Tag Archives: cold

A Mime to Kill (With Beans)

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The snow came and went faster than a fleeting thought on a cold February morning. Despite the chill, a very famous festival is set to take place across Japan in two days’ time, known as Setsubun. The festival involves throwing roasted beans at demons and marks the penultimate day of winter, according to the Japanese lunar calendar. However, it doesn’t feel like spring is coming anytime soon; outside, it is cold, and patches of frozen white snow cover the city of Tokyo. Perhaps it will stay this way for another two months, or perhaps the unpredictability of Japanese weather will strike again.

The bean-throwing festival will be taking place at most of the temples and shrines in Japan. However, I have decided not to attend. Instead, a group of performing artists, some of whom have been featured in my previous posts, and a couple of whom I have randomly become friends with, are celebrating Setsubun in a very different way—with comedy, clowns, and plenty of balloons.

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I arrive just as the event starts. It begins with a man dressed as a ninja performing tricks. He jumps over chairs, stacks some chairs, balances on chairs (his performance very much focused on seating), before being randomly attacked by a man wearing a sheep costume. The sheep man throws a single bean at the ninja; he overreacts in a classic comedy style before falling over and playing dead for the remainder of the proceedings. The sheep man has a costume made up entirely of balloons, the handiwork of my balloon artist friend, no doubt.

After the ninja fight, two demons emerge. One is dressed in white, presumably to represent good, and the other is dressed in black. The demon in black wears a target on his back, seems far too happy for an evil spirit, and appears to be enjoying standing around on his high stilts, smiling at everyone.

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Suddenly, the attention shifts to a group of clowns standing on a balcony above a pachinko parlour. They start shouting in Japanese using megaphones. After exchanges are made between the clowns and demons that I can’t quite comprehend, people in the audience begin to laugh, a lot. An elderly woman on a bicycle with an impossible number of shopping bags sighs as she tries to weave through the crowds. I might just add, this whole festival is taking place on a busy shopping street and is perhaps causing a little too much chaos for some of the locals who just want to get to where they need to be.

After the shouting, all hell breaks loose. Paper bags are dropped from the sky by clowns in their thousands. Children and adults alike scramble to collect them from the floor. I raise my arm and catch one in mid-air. Everyone is rushing around, trying to salvage one of the decorated paper pouches. People are crashing into each other, forgetting about the safety of others. Regardless of the carnage, it’s actually a lot of fun.

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The pouch I caught predictably contains roasted beans. After a while, everyone goes silent before a chant occurs. Following the chant, people start pouring beans into their hands and throwing them as hard as they can at the demon. His smile is quickly wiped from his face by roasted beans.

As I run out of beans, a little girl walks over to me and smiles. She takes my hand and pours beans into my palm. “Quickly! Throw!” she says before giggling off and returning to her parents. Eventually, everyone runs out of ammunition, and the event draws to a close. As people start to leave, the floor becomes a hunting ground for hungry pigeons. A man with a megaphone starts shouting at the birds, and they eventually fly away. The last thing that happens is all of the performers, clowns, demons, and mimes begin to clean the streets.

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Something about seeing a mime hard at work sweeping the streets fills me with a sense of disappointment. It kind of spoils the character and takes away from the magic. I offer to help sweep using one of the many brushes, but I am shooed away, just like the pigeons.

I still have some of the afternoon to kill, so I head over to Senso-ji. It is the weekend, and there is usually something taking place around the temple. Sure enough, I find a street market, the usual man with his performing monkey doing some tricks, and strangely, for the first time ever, the temples and shrines in the complex are each holding some sort of service. I head into the main hall of Senso-ji Temple, and although it is very difficult to get close enough, I manage to sneak a quick photograph before being told once again to move on.

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With nothing much else to do, and Asakusa now mostly quiet, I head home to eat some demon-killing beans.

Schindler’s Lift

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Recently I have been a little caught up with having a cold, taking numerous visits to the dentist, and a sudden urge to spend the remainder of my free time filling out multiple sheets of paperwork pertaining to banking and insurance. This morning, I head outside to discover that everything has fallen down. I lift my bicycle up from the floor, pulling it apart from the scattered mess of other fallen bikes. The temperature in Japan is freezing cold now. Two days ago, there was snow in central Tokyo. Today, a strong wind blows through the air. I take my bicycle, armed with winter clothes, and cycle to Asakusa.

