Christeph in Japan

To get more of a flavor for the JPop School of Japanese Studies, below is a cross-section of my, um, homework.

Cutie Honey - Koda Kumi
Ah, my very first JPop song. Cutie Honey is a character who appears in lots of manga and anime, and this is her theme song! Her prominent characteristic is that she gets “busty” whenever she’s in crime-fighting mode, and the lyrics to “Cutie Honey” describe the salient features of her body. This version is by Koda Kumi, who is, as far as I can tell, the Britney Spears of Japan: void of socially redeeming features and total eye candy. The video for this song actually grooves pretty effortlessly, and has an English translation of the lyrics as well as romaji.

Word to the wise: let it download completely before you start watching.

Cutie Honey’s contribution to my knowledge of Japanese includes:

• Verbs for sappy love songs
  傷つける (to wound, hurt someone’s feelings)
  見つめる (to stare intently)
  追いかける (to chase after/pursue someone)
  近寄よる(to approach/draw near)

• Japanese onomatopoeia:
  チュクチュク(beating heart)
  ヒクヒク (twitching nose)
  シクシク (sound of sobbing)

アゲ♂アゲ♂EVERY☆騎士 - DJ OZMA
Ok, I have no idea what is up with the title to this song, thus I always have to get my Japanese friends to reluctantly punch this one into the karaoke machine. For the sake of clarity, I’m just going to refer to this gem as “Every Night”, because that’s the phrase that’s going to be burned indelibly into your consciousness by the end of the song.

I’m a little ashamed to put DJ Ozma up here… he seems a little trashy, and I always get a few eye rolls when I queue this one up. But you can’t deny it… the song is catchy and mesmerizing. There’s a fair bit of English in this song (it even kind of makes sense!) which is balanced out by some ridiculously fast Japanese phrases.

The video is worth it just to see Ozma’s hair at the end, which is kind of like a blonde afro. Did I also mention that he’s wearing a white leisure suit? The mood in this video strikes a weird balance between raw sexuality and the kum-ba-ya-ishness of summer camp. Some of the dance moves are also ludicrously outdated, as are the women crawling earnestly all over Ozma

In addition to being endlessly amusing, DJ Ozma taught me some basic PG-13 vocabulary that has for some reason escaped me up to this point, such as:

唇 (lips)
狂う (to go crazy, ie. dancing like crazy)
出鱈目 (bullshit, nonsense)
裸 (naked)

Kiss and Cry -宇多田ヒカル
Utada Hikaru’s a pretty big name and has been for about 10 years now. I’m told by my Japanese friends that her lyrics are beautifully crafted and “read like poetry”. No music video for this one yet as far as I can tell, so you’re going to have to settle for this odd pairing with anime.

More good sappy love song vocab here, including:
近づく (to approach, get closer)
誘う (to lure, seduce)
共犯 (complicity)
and my personal favorite, 弱虫, which translates directly as “weak insect” and means “coward”.

The song also features fun Japanese-English phrases like “high tension” (said of a person), “critical hit” (to the heart), “resutora” (corporate restructuring), and “donto-uori-beibe” (Don’t worry baby), which is mysteriously inflected with katakana, even though the singer is fluent in English.

Extra points to Utada Hikaru for effortlessly working “Nisshin Cup O’Noodle” into her song.

Choo Choo Train - Exile
My students are all bugging me to learn a song by Exile. They’re kind of boy-band-ish for my tastes, and thus I’ve been resisting. But two weeks ago I started teaching American pop music to my English club at school, so in the name of reciprocity, I’m kind of at their mercy.

This particular song seems to have more English in it than 日本語. The lyrics don’t seem to make much sense in either language, which makes the song kind of useless for studying Japanese. But it’s fun, if formulaic. Choo Choo train is easy enough to learn, and if it gets me some cred with my students, it’s the least I can do. Literally.

Let’s just call this one a pop-culture lesson and leave it at that. I wish I could show you the breezy fun video of boy candy running along railroad tracks, but alas, the copyright watchdogs in Japan are FIERCE!

Anytime - Crystal Kay
Crystal Kay has this intoxicating cultural background that is rare in Japan. The upshot of this is that she is fluent in Japanese and English and is an excellent R&B singer to boot.

am 11:00 - HY
Should I ever master this song, I want a lifetime achievement award. This song lies right on the boundary of the possible for me and the Japanese skills I currently own. It’s full of crazy articulate vocabulary, but more intimidating than that is that the second half of the song is rap. However, am 11:00 has endeared itself to me, and I find myself oddly drawn to the whole Japanese rap thing. The music video is sweet and earnest and fun and isn’t trying too hard to be cool or foreign or sexy, which is saying a lot in the world of J-Pop. Plus I love that I get to sing the non-sequitur “Let’s go to hunny’s house” right smack dab in the middle of the song.

