Hakusan Misadventures

My recent post about Shirakawa-go reminded me that I hadn’t actually discussed the ways in which Hakusan, Ishikawa’s holy mountain, has tried to take me out. First, I feel like I need to stress that Mt. Hakusan (白山） is not a bad hike. It’s not an easy hike for a beginner, but even if you don’t have all the right hiking equipment, it’s not impossible. Japanese hikers will go all out with the hiking gear, and if you have the equipment or the money to buy some, there are plenty of athletic stores like Montbell in Kanazawa.

Bettôdeai - the start of the trail

Shirakawa-go

I’m constantly amazed at how dramatic the landscapes are in the places I have lived since I left the Ohio River Valley. When I lived in Colorado, I spent spring and summer breaks traveling to places like Red Rocks, the Great Sand Dunes, Hot Sulphur Springs, Rocky Mountain National Park, Grand Lake, and Garden of the Gods. When I decided to move back to the Midwest for grad school, I felt a sense of loss–at least until I got to Michigan and discovered how gorgeous it was. If you’ve never been to Michigan in the summer or fall, I can’t recommend it highly enough. The maple leaves, Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, the lakeshores, the forests, the wine country in the north–even without the mountains I never wanted for beauty.

Moving to Hokuriku meant I got both the sea and the mountains, but the sea never grew on me. My old apartment was about two meters from the water, and while I had always hated the humidity, the tsunami also soured my attitude toward sea-side living. Now when I tell people in Chubu and Kansai that I live in Kanazawa, they often respond, “Oh, by the sea?”, but I live far enough inland that I can’t see it. Rather, I tend to think of Ishikawa as mountainous, with Hakusan in the south of the prefecture and the Central Alps also in the region.

Let’s Merry!: Osaka German Christmas Market

While Kanazawa (and most of Hokuriku) got its annual white Christmas, I got a set of Seishun 18 Tickets (青春１８きっぷ) and my husband and I made the trek down to notably sunnier and warmer Kansai for the long weekend.*

Why Osaka at Christmas? For the German Christmas Market, which proved to not only be an entertaining night out but also a sociological experience!

Let’s Merry!: Mameshiba

Mameshiba (豆しば）is one of my favorite short video series. In each 30-second episode, a bean of some sort–lentil, azuki, edamame–pops out of a diner’s food to convey a bit of trivia, the Japanese word for which is mame chishiki (豆知識), lit. bean knowledge. The facts are usually a bit awkward for the situation, like, “Female mantises eat male mantises.” Or, as the commenter lovelylexolicious writes for the prior video,

Storyline of mamashiba.
Random person is hungry, goes for a snack.
This random dog-like piece of food is found.
Mamashiba tells a random fact of trivia.
Person loses hunger and sets down mamashiba.
Mamashiba walks out like a BOSS!

You can watch all of the Mameshiba videos at the official site here or with English subtitles on the official site or on youtube.

Now, how does a Mameshiba celebrate Christmas?

Let’s Merry!: Kanazawa’s Lights

The area around Kanazawa Station（金沢駅) and the shopping districts of Kohrinbo (香林坊) and Tatemachi （竪町) are all aglow this month. It’s funny how some pretty LEDs can cheer you up about the typical Kanazawa winter weather–thundersnow (that deserves its own entry), clumpy snow, rain, sleet, hail, clouds, and all within the same hour.

Let’s Merry!: Let’s Merry!

In case you were wondering about the Engrishy title of this series, “Let’s Merry” is the Starbucks Japan campaign slogan for the seasonal drinks. Update: AND the slogan for the Starbucks US holiday campaign?! Really?

Image from starbucks.co.jp

Let’s Merry!: Decorating

I had a tiny pre-decorated tree at my old apartment out in the country, which was no doubt left behind by a predecessor who wanted the place to feel a little more like home during the Christmas season. I left it behind because, not only was I taking way more stuff than I thought I even owned, the tree just didn’t do anything for me. For me, the act of decorating a tree with ornaments that represent places I’ve been and people I’ve met, rather than simply having a tree, is what invoked warm fuzzy holiday feelings. In fact, as a secular/cultural participant, the tree symbolizes the feeling as if winter has arrived, as the trimming of the tree coincides with the solstice and often the first big snow.

Let’s Merry!: Buying Mochi Rice

New Year’s in Japan means it’s the season for mochi-gome (餅米), mochi rice, a sticky, glutinous rice. Mochi rice is used for two traditional New Year’s foods: mochi, a smooth rice “cake” made of this mochi cake, and sekihan, sticky rice with azuki beans.

Mochi is traditionally made by pounding the rice with a giant mallet called a kine in a large mortar, usu, carved from a tree trunk. While shrines and neighborhood associations will host festivals for New Year, inviting locals to participate in rice pounding, most household will either use an electric mochi-making machine (sort of like a bread-maker for mochi) or buy mochi premade.

Let’s Merry!: Little Taiko Boy (リトル太鼓ボーイ）

This post is an entry in the December 2011 J Festa “Christmas in Japan,” hosted at japingu.

Being in Japan for the holidays means that I can choose my own holiday music if I feel like listening to it. Even though the stores are all playing Christmas Muzak, Japan’s retailers seem to work from a more limited playlist than the US and even have some of the Santa-oriented songs in Japanese, which means I don’t feel encounter these songs often.

A lot of songs that get played around the holidays are meant to make listeners think about peace on earth and goodwill toward others, but how many make you think about your sexual health? For that, there is “Little Taiko Boy.”

Image from "Little Taiko Boy" by All Out Attack Films.

On the official youtube page for All Out Attack Films, the project is described as follows:

Little Taiko Boy’s soundtrack is a safer-sex parody of the American Christmas carol “The Little Drummer Boy” interspersed with the slow rumble of a traditional Japanese taiko drum that sounds like a massive throbbing heart beat. Against this backdrop, several men meet in [Ni-Chome, Shinjuku,] Tokyo’s bathhouses, love hotels and cruising spots for intimate encounters, watched over by a glamorous drag version of Amaterasu Omikami, the Shinto goddess of the Sun played by Japanese activist and artist MADAME BONJOUR JOHNJ. Like a queer Santa Claus, the goddess leaves each couple a condom in a bejeweled wrapper as a gift and blessing for the night.

Any video that contains the phrase “like a queer Santa Claus” deserves a watch, don’t you think? This video, embedded below, is not safe for work for partial nudity and language.

Let’s Merry!: Cookie Tea

My mother usually makes three kinds of Christmas cookies: gingerbread cut-outs, white-velvet cutouts (sugar cookies with cream cheese in the batter), and press cookies. The press cookies are my favorite. We originally had a Mirro cookie press, which functioned like a cross between a coffee press and an icing bag with a tip. Dough was put into a metal tube and pushed out with a plunger through a disk with a shape so the cookie would have a shape without having to be cut out.*

Mirro cookie press. Image from food.com.