asazuke

Life in Japan, food, music, whatever…

Whale Meat Again 20 January, 2010

Filed under: food & drink,news,politics — johnraff @ 1:00 am
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The whaling season got off to a good start with a collision between the Japanese ship and the Sea Shepherd hi-tech speedboat that sank the pirates. The Japanese media refer to the protesters as something like terrorists, and can’t seem to understand why the Australians, and most of the rest of the world, should have any objection to this lawful “research” culling of several hundred whales every year.

On paper they’re right of course, but the ironical thing is that most Japanese people wouldn’t care at all if they never ate whalemeat again. Many have probably never tried it, and it’s certainly not a prized delicacy like “toro” tuna belly for example. Whalemeat is more like what it was in Britain: something people had to eat when times were hard just after the war. There seems to be a mountain of the stuff in a big freezer somewhere which they’re doing their best to sell off with TV advertising. You still don’t see it in the supermarket though, or anywhere else for that matter.

So what’s all the fuss about? Why don’t they just quietly pack it in? The only thing I can think of is just plain stubbornness – noone like to be ordered around and the Japanese are no exception. The more they’re told to stop the more they’ll carry on… unless there’s some hidden vested interest here which I’m not aware of…

 

New Year at the farm 19 January, 2010

Filed under: countryside,customs — johnraff @ 2:23 pm
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The weather forecast said a cold front was on its way and sure enough just after midday on the outskirts of town the snow started sprinkling down. We were on our way out to Gifu so that didn’t bode too well for conditions further on, but we had decided to spend a couple of days out at “the farm” for the new year so pressed on… Of course by the time we’d got halfway the road was getting slippy and there was nothing for it but to put those cursed chains on the front tyres. Put on the brakes to pull into a parking area and the car just kept going… that’s how close to the edge things had been. These new-fangled plastic tyre chains are supposed to be easy to put on, but after half an hour of scrabbling about in the freezing slush I still hadn’t got the hook thing at the back properly attached – my fingers had no feeling and it was getting dark and things were looking somewhat hopeless… Finally a friendly passerby gave us a hand and the left chain was on. Back in the car with the heater on full for a few minutes of agony as the blood returned to my fingers, but then the other chain went on much more easily, as I’d sort of got the hang of it.

It’s now dark and an almost full moon is gazing balefully down through a gap in the clouds as we tiptoe gingerly down the road through 10cm or so of snow. Finally make it to the house, turn on the heater, sit in the kotatsu with a cup of tea and it’s all in the past…

New Years Day and it’s still snowing. The postman braves the elements to bring us our small bundle of nengajo – there’ll be more back in Nagoya. Unlike Christmas cards, which should arrive before Christmas, New Year cards are supposed to be read at New Year and the Post Office keep the ones posted in December and go to some trouble to deliver them on the first of January if at all possible.

New Year is really just like Christmas back home in many ways: everything’s closed, all day spent watching the box, eating, drinking… We’ve only got a radio on the farm, but still don’t miss NHK’s big song spectacular which they’ve been plugging for weeks. Something like the Royal Command Performance (do they still have that? ), it’s been slipping in the ratings in recent years. The newspaper is full of adverts for January sales – these used to be after a week or so but now many places start right in on the first, along with “lucky bags”, which can be OK and can be rubbish. Even the shrines are advertising – the best place to have your car blessed to protect it from accidents, the best place to pray for success in exams… They say some 80% of a shrine’s takings are in the first few days of new year, so this is peak time for them. The terrible economy is good for holy business, but the snow and cold probably hasn’t helped.

Throughout our stay we are visited by a huge flock of small birds, flying around in a swarm like migrating swallows. About the size of sparrows, with a crest on their heads – I’m not an ornithologist, but I suppose they’re winter visitors from somewhere further north.

A new beginning… and everything is “hatsu”whatever, ie hatsumode – first visit to a shrine and presumably hatsu-sake, hatsu-tabako…

Happy New Year!

