Not Just Ninjas

Thanks to my boss for forwarding me this New York Times article, incredibly focused on Noshiro and Akita!

In Japan, Rural Economies Wane as Cities Thrive
By MARTIN FACKLER

NOSHIRO, Japan — The only outward sign of conflict here is the red flags of protest, but this small logging city on Japan’s remote northern coast is seething.

A proliferation of national chain stores outside town has already forced the closing of about half of the city’s once teeming central shopping district. Now, many in this normally restrained rural community see the megamall being built nearby, by a company based near Tokyo, as the final nail in the coffin of their economy. read more

It doesn’t make Noshiro sound very nice, but the depiction of empty lots and shuttered stores is sadly true. We’ve learned to ignore these things and just accept that this is what a medium-size town looks like in Japan; all the similar-sized towns we have visited are in the same state. On the other hand, restaurants and nighttime hangouts seem immune to these problems, and Noshiro is blessed with many wonderful, warm and bustling eateries (and people!) that are probably the #1 thing we love about the town.

We have heard rumors of this new Supercenter that Aeon wants to build east of town. But generally, people don’t talk to us about these kinds of things, probably because of the language barrier. While it would be nice to have a huge mall nearby (we currently have to drive an hour to get certain groceries), I agree with the townspeople quoted in this article that it would probably be the last nail in the coffin for the downtown business district. There’s already a big department store right in the middle of town (JUSCO, you can see it in the picture above) which is probably responsible for shutting down most of the small stores on that street. Putting a bigger one outside of town might even kill that downtown JUSCO, which would be doubly terrible, leaving the main central shopping street almost completely useless.

Thanks again to John for forwarding that article to me. Amazing to see our very own “shopping street” (our name for it; the real name is ??, Yanagimachi, “willow town”) on the pages of the NYT.

Last Monday I arrived at my high school to discover with dismay that I was at the wrong school. It’s not so surprising actually. With 15 schools to visit, it’s a wonder I don’t make this mistake all the time. With one hour to regroup, I went home and began my planning for elementary school lessons. Raw ingredients for the day’s lessons included:

• my smallest school, with only 10 kids in the entire student body
• my voice, hoarse and almost inaudible, from a long and insistent cold

I racked my brain: with an hour’s notice, how could I finagle a day of successful lessons? And then it hit me: Of course! I would bring the pumpkins.

(more…)

I didn’t hear about the southern-California wildfires until my mom told me about them on the phone yesterday. Since then I’ve been riveted by the Flickr community’s photos that are constantly being uploaded by photographers all over the region.

You can get an idea of the scale of this thing from this map from KPBS.

The amazing thing is that this map covers as much area as the entire prefecture that we live in in Japan.

It’s deja vu all over again. We lived in San Diego for four years before moving to Japan, and the fire pictures are taking us back to 2003 when some of the same areas burned at almost exactly the same dates, starting on October 26 and continuing for several days after.

Our thoughts are with our friends in San Diego, particularly John and Kathie who live directly between the north and south fires.

Pumpkins and Potatoes

I’ve been coaching a high school student for a speech contest (which she won, incidentally). She was really nervous the day before the contest. To calm her nerves, another teacher suggested that she imagine that everyone in the audience was a potato or a pumpkin. This advice, “Minna wa jagaimo”, is apparently de rigeur when trying to calm public speakers. I told my co-teacher that our old stand-by is to imagine everyone in the audience in their underwear. I don’t think this American version was translated for my student’s benefit.

The Big Chill

I’ve been doing mini-lessons on Halloween, explaining why we wear costumes, and why we make Jack O’Lanterns. During one of these lessons, I learned people go to haunted houses in Japan also, though it is a summer activity, because being scared cools the body.  I can see a certain logic there, I suppose, but autumn will always be haunted house time for me.

Piping Hot

Many of the onsens around Akita are located in mountainous areas. These ups and downs can be really hazardous to negotiate in the winter with ice on the road. However, wintertime is exactly when you want to take a nice long dip on an onsen. The solution? Pipe onsen water under the roads to keep them ice free. Efficient and brilliant. Here’s a cross section of road with all the tubes for water:

Oishii, yo!

While driving through the ken, we stumbled onto a little pullout by the side of the road, which was absolutely brimming with trucks. We pulled over to see what the hubbub was about, and found people enthusiastically filling huge jugs with the water pouring out of a pipe from the mountain. Empty bottles were provided nearby for a small fee. People were hauling away this water by the truckload. Apparently this particular source of water was praised by some writer, and ever since, people have flocked to this spot. With assurances of “oishii, yo!”, I filled up one of my own bottles for a sample. I must not have a very sensitive palate, because I tasted nothing. Or perhaps that is the very embodiment of delicious water.

When we moved to Noshiro, we were “thrilled” to find that our otherwise wonderful house included two ancient rusty car hulks in the front yard. You may remember them from such photographs as “Our House”:

According to Nate, Steph’s predecessor, they had been there when he’d moved in three years before.

Well, last week, a couple guys showed up at our front door and asked me if those cars were mine. “Heck no,” I said in my best Japanese, “but I can take you to the person who knows.” I showed them to our landlord who lives in one of the blue shacks next door. I left them to it and surreptitiously watched out a window as they gestured and yakked around the cars. The guys got in their souped-up spoilered window-tinted pimpmobile and went on their way.

