Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Updates

Just 2 days ago I finally started to look my age. Prior to that, I felt I looked both younger and older, but not 27. Maybe it was a good hair day, I don't know. Anyway, today in class I realized this is the age my first Japanese ALT was when he taught me in my first year of Japanese. Maybe that's why this year's sophomore class is so endearing to me (lucky for them, too, because their work ethic isn't exactly bent on English mastery of late).

Two thoughts occurred from this:
  1. I should get in touch with Toyama 先生. Even though it's been a while since my last correspondence with him, I can reasonably assume he would be happy to hear something from me since I know I'd be glad to hear from some of my students in 10 years or so.
  2. I should conform this blog to my original intentions, which were to post bilingually, and to keep things short, frequent, and media-rich.

The day being well spent, I'm saving item #1 for another time; concerning #2 however, I just started up a parallel blog for Japanese entries. So for anybody interested in reading (and correcting!) my Japanese, please take a look. Nouvelles de Toke in Japanese. There's not much there currently, but depending on how long my current spirit of revival holds out, I may just be able to duplicate some of the posts here in Japanese. Approximately.

And now, to keep things media-rich, my favorites of the day:


豚まん, contains pork. So why not make it look like a little piggy? I'd still eat it.


I had to take a photo of this one. Canned bottled water. Only ¥100, too.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Wishlist: Recording The Beatles


It recently occured to me that someone reading this might have an extra hundred dollars laying around they don't yet have a use for. If you happen to be such a person, I am here to help. This morning I found just the thing to take your anxiety away. Take that worthless hundred dollars, buy me this book, and have a wonderful day!

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Today's Photos



I went to Showa-no-Mori this morning and took a few pictures (okay, like, forty) of the plum trees which are blossoming now. If I didn't have a stuffy, runny nose and sinuses more tightly packed than a 7 o'clock commuter train from Shinagawa to Shinjuku, I would be able to tell you about how wonderful the scent was. But as it happened, I could barely smell anything. Just a second of sweet cinnamon and then it went static on me. Even that was enough to recall those times when I haven't had a head cold. Simply put: Ume blossoms are better than any other blossoming of any plant I can think of, year-round. They even beat out the lilac bushes in Grandma's backyard in summertime. I swear, if Heaven gets fashioned for each of us differently, mine will have a giant grove of always blossoming plum trees somewhere near the entrance...



On a different subject...
I'd thought I'd finally found a great place to upload photos online in Picasa. I tend to like everything Big Brother Google does for us, because Google likes to do things massively and freely (take Blogger, for instance, or Gmail). However, I just found out that my limit for pictures there is 250MB and they do something funny with their compression (I know because the buds in the top photo of this post should be much deeper red and the contrast and saturation levels are muddied somewhat on all the photos compared to the originals). Turns out I'd have been better off with Flickr because there I have no limit so long as I only upload so much per month. I don't like Flickr, though, because Yahoo! owns it and the more Yahoo! touches stuff the less useful and more Spam-filled it gets. Alas...

Is there no company out there who will give me unlimited uploads forever and charge me nothing? And have all the best options and add-ons? And do my ironing?


Friday, February 02, 2007

Hinamatsuri Displays - ひな祭りの品物

On March 3rd, the Japanese celebrate Hinamatsuri, also known as the Doll Festival (and sometimes the Peach Festival because it used to occur during peach blossom season). It's mainly a day for families with girls, and part of the celebration includes displaying Hina Dolls.
[You can read more about the festival here and here if you want, but this post is just going to be about the displays.]

"Hina" can be understood to mean little and cute, small and lovely, or miniature ("matsuri" is the Japanese word for festival) and the prominent little cute miniature things around Hinamatsuri are certainly doll displays. They can range from $20 up to $2000 in price, and are made of all sorts of materials, mostly porcelain or plastic made to look like porcelain, and also really nice fabric. My understanding is that the principal characters are the Emperor and Empress, and the others are their retinue. Smaller sets display only the royal couple and instead of the various lords, ladies and servants, it is popular to include ornaments such as lamps, lanterns, tiny food offerings, flower petals (especially peach blossoms), and various symbols of long life or good fortune or love (cranes, rabbits, cherry or plum blossoms come to mind). Over the past few weeks I've made it a goal to snap as many photos of these as I can. I've posted the full set on Picasa if you want to see them all; meanwhile, here are some of my favorites with a few comments thrown in for good measure.

This one I'd say is a typical display, excepting the fact that it's glass-enclosed. But it's got the royal family, three court ladies (sannin kanjo), some flowers, lanterns, a wagon and what seems to be a mikoshi, with some peach blossoms blooming on the gilded wall in back.

This one is smaller, and is made out of Japanese fabric. Notice that the couple are seated in peach blossoms, and that adjacent displays also have peach blossom motifs.

I like this variation a lot. The royal couple being rabbits, it makes sense that the food should be carrots instead of rice dumplings! Also worth mentioning is the background of plum, pine and bamboo trees (these trees have a special meaning, and are featured together especially during the winter) and the cherry blossom fabric underneath the display.

This set is from a sort of Kmart-like store, where you can buy goods of all kinds at low prices. It's got all the trappings of its more expensive relatives (the flower arrangements, food offerings, multi-layered kimono, and folding screen background) but if you take a closer look you can tell it's not of the highest caliber. Even so, I believe it was around ¥2000 ($16).

On the opposite end of the price-scale, we have here a set from the Sogo Department Store's 9th floor, "Ye Olde Japan-Style Goods" shop. (They don't actually call it that, but it does a good job of selling totally upper-class, high-end products in a patriotic way. I imagine the Japanese who shop there feel nostalgic for the good ol' days without remembering that back in those same good ol' days, no one could afford this stuff.) Priced at ¥189,000, it's the most expensive couple on this post. I wasn't sure if the small chest of drawers came with, but I think it was supposed to.

This is a closeup of the dolls. It's not in focus, but you can tell that the material used to make their clothes is real, and the Empress' hair below the braid looks like doll hair. I doubt they make them anymore, but some time ago, Hina dolls were made with human hair.

The Hinamatsuri itself doesn't occur until March 3rd, so I have a few more weeks to collect photos. I'm curious to find the biggest, most audaciously expensive display. The other day at a train station I saw a poster advertising a huge event down in Katsura, where they fill up an entire street with dolls, so maybe we'll go check that out too if there's time.