7-5-3

You might be thinking "What kind of post title is that?  Did she forget to proofread?"  No, I did not. ;)  

It refers to a Japanese tradition called "Shichi-Go-San" which is the subject of today's post. Shichi-Go-San translates to "seven-five-three".  The tradition, in a nutshell, involves dressing your 3, 5 and 7 year old kids up to go take pictures of them, visit a shrine and/or have a party.  Traditionally the day to do this is November 15th, but since it isn't a national holiday most families do it on the closest weekend.  The tradition goes back as far as 800 A.D but changed a good bit around the 1800's and has stayed basically the same since.

I have an American friend here who has a 2 1/2 year old daughter.  She, in turn, is friends with a Japanese family who was kind enough to offer to do Shichi-Go-San with her daughter (I'll call my friend "M" and her daughter "R" in order to somewhat protect their identity). I was fortunate enough to be invited as the official photographer/blogger of the event.

This Japanese family actually has their own "family kimono" that has been passed down through three generations. So R was the fourth to get to wear it.  Not all families have their own real family kimono these days.  Many families will rent them for dress-up occasions as they are rather expensive.  

You may be wondering why I'm posting about this now as it isn't November.  Well, (and this is information that I could find nowhere else on the Internet but I have it on authority from actual Japanese people) if you have your own family kimono (or even if you rent, I suppose) you can opt to also do a kind of "preview" Shichi-Go-San in the spring.  This is for two reasons: 1) you can get pictures outdoors with the spring flowers and 2) you can get pictures of the kids before they get their summer tan.

You also may be wondering why we are doing this when R is only 2 1/2 years old.  It's traditional to do it all in the year the child turns three, even if their birthday hasn't passed yet.  Alternately, some families may choose to use the East Asian method of calculating age, in which a child is one year old at birth and gains a year on each lunar new year.

We started at a hair salon near the home of our host family (run by a family friend), where R was given a fancy updo.

We moved into a side room in the hair salon where the stylist (who is also known as a "kimono master") proceeded to dress R up in the many layers of a three-year-old's kimono.  I'll stop here and praise R, because she was extremely patient and well-behaved during all this.  I couldn't help but think of my own child, who wouldn't have stood for it, no way, no how (and I know this for a fact, but more on that in a later post).

After she was finished, we took a trip to a local shrine where we took family photos.  And then we went to a local park for more photos.  Below is one of my personal favorites.

Many thanks to M and her family for inviting me to see a Shichi-Go-San and for allowing me to blog about it!

Happy Christmas, Japan-Style!

Some of you know that as you read this, we are back in the US celebrating Christmas with family.  I scheduled this post to go out back in early November because that's when the Christmas catalogs started appearing.  No, I don't mean toy catalogs.  I'm referring to the catalogs that supermarkets and convenience stores put out with all the food you can order for the holidays.  I didn't do this post last year because I wanted to wait until we actually had some experience with ordering the holiday food, but at the rate we're going we'll never actually be here at Christmas.  So here it is.

You may have heard about how Japanese people go to Kentucky Fried Chicken for their Christmas dinner.  It's true, many years ago KFC was the closest you could get to an American holiday-type meal here and the KFC advertisers took diabolical advantage of it by convincing the Japanese that everyone in the US eats restaurant fried chicken at Christmas.  And since Christmas is only celebrated as a fun, secular, western holiday here, they believed it.   So as it nears Christmas you'll see a sign-up sheet outside KFC where people sign up for their holiday meal.  When you try to explain to a Japanese person the reality of turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce they just get kinda confused.  As far as I can tell turkey isn't a very popular meat here although you can find a few Butterballs at Costco and you can order them online through the Foreign Buyer's Club.

last year's KFC sign-up sheet and advertising

The other food you have to have at Christmas is cake.  Most supermarkets and bakeries do a booming business selling elaborate cakes that you pre-order and then pick up at Christmas.  They have catalogs that you can get in November with all the cake options listed. 

By far the most fun is the 7-Eleven catalog.  Now, this seems like a pretty ghetto place to get your Christmas food, but I'm not sure if that holds true for the Japanese people.  It does seem like more people go to the supermarket and do their ordering, based on the crowds.  Anyway, we always pick up a 7-11 catalog for sheer entertainment value.

I particularly like this year's catalog cover because it depicts a little scene of Christmas houses.  Notice that the houses are western (including a church), the little people are Japanese, there are dudes running across the roofs and a half-dressed lady is hanging out an upper window.    And, of course, a 7-11 is prominently featured.

The hugely famous pop group AKB48 is prominently featured in the 7-11 catalogs. 

I particularly like their exclamations over the chocolate fountain. (BTW, wouldn't a chocolate fountain be awesome at Christmas dinner?  Who needs pie?)

Here's your roast chicken, sandwich tray and wine options....

