Chopstick holders

 

Eating with chopsticks can seem easy once you've managed to learn how to pick up sushi without it falling apart, but there is more to it than just that.

You must be careful while eating with chopsticks, since sometimes what you do with them can resemble a funeral ceremony. Therefore no sticking the chopsticks up-right into your rice or passing on food from chopstick to chopstick (from another person). Don't point chopsticks at people either.

The one thing I find hardest to master though, is NO HOLDING ON TO YOUR CHOPSTICKS IF YOU'RE NOT USING THEM. If you're talking with someone and stop eating because you have something to say, I always keep holding on to my chopsticks, but it's actually really rude to do so.

In some Japanese restaurants they will provide you with a chopstick holder, but if the chopsticks are disposable they won't. Still, you can easily make an origami one of your own out of the wrapper. On the left you can see how the standard one is made. Of course you can make any origami figure that is square enough so the chopsticks don't roll off.

Once you've got the holder, just remember to never cross your chopsticks when resting them on the holder; they always must be parallel.

Kappa

Kappa are usually seen as mischievous troublemakers or trickster figures. Their pranks are usually rather innocent, such as loudly passing gas or looking up women's kimonos, but they can harm humans and even try to kill us.
As water monsters, kappa have been frequently blamed for drowning, and are often said to try to lure people to the water and pull them in with their great skill at wrestling.They are sometimes said to take their victims for the purpose of drinking their blood, eating their livers or gaining power by taking their shirikodama, a mythical ball said to contain their soul which is located inside the anus. Even today, signs warning about kappa appear by bodies of water in some Japanese towns and villages. Kappa are also said to victimize animals, especially horses and cows; the motif of the kappa trying to drown horses is found all over Japan. In these stories, if a kappa is caught in the act, it can be made to apologize, sometimes in writing. This usually takes place in the stable where the kappa attempted to attack the horse, which is considered the place where the kappa is most vulnerable.

 

It was believed that if confronted with a kappa there were a few means of escape: Kappa, for one reason or another, obsess over being polite, so if a person were to gesture a deep bow to a kappa it would more than likely return it. In doing so, the water kept in the lilypad-like bowl on their head would spill out and the kappa would be rendered unable to leave the bowed position until the bowl was refilled with water from the river in which it lived. If a human were to refill it, it was believed the kappa would serve them for all eternity. A similar weakness of the kappa in some tales are their arms, which can be easily pulled from their body. If their arm is detached, they will perform favors or share knowledge in exchange for its return. Once the kappa is in possession of its arm it can then be reattached. Another method of defeat involves the kappa and their known love of shogi or sumo wrestling. They will sometimes challenge those they encounter to wrestle or other various tests of skill.
Japanese parents sometimes write names on cucumbers and toss them into waters believed to be infested with kappa in order to mollify the creatures and allow the family to bathe.

Urashima Tarô

Urasima Tarô by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

One day a young fisherman named Urashima Tarō is out fishing when he notices a group of children torturing a small turtle. Tarō-san decides to save it and lets it to go back to the sea. The next day, a huge turtle approaches him and tells him that the small turtle he had saved is the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea, Ryūjin, who wants to see him to thank him. The turtle gives Tarō gills and brings him to the bottom of the sea, to the Palace of the Dragon God. There he meets the Emperor and the small turtle, who turned out to be a lovely princess, Otohime.

Tarō stays there with her for a few days, but soon wants to go back to his village and see his aging mother, so he requests Otohime's permission to leave. The princess says she is sorry to see him go, but wishes him well. She gives him a mysterious box called tamatebako, which will protect him from harm, but which she tells him never to open. Tarō takes the box, jumps on the back of the same turtle that had brought him there, and returns home.

When he does, everything has changed. His home is gone, his mother has vanished, and the people he knew are nowhere to be seen. He asks if anybody knows a man called Urashima Tarō. They answer that they had heard someone of that name had vanished at sea long ago. He somehow discovers that 300 years have passed since the day he left for the bottom of the sea. Struck by grief, he absent-mindedly opens the box the princess had given him, and out bursts a cloud of white smoke. He is suddenly aged, his beard long and white, and his back bent. From the sea comes the voice of the princess: "I told you not to open that box. In it was your old age ..."

Another version of the legend says that he turns in to dust when opening the box, since nobody can live for 300 years.



 

The Tamatebako that Otohime gave Tarô-san is an origami cube that can be opened by any side. If it is opened by two sides it falls apart and is not easily put together again. The model of the cube and the instructions for creating it had been lost for centuries, but have recently been rediscovered.

 

The hidden faces of the Country of the Rising Sun

Japan's four main islands — Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku and Hokkaido — comprise 97% of it’s total land area, as well as most of the people, but there are actually about 6,800 islands in Japan, though approximately 430 of these are inhabited. You may not have ever heard of them, but many actually have quite an interesting history.

