O-Bon dance and free beer

It is now O-Bon here and yesterday the big bon-dance in the central Odori Koen park started. Lots of people show up in yukatas (or normal clothes) and dance a very simple dance around a central stage where people play drums, flutes, and other things. This goes on for hours.

I like this, and since it is a good chance to use one of my many yukatas, I stopped by yesterday. When I took a short break to check why there were so many e-mails assaulting my phone, and old Japanese man came up to me and said: "Great! You were great. Keep up the good work." When I had finished checking my e-mails and were looking at the other people dancing to try to find a spot where it would be easy to jump in (it was pretty crowded), the same man came up to me and said: "Go go go!" and more or less pushed me into the dance again, haha.

Another man came up to me and talked for several minutes about his love for The Beatles, and which Beatles songs he likes best. Not sure why, but then again, why not?

A Japanese woman came up to me and congratulated me on my choice of yukata (I wore a black one with red embroidery in the shape of cherry blossoms). She also talked to me about various things. She has lived for 17 years in Britain, she said. She is back in Sapporo for the O-Bon (which means visiting the graves of your dead relatives) only. She later found me again and gave me a big cup of beer.

Coming of age day

Yesterday was the 成人式 (seijinshiki, coming of age day) here in Japan, and people who have turned 20 years old since the last coming of age day dress up and have ceremonies (and photos taken) to celebrate that they are now adults (and they can now vote, smoke, drink etc.).

Men often wear suits (and some women do too) and women often wear colorful kimonos (some men wear Japanese clothing, though much less colorful; usually they wear hakama). I like these colors and clothes. In Sapporo, coming of age day is a bit cold, so I guess your feet might not like this type of clothing.

I have been thinking of going to one of the places were tourists can try on Japanese kinonos and have photos taken in traditional Japanese settings, but I never get around to it. The closest I have come so far is when I dressed up as a geisha in Kyoto. Which was fun, though.

Futomaki, toshikoshi soba, LeTao cheese cake, and more

Every year my sister in law makes futomaki (sushi rolls). They are always excellent.

 We had lots of noodles for lunch; both yakisoba and spaghetti.

Of course, there was also toshikoshi soba ("pass the year soba noodles").

I had brought a cheese cake from the LeTao cheese cake maker. This is company from Otaru, the city next to Sapporo.

Japanese New Year breakfast

Setting up a small part of a light Japanese breakfast

No breakfast is complete without sake, I guess

In Japan you eat "toshi koshi soba" ("passing the year soba noodles") on New Year's Eve, and you eat "osechi ryouri" on the morning/lunch of January 1. Osechi is a number of traditional dishes, mainly based on strange puns. You eat beans ("mame") to become a more serious person (also "mame", though a different Chinese character) during the new year etc.

Osechi

Osechi

Osechi

Osechi

More sushi

Breakfast beer, and pickles

More New Year food

Ham

Some raw octopus arms

Japanese Christmas food

Top selling Christmas dish at our school cafeteria (beef curry, omelette, rice, ketchup, broccoli). It is Christmas food because it has green and red colors, and is a "Western dish" (the omelette makes it "Western" by Japanese standards).

In Japan, almost no one is Christian (something like 0.5% I think) and Christian holidays are not generally known or celebrated. People do know about Christmas, though, from American movies and TV shows. So some people have Western style Christmas parties and things like that.

Traditional (though it is a fairly young tradition) Japanese Christmas celebration is to go on a date with your girlfriend/boyfriend at a restaurant serving Western food. Like pasta.

What Japanese people consider to be Christmas food is also interesting. The number on food that springs to mind when you say Christmas is apparently Kentucky Fried Chicken. My guess is the reasoning is something like "Americans eat turkey. Turkey is a bird. Kentucky Fried Chicken serves birds. And it is American. This must be the food most similar to Western world Christmas food", but I could be wrong.

There are thus huge lines outside KFC on Christmas. At some KFC places you have to stand in line for hours. At some places they only serve you if you booked in advance. Bizarre.