 And your cake, which can run anywhere from $20 - $70.  I'm not sure how much the cakes are at supermarkets and bakeries but I'm betting they're more.

So if you're sitting around with your family over the holidays, trying to figure out what to eat, pretend you're in Japan and get some KFC and cake! :)  Happy Holidays!!

Holiday Catch-Up

I have missed blogging about a lot of Japanese holidays over the past few months so I'm going to try to correct that now. 

First off, I never blogged about Valentine's Day and White Day.  Basically here on Valentine's Day women give men chocolate, either because of a romantic involvement or out of obligation (like to a coworker).  It reminds me of elementary school when you had to take a valentine for the whole class.  I don't think it's quite as romantic a holiday here---it's really all giving chocolate out to all the men you know.  We were back in the US on Valentine's Day so Chad didn't get any chocolate at work.  White Day is on March 14th (one month later) and it's when the men return the favor by handing out a chocolate Valentine to all the women they know (and it's my understanding that they have to give larger presents, like jewelry, to their significant others).  Chad didn't give any chocolate out either--not very Japanese of us, I know.  Although we're really not sure how much of the chocolate-swapping goes on in his office.  Maybe we'll find out next year.  I did see all the elaborate chocolate confections in stores around this time---they get really serious about the chocolate here.

There was Girl's Day, also known as Hinamatsuri, or the Doll Festival.   It was March 3rd.  The day is to celebrate girls, and as far as I can tell, mainly involves grandparents buying expensive, ornate dolls for their grandaughters.  I saw a lot of these dolls in stores.

excuse the bad iPhone photo

Then there was Golden Week.  There are four holidays in one week at the beginning of May.  Most people take a couple of days off and make it a whole week vacation, although they also have to take their kids out of school if they are going away.  Not really sure how schools feel about that here.  Anyway, traffic is nuts, airports are nuts and trains are kinda nuts.  As I posted about earlier, we went to Kamakura to see the Daibatsu there and it was packed out.  I compared trips with another expat who went at a different time of year and yeah, so.....it was a madhouse because of Golden Week.

The Golden Week holidays are:

April 29th---Shōwa Day---To celebrate the events of the Shōwa Period of Japanese history (1926 to 1989).  A lot went down during that time period.  For starters, Japan went from being not such a great place to the lovely country we know and love today.

May 3rd---Constitution Memorial Day---To celebrate the postwar constitution going into effect.  And to reflect on the joys of democracy.

May 4th---Greenery Day---For this one, I really can't do any better than the interesting Wikipedia entry:

The present observation of Greenery Day as a national holiday in Japan stems from the celebration of the Emperor Shōwa's birthday on April 29 every year during the Shōwa era. In 1989, following the ascension of the current Emperor Akihito to the Chrysanthemum Throne, the name of the holiday was changed from "Birthday of the Emperor" to "Greenery Day". Officially, as its name suggests, it is a day to commune with nature and to be thankful for blessings. The day was renamed to "Greenery Day" to acknowledge the controversial wartime emperor's love for plants without directly mentioning his name. However, in practice it is seen as just another day that expands the Japanese Golden Week vacation.

May 5th---Children's Day---To celebrate children.  Historically this is also known as "Boy's Day" because families with sons fly koi banners and decorate with samurai dolls.  The samurai dolls are also very expensive.  Our Japanese teacher made the mistake of bringing us an advertisement of these samurai dolls which also had very elaborate samurai costumes for boys.  Chad really wanted one for himself.  But they are, no kidding, about $1000.  I don't think so.

At one point around this time, Chad called home to tell me about some enormous koi banners hanging about a mile from our house.  So I waddled on down there to get the photo below.  According to what Wikipedia says about the banners, these indicate that this particular family has at least two sons.  And that they are really into the koi banners.

There were a couple of other holidays in there that I didn't hear much about at all, although they are listed as public holidays.  Maybe I'll save those for next year. :)

Happy New Year!

So New Years Day kinda of snuck up on me this year.  I meant to post about some of the many, many Japanese traditions before now, but never managed to sit down and do it.  Better late than never....