 

Hana Matsuri 30 December, 2009

Filed under: customs — johnraff @ 1:56 pm
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Yesterday we got a postcard from a village in Toei Cho in the mountains of Aichi prefecture – the same prefecture as Nagoya but a completely different world. That region is known for the Hana matsuri (“flower festival”) held around this time of year and which seems to be a sort of fertility rite to encourage the return of the warm weather (not to be confused with Buddha’s birthday, in April). That postcard was to remind us of our visit in 2004, in case we wanted to go back I suppose. It’s tempting… anyway, here’s a bit from a letter I sent home that year:

This January we went to the Hana Matsuri in a place called ToEiCho a
couple of hours drive from here. It’s still in Aichi Prefecture, but in the
Northeast corner and quite isolated in the mountains. The Hana Matsuri takes
place in a number of villages in the area from late November to sometime in
March, depending on the village. In the 28 years I’ve been here I’ve been to
this festival 3 or 4 times, and it really is quite special. Because the
place is so isolated the ceremonies have been preserved much more completely
than in most other places, it runs continually for about 36 hours, there are
some impressive devil masks worn by the dancers, and the beliefs behind it
are really interesting if you’re an ethnologist. Of course it’s now a
“National Treasure” and well supplied with photographers, not to mention TV
cameras, but it still has a special atmosphere, especially if you pick one
of the smaller villages as we did. At 4 in the morning, freezing cold,
watching two huge devils dancing by the light of a couple of pinewood
torches, Japan feels like a pretty exotic place after all…

 

Spring Cleaning

Filed under: customs — johnraff @ 1:24 pm
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This weekend (27th & 28th) we stayed in Nagoya again to do some cleaning up before the New Year holiday. I had given myself the task of getting the grease off the extractor fan hood, and T re-waxed the floor so the restaurant looks quite nice now. This is the traditional time for a big cleanup here, so everything can be fresh for the New Year. Actually new year is associated with Spring anyway – the traditional lunar calendar, still followed in Okinawa and China, would put it somewhere in February, and even at the end of December you’re already past the solstice so the days are getting longer – so we’re not that far from our Spring Cleaning really.

 

Farmlog 5th October 2009 15 October, 2009

Filed under: countryside,food & drink — johnraff @ 1:09 am
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It’s probably one of those “you know you’ve been in Japan too long when…” things, but there’s a rabbit in the moon. You can see its long floppy ears hanging over the mortar as it pounds mochi. Mochi is glutinous rice cooked then pounded into an even more glutinous lump. It’s supposed to be a New Year treat, but I can’t say I find it too appealing. Maybe that’s the next hurdle? (They have something similar in Ghana called foofoo, made from plantain, yam or, yes, rice.) Anyway, Sunday night was indeed a full moon, and cloudless so there was the rabbit pounding away. This particular Autumn full moon is special: “chu shu no meigetsu” – a harvest moon I suppose – and you’re supposed to eat “imo” or yams, while sipping sake maybe and waxing poetical, and that’s what we did, in a “nabe” (a sort of stew) plus a bottle of white wine. The winter cold is definitely coming on and there was plenty of wood on the fire to hold it at bay for a few hours.

Japan and rice seem so close; both Japanese and foreigners agree on this, and this attachment to rice is common all over the Far East. The word for rice is usually synonymous with a meal and in many countries the rice plant is venerated as a god. However, the “imo” goes back even further, apparently, to before the introduction of wet rice cultivation, and is still held in affection somewhere deep in the Japanese psyche. In the north of the country around this time of year there’s a tradition of “imo ni kai” or “potato party” which is better than it sounds as the imo stewpot usually has other good things in it, and there’ll be some booze too… Actually “imo” covers a variety of potato-like vegetables: “jagaimo” are our familiar potatoes (“Jakarta potatoes”), “satsuma imo” are sweet potatoes, presumably arrived via Kyushu, “yama imo” (“mountain potatoes”) grow wild, are incredibly slimy and disgusting, especially when grated and put on raw fish and therefore much loved by the Japanese (yes, another hurdle coming up), and “sato imo” (“village potato”) are the kind we had in our stew, and used in the imo-ni-kai. These seem to be definitely a kind of yam, smaller than the ones I saw in Africa but with the same broad waxy leaves. They grow well here – you can see those leaves in everybody’s garden once you get a bit out of the city – maybe yams were the staple diet all over this part of the world once, as they still seem to be in some Pacific islands.

