Basic Black

Kunoichi craftiness in 2008

Somehow I missed resolution #2. I hope to make more stuff, and a greater variety of stuff, this year. Tonight's project was a simple case to help me with resolution #1, bringing my own chopsticks. The case holds two pairs, because food tastes better with company. I handstitched the tube of stripey cotton and you can just see the ceramic butterfly button, very 和風, wafu, Japanese style. The loop is scrap yarn from knitting dishcloths.

　This cable knit muffler was inspired by a pattern book I glanced at in the local craft store. I said to myself, That's dead easy. I can do that. But I didn't realize how much more time and yarn cables take than flat knitting. This will be done soon. It's a bit late for someone's birthday. Hey, men in black, don't count on your woolies being ready for your birthdays.

あけましておめでとう！ Happy New Year

The banner on the wreath is a blessing of safety within the household. Lots of businesses and homes hang these 注連縄 shimenawa rope decorations in front of their doors. For safety, mine us hung in the genkan of my apartment. The landlord doesn't allow decorations on the door.

Why do I have a shimenawa wreath? It's a habit I learned from the year I lived in rural Ehime Prefecture, when my dear neighbour, the kimono teacher, madea wreath by hand and hung it on my door. She said I and my apartment could do with the blessing for the coming year.

This guardian deity meets you at the gate when you walk up to 布施弁天 Fuse Benten where I did my お参り omairi, a first visit to shrine or temple,

Benten is represented by the flow of water and the beauty of flowers. The temple is often very quiet when I visit any other day of the year. I sometimes make the 20 minute bike ride on a Sunday, and often have the whole place to myself. Once, the priestess invited me in to see the hand coloured devotional paintings made by parishoners. But this time, there was a line of people waiting to ring the gong in front of the offering box. There was a performance of 獅子舞 shishimai, the lion dance accompanied by drums and flutes played by children.

Resolution #3 is to make a one-day pilgrimmage between the three famous Bentendo temples. Fuse Benten is one of the three significant ones belonging to a branch of Shingon Buddhism. The other two are on Enoshima Island in Kanagawa and the Bentendo in the middle of Shinobazu Pond in Ueno. I'd have to start early. The trip is over 100 kilometers.

Getting an early start on resolution #1

Every time you go out for a bowl of ramen in Tokyo, you likely pick up a pair of 割り箸 waribashi, the disposable wooden chopsticks that you split with a crack before you eat. Waribashi are so ingrained in Japanese culture that there are manners specifically for their use. Break your chopsticks holding them horizontally, never vertically. Don't sand them against each other or roll them like pick up sticks. This implies that the waribashi are cheap and insults the wait staff. When you want to set them down, place them on the paper wrapper which you have artfully folded into a　箸置きhashioki chopstick rest. And when you're done, put them back in the paper wrapper, folding the end of the wrapper diagonally.

How many times does the average salaryman eat a takeout bento or eat in a noodle bar? The waribashi add up in a year to 200 pairs per person, making the total a scary 25 billion sets a year. China has slapped a surcharge on waribashi sold to Japan, which has resulted in some shops looking for alternatives. I've been really good, turning down proferred waribashi, plastic bags and other disposable unrecyclable stuff.

But what could be simpler than carrying your own? I surprised myself when I went to lunch this afternoon and, when my meal came, I automatically reached for the waribashi on the counter. No, no. My own hashi are pretty bamboo with woven handles and a sturdy sheath. I'll get used to it in no time. I have already eliminated plastic register bags from my shopping routine, so I figure I won't miss waribashi.

Meri Kurisumasu in black

Today, Christmas Day, I'm doing what everybody in the neighbourhood is doing - 大掃除 - osoji, the big year-end cleaning effort which originally was a purification rite in preparation for New Year festivities, the most important of the year. This morning, my neighbours were vacuuming loudly below me, and I got into the spirit of the day by laundering everything and scrubbing windows, floors, bath and kitchen.

While I'm working, I'm listening to CBC Radio over the 'Net to remember the day as celebrated on the other side of the ocean.

And I'm thinking about this year's events, lows and highs, mostly highs. This year, I'm grateful for friends from here and abroad, for their good wishes, encouragement, insight and enthusiasm. In the summer, The Phoenix and I visited Osaka to see Maren, then Kyoto, Himeiji, Hiroshima and Matsuyama to see what the rest (real) Japan looks and feels like. This autumn, the Bujinkan presented at the Togakushi festival, and amazing experience. Later, Shiraishi Dojo reprised the performance at the Gyoda City festival. Last Saturday was Shiraishi Dojo Bonenkai, a year-end party to say thank you to sensei and our members, and honour the two new wonderful students.