If anyone out there knows of more singable JPop, please pass it my way!
After all, I have a big test to study for.

We’re now coming to the end of February Festival Madness. Tohoku is a flurry of winter celebrations all month long, though for some reason we squeeze most of the action in somewhere between the second and third weekends. Allow me to sum up:

Oga’s NAMAHAGE

Any festival whose sole purpose is to make small children cry already has a plus next to it in my book. Namahage are the demons which inhabit the Oga peninsula, just to the south. They have red or blue faces and are dressed in bushy straw tunics. Twice a year, they descend from Mt. Shinzan, growling with torches in hand. They proceed to terrorize all the small children they can find, making them cry, and then ask if there are any naughty crying children nearby that they can eat up. Brilliant.

Everyone gathers around a big bonfire at the Shinzan Shrine, while the demons make a few circuits through the crowd (stopping for photo ops of course). Anyone who picks up the straw which falls from their clothes will be free of illness for the rest of the winter. Taiko also plays a prominent role in the festival, with folks dressed as demons wailing on the drums.

Namahage Taiko

The festival has an ominous-bogeyman-in-the-dark-with-fire feel that is a delicious change from the usual sugary sweet snow festival.

Nishiki’s HOT AIR BALLOONS

The hot air balloon launch, or kamifusenage, is a rather poetic and beautiful event. Cars choke narrow icy streets in a mad lineup for parking, and everyone heads out to a big snowy field. Here, huge elegantly decorated paper balloons (with ads on the other side) are filled with hot air via blowtorch. When the balloons are filled, a fire is lit at the mouth, and a warm glow fills the balloon, lighting the pictures from the inside. Balloons are released about 8 at a time, and soar off into the sky. Occasionally they’ll catch on fire or explode, but usually they simply soar away. The balloons aren’t weighted very heavily, so they swing back and forth like pendulums as they ascend. They stay lit for quite a long time, as they float up into a sea of stars. Special booths are set up where you can write your wishes for the year on balloons, which are then set free to deliver your wishes to the heavens.

Hot Air Balloons

Kariwano’s TUG-OF-WAR

The tug of war is held on the same night as the balloon launch. It’s possible to do these two events in succession if you play your cards right… unfortunately, we didn’t, and arrived in Kariwano to witness a mass exodus after the fight. Which is fine, because all I wanted to do was see the massive 20 ton rope anyway. While I was admiring the rope two dudes came by with a scythe and cut off a huge hunk for me to take home.

Rokugo’s BAMBOO FIGHT
Not the most photogenic festival, but it certainly is the most exciting. Ranked as one of the world’s Top 10 Most Dangerous Festivals, folks descend upon the tiny town of Rokugo to bash each other with 20 foot long bamboo poles. Requirements: Helmet? Check. Over 18? Check. Willingness to throw caution to the wind coupled with a fondness for alcohol? Check.

Hundreds of people flock to this testosterone fest to watch two teams beat the crap out of each other in 3 rounds. Helmets are ripped off. Bamboo poles bend and snap under the pressure. It’s an all out brawl. To make matters even more stupidly dangerous, the third round is fought around a bonfire, after everyone lights the flags on the end of their poles on fire.

Fire

My toes were frozen, and I didn’t care. The air was crackling first with anticipation, and then later with embers. A video taken in less than favorable lighting conditions is included below for your enjoyment:

Fight

After the fight, we were adopted by a local from Rokugo, otherwise known as my Drunken New Best Friend, who took us under her wing and straight to the only bar still open in town, where we downed a few beers and talked about how great we all were.

Towadako’s SNOW AND LIGHT FANTAVISTA

I had high hopes for this festival; it seemed to have everything: a grill your own food tent, snow sculptures, an ice bar, and fireworks. It was a fun way to spend an evening with friends, especially after a High Priority Mission in the area. But I think once was enough, and I wouldn’t make a big effort to see this one again. Maybe it was because we went on a Sunday night, but this festival seemed pretty dead… like a toned-down version of the Sapporo Snow Festival.

Some of you may have heard that we have made some inroads in the music/performance community here, after a year of looking in from the outside.

A month or two ago, our friend and fellow Noshiro ALT Frank discovered and introduced us to a taiko drumming group, Noshiro Belabo Taiko (能代べらぼ太鼓). We (and I in particular) had been dithering about joining a similar group in the neighboring town of Futatsui, unaware that there was one right in our own back yard. The group is a great deal of fun, consisting in roughly equal quantities of adults and elementary/junior high kids.

After all of two rehearsals, we were informed we’d be performing at a small town festival the following weekend. Since then we’ve been in no less than three performances (albeit playing with the kids), which always tickles the announcers who love shoving microphones in our faces and asking us where we’re from.

