成人式 (Coming of Age Ceremony)

Monday, 01/10/2011: Seijin no hi, or Coming of Age Day, is sort of like a huge "sweet 16" party for Japanese kids that turn 20 during the year. In Japan you're not officially an adult until you're 20 years old, but when you turn 20 you're allowed to vote, smoke and drink (officially). Because of this, a ton of people get drunk at the ceremony. But they're beautiful drunks:

This girl may be a maiko (geisha-in-training) that turned 20

Some Korean-Japanese girls wear traditional Korean Hanbok

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Yeaaaa!

Skiing in Japan

Nowadays there doesn't seem to be much "skiing" in Japan from what I've seen and heard. At least, among the youngest generation everybody has gotten into the snowboard trend. Which is dandy but also sort of funny. In the US there are tons and tons of people who suck at skiing and snowboarding, but those people at least look like they suck. In Japan, on the other hand, everybody looks like they're super awesome, like they could pull fifteen 720s in a row and not break a sweat awesome. Why is this?

Its because of their ghetto-fab fashion sense (see below):

Both boys and girls are tricked out in baggy, bright attire with suspenders straps hanging down and loads of pockets that aren't actually pockets. A lot of people opt to wear their goggles on their foreheads and not their eyes because that looks cooler. As for the people who use their goggles, they keep them on at all times and put a bandana over their mouths like a cowboy.

I finally realized that clothes say nothing about how good you are when I saw 20 people fall getting off the lifts. I haven't been skiing in the US in a while and so I don't remember if that happens there too, but there seemed to be a huge number of people falling down on Hachi Kita slopes.

I wonder why. Is snowboarding a fairly new trend in Japan, or do people start out on skis and then move to boards when they're teens? Or maybe its harder for teens in this area of Japan to get to the slopes.

There were other differences between ski mountains in Japan and the US that I noticed. For one, gear rental shops in the US seem to be affiliated with the mountain, but here there were tons of rental shops set up at the mountains base, all competing with each other for business. I don't know if that was special to the mountain we went to or not, though.

The major difference I noticed was that there didn't seem to be any large, main lodge. After renting our gear we stashed our bags in the rental shop. For food, people don't bring their lunch but instead buy it on the mountain. There were about a dozen independent, small cafeterias on the slopes.

Next month I'm going to Sapporo for Yuki Matsuri. woo. I'll try skiing again there :)

Winter Break pt. 2

Winter Break was short but boringly relaxing. Finals ended on Wednesday with our speaking exam. Everyone came to school to take a 15 minute test and then leave. Then, the following day I went to Osaka to do a half marathon with my track circle. It was kinda scary because I had only done one or two short runs over the last month and I didn't actually know if I could run a full two hours..

There was a lot of waiting around before the actual half marathon and I pretty much did nothing. I don't really know the people in track circle and a majority of them are really short guys (boo). There was only one other girl set to run and she had a boyfriend on the team, so obz she was with him a lot. The actual race was all university students from schools around Osaka including Doshisha and Kobe Universities. There weren't that many girls running but those who did were slow. Most of them walked. Only two girls really went for it and they beat me. My only goal was to run the whole race and finish it. I came in third and won a tea strainer. Wooooooooo >:D

Following the race, everybody changed into regular clothes and then went to dinner and nomihodai at a nabe place. I was the only foreigner out of 60-ish people so it was a bit terrible at first, but then it wasn't.

My body was so stiff after that and it took me, like, two days to feel non-corpse-like. The next big event was Christmas Eve, and because I didn't have a sexy date I went to Osaka with friends to see a "light up" and then to an Izakaya for dinner.

Over the next few days Kate and Katie and I went to temples like nanzen-ji, which has a weird aqueduct that is totally not japanese-esque:

We also went to Ryoan-ji, the temple I concentrated on during first year of college when I came to Kyoto for a field trip. I didn't think that the temple could possibly be any more boring than the paper I wrote about it, but I was wrong. This is what I paid five dollars to see:

Supposedly the interesting thing about the rock garden is that no matter what angle you stand at, you can't see all the rocks at the same time. This seems slightly cool but it's actually not at all.

Christmas isn't really a big deal in Japan. It's a holiday mainly for couples and marketing and there are a lot of fried chicken everywhere. A big misconception that Japanese have about Americans is that we eat KFC for Christmas dinner. Because of this, Japanese have decided that they "also" want to eat fried chicken for Christmas and there are loads of ads during this time for buckets full of deep-fried meats.

The Tuesday after Christmas I went out with my friends for all-you-can-eat pizza and then to all-night karaoke. I finally biked back home around 7am. wooo.

New Years is the big winter holiday and all the schools went on breaks, including my host brother's. Japanese school breaks honestly seem to suck, though. High schoolers and even college students still have homework during break. My host brother went to school yesterday so he could work on all the homework he had to do over the holiday. Furthermore, he and lots of other students even have juku, or supplementary school, during break. I am so happy I never had to grow up in Japan because I would fail at their education system.

My host sister also came home around this time from college and it was neat to see her. She works as a tutor for an elementary school student (10 years old) who wants to be a doctor (I think). This little girl goes to two juku schools besides attending regular elementary school and has private tutoring sessions from my host sister. I guess this isn't a rare thing and even elementary schoolers in Japan don't get a chance to just chill out and play.

On New Years Eve I woke up to SNOW. We got about five inches during the night and it was still snowing. That amount of snow is really rare for Kyoto and so the roads were slushy and there weren't many cars out. My friends and I went to Gosho--the imperial palace--across the street from Doshisha:

That night Okaasan made special food for the holiday. Obaasan (grandma) also came over to eat with us. Later in the night I celebrated with my friend by going out on the town. For the actual New Years day, Obaasan came over, Okaasan prepared nabe and we all ate it, and then the family went and did Hatsumode (first shrine visit of the year). Even though we live right next to Shimogamo-jinja, my host family drove us to Fushimi Inari. The place was packed with people and we had to wait in line to throw coins and ring the bell to bring us luck during the year (?). Then Okaasan bought us all paper fortunes that tell about how your year is gonna go. I couldn't really read my kanji-laden fortune but from what my friends told me my year is going to be maybe-pretty-okay-i-guess-probably.

Shimogamo Jinja

On January 3rd I got up early to go on a ski trip with two of my Doshisha friends. We left from Osaka and took a bus three hours to a ski resort at Hachi Kita mountain. We skied two half-days and the snow was so perfect:

Winter Break pt. 1

A video with some pictures and footage from winter break :