I'm happy to put 2007 behind me. A friend and inspiration to Vancouver's artists left us this year. On this side, The Phoenix, though a bright light in my world, flew home for what I thought was only a few months, but later thought better of returning to me and Japan. Curiously, despite that spargoing out, he left a little glow - a Japan-resident friend of his brings a lot of happiness into my life.

Next year holds a lot of promise - my new work, which will start in April, promises to change my whole scope of teaching and learning. In May, I hope to be well into my academic studies in the evenings, too.

And Soke's taking us on another trip into darkness, black on black, with the next training theme. Sometimes, yes, I lose heart in my training. What the hell am I doing here, in Japan, doing this? I know so little. Am I getting any better at this stuff? And then I think, 我慢, gaman meaning endurance, and　忍, nin meaning patience and concealment, are my helpers in this endeavour. I will never be the world's most amazing martial artist. But I might, with perseverance and patience, figure out what budo is and why I want to do it with body, mind and spirit. Most of all, spirit.

Reducing the plastic in my life

Today's shopping at Nagasaki-ya was under 1000 yen worth of groceries. In the basket, you can see spinach, carrots, a piece of salmnon, some lemon chuhais, a whole daikon radish, and a bag of udon noodles.

You'll see, too, the pink "No bag, please" card. If I bring my own bag, place this pink "No bag, please" card in my basket and carry my point card, the cashier gives me a stamp for each bag I refuse. After 20 no-bag points, I get a 100 yen discount.

The effort required to bring my own bag (usually my bookbag or whatever bag I brought to work with me, or a furoshiki or repurposed bag I have recieved from shopping) is negligible, yields me a small monetary reward, and makes household waste a little lighter. This year, 2007, I have endeavoured to reduce my plastic bag pile to nil, and very nearly succeeded. The only contributions were from guests. I keep all reusable plastic packaging (plastic sleeves from advertising and the like) in a bag above the fridge, and put it to work when I need to protect valuable papers.

I've been following Envirowoman's plastic free blog, a chronicle of one Vancouver woman's endeavour to eliminate plastic products and packaging from her life for one year.

Kudos to Envirowoman. Trying to follow in her footsteps in Japan is extremely difficult for this expat Canadian living in Japan. Japan has a great record for recycling appliances and paper, but I wonder where the plastic goes to, and what happens to it post-consumer use. Well, the Japan Times recently documented the incineration of plastic waste, and begins to explore the idea of burning the unburnables in Tokyo. It makes me nervous about throwing away that plastic sushi tray. Where's it really going?

So I'm throwing my efforts at consuming less plastic because I fear it is impossible to eliminate it from my diet. Virtually everything I buy, from rice crackers to fruit to noodles, is packaged in plastic. If I were to buy in bulk or one item at a time, I might be able to reduce plastic packaging, but it is impractical and expensive for the single Japanese resident. One orange is more expensive when you cost it out, and buying in bulk presents storage problems that are unique to the Japanese domestic environment.

So, for now, I'll work on getting my plastic consumption down in 2008, but barriers to eliminating it appear to insurmountable right now.

I'll still look for advice and information at Japan for Sustainability and see what information I can glean.

Meanwhile, I had a wonderful and healthful dinner of , making the most of a piece of salmon, chopped carrots and daikon radish, flavoured with miso paste, and accompanied by a side dish of Korean kimchi. If I eat whole foods, I eat better right away.

The remainder of the day's shopping haul will go into a container and turned into Japanese-style tsukemono pickles. Made with love, no extra plastic required.

Learn English and feed people, too

Laundry's done, sent my new years greeting cards to the family, puttering in my pjs at home. This is homework avoidance at its finest.

All this domesticity is a cover for organizing my notes and writing reports. Ideas percolate while I'm doing other tasks, of course. A strange effect I attribute to living outside my first language community... I'm frequently at loss for words. My literacy in Japanese is weak, sure, so I can't blame my lack of verbiage on Japanese crowding out my language skill. It's more likely that I simply haven't used these words frequently enough, and I'm not reading English regularly outside of my university reading packets.

Listening to National Public Radio on the Armed Forces Network this evening, I heard a report about Free Rice, a website that combines vocabulary practice and a donation of rice to The World Food Program. Go play! Get rice! How cool is that!

Okay, back to homework...

Vancouver to Tokyo beauty and squalor

I've been so homesick for Vancouver's landscape lately. Some of my happiest memories are flying along on my mountain bike on the new seawall near Coal Harbour, the morning light on the North Shore mountains. Yes, it is beautiful. Terminal City encroaches on the rain forest edge, but sometimes I wish it were the other way - the trees marching down into the city, the bears fishing from the landings, the eagles picking off the rats in the alleys.

