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.

Black or White?

More than 98% of the Japanese population is ethnically Japanese. A large portion of the remaining population is of other East Asian descent.

Needless to say, people notice differences in appearance.
Hair color, eye color, facial structure, facial hair, arm hair, noses, eyelashes and more can all be a source of curiosity when a Japanese person encounters a foreigner. Some of the most interesting conversations I've had about appearance, though, revolve around skin color.


Last weekend I was outside almost all of Saturday and Sunday cycling and practicing for an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. Both days were very sunny, and my skin naturally became darker as a result. Then, when I returned to school on Monday I had an amusing conversation with some of my more entertaining first year middle school students.

"Sensei," one boy asked (in Japanese), "are you Black or White?"
"White, of course."
"But you have Black people in your family, right?"
To which another boy chimed in, "only White people can have White kids!"
"Yes, but if a Black and White person marry they could have mixed kids."

The silly thing is, this isn't the first time people have asked questions like that. Here in Japan I have been Black, Brazilian, Spanish, Indian, Scottish (someone once even said that I had a "very Scottish face") and more. Such are the joys of internationalization!

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.

台北: Formosa Entry #4

The long overdue updating of my on-line travel journal begins.
The picture atop the page is from Eiheiji, which I visited in January.
For now, let's get back to Taiwan.

Previously, in Formosa entries I was wandering the hills near the city of Hualien on the East Coast. The Hualien portion of the trip was only a couple days out of a full week, but it was the most unique and exciting part of the journey. The rest of the time I spent in Taipei, Taiwan's political, cultural and economic centre.

Taiwan is not a large island. Next to Bangladesh, it's considered one of the most densely populated places on the planet. In spite of its small size, however, Taiwan has one very sexy, sexy global influence: half the laptops in the world are manufactured here.
A large number of computer chips are manufactured as well. Chances are, if you've owned a computer, you've benefited from the Taiwanese technology industry.
Rowrrr...
(that's an imitation of a seductive cat purr, in case if you couldn't tell)

So, how do you cope with such a dense population in Taipei?
Construct the world's tallest building, Taipei 101.*
The entire population of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, could work in this tower and there would still be positions available.

Taipei 101 is not only tall, it also can withstand powerful earthquakes, typhoon-force winds and Japanese tour groups.
It is considered one of the greatest feats of modern engineering.
Here's the view from the cafe on the 89th floor. Notice the mountains in the background. It's possible to take a bus into the mountains to a tea village that I will mention later. Remember that. It'll be important. You may want to have a notebook ready (but not yet - it'll be in a later entry).

Taipei has some great night markets. Meals, souvenirs, clothing, drinks and the ever-important snacks-on-a-stick are all available. Most of my time in Taipei was spent wandering around trying various foods in markets like this one and looking for museums.


*construction should finish this year on a tower in Dubai that will become the tallest building in the world.

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.