At our university cafeteria they also serve Christmas dishes now. These include "grilled chicken leg" (though not from KFC). They also include things like "beef curry with omelette and ketchup, and a small piece of broccoli". This is Christmas food because it has green (broccoli) and red (ketchup) on it (yellow is also common in Christmas food). Anything that is green and red, and not Japanese food, is considered Christmas food. That is not exactly how we divide food into "Christmas food" and "not Christmas food" in Sweden, but still...

More reverse chocolate

I was looking for more cheap reverse chocolate (chocolate where the package has all the text mirrored, because it is chocolate a man can give to a woman on Valentine's Day, which would be the opposite of the normal Valentine thing here in Japan) for a magic trick. The shop I bought it in before no longer has it (sold out), but a friend found some in a different convenience store so I went there to have a look today. They had a sign indicating they sell the things I want on the shelf, but the shelf was empty...

I did find two other types of reverse chocolate though. I bought one to check if the contents were also reversed, but they were not.

Reverse chocolate

In Japan, Valentine's Day is a fairly big event. Women are expected to give chocolate or home baked chocolate cakes to men they are fond of. On "White Day" (14th of March), men then return the favor, and you have to give (at least three times as much as you received) chocolate to the women that gave you chocolate. Originally, women gave chocolate to men they liked to say "I like you, let's become a couple!", and if the man returned chocolate on White Day, it meant "OK!".

The custom has evolved, and women are now also expected to give "giri choco" (giri means "duty" or something you have to do) to all the men at their work place etc. It seems like quite a lot, and most women I have talked to say it is a pain and can cost quite a lot of money.

There is also something called "gyaku choco", gyaku meaning "opposite". This is chocolate that a man gives to a woman on Valentine's Day. So even though you are a man and should just be receiving piles of chocolate, you are giving something, to a woman no less, so it is the opposite of how things should be. Today, I found "gyaku choco" being sold in one of the 12 convenience stores located within a few minutes walking distance from my home. It is so opposite that all the text on the package is mirrored! I might be able to use this for some magic trick or something, and it was cheap, so I bought four of them... Sadly, it is only the box that is mirrored. All the text on the chocolate inside is like the normal boxes.

By the way, I usually get zero pieces of chocolate on Valentine's Day. This means that no one likes me, and no friend or colleague things I am worth chocolate either. In fact, even those years that someone took pity on me and I got something, I got so little that my professor said "That is really really sad" when he heard how little chocolate I got (he is married and still gets huge amounts, apparently), and I get ridiculed by 10 year old boys that also get much more than I do! In a zoo I was asked by small boys how much chocolate I got, and said "nothing". They asked if I did not have any female friends at all?! I said, these two women sitting next to me here are friends enough that we took the bus all the way to this zoo (2 hour trip) together. The kids thought they were very cold hearted towards me, but my friends did not seem to take the hint...

This year will be my seventh Valentine in Japan (though I have only been here five and a half years). It looks like it will be one more traumatizing Valentine this year too...

Japanese New Year: Hatsumode at Meiji Jingu

Me outside the Meiji Jingu grounds.

When the new year starts, you go to the Shinto shrines for "hatsumode" ("first visit"). If you go right after midnight when the new year has just started, there is usually a huge line and you have to wait for hours (if you go to one of the larger shrines). I once went to the Hokkaido Jingu in Sapporo, but the line was kilometers long, with 30 people abreast... and it is fairly cold here in the winter nights, so I gave up.

If you manage to reach the actual shrine, you throw some money in a basket, pull a rope connected to some bells (causing noise so the Gods know to listen to you), and pray for something (like passing the entrance exam to your favorite university). You also usually buy a form of written prediction of how your new year will turn out. You get things like "very lucky" or "not so lucky", and details about love life, money, etc. If you get some bad prediction, you can tie it to a tree in the shrine to have the bad effects canceled.

There are usually also tents selling alcohol, hot dogs, and general festival food. Having this kind of commerce on the shrine or temple grounds is very common in Japan, but was a bit strange to me at first. But the religions here seem fairly relaxed, and many shrines and temples put up Christmas decorations on the Buddhas or shrines and other things like that.

My brother and his girlfriend eating crepes outside the temple. The tents in the background is for getting people to donate blood.

