Lost In Translation

So today was a Japanese festival called tanabata. As it is celebrated here in Hokkaido, the festival involves children dressing up in costumes and then going door to door requesting candy. (Sound familiar?) Here in Hakodate these requests are made in the form of a cute little song, but in neighboring Sapporo I'm told that the lyrics are different, with children threatening to hurt you if you don't give them candy. All in all, upon hearing this explanation, I basically thought, "So this is Japanese Halloween," but a little googling has revealed that this is far from the truth. The holiday was imported from China and celebrates the meeting of two stars (Vega and Altair in Western astronomy), said to be two lovers doomed to be separated except for this one time a year. The way it is celebrated nowadays in Hokkaido is quite different from the rest of Japan and different even from the way it was celebrated in Hokkaido a generation ago. Apparently, it used to be that children requested not candy but candles for the family altar, but these days that is unusual.

As one would expect, the combination of small Japanese children and costumes produced much cuteness, though I was rather disappointed to see that most little boys don't bother with proper costumes--my host brother just went in his decidedly boring gym suit. The little girls wearing yukatas were the main source of cuteness for the evening, that and toddler Tomoya's difficulties in trying to walk and consume candy simultaneously--the concentration required to unwrap the sweets slowed him near to a standstill, sometimes right in the middle of the street, much to his mother's dismay.



Lamely uncostumed neighborhood boys examining their hauls. Please note the relative size of kids and candy bags. (Strictly speaking, it wasn't just candy-- squid flavored crackers, pocky, and other Japanese goodies were included.)


One mom was enlisted to help carry the excess...

Yukata clad girls and the ubiquitous "peesu."

Lost looking girl being completely, as Elliot would say, adorbs. Modern sneakers beneath her yukata.

Same little girl with her brother. Please note his power ranger themed yukata.

In addition to the beggar's night aspect, tanabata is celebrated by writing wishes on colored strips of paper and then hanging them on trees along with other decorations.

All in all it was quite a bit of fun and a welcome break from preparing for my midterm and the upcoming speech contest. That said, it made me more aware of my tendency to try to translate all things Japanese into something recognizably American. Upon hearing about the costumed candy-demanding children, I just tried to equate it with the familiar Halloween. As I progress in my Japanese language studies, I am increasingly learning words and expressions that just have no real equivalent in English, and the same can surely be said of cultural traditions.
That said, there are plenty of things that are direct imports. I watched a program recently which I am absolutely certain was the Japanese version of Mythbusters. In the episode I watched they were trying to recreate a movie stunt which was basically the vehicular equivalent of ski-jumping, but the effort failed miserably when the scale model took a total nose-dive. However, that program came directly after a game show that was definitely of the only-in-Japan variety, for much of the game show centered around the contestants' abilities to read and write obscure characters and to appropriately categorize English words. Much to my surprise and my host family's amusement, I found I had never heard some of the English before. Now, thanks to Japanese TV, I know what eldelweiss and Judas' ear are...

Further Updates: Tea, Kimonos, and Engrish

As part of HIF, there are number of after-school classes covering various traditional Japanese arts. Recent classes have included the art of sado (tea ceremony) and the etiquette of kimono wearing. For the tea ceremony, we all trooped to a local high school to observe the tea ceremony club there in action. Like all Japanese arts, tea is full of highly specific rituals detailing how exactly one must pour the tea, the number and direction of rotations of the tea cup to be made before drinking, etc. During the ceremony we foreigners were permitted to sit normally rather than adopting seiza, the highly painful traditional kneeling pose, and were generally given a great deal of latitude, but it nevertheless struck me as highly regimented. What also surprised me was the amount of difficulty the Japanese high school students had with seiza, even after years of practice. One girl had to be lifted up by her friends because her legs became so stiff...
The tea ceremony club, with teachers seated at left.

For the kimono wearing ceremony, teachers came to our school bringing cotton yukatas for us to all practice wearing. Even for just a simple yukata, the process of tying the obi is quite intricate, and I doubt I would be able to do it on my own.














Helen, wearing her yukata, then all the participants in our kimono etiquette class.

Amusing Engrish watch: The other day I shopping at Dai-Ei, this sort of continuous indoor mall, where I saw these shirts for sale

Mayonezu, Mayonnaise, Omeretsu, Omelet, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

So basically I have been horribly negligent about keeping this blog updated... First, the big news is that two weeks ago I moved in with my host family, the Murakamis. Dad works for Toshiba while Mom stays at home taking care of things and minding toddler Tomoya and 8-year-old Naoya. My new parents are lovely and almost overaccommodating--I've been given my own bedroom while everyone else shares. The kids are full of energy, leading Dad to sometimes dub them as めんどくさい (troublesome). Naoya is surprisingly independent; he typically spends most afternoons in a nearby park with his friends, and he comes and goes more or less as he pleases. Tomoya chatters more or less continuously, but I catch less than 10% of what he says--the combination of poor enunciation, highly casual speech, and high speed does nothing for my Japanese comprehension. I felt a little better when I found out his parents don't always know what he is saying. And just knowing what he is saying doesn't guarantee comprehension... He often yells "mayonezu!" (mayonnaise) for no apparent reason. Me with Dad and Tomoya.

Which leads me to another topic: Japanese food habits. Apparently in Japan mayonnaise is seen as an all-purpose condiment to be used not only on sandwiches, but on pizza as well. When mixed with soy sauce, it becomes a veggie dip. Tomoya likes to eat it alone, but I think that this is atypical... He also likes to eat dried squid snacks and Calpis candy. Calpis is a brand of yogurt based food products, the main one being a carbonated yogurt drink. Also available are yogurt candy and yogurt popsicles--I guess yogurt is a dessert here. The Japanese seem to take Western foods and reinvent them, just as they like to take English words and reinvent those. This is how "manshon" (mansion) comes to mean apartment and "waishatsu" (white shirt) comes to refer to any collared shirt. Go figure.