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The Japanese use the Western (Christian) format to determine the year
1998 (Sen-Kyu-Hyaku-kyu-ju-hachi-nen), but they also use a traditional format.
Japanese history is broken into periods which change each time an emperor dies.
We're in the tenth year of the Heien period. The government determines the name of the period. The word Hesei is composed of two kanji (Chinese characters) which mean peace and prosperity. Sorry, it's my hand and I'm not much of a calligraphist, but you get the idea. I'll try to include one by Tim. He studies kanji.) When Emperor Akihito dies a new period will begin at year O and I don't mean at the end of that year. I mean that the year changes that day.
As you might guess, this could be inconvenient, unless the Emperor dies on New Year's Day. For example when the Emperor died before January 7th. That was Showa period the 64th year. It lasted one week. Then the Showa period began the next day. So those 365 days are actually listed under two years.
Plus if you want to refer to some past event and want to determine how many years ago it occured, you have to count oddly number periods, subtracting one I suppose to account for an Emperor's death, and add the numbers together.
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I went to an interesting onsen this weekend. Rika and I were going to go to Mizunuma. You get there by train and the onsen is actually in the station. It's fairly nice there, but I'd been there three times already, so Rika suggested that we go someplace different. About 2/3 the distance of the 45 minute train ride to Mizunuma (mizu means water, by the way) there's a little village called Kamikanbai. You get off the train--there's no station--turn right and start walking across a field on a grassy path that leads up to a hill with lots of bamboo trees at the top. The path becomes pretty narrow running along a hilly ridge with a good seven meter drop to the train tracks below. The path runs around the hill to the left, between a couple of houses and then turns right into the small parking lot of the onsen. The walk is the nicest thing about the onsen because you really get the message. This is it. The truly rural Gunma. Everyone knows about Mizunuma onsen, but I haven't met anyone yet who knows about the one in Kamikanbai--most people don't even know about Kamikanbai for that matter. The walk from the station to the onsen is less than seven minutes. The onsen water has a high calcium content, is just the right temperature and you can relax while listening to ambient music played just audibly. While waiting there we walked down a road intending to walk up the hill opposite the tracks and visit a famous temple, but on the way we saw a sign for another onsen. I was able to read the katakana ku-su-ri, meaning medicine, and the kanji for hot water. We walked down the road five minutes further and found another onsen known for it's herbal qualities. High KAMPO content good for digestion, sore muscles and skin.
Today I saw an old man riding a bike with a roller-skate lashed to the bottom of the back wheel. Presumably, he only used it to coast and then pushed it up hill or long straights. And they look at me strangely!
Being a novelty gets a little tiresome sometimes. Here's a quote: "I visited Japan with my father last summer. I liked the people and the food, but I didn't like one thing. Sometimes people looked at me and shouted, 'Gaijin, gaijin!' (Gaijin literally means "outsider," the more polite form gaikokujin meaning simply "foreigner.") I didn't feel at home. Are we so strange and different?" That's from my seventh graders' English textbook and shows two things: that alot of people still can't just be cool when they see someone non-Japanese, and that some people are aware that it's a problem. Often when I'm eating out I find people are staring right at me. They're watching me use chopsticks. They can't imagine that I've actually been using ohashi for ten years. It gets tiresome. I have one very sweet woman student in her sixties. Everytime our class has a party at a bar or restaurant she makes sure that all twenty people in the class pay careful attention to how I'm using my chopsticks. She gets everyone's attention and then says, "Dabido wa ohashi jozu desu ne!" The least she could do is say it in English. I mean it's an English class, right? And if I'm here for five more years, I'll still be hearing it. Oh well, it does come with the territory, does it not? I love everybody. I was in Nagano a year ago. We were stopped at a light and I noticed some monkies on the sidewalk. I said "Hey look. Monkies." and pointed them out to Futterman. Then I looked up to see not ten feet beyond a couple of young children completely ignoring the monkies, pointing at us and saying to their father, "Mite Otosan--gaijin!" ("Look father, foreigners") One of the things the Japanese are doing is to give their young ones earlier exposure to gaikokujin by introducing A.E.T.s into the elementary schools. Looks like in Maebashi, I'll have two junior highs and one elementary. Yikes!
