Exploring other career options in Japan

If you blinked and missed the cherry blossoms, the next seasonal clue to look for in Japan is fields full of water. April and May are rice-planting months, and while this is mostly done by machines these days, I live in the real, hardcore country where it’s clearly more fun to watch people wade around in the mud and do it by hand. If you have a Taue festival at the same time, you can get people to do your farm work for free. Er, I mean invite people to celebrate with you. In your field. While they plant rice.

It was actually a lot of fun. The mud was really cold and I was on the lookout for the little black poisonous snakes that lurk in rice paddies, but I still had a good time. I went to the same festival last year, so I knew what to expect this time around. A team of old ladies jump, strip and redress you in a fashionable burlap kimono and sexy straw hat, then march you out to the field. Since it’s Japan, there was at least half an hour of speeches and a ceremony at the beginning, including shaking hands with the mayor, offering the field a bottle of sake, and watching two guys dressed as an ox be pulled around in the mud to symbolically plow the field. Then it was down to business.

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Everyone walks backwards though the mud, planting row after row of rice. When we got partway across, the costumed drummers who had been playing at the side of the field got into the mud behind us and continued to drum and sing. I’m sure we’d have been done faster if they had planted rice instead, but I digress.

It’s backbreaking work, but I’ve never had this much fun playing in the mud.

The Kyoto Protocol in Action

Environmentalism my arse. If Japan is so serious about saving the environment, people should stop sending me so many faxes. Especially since this chemical-laden paper will be burned, not recycled.

Sakura Season

About a month later than scheduled, the weather suddenly picked up and I ventured out from under the table for a weekend of extremely Japanese fun. On Friday night, I wandered along a riverbank lined with cherry trees strung with lanterns, impatiently waiting for dusk to fall so that I could take the following fuzzy, poorly-lit pictures. They don’t really do the trees, lights or atmosphere justice at all.

On Saturday, some friends and I went for a drive and a picnic to indulge in Japan’s top spring obsession, Hanami, or cherry-blossom viewing. Allegedly, the purpose of cherry blossom viewing parties is to celebrate the coming of spring, and to take the time to appreciate the profound, fleeting beauty of the fragile cherry blossoms. In actuality, it’s just this season’s excuse to have a party and get drunk in public. I’m sure that some people do appreciate the blossoms for deeply spiritual and/or artistic reasons, but the rest of the nation sees the opening of the blossoms as the signal that it’s party time again. I swear this country would have a festival for just about everything if it were allowed, but I can’t help but respect a society that works and plays equally hard.

Sunday found almost everyone I know a couple of hours from home in Tsuwano, the only place at this end of the prefecture that makes it into guide books. It’s a very cute town, home to some interesting history, an Inari shrine up a mountain, some castle ruins, cute old streets lined with cute old buildings, and gutters filled with colourful carp.

Every spring, Tsuwano hosts Yabusame (horseback archery) which is what we were there to see. Basically, archers clad in tradition riding gear shoot a series of wooden targets as their cranky horses hurtle unwillingly along a track. There’s a great deal of pomp and ceremony involved in most of the proceedings, given weight by the intense, blood-chilling war cries of the archers, and undermined by uncooperative steeds and inconveniently placed horse poop.

Good times. I’m glad they shoot away from the crowd.

Spring Break – Part Two - Okinawa

My second spring break venture was a dramatic change of scenery.

Okinawa has a very different climate and culture from mainland Japan, and even Japanese people consider a trip to Okinawa to be the next best thing to actually going to a different country. Okinawa’s past relations with various Asian countries are reflected in its music, art, architecture, food, textiles, traditions, etc. This + the indigenous culture + influences from mainland Japan and America = a really strange cultural environment.

Okinawa suffered a lot of damage during World War 2, but since most of the aid and help with clean-up after the war came from the Americans, Okinawa ended up grateful to America and resentful of Japan. As a result, Okinawa is now a strange cultural mish-mash that works well for tourism. I was quite happy to revel in the old and the new, learning about the little kingdom’s history and culture while enjoying as much “American food” as possible.

I had a blast, visiting castles, seeing traditional theater, and shopping on Kokusai-dori(International Street), the biggest, brightest, most life-sized-cartoon-character infested tourist trap I have ever seen. It was warm. There were palm trees. I ate tacos and rode a monorail. Even the fact that it rained almost the whole time couldn’t spoil my fun.

In retrospect, I’m not sure that I could have visited two places within Japan that were more different. Kyoto is the center of Japanese culture, and Okinawa is the least Japanese of all the prefectures. Seeing them a week apart made the differences seem even greater, so I suppose it’s no wonder I was a bit dazed after I got back. And broke.

Spring Break - Part One - Kyoto

I’ve found that most people in Japan get a fair number of paid vacation days per year, but it is a definite faux-pas to take a day off from work, even if you are disgustingly sick. I’ve done my best to behave like a good Japanese employee and not miss any school, but this means that when a school break rolls around, I feel like I’ve got to make the most of it. During spring break last year, my parents came for a sightseeing tour-de-force that spanned all the way from Tokyo to Gotsu and back again. This year wasn’t quite as epic, but I really wanted to see Kyoto and Okinawa, and somehow ended up doing both.

My first stop was Kyoto.

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for centuries, and as a result, the city is full of places that have great historic and cultural significance. There are numerous world heritage sites, and Japanese people still widely regard it as the cultural capital of Japan. Kyoto has well over 1500 shrines and temples, which is a bit mind boggling for tourists. How do you decide which ones to see? I had two places that I really wanted to go, so after that I just surrendered myself to wandering around and going anywhere that interested me, and I ended up in some neat places.