I head over to Senso-ji, passing hordes of skeletal trees. For the next three days, a festival takes place. Something to do with badminton rackets, or so it seems.

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Today is Hagoita-ichi, a festival of decorated battledores—old-style badminton rackets depicting characters from kabuki shows. There are about twelve different stores here, each selling these rackets at a high price. These decorated wooden boards are supposed to deflect evil; perhaps this is where the ‘bad’ comes from in badminton. The sport that these rackets are used for is something of a Japanese childhood game called ‘hanetsuki,’ very similar to badminton but played without a net. I suppose the evil is the shuttlecock, and hitting it toward your opponent is a way to deflect that evil upon others.

The traditional way that hanetsuki is played involves the use of face paint. If you lose a point, your opponent gets to rub paint on your face. If you were terrible at the game, I suppose after a while, your colourful face might begin to resemble one of the characters portrayed on the hagoita. These days, these rackets are mainly used for decoration purposes. Sandwiched between the stores selling badminton rackets are food shops, and one specific store caught my eye because it looked so out of place.

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Daruma dolls are traditional Buddhist dolls depicting the image of Dharma, and they are considered a symbol of good luck. With white eyes that stare into nothingness, it is said that if you colour in one eye, you can make a wish. Once the wish comes true, colour in the second eye, and your Daruma is almost complete. The only thing left for the doll is to be returned to the temple it was bought from and burned. It feels slightly unfair to burn an object that has done its best to grant you a wish, but sadly, that’s just how these things go. As I am taking a photograph of the dolls, a man next to me is doing the same. His hat flies off his head in a gust of wind. Somehow, I manage to reach my hand up and catch his hat in mid-air, like a pro.

After the festival, I go to Akihabara for some Christmas shopping. In Japan, where Alcatraz-themed restaurants and robot cabaret shows are common, it’s no longer strange to find a cafe themed around a popular girl idol band. Akihabara is bustling with comic book stores, video game shops, and large electronic department stores. However, that’s not my reason for being here. Almost instinctively, I leave the station and head directly to the AKB48 Cafe and Shop.

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The last twenty-three single releases by AKB48 have consistently claimed the top spot on the charts, indicating their immense popularity among Japanese people. One clever marketing strategy involves including a ticket for a handshake with a band member with every CD purchase. Observing the guy in front of me in the queue buying over one hundred copies of the same CD, it’s clear that he’s a fan of the handshake perk. I exit the store with ten copies of ‘Kiboteki Refrain’, and I can’t help but feel like a weirdo. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to wrap up Christmas shopping for ten people in less than ten minutes.

Before returning to Asakusa, I make a detour to Yodobashi Camera to play some piano. However, after thirty minutes, I decide to leave because one of the staff members is giving me an ‘are you going to buy anything?’ sort of look. Outside Akihabara Station, somebody seems to have mixed their Christmas up with Easter.

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For some unknown reason, it is not possible to open a bank account in Japan unless you have lived here for a minimum of six months. Since my time in the country has exceeded that quota by almost three weeks, I decided it was about time to get my documents in order and take the plunge toward integration. But, I can’t just wander into a bank saying, “I have been here six months, give me a bank account!” First, I need to get myself a personal seal. Not the aquatic mammal I had been hoping for; this seal is more like a stamp and is known as an ‘inkan’.

I head over to a small inkan shop opposite Tawaramachi Station and take the escalator up to the second floor. The escalator provides me with amusement, and the title of this overdue blog post practically writes itself.

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Inside the shop, there are wonderfully expensive stamps on display in high-priced cases. Since I am only getting this product for one reason – a bank account – I opt for the second cheapest option available. The woman draws a circle that takes up a whole page of A4 paper and asks me to write my name in the way I would like it to be engraved in the stamp. Horizontally or vertically? Kanji or katakana? I don’t really care, so I just scribble my name across the paper as quickly as possible, and with very little thought.

Next, I select a case, once again opting for one of the cheapest available, but still seemingly of high quality. Perhaps there is no such thing as bad quality inkan. I hand over ¥2950, the cost of both the inkan and the case. The woman informs me that it will be ready in thirty minutes, hands me a slip of paper, and asks me to bring it back with me when ‘my time is up’.