We don’t have any taiko videos yet, so for the moment you can get an idea from this photo from our friend Andy:

Almost immediately after starting taiko, Steph fulfilled her year-long dream and got the opportunity to join a Yosakoi dance team. In the apparent tradition of Japanese performing groups, they threw her into a performance after but two rehearsals. Here they are performing (in the rain) at the pre-Futatsui Marathon festival (5-minute video; might take a minute to load):

Yosakoi at Futatsui Marathon Festival

One more post on the joys of small town life. Akita Prefecture is playing host to the 62nd Annual National Sports Festival of Japan (that’s right! the sports-playing tree mascot is not a general Akita symbol as we originally thought, but is in fact Sugitchi, the mascot for this Olympic-style sporting event). Yesterday, the city of Noshiro held a rally in the center of town to celebrate the opening of this sports festival next month.  This was a Big Event.  What looked like the entire student bodies of at least five schools filled the streets to see a torch go by.  There was music and dance-like gyrating:

Sugitchi Rally

After sitting around on sidewalks for half an hour, the actual “action” lasted for about two minutes.  The torch went by, photos were taken, and over a thousand students made their way back through the streets to their respective schools.

The Japanese school year is one of the longest in the world, at least six weeks longer than the American school year, but many of those extra days consist of festivals and field trips like this.

It’s not often that a garbage truck brightens your day, but here you go, fresh and ripe from the nothern city of Sapporo.

Singing Trash

We met this absolutely priceless lady on the train in Sendai. She spoke a bit of English and likes rap.

Sendai Rapper

Kites. I was promised kites. And, in turn, I promised others kites. So it happened that four of us made the long 3 hour trek up to Aomori City, on the north tip of Honshu last Saturday with a song in our hearts and a gleam in our eyes. So what if the weather was grey and unambiguously wintery? Surely this would highlight spectacular dragons and whatnot flying through the sky. However, when we arrived in Aomori, we all noticed right away that the city, while windy, was spectacularly lacking in wind powered aircraft. Crap.

Kite festivities would not begin, we were informed at the information desk, until tomorrow. Stupid internet and its empty promises. We then sat down to regroup and figure out how to salvage a day in (let’s be generous) a mildly interesting city in the dead of winter. Step 1? Drown your sorrows by taking refuge in the closest Thai/Vietnamese/New York themed restaurant you can find.

When we heard of a little lunch spot called Saigon that purported to have Thai food, we knew something had to be up. Not picky about the geographic consistency of their menu, Saigon offers samosas, bagels, Greek salads, and Hawaiian beer with aplomb. This met my basic criteria for excitement in Tohoku: just feed me food I can’t get in Noshiro.

After lunch, we went in search of a big Buddha at the nearby Blue-Green Dragon Temple. I have to say, he bested the kites in that he a) existed and b) lived up to the hype. The temple complex had quite a bit to see. Shrines for the old and forgetful, shines for children. Even lots of bells to ring to alert the almighty to your prayers, which Frank will now graciously demonstrate below:

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After we’d photographed every subject in the shrine from every possible angle, we went to check out Aomori’s archaeological claim to fame, the Sannai-maruyama site, where you can view artifacts from the Jomon period. I have to say, as the afternoon went from gray to grayer, I wasn’t very excited about going to see a muddy field with a few thatched huts and a huge glorified ladder. But my mind was set, I had to see it. It was one of those “if I see it now I don’t have to come back to see it later” kind of deals. But, the huts turned out to be surprisingly photogenic and even kind of interesting.

Still. I wouldn’t drive 3 hours just for the pleasure.

We concluded our trip to Aomori with a quick onsen visit. For those of you who are still a little fuzzy on onsen etiquette, here’s a charming graphic for you which illustrates the big no-nos. Please provide your own captions:

There is, however, a rule which isn’t shown above which was enforced by this particular onsen: bring your own soap. Little did we know. I mean, it’s not like this was the first onsen trip for any of us. We thought we knew we knew how to play by the rules, honest.

On the women’s side, the showers were packed to capacity, and I only hesitated for a moment when I sat down to wash up at a seemingly empty spot and noticed that the shampoo bottles at each shower were different. Not what you would expect for onsen-provided items. But never-mind! I ignore lots of stuff that seems strange to me here and chalk it up to the Japanese way. While everyone took my lack of manners in using their belongings gracefully (thanks for the shampoo, whoever you are!), the boys weren’t so lucky. When they sat down to wash up (so I’m told), they elicited a vicious growl from whomever’s territory they’d intruded upon. One of those “maybe-I-look-demure-but-never-forget-this-is-the-land-of-samurai-
and-ass-kicking-ninjas-so-back-the-hell-off” kind of interactions.

Yikes. So much for internationalization.