Love List Friday: Summer in Japan

Summer in Japan is brutal. Which is probably why there are so many delightful distractions to trick you into thinking it's a season worth celebrating. The Japanese spring is famously associated with cherry blossoms, but summer has its own time-honored symbols as well -- many, in fact. A lot of them are things that make you feel physically cooler, or somehow trigger the illusion of coolness.

My particularly favorite symbols of summer are:

1. goldfish, 2. 祭り＠赤坂, 3. 金魚, 4. kingyo with cherry flower

• kingyo = goldfish

1. fūrin, 2. FURIN

• fuurin = windchime

1. *, 2. kakigoori is sooooo goood!

• kakigori = shaved ice

1. *Midsummer Night's Dream, 2. 線香花火

• hanabi  = fireworks 

1. A night of lanterns, 2. Cool Yukata Guys on Omotesando, 3. YUKATA, 4. Untitled

• yukata = summer kimono

We may look like we're enjoying our yukatas, but really we are on the verge of keeling over with heatstroke. Not really the most appropriate attire for 100-degree weather. Cute though.

Life in Japan: Takayama

Continuing on from last week, the second installation of my travels through Japan is our trip to Takayama, a mountainous region to the west of Tokyo.

*As previously mentioned, most of the photos were taken by Tom (you can tell I'm not the photographer by the marked absence of any foodie shots).

The Hida Folk Village, an open-air museum of preserved farmhouses. Steep thatched roofs, rice paddies, lush green... sitting on the cool wood floor and listening to the chirping cicadas, it is only too easy to imagine you've slipped into the past by a few hundred years.

Our timing was good, and we were in town for the Tetsuzu (handheld) fireworks festival. On a platform built by the Miyagawa river, a group of men stand in a row holding these massive bamboo fireworks, which they set off and then hold while they are showered with sparks. (Craziness.)



Above: bottles of Ramune (a delightful clear soda that has been around for years) chilling in a wooden trough of frigid mountain water.

My favorite day was our jaunt to the nearby town of Shirakawa-go: more thatched roof farmhouses, blooming cosmos, cucumbers growing plump on vines, and deep green mountains all around.

As you can see, I was a fan of taking a moment to sit on the floor, no matter where we went. When you tour anyplace with wood or tatami floors (houses, temples, castles) in Japan, you remove your shoes, and there is just something so soothing about walking around on stocking feet on the faintly squeaking boards, worn smooth over time.



Next time on Life in Japan: Kyoto.

Life in Japan: Kyushu

Last month my nine-year blogiversary quietly came and went (perhaps I will do something special next year, for the big 1-0), and it occurred to me that I cannot genuinely claim to have been blogging for nine years, not really. If you glance down at the archives, you can see that years 2002 and 2006 only have one entry each, so that hardly counts.
Since I am on the cusp of another large life change (stay tuned in the upcoming months for more info), it seemed a good time to revisit the past, and start filling in the blanks for those undocumented years.

For my first few years in Japan (2001~2006), I owned neither computer nor camera, and kept only a very patchy, infrequent journal. Luckily though, my boyfriend at the time was an avid film photographer, and I do have the albums I meticulously put together from that era. We travelled A LOT, he and I, and the albums are more or less divided by trip location: Kyoto, Okinawa, Takayama, etc.
Because I wasn't organized enough to scan them chronologically, we are starting with the 3rd of my albums: Kyushu (the island prefecture just south of the main island of Honshu).

*This era marks a particularly low point in my personal fashion history, as well as a regrettable case of over-plucked eyebrows.

We took the train down from Tokyo and began at the top of Kyushu, in Nagasaki.
What I remember most about the city was the abundance of stray cats, and of course the still vivid remnants of the bomb.

After a brief stop in Kumamoto to see Aso-san, Japan's largest, still-active volcano, we made our way down to the bottom of the island to Miyazaki, where we stayed with relatives of my grandmother.

My mother's cousin took us to Aoshima, where I retraced my mom's footsteps by collecting tiny pink shells on the beach (something she often reminisced about from her childhood visits there).

My favorite part of the trip was staying in the old family home, combing through old photos of my grandmother as a child, and being spoiled with sumptuous food: a massive fresh-caught sushi feast one night, decadent renowned Miyazaki beef steaks another... (I pretty much gave up on being vegetarian for the duration of my time in Japan).

Next time on Life in Japan... our trip to the lovely rural town of Takayama.

Book Love: Tokyo Smile Holiday

Every few months something will trigger the homesickness -- someone posts photos of cherry blossoms, This American Life does an episode about the Japanese philosophy of teamwork, I come across yet another mis-use of the word geisha (seriously internets, please stop using this word to refer to any woman in a kimono) -- and the longing for my Tokyo life becomes a visceral ache.
Because one cannot just hop a plane and embark on a 23 hour journey around the globe whenever the mood strikes (unless, of course, you are Richard Branson), one must find comfort in the small reminders of home: a bowl of miso soup, YouTube videos of crazy commercials, a gander through the pages of the quintessentially Japanese Tokyo Smile Holiday by Mariko Hirasawa, an illustrated guidebook to the best the city has to offer.

Divided into sections by month, the book highlights the best places to explore for that season. June is tsuyu (rainy season), so there are a selection of atmospheric cafes to get cozy in. In July is the national holiday "Marine Day", where everyone in the country hightails it to the nearest available beach -- that chapter is all about the hidden delights of Kamakura, a laid-back seaside town whose cool green temples and airy beach restaurants are a very welcome refuge for those escaping the concrete heat of Tokyo. Kamakura is also the only place I know where you can get vivid purple soft-serve ice cream (sweet potato flavour).

I especially love that some of my own former haunts are featured; the Lover's Rock Cafe is where my friends and I once took shelter when a freak hailstorm interrupted our picnic under the cherry trees; D&Department is a so-hip-it-hurts restaurant co-founded by a former student of mine.

And more than just a local's-eye view of the city, the book itself feels like Tokyo. The visual appeal, the style, the cuteness, the almost too-crowded text, the attention to tiny details, the fixation on food (oh, do the Japanese ever love food), the appreciation of seasonal joys, and the indefinable sense of balance.

from fuji to ajisai, 2 months in japan