The first item on my agenda was Kinkaku-ji, or “The Golden Pavilion”. I had to stand for the 45 minute bus ride to get there, and the viewing area that everyone takes pictures from strongly reminded me of a mosh-pit (though mostly full of old people) but was worth it to get a peek at Japan’s shiniest temple. Like so many things in Japan, it is a recreation, as the previous one was burned down in the 1950s by a disgruntled monk.

The other place that I really wanted to see was the Fushimi Inari Shrine. There are Inari Shrines all over Japan, but this is the biggest and best of them all. The hike up the mountain was pretty tiring, but I was distracted by the thousands of vermillion toriis that flank the path. My reward for my hike was a great view down over the city, a series of closed shops and refreshment stands, and lanterns that began to glow spookily as evening fell and I made my way back down the mountain.

Cities always boast if they have the number one anything. Apparently I saw the largest wooden structure in Japan (the massive temple next to my hotel) and I went to the tallest 5 story pagoda in Japan at Toji Temple . I also visited Sanjusangendo Hall at Rengeoin Temple, which houses 1001 bronze Buddha statues (cool looking but creepy as Hell, standing in rows like an army of bronze soldiers, not remotely peaceful), Kyoto National Museum was conveniently across the street, and somehow I walked all the way to Gion.


I’m not sure that I made it to the famous bit of Gion that everyone talks about. I saw Minamiza Theater (the oldest theater in Japan) but I didn’t see any Geishas. Then again, perhaps 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon is not prime geisha time. I settled for shopping instead, since the buildings in “old Kyoto” actually looked much newer than anything around where I live. I guess the architecture in Gotsu hasn’t changed much in the last couple of centuries.

Escaping the Kotatsu

There is another method of surviving the Japanese winter that is more expensive than the kotatsu, but also a lot more interesting; just go somewhere warmer. You don’t even have to leave Japan, just go to a different bit that has better weather than where you live. Traveling in Japan is pricey, but it’s nowhere near as expensive as attempting to leave Japan for a vacation. Gotsu is near the Sea of Japan, so while it’s at the southern end of Honshu, it’s also on the northern coast. The southern, Inland Sea coast is a much more sheltered and temperate area, making it a great day-trip destination, even in the winter.

Some Japanese friends took me to Hiroshima a few months back, and while it was cold and snowing in Gotsu, it was gorgeous once we got through the mountains and down to Hiroshima. It got even better once we made our way over to Miyajima, an island just off the coast of the city that boasts the largest torii gate in Japan.

It is actually part of a shrine called Itsukushima-jinja, a scenic place connected by multiple wooden boardwalks, and surrounded by water when the tide is in. From there, the gate appears to be far out in the water, and the whole place is aptly called "the floating shrine". Tough luck for me the tide was mostly out, so I visited the land-locked shrine and the standing-in-the-shallows torii, but it was still nice. It snowed on us all the way home again that evening, but for the few hours we were there we could stroll around in the sunshine with our coats open, feeling warmer than we usually did in our homes.

I escaped again in March, this time to Yokohama. It was a business trip, so I didn’t get to do much sight-seeing, but it was nice to get out of the conference center and be able to walk around in the evening. Spring obviously arrives early there, as it was much warmer than Gotsu, and many trees were in bloom.

My big hotel by the big ferris wheel.

The even bigger Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan.

I’m not really sure what this is but it looks neat.

Despite being part of Tokyo, Yokohama actually reminded me of a nicer version of Vancouver. The tall, shiny office buildings, shopping malls and hotels make it feel like a big city, but it is also full of parks, trees, and is on the waterfront. And since it’s in Japan, it’s perfectly safe, with attractive, well-lit, tree-lined streets completely devoid of homeless people and rubbish. Well, I saw one piece of litter during my four days there, so I took a picture of it. My kind of place.

Kotatsu Culture

I'm cold.

No, this isn’t the outside temperature. Well, actually, it might be, but that’s not the problem. Unfortunately, this thermometer is on my kitchen table, and this is the temperature inside my apartment. In this land of technological advancement, where every car has GPS and a DVD player, and every child had a cellphone, none of the houses have heating or insulation. Well, some posh ones in Tokyo might, but mine sure as hell doesn’t.

There are a variety of ways to combat the Japanese winter. I know many people who stick an adhesive heating pad on their lower back, the theory being that “if your liver is warm, the rest of you will be warm”. My toes disagree. Most people (and all of my schools) run kerosene heaters indoors and have to keep a window open to prevent death-by-fumes (the most counter-productive, dangerous, and inexplicably common method).

I just stay under my coffee table.

It’s actually called a kotatsu, but it’s essentially a coffee table with a heater mounted underneath. You lift off the table top, put in a blanket, replace the top, then get under it, turn it on, and don’t get out unless you absolutely have to. I’m usually under mine within 15 minutes of coming home from work, and I wake up under it in the wee hours of the morning several times a week with a very stiff neck.

It sounds pretty odd, but it’s actually a deeply rooted part of the culture, as whole families spend days crowded around/under their kotatsu for several months. There are even certain foods that people cook and eat without having to leave the kotatsu, like nabe, a communal pot of soup that just sits in the middle of the table top, having more ingredients added when it starts to run low. In the fall, the stores are stocked with designer blankets and legless chairs to make your kotatsu-dwelling months more comfortable and fashionable. In the spring there are weight-loss programs whose entire advertising campaigns are centered around losing the weight you gained under the table.

I could pretend that I use mine because I understand and respect the cultural and economic significance that the kotatsu has in Japanese society, but I’d be lying. If my apartment wasn’t a walk-in freezer, I’m sure I could find somewhere better to be than under the coffee table.