First a little general information.....New Year's celebrations are a BIG DEAL here but not in the party hard way it is in the US.  There are certain decorations you put up, certain foods you eat, and most people travel home to spend the day with family and/or visit a shrine. It's also traditional to give one's house a good cleaning.  When I started seeing some of the stuff in the stores a couple of weeks ago I got some things, but not others (and asked a lot of questions and looked up a lot of things).  Many of the traditions come from the belief that a special New Year's spirit called the toshigami comes to visit and brings blessings.  And many of the decorations have dragons on them since 2012 is the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac.

a big kadomatsu, which welcomes the toshigami spirit,
in front of our hotel in Okinawa on the day after Christmas

a shimenawa, which wards off the bad spirits while the toshigami is visiting
(I did get us one of these for the door)

a singing, dancing dragon at Joyful Honda

kagami mochi, special New Year's rice cakes that are in
little domed, decorated packages.  they are offerings to
the toshigami spirit

I read somewhere that you don't eat the kagami mochi
until the 11th, so I'm waiting to grill ours (yes, I was told to grill it)

 I did go to the supermarket yesterday (which was New Year's Eve for us) and it was even more of a madhouse than it usually is on a Saturday.  A lot of people seemed to be buying premade food at the "bar" that is kind of like the bar at Whole Foods.  Tempura seemed popular, and since Chad had requested I try frying shrimp, I picked up some raw shrimp and made us some "tempura" (aka fried shrimp) for dinner.  I also bought edamame since everyone else was doing it (and I like it).  One thing I did not buy was one of the trays in the photo below, half of the contents of which I can't identify.

click the photo to enlarge

I did buy us a few of these cakes (also sold individually) which are really cute
but not so tasty--they are moist and dense, kind of like a strange cookie dough

If you want to know more, this is an interesting article that mentions some of the other New Year's traditions that I haven't seen or heard of personally.

Christmas in Tokyo...

A few days before Christmas we spent a night in Tokyo and ran around trying to see Christmas lights...

in Shinjuku

Christmas trees under Tokyo Tower

Santa crawling up Tokyo Tower

lights in Odaiba

gingerbread house in our hotel

...and Christmas in Okinawa!

We decided to spend Christmas in Okinawa this year as it is a little warmer there than in the rest of the country.  Okinawa is in the string of islands that trail off the southern tip of Japan toward Taiwan.  It's a three hour plane flight from Tokyo and stays around 65°F in the winter.  Okinawa Island was pretty, with a beautiful rocky coastline that you could see from almost anywhere because the island itself is really mountainous.  It was pretty densely populated with a surprising amount of things to do.

And it made for an interesting holiday--on Christmas Eve we went to a butterfly garden, then to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium which is situated right on the coast and was the largest aquarium in the world until the one in Atlanta was built.

Cape Manzamo

at the butterfly garden--decorated for Christmas

view of the East China Sea from the aquarium

Thousands of years ago Okinawa was separated into several kingdoms.  Eventually the kingdoms combined into one Ryukyuan culture and then around the 1860's all the islands were absorbed into Japan (there are still differences between the islands and the mainland, mainly in food and dialect).  However, most of the castles from the kingdom days are still standing, albeit in ruins.  They are all UNESCO World Heritage sites.  We finished off Christmas Eve day by visiting one of the largest---Nakijin Castle, built in the 13th century.

Nakijin Castle walls and the East China Sea

castle walls & mountains

Christmas Eve dinner was remarkably authentic tacos in a pretty skeevy place next to one of the many US military bases on the island.  We also enjoyed Tony Roma's, A&W and Baskin Robbins while we were there, as well as an elaborate Christmas buffet served at our hotel (and Santa found time to hang out in the hotel lobby). There is a little more American "stuff" on Okinawa because there are so many US soldiers stationed there.

nothing like Christmas Eve dinner at a place where
you can  walk up and order on the street

There is even an area called the American Village that is modeled after American beach towns like Venice Beach.  The shopping was a little disappointing (not much imported stuff) but it is lively, especially at night.

American Village & ferris wheel

an Okinawan shisa, lion-dog guardian statues
that can be found all over the islands
(seriously, they are everywhere)

O Christmas Tree

Before we came to Japan I didn't really know how Christmas would be celebrated here.  I knew it wasn't the big deal that it is in the US.  But over the past month or two I have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of Christmas decorations that are available.  We have a Christmas tree, it's a cheap little fake one I bought here (I optimistically brought a small box of our ornaments with us).  In fact, most of the Christmas stuff here, although plentiful, is pretty cheap and tacky.  You can find ornaments and little decorative figurines.  Christmas lights are available, but no one really puts them on their house---some businesses and restaurants do though.  Wreaths are somewhat popular although they tend to be a little more for New Years, which is equally as important (maybe more than) Christmas.  Poinsettias are also popular.  Also, it should be noted that Christmas is completely secular here.  It's all Santa and Frosty, no Jesus or angels (only 3% of Japanese people are Christian).  Speaking of Santa, he does bring presents to Japanese boys and girls who believe in him. :)

I have been disappointed that there is not much "Japanese" Christmas stuff available.  Most of what is here is the same type of generic stuff you see in the US.  The one exception is Christmas cards, which are beautiful and often depict Santa hanging out around shrines or rice paddies, or flying over Mt. Fuji.  Some of them are origami-style 3D or have glitter and gilt on them.  I really wish they would carry the same style over into ornaments and decorations.

our tree, staged, before all the presents got packed up
and shipped to the US (I thought the lights were all white
when I bought them but they are blue and white)

I could've gotten an all Minnie tree.....

or this lovely pastel number (at Joyful Honda)

the Santa ornament I bought
at Usaburo Kokeshi

one of the nicer displays at the Shinjuku Tokyu Hands (two months ago)

little wood cutout decorations like this are one different (and not too tacky)
thing I found....although for all I know they are the new thing in the US too

Illuminating

Last night we took a trip to the neighboring town of Ashikaga to see the famous Ashikaga Flower Park.  In the spring, the park is well-known as the place to see huge Japanese wisteria vines.  But in December and January, the park is decorated with Christmas lights, or "illuminations" as they are known here.