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So it's lunchtime now, and since it's high school entrance exam week, there's no school lunch, and no one remembered to order me a lunch. So I leave school, not to go out to eat so much as to escape before I have to endure ten or 15 apologies for my lunch not being ordered. It's really no big deal and besides it gives me the chance to go take care of a few errands. I spin back by the apartment and pick up some late library movies and cds (sorry no English books at the Isesaki branch) and then I go to the library then straightaway to the bank to withdraw money. Since my bank book got mangled by the machine last time, a simple three-minute operation turns into a somewhat longer one.
Song:
Kimi no kaita (Your writing)
Kimi no tegami (Your letter)
Yubiin-ya-san (Mr. or Mrs. Letter-Carrier)
Hayaku! Torokete, yo! (Hurry! Deliver!)
At the post office I fill out a number of forms (sending money orders is such a hassle, but the woman at the counter gave me some kleenex and aluminum foil for my trouble). Then I mail a few letters, including Nagano Olympic T-shirt I bought for my sister's 40th birthday. No time for lunch--who cares?
On the way back to school I pass by a cemetary. Japanese cemetaries are small (often no more than 20 meters across, though I have seen some much larger ones) and numerous scattered here and there and the city just grows up around them. I drift off thinking about Christianity in Japan. Christians may think that they've got some foothold over here but they don't. They've got something but it's hard to pin down exactly what. Most people who are at all religious will say that they're Christian, but they're also Buddhist and Shinto, and furthermore if you try discussing their opinion of even the most basic ideas of Christianity or a story from the NT, it becomes pretty clear that they don't really have any idea what Christianity is. What they usually mean when they say they're Christian is that they have no strong feelings against it. Recall my private 18 year old student Emi. Last week she showed me a video of her grandmother's funeral, explaining it to me. Bright girl, with excellent English skills (top English score in her private school of 500.) I ask her, if I can ask a personal question. "Where is your grandmother now?" Emi said, "She's in heaven." I said, "I just wondered what you thought about that, because I know your family studied English at a Christian church in Maebashi. So I just wondered if you thought of yourselves as Christian." She said, "Oh, well we're not Christian." I said, "Then is your family more Buddhist or Shinto?" She answered, "We're nothing." I said, "But you just told me that your grandmother was in heaven." She laughed and said, "Well, when we are children, we are told such things." And then there's Mrs. Oshima who I team-teach and adult class on the history and culture of Springfield. She's told me she's a "very strong Christian" but in class when were discussing the role of religion in Western culture as compared to the Eastern culture it clear that she doesn't know as much as I'd assumed. I'm not so arrogant as to say that she's not Christian in some way, but she sure ain't no Baptist, more toward the Unitarian side. I think maybe Ralph Waldo Emerson would have liked it over here. He would have loved Sanjusangendo, a long high-ceilinged dark hall in Kyoto, in which on ten tiers stand 1001 hand-carved goldleafed statues of Kannon-sama (kind of like a genderless Buddha), all facing with the east with an impassive expression of spiritual contemplation. Each statue has ten auxilary heads and forty-two arms. Seated halfway down the hall is a seven meter Kannon-sama. It's the most quiet place I've ever been, sheer awe, removing the power of speech, the only sound being the occasional ringing of a bell by a chanting priest during devotional rites which are performed hourly. My favorite place in Japan.
Back at school, I'm a little late. I'm hoping the principal Mrs. Kamai won't be looking at her watch. In the teachers' room, she's standing in the center of the room warming herself by the gas heater. As I'm walking by she stops me and hands me tako-yaki ippon (octopus on a stick).
February 1998
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