than normal. Instead of 相合傘 (coming together under an umbrella), we can write 愛合傘 (love meets under an umbrella) . Both are read as, "ai ai gasa".


For the record, the teacher and the man were fixing a fence in front of the school.

Setsubun, Risshin & Formatting Updates

Greetings all!
Sorry I haven't updated in a couple weeks. I've still got some things to share from my experience in Taiwan, and I recently spent the evening at Eiheiji learning zazen (meditation).

In the meantime, I've made some changes to the format of this blog. You'll notice along the left hand side that links to other blogs have changed, and you now can see a list of labels. I added that for easy archiving purposes. Now, if you want to see anything I've written about something like temples or festivals, all you have to do is click on the label for temples or festivals. I also inserted a translation service at the bottom of the page.

While looking through the archives I noticed that some pictures seemed to have disappeared. I checked my storage limit, and I really don't know why this has happened. While looking up the storage limit, however, I found out that all the pictures I post here automatically get sent to an online photo storage service. If I ever organize that, I'll post a link.

Now, on to some updates:

This is a photograph I took in January shortly after returning from my travels. We had a decent amount of snow for probably less than two weeks in Fukui City. Then, it warmed up just enough to change to rain, and all the snow disappeared.

I noticed something with the snowfall this year that I don't recall from last year - THUNDER. Turns out that Western Japan is one of three places in the world where it can thunder while snowing.
February 3rd was setsubun this year. (click here for old post on setsubun). It's the end of winter on the lunar calendar, and people celebrate by tossing beans to ward off demons. I decided to check out events at a local shrine but heard the wrong starting time and showed up just as it ended.The day after setsubun is called risshin. This is the first day of spring on the lunar calendar. I believe it snowed on this day last year.

Are You OK? FIGHT!

One idle spring morning as I was engaged in a typical post-work day "rush", I realized that it had been more than 6 months since the last time I did any form of exercise. "This is not good," I whispered to myself, so as to avoid fully arousing myself from a mid-afternoon nap. "I should do something," I muttered quietly this time fully awake but not wanting anyone around me to realize how much of my day is wasted on writing an inner monologue, "whatever shall I do?"Then, suddenly, I remembered something! Every May my school hosts a 10km (6.2 mile) marathon. I could plan to run in that marathon. This would give me incentive to work out and an opportunity to bond with my students while running together around the school.
Oh, it seemed like such a good idea.
Yes, I trained hard. Running 4 or 5km a few days a week with some students from the Kendo club. I even used Google maps to plan 5-7 km runs around Fukui City. I was getting in shape and feeling good!
The week before the race was strangely cold and dreary for May with clouds and rain, and on my last practice run before the race my new running shoes become terribly soggy. But come marathon morning all was sunny and delightful. We couldn't have planned for a better spring marathon day.
The starting pistol fired, and off I ran with a herd of more than 350 high school age boys. I kept pace as best I could, and when I felt I was nearing the end I still managed to maintain position in the top 3rd of a pack of very athletic boys in the prime of their physical health.
Unfortunately, what my body felt to be the end of the race actually turned out to be the halfway mark.
Soon, I found that my students were finally eager to speak with me in English outside of class. Conversations usually went as follows, "Oh! Hello, Zachary! How are you? Bye Bye."
At one point as I passed one of the teachers standing by the course to direct students and traffic, I was encouraged by some very typical Japanese English.
"Zachary, Are you OK?"
"Yes"
"FIGHT!"
"Fight," indeed, I did! (much to the joy of all natural Japanese red heads)
I finished the race far from that top 33% position I once held but still far from the bottom (a lot of students walked). In so doing, I came to understand the Japanese expression 足がぼうになった(ashi ga bou ni natta - "my legs have become like sticks"). Although my body felt wonderful, perhaps even euphoric, for a few hours it seemed like my feet had fallen off, leaving me to walk on sticks.
Shall this endeavor lead into greater things?
Meh, we'll see.

雪祭り：Snow Festival

Time to start posting photographs from 北海道 (Hokkaido), the northernmost of the major Japanese islands and proud home of nearly 6 months of winter weather annually.Every year in February, Sapporo, the capital and largest city of Hokkaido, hosts a Snow Festival. For one week, people pass through the city in droves to see the many snow and ice sculptures. The main section of sculptures took about 1-2 hours to see, but there were other smaller displays in other parts of the city.

International superstar Al Gore!
There were a dozen large sculptures like this one and many dozens more of smaller ones like the Al Gore above.

This one follows the design of Inuyama Castle, a national treasure not far from Nagoya.

Several of the large sculptures also featured a stage with entertainers or games.

A Rhinovirus Requiem: Haiku Round 3

I took a couple days off work and spent a long weekend in Hokkaido, the northern island, to see the Snow Festival and a few other things. I'll begin posting about that later in the week after I've organized my photographs.

In Hokkaido there is snow for, on average, half a year. The snow, however, differs from the snow in Fukui which is usually wet and slushy. Hokkaido is cold, but it's a drier cold than Fukui, so it's easier to handle (at least it seemed so while I was there). After spending a weekend wandering outdoors in Hokkaido and returning to the wet muck of Fukui and a flat with no central heating, it was inevitable that some kind of virus would at least attempt to disrupt my senses. While walking around a classroom this morning feeling as disorientated as a fish in the desert I thought of a few words to describe my physical status.

Cold chest, fever mind
Internal antipodes
Of water and flame

Supernova flare
Fades into icy blackness
Soon to burst again