Chad and I had a tradition of going to see the Roper Mountain Lights in Greenville every year so we were hoping for a similar experience.  And it was, except here you park and walk it instead of driving through.  There were holiday gift shops and lots of little food vendors selling marshmallows and hot chocolate along with the ubiquitous seafood and cabbage-y vegetables.  It was a pretty impressive display, perhaps a little more elegant than what you usually see in the US.

Oh, and I had an issue with camera batteries so these are all with my iPhone.  :(

the pyramid is in a pond, hence the reflection

lights are hung to mimic the springtime wisteria vines

yellow "wisteria" tunnel

lots of places set up for picture-taking--including this canoe

the park is next to a mountain, and the lights are all over the side

I liked these all over the ground

Japanese Santa is skinny

roasting marshmallows

Happy Turkey Day!

Chad has been on a business trip in China this week and ended up flying back on Thanksgiving.  Fortunately, I received a kind invitation from some fellow American expats to enjoy a real American Thanksgiving with them.  They invited a few of their new Japanese friends as well and we made a night of it.   Considering where we find ourselves this year, I was very thankful to find myself surrounded by friends and American food.

FYI, the only way you can get a turkey here is to order it --- and it will be imported.  Turkey isn't a popular meat here at all, although I can get tiny packs of sliced turkey sandwich meat at the supermarket.  Cranberry sauce has to be ordered as well, and it must be done far advance as it will sell out.  I actually saw a box of StoveTop stuffing in the imported food store in the mall and you can order it as well.  Pumpkin, pecans and green beans are hard to come across here but potatos, corn and other vegetables are plentiful.  I contributed an apple pie to the festivities and made it from scratch (got a tub of shortening at the imported food store) as I didn't think there was any hope of finding a pre-made crust.  I was wrong though, during dinner I learned that you can get pre-made crusts here--the packaging is just a little different.  So it's a little harder to do Thanksgiving properly here but certainly not impossible.

And Chad made it home in time for us to see a little bit of the Macy's parade---at 11pm.  ;)

Culture Day

Today we are celebrating yet another national holiday, Culture Day.  Chad has the day off and while we aren't going to experience much culture today, he also took tomorrow off and we are taking a little trip to see some culture this weekend.

This holiday started in the 1800's as the then Emperor's birthday.  When a new emperor came along it wasn't a holiday for awhile, but then it was reinstated in 1927.  I'm noticing a real trend of renaming, moving and restructuring holidays in Japan.  Traditionally the day is full of art exhibits, festivals and parades. I went out briefly today and didn't see much going on....there were a lot of people celebrating culture by shopping in the mall. ;)

Happy Halloween!

I had assumed that Halloween wasn't really celebrated in Japan, so imagine my surprise when pumpkin paraphernalia started showing up in stores about six weeks ago.  I first noticed it in the imported foods store, then the florist and gift shops, and by now pretty much every store everywhere, including restaurants, have pumpkins and ghosts and orange all over the place. (The spiderweb donuts at Krispy Kreme are really good, btw.)

I immediately quizzed our Japanese teacher about what we should expect in terms of trick-or-treating.  She had no idea what I was talking about.  She said, "So children come to your house and you have to give them candy to get them to go away?".  I told her that pretty much summed it up and she said that it didn't happen here.  She also said you couldn't get real pumpkins of carving size, only the tiny ones sometimes.  I haven't really seen any decorated houses either.

Oddly enough I have seen a couple of tiny displays of costumes, mostly Disney stuff.  Disney is popular here because there is a Disneyland smack in the middle of Tokyo.  Mickey and Minnie do a good job of ingratiating themselves into the more international holidays.  I think the costume display I saw was optimistic on the part of the store....after all, Japanese people do love to dress up in costumes.

While on the subject of holidays, I am sad to report that Japanese stores jump the gun just as bad as American stores do---in other words, Christmas has arrived!  But I refuse to say more than that until it is at least Thanksgiving. ;)

Disney costumage

cactus pumpkins in Cainz

shelves and shelves of cheap junk

Kaldi, the imported foods store (six weeks ago)

spooky pumpkin at the florist