I didn’t really expect that they would actually return for the hulks. But my lack of faith, disturbing or otherwise, was rewarded today when a crane truck backed into the driveway right up next to the cars. Open the gates, Peter, they’re a-comin’ home!

Now they are gone and a whole new world of landscaping opportunities (and parking places!) has opened before us. We might need to have a bring-your-own-car party just to see how many we can fit out there. It’s still not Andy’s driveway, but we’re catching up!

P.S. I was amused to note that a pine sapling about two feet high had grown between the cars.

I discovered this delightful public-service announcement posted over the urinals in the bathroom of a visitor center on the slopes of Mount Chokai in the south end of Akita. It says “please take one more step forward.” Or in the words of our friend Andy: “You’re not as close as you think you are.”

This is how I came to be face to face with the naked Japanese man.

I’ve been flirting with onsens lately… well, me and Chris both. Onsening seemed a little intimidating and unnecessary at first. I already have my own shower and the luxury of privacy in my own home, why jettison both for a clothes-free dip with strangers? Well, we’re sucking it up now, and giving it a try.

There are tons of onsens around, so each one has to find its niche to stand out in some way. An onsen’s selling point may be the mineral content of their waters, which are piped directly out of the bowels of the earth. Or it may be the water color, with shades ranging from turquoise to rusty brown, chock full of various healing properties, bound to cure whatever ails you. Another way an onsen can add spice to the bathing game is to add gimmicks to their pools. Here is where my stress comes in.

The general pool-soaking concept, I get. It’s a no-brainer. My issue is with the onsens that have decided to get overly creative, the places with slots for individual bathers, one inch pools with wooden head rests for laying down, electric pools, super hot pools, super cold pools, outdoor pools, or spouts of water that fall from the sky. Each onsen has a sign next to it explaining what’s going on, but this usually does me little good. Every time I go to a new onsen, I have to scope the scene, and watch everyone else nonchalantly to make sure I understand what each pool is “for”.

In the spirit of sampling the wide diversity of the onsen spectrum, we decided to visit Taenoyu near Lake Tazawa, where the water has a famed and mysterious milky-white hue. People come from all around to soak in these waters, and we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

With a new onsen, you just never know what you’re going to get. We’ve been to onsens that were basically ugly linoleum boxes, large industrial complexes with lockers for hundreds upon hundreds of guests, designed with an eye for volume instead of aesthetics. We were relieved to find the opposite layout at Taenoyu. We were welcomed warmly into a discreet little wooden building, overflowing with charm and ambiance. The small foyer, which was filled to capacity with empty pairs of shoes, hinted at the modest size of the establishment, with barely room for 20 people in the baths.

Once I had paid and disappeared behind the red curtain which marked the women’s only area, I found a beautiful bathing area constructed entirely out of wood, with only 4 showers for everyone to share. The scent of sulfur and herbal shampoo co-mingled pleasantly in the air. After showering, I soaked in the two simple yet relaxing baths, complete with wooden recliners built into the pool.

Two pools are all well and good, but a bit on the small side for an onsen, especially one as famous as Taenoyu. Which is when I saw the mysterious wooden door. Figuring this must lead to another room of female-only bathing, I nonchalantly walked my naked self through.

On the other side, I found a set of rather pleasant outdoor pools, overlooking a waterfall set amongst the trees. In between me and this tranquil scene was a naked Japanese man, who was lurking just outside of the door to the women’s baths (in retrospect this seems a little suspect). This area of the onsen was unisex, every man for herself.

With an eep! I quickly retreated to the haven of the women’s only bathing room to regroup. I had heard that mixed bathing onsen existed, but had been too shy to purposefully seek them out. I then noticed this label 混 on the door. If I had taken a moment to read this kanji earlier, it would have informed me that the room beyond was “mixed”. Ahhh, kanji. If only I could learn and remember 2,000 of you I wouldn’t, for example, walk naked into a room full of men. Mental note, must study more.

I struck up a conversation with two fellow female bathers. They informed me that all of the onsen in the area are mixed gender. Charming. My new friends exited the bathing pool, and covered the front of their bodies with a “modesty towel”. Why Japanese women feel the need to cover their fronts and not their backs, I’m not sure, but no one seems to mind if their bum hangs out in the breeze. Women started to gather at the door to the outside pools, sneaking peaks and assessing the situation.

I glanced at my friends, and I knew what I had to do. I told them, if you go in, I’ll go in with you. We made our pact, and I went to go get my own towel. Together, we took the plunge, through the looking glass and into the world of co-ed public Japanese bathing, and this is what we found:

In the end, the mixed gender thing wasn’t such a big deal. Onsens are about relaxation and contemplation, so everyone was in their own little world anyway. That plus the fact that I knew no one and would never see them again made any initial awkwardness dissipate pretty quickly.

Final analysis? Totally worth it and I’m so going back.

*Thanks to the Taenoyu website and the Flickr community for the photos that appear in this post.

It’s not often that a garbage truck brightens your day, but here you go, fresh and ripe from the nothern city of Sapporo.

Singing Trash

Niigata was hit by a big earthquake a couple hours ago.  I felt it sitting here at the computer, a slow swaying motion that went on for quite awhile and reminded me of being on a boat.  I just wanted to write this quick post to say everything’s all right up here.

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