The chillies are doing quite well this year as the deer have been kind enough not to break through the 3m net I put round them and eat all the leaves off, and the wet July was followed by lots of sunshine in August and September. Chillies need sun, especially Habaneros, and our small but hot “ishigaki” variety.

Min. temp. 11°C max. 18°C

 

Farmlog 21st September 2009 23 September, 2009

Filed under: countryside — johnraff @ 2:49 pm
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Yes it’s Autumn for real, all the rice in nearby paddy fields is golden and some has already been harvested, and all kinds of wild nuts and berries are ripening up so the wild population can get through the coming (probably mild) winter. Not quite as cold as last week and dinner under the stars with the Milky Way visible, a bottle of wine and some Spanish guitar music softly accompanying the insect chorus was quite pleasant… (I recommend “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” by Narciso Yepes.)

  • We used to have 5 chestnut trees behind the house, but insects and a typhoon got most of them; we planted another though, and the nuts are ripening now. Last year the monkeys came and ate them, but we got some on Monday – you can cook them with milk and sugar, then mash for a nice dessert, and chestnut rice is good too.
  • higanbana coming up everywhere. A beautiful red flower that blooms exactly at the Buddhist higan period. There’s nothing to be seen through the summer – the leaves only appear briefly in the spring, I don’t know how it manages.
  • On our way back home through the village we passed a folorn tai yaki van. As it was a public holiday he must have thought children visiting from the city might get their grandparents to buy some, but didn’t seem to be doing much business.
  • Min 13°C, max: I don’t know because we left early to get back to Nagoya where Daihachi Ryodan were due to play at a festival, but at 12:00 it was 25°C.
 

out demons out 3 February, 2009

Filed under: customs,music — johnraff @ 2:13 pm
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Anyone remember the Edgar Broughton Band? Back at university it seemed like they’d be there at any festival, event or concert with those Beefheart vocals and wild distorted guitar. I hated them at the time, them and another bad penny, the Third Ear Band who went in for interminable atonal wailings. (Subsequently changed my mind completely about them, and probably would have liked the Broughtons too if I’d heard them a couple of years later.)

Anyway every year I get reminded of Edgar Broughton’s anthem “Out Demons Out”; today is Setsubun, the coldest time of the year which, as everything contains the seed of its opposite, means the beginning of Spring. You’re supposed to throw beans around the house shouting “Demons out,  luck in”  or something. (Demons, or oni represent evil influences, generally, and have horns just like the Western variety.)  I wonder how many people actually do it now – maybe another generation and most of these customs will have died out…

You can check out Edgar Broughton’s rendering of “Out Demons Out” here – real 60s stuff! I keep meaning to have a go with Daihachi Ryodan but it will have to wait till we have a gig at the beginning of February some year. (Probably noone would enjoy it but me anyway.)

 

Cloudy Tanabata 8 July, 2008

Filed under: Uncategorized — johnraff @ 1:43 am
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Today is Tanabata – a day full of associations with the Summer stars and the Milky Way. Unfortunately, on the 7th of July your chance of being able to see any stars is pretty low, as it’s the middle of the rainy season! In fact, “the 7th day of the 7th month” should really be by the lunar calendar, which would put it about a month later, in early August, when you’ve got a much better chance of a star-filled Summer sky. Some places in Japan have Tanabata festivals in August, but the official date is the 7th of July, i.e. the lunar date has just been switched to the Western calendar with no adjustment for the (about) 1-month difference. The same happened to the “first day of Spring” and most other events on the Japanese calendar since it was changed to the Western Gregorian system in 1873.. Apparently the current Meiji government saved a month’s worth of civil servants’ salaries that way, but we’re still living with the consequences…