People ahead of me in the line to the shrine. And the line turns around the corned and goes on for much longer.

This year I went to Meiji Jingu, which is possibly the most heavily visited shrine in Japan. I went there on January 3 in the hope that most people would have already done their hatsumode by now, so the line would not be that long. Compared to peak times, it was not long, but it still would take more than an hour of standing in line, so I once again gave up. I went to a nearby store selling funny t-shirts instead. As I understand, Meiji Jingu gets more than 3 million visitors during the first three days of the year. If you go there during the summer when nothing special is going on, there are around 10 other people or so.

Japanese New Year: Endless amounts of food

My brother's girlfriend made some excellent "futo maki" (sushi rolls).

I had a fairly traditional Japanese New Year this year. In Japan, New Year is a big deal, and most people have several days off from work. You celebrate the new year with your family, so this is the time of year where it is most expensive and difficult to get plane tickets, and there used to be lines of cars standing still for 80 km when everyone was going back home to gather with their relatives or when everyone was going back to the cities to work after the holidays.

Some octopus, sushi, ham, and other things.

The main activity is doing nothing, and eating. Traditionally, not even housewives where supposed to work during the New Year celebration and they had to work lots before instead, making enough food to feed the whole extended family for three days.

Toshi koshi soba

There are some foods that you are supposed to eat. On the 31st, you eat "toshi koshi soba" ("bringing in the new year soba"), which means soba noodles, with no additions (i.e. no meat etc.) but in extreme amounts. You also eat "osechi ryouri", lots of small dishes of traditional food. Most are based on some kind of word-play system, so you eat beans to have a year where you are serious in studies or work because the word for bean is "mame" but "mame" is also the word for serious. There is also a lot of other food that you eat, and you drink a lot of alcohol.

Crabs are not particularly New Year but they are very Hokkaido, where I am from, so I am usually asked to bring crabs with me.

Sukiyaki

Swedish cheese is not normally available at Japanese New Year tables, but my brother had brought some with him which was nice for me. Also, cheese slicers like the one in this picture are almost unheard of in Japan (they get pre-sliced cheese here).

Japanese Christmas

Roast beef and salad.

In Japan, people do not really celebrate Christmas. The celebration that Japanese people do are mainly: 1) stand in line at Kentucky Fried Chicken and buy fried chicken (everyone knows that in the West, people eat turkey for Christmas (not in Sweden, though...) and KFC is close enough, and it is American, so it must be Christmas food); and 2) buy strawberry sponge cakes (because that is also Western, and very Christmasy (in Sweden we do not eat that for Christmas either...)).

Home baked bread!

Christmas is also a night were you have to go on a romantic dinner date if you have a girlfriend, so there are lots of couples out that night. Luckily  (?) I do not have anyone who would date me, so I spent both Christmas Eve (when Japanese people date) and the 25th in our magic bar, working. In fact, I worked every night from Thursday to Sunday, since Friday (23rd) was a holiday (the emperor's birthday) and we were open on Sunday because it was Christmas.

Christmas cake

On the 24th, I was invited to a friend's house and four of us spent a few hours there eating Christmas party food. It included a cake with strawberries, of course, and also had roast beef, avocado salad, octopus carpaccio, various stick vegetables, and home baked bread. Everything was very good (it always is when my friend is cooking). Especially the bread!

My friend is great at cooking, but less great at cooking proper amounts of food. There is always way way way too much. But delicious, so everyone ends up eating too much. Everything was of course home made. My friend even has a proper oven, so she roasted the roast beef herself, and baked the sponge for the cake etc.

Japanese holidays: Pocky day

In Japan a popular snack is Pocky. Pocky is a crispy stick dipped in chocolate. There are many expressions in Japanese related to Pocky. For example, if you get a strong sunburn while wearing a t-shirt you get a "Pocky burn", since your arms are chocolate brown for the larger part but white on top.

November 11 is "Pocky day". This is because 11/11 looks like for Pocky sticks. So you are supposed to eat or give Pocky to friends. This year it is extra much Pocky, 11/11/11, so our university coop celebrates by giving 11 times the normal amount of points (i.e. 11 points instead of 1) for purchases of Pocky that day.