It hurts when I remember the crappy things in Vancouver - the Downtown East Side, ground zero Wastings and Pain Streets (Hastings and Main on the street signs). The loss of the Woodwards building. The chrome and concrete anonymity of the buildings.

Mark Mushet in The Tyee documents the abject landscape of Vancouver. Oh, the photos take me back. Vancouver, like Tokyo, has little architectural heritage. But unlike Tokyo, Vancouver never suffered earthquakes or firebombing like Tokyo did. The city simply lost its classic buildings to progress. Artist Michael Kluckner has drawn, painted and documented the loss of Vancouver's heritage and the grim development of the city.

Tokyo's so ugly. You can see Aoiko's photos of ugly Japan. You won't see a temple or garden amongst those images. Urban Japan, Kanto especially, is one big jumble of parking lots, rice paddies, housing developments, factories and office towers. Looking out of the train window on the Joban Line, you won't see any buildings more than 20 years old. Everything is relatively new but tatty. Tokyo itself has some fantastic modern architecture. Mark Brown documents the glorious new buildings and public spaces in Tokyo's 23 wards.

My favorites are Omotesando Hills with its ever changing lighting facade rippling behind the keyaki trees, the Tokyo Opera City Tower, the expanse of different stone and gravel vistas with water all around so peaceful; the gleaming golden unchi (poop) atop the Asahi Beer Hall, visible from the Sumida River.

紅葉 Autumn leaves

　鎌倉は紅葉がすごいきれい！歩道の上にこの楓の木を見ました。夢中...

It's sooo beautiful.

Immigration or not

I love Statistics Canada. They record and disseminate oodles of information about Canadians, our languages, our people and their origins. This week, Reuters reports, likely drawing from StatsCan press releases, that one in five Canadians was born in another country. My brother and I were the first two kids in my father's family, and the second and third kids in my mother's family, to be born in Canada. Everybody else came from somewhere else.

There are few stats on illegals in Canada. The entry in the Canadian Encyclopedia says there could be between 50,000 and 200,000 illegals in Canada. Immigration has no way of regulating undocumented people.

Amazingly, it is estimated that there are about the same number of undocumented workers in Japan. Just like Canada, foreign workers legal and illegal do the dirty work in Japan, jobs Japanese won't do. While some folks in Canada are calling for documenting labourers who didn't make refugee status in order to keep them in the Canadian work force, Japan tolerates the undocumented in their midst but does not account for the numbers.

Japan's population is aging, but the immigration policy does not introduce new people to the country or the workforce. The demographic time bomb is ticking - by 2050, fully 40% of Japan's population will be golden agers.

'Net and missing Daikomyosai

Civilization has come to my Armory-cum-bedroom in funky Kashiwa City - I have a 'Net connection at home! The first attempt left me bewildered, and with a whiff of surreality. A little man came to my door, armed with official looking name tag, clip board, and mysterious gadgets, looked my apartment up and down, whilstled through his teeth and said No, can't do it. The flex ducts wouldn't accommodate such a thing, he claimed. Besides, your air con unit is in the way of the one inlet for ducts, he said.

Well, this week, Harry Tuttle times two arrived at my door, a young fellow who wouldn't look me in the eye, and a terribly friendly older, wiser fellow who talked my ear off. It took them about 15 minutes with tea break to snake a line from what looked like an oscilloscope to find the portal and fire the proton pack to collect incorporate Sumerian deities...Wait, wrong movie. Well, they plugged me in and installed a cable modem ( and now I've got 'Net 24/7). At home, anyway.

This is my consolation for a week of being so tortuously close to Daikomyosai, but obligated to be at work and write stuff for school projects. The only chance I'll get anywhere near training is tomorrow night, if Shiraishi sensei is on for a post-game review.

Many wonderful moments with people happened in the last few days. we took pictures of visiting ninjas under gorgeous flaming maple trees at Kamakura; fortuitous timing put me on a train with two slightly lost kunoichi who I helped navigate the spaghetti that is the JR East rail system, then joined them on a shopping expedition (fabric and stationery!); some kind train passengers on the Joban Line consoled me when I dropped my mobile phone which exploded on hitting the deck; a slightly tipsy salaryman on his way home wished me a happy life before tottering off the train at Matsudo Station; the noodle guy on the Shinagawa Station platform slipped me an onigiri in thanks for my patronage (I hit him every week on the way to Ayase training); the Kashiwa Information ladies treated me to yuzu citrus marmalade and got me up to date on Kashiwa events so I can inform visiting ninjas; my sempai came over for dinner and spoiled me with a belated birthday present despite the fact that his isn't finished yet (gomen, ne!).

See? I can't complain.