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Half an hour later, I am the proud owner of my very own inkan. Naturally, I head home immediately and start stamping my name on everything I own.

On the Other Side of the Mountain

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Today, I am exactly halfway through my trip. To celebrate, I have decided to take a break from city life and booked a night at a Japanese inn, known as a ryokan. It is situated in the middle of the mountains in a place called Nikko, in Tochigi Prefecture. My plan for the next few days is to experience a more traditional side of Japan.

From Asakusa, I pay ¥2390 for an express train taking 140 minutes. At Shimo-imaichi Station, I have to change to a dreaded local train. On the platform, I wear a short-sleeved shirt. A Japanese man says to his friend, “Look at that guy; he must be freezing!” I admit, it is a little cooler than Tokyo, but I only have to wait two minutes at the cold station platform. I eventually get on the local train. It sounds like a roller coaster as it claws its way up the mountainous tracks. The train’s only luxury is its heated seats; they make the whole train smell like the inside of a giant hairdryer. Five minutes later, I arrive at Tobu-Nikko Station.

I head out of the station and onto an old bus; the transport on this trip is getting progressively worse. The place I am staying tonight is at Yumoto Onsen; ninety minutes from Nikko Station and some 185 kilometres north of Tokyo. It’s just gone five, but the sun is no longer visible. The bus crawls through the darkness. A warning says, ‘Hold onto the handrail as the bus will sway from side to side as it makes its ascent.’

The bus eventually arrives at my stop, the last stop. I pay ¥1700. This is also the last bus. I am trapped up here now; no coming back. Outside, it is freezing cold—the coldest I have been since leaving England. Luckily, at the bus stop, I am greeted by warm smiles. A Japanese woman with a sign is waiting for me. We head to her car, and she drives me thirty seconds to the place I will spend the night

Inside the ryokan, she takes me to my room—the biggest room I have stayed in since being in Japan, spacious and warm. It has a massive double futon laid out, and a table of equal size. The woman starts by preparing me a hot cup of green tea before leaving to prepare my dinner. I get dressed into my yukata, carefully ensuring I cross it left over right; crossing it the other way is how the dead are dressed at funerals, and I am not dead. I also make sure to tie the bow behind me; a bow at the front is how prostitutes dress.

At 7 p.m., the woman comes back into my room to serve me dinner.

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My food consists of buttered trout, salmon, vegetable tempura with natural salt, radish, simmered sesame tofu, lotus root, miso gratin with cabbage, yuzu pepper salad, grilled eggplant, fried tofu, boiled tofu in a soy milk pot with mushrooms, rice, a selection of vegetables, a selection of pickles, and a couple of things I can’t identify. The entire meal is pescatarian, and all the food is of the highest standard. I don’t usually like tofu, but up here, it is made from the cleanest of mountain water and tastes phenomenal.

After a while, the woman comes back into my room to clear and clean the table before bringing me dessert. In comparison to the huge dinner, my dessert is somewhat anticlimactic.

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I help myself to a couple of the complimentary bottles of Autumn edition beer before deciding to take a dip in the hot springs. I book the outdoor onsen for forty-five minutes. Outside, there is not a single sound. The stars are out. Mountains loom in the distance. The contrast of boiling hot water mixing with the cold winter air is wonderful and relaxing. After my time is up, I head indoors to onsen number two.

The indoor onsen doesn’t offer a window, so there isn’t much of a view. It is a rather lonely experience. After I get out, I take a shower. It is etiquette in Japan to shower before and after getting into a hot spring bath, so this is actually my fourth shower this evening. I notice weighing scales in the changing room; I haven’t weighed myself since before I came to Japan. After a massive meal and a not-so-massive dessert, I am surprised to discover that I am 7kg lighter than when I arrived in this country.

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Back in my room and with kilogrammes to gain, I decide that the perfect way to cool off is with a delicious tub of homemade cream cheese and alcohol-flavoured ice cream. Sulphur from the onsen taints the experience slightly, the smell of rotten eggs lingering in the room.

I sip quietly on complimentary beers with the window wide open, wrapped up in my traditional Japanese clothing. The clean cold air is nothing more than a fresh distraction to the silence that engulfs me. Outside, the only thing I can see is hot smoke billowing from the many hot spring baths and the dark outline of mountains in the distance.