 

Gunkanjima Island, also known as "Hashima" or "Battleship Island", has been entirely abandoned and now is a ghost town that has been completely uninhabited for over forty years, left to crumble and fade away, even if it's at just an hour sail from Nagasaki. At the start of the 1900s the Mitsubishi Corporation discovered that the island was sitting on an underwater coal deposit, and therefore built a mine that for a very long time worked greatly. By 1941, 400000 tonnes of coal were produced. Though the ones working there like slaves were from Korea.

Ten-storey apartments were built to accommodate the miners working there, as well as schools, restaurants and gaming houses. In 1955, it was considered the place with highest population density, with nearly 6 thousand people living there. When the coal ran out, there was no point in staying there, so practically in just one night everyone left and the island was abandoned.

Since 1974 it was illegal to visit Hashima because the place wasn't safe. If you were caught there, the punishment would be 30 days in prison followed by immediate deportation for us tourists, but in 2009 the island re-opened and tours were organised.

 

Miyakejima in one of Japan's Izu Islands just south of Tokyo. It is situated upon an active volcanic chain that has already erupted six times in the last century. Apart from this, another danger is the concentration of poisonous gases that comes out through the ground, mostly sulphur. In the year 2000, all the habitants of the island were asked to evacuate due to these gases after eruptions from Oyama-san (the main volcano of the island), but they were allowed to return to their home after eight years with the condition that they had to carry a gas mask with them at all times, once the high levels of sulphur lowered.

Miyakejima might not seem like a very attractive place to visit, but it is open to tourists and visitors and you can easily buy a gas mask at one of the shops upon arrival. They say the scuba diving is great and you can swim with dolphins there.

 

February 11 of 1933 was the day 21 year old Kiyoko Matsumoto started the trend of committing suicide by throwing herself into Mount Mihara's crater, the volcano of the island Izu Oshima. She did this because she had fallen in love with another girl, Masako Tomita, and lesbian relationships were taboo at the time. People started to travel to Mount Mihara to suicide themselves (or commit shinjuu - couple suicide) or simply to see people jump. In 1993, 944 people jumped into the crater. Luckily this has ended, since Mount Mihara now has enhanced security and you cannot travel to the island with a one-way ticket.

Sadako Sasaki and the Senbazuru

Sadako Sasaki, with two years old, was at home when the explosion of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 blew her out of the window, which she somehow miraculously survived. But when she was eleven, signs of leukaemia started to show (swelling on her neck and behind her ears, as well as purple spots on her legs) caused by the radiation exposure, and she had to be hospitalized in February of 1955 after being told she only had one year left to live.

On August of that same year Chizuko Hamamoto, Sadako's best friend, went to the hospital to visit her. She folded an origami crane on a golden colour piece of paper and told her about an ancient Japanese legend that promises that a crane, or the gods, depending on the version of the legend, will grant a wish to anyone who manages to fold a hundred paper cranes. Sadako decided to try it, though she knew she wouldn't ever get cured. She wanted to wish that nobody else ever had to find themselves in her situation. 

Though she had plenty of free time in the hospital, she couldn't find enough paper. She used medicine wrappings, paper from get-well presents and the pieces her friend bought from school for her. She passed away at the young age of twelve, on the morning of October 25 in 1995.

Whether she managed to finish them or not isn't known. The most popular version is that she couldn't complete the 1000 cranes and died with “only” having done 644. However, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum states that she did manage.

After her death, Sadako's friends and schoolmates raised funds and built a memorial to her and all the children who had died, or were about to die, because of the effects of the atomic bomb. Now there is also a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Sadako's older brother, Masahiro Sasaki, has become a peace activist.

In Japan, the crane is considered a holy creature, such as dragons or tortoises, and it is said to live for a thousand years, hence why 1000 cranes are made in the legend. Some say that all of the cranes must be completed within a year and must all be made by the person who wants to make the wish at the end, and it doesn't count if they are given to somebody else. However, it is a popular gift for special friends and family.

 

The 1000 origami cranes receive the name of Senbazuru (千羽鶴), with sen meaning 'a thousand' and tsuru meaning ‘paper crane’. A thousand paper cranes are traditionally given by the father as a gift at a wedding, who wishes for "a thousand years of happiness and prosperity" to the couple. Hanging them in one's house is considered to be a powerful lucky charm.

How to fold a paper crane

The secrets of a geisha’s kimono

You probably know the basic names and pieces of a kimono, but there is much more to that robe than what meets the eye.

First of all there is the kimono. They tend to be all the same length, so no matter how short you are, you’ll probably get one that is similar in length to one that belongs to the tallest person in town. If it’s too long, you can fold it underneath the obi so that it doesn’t show.

Then there is the obi. The way it is tied can vary depending on who is wearing it, the season and/or the occasion. They are very long and can even reach one side of the hallway to the other, so just imagine how heavy it actually is when wearing it. Oh, and if it's tied up at the front then it's not a geisha, but a prostitute.

Darari-obi (lit. "suspended obi") is the obi knot that the maikos tend to wear. The bow nearly starts at the height of the shoulders and the edge nearly reaches the floor.

Apart from the obi there is also the obijime, a string that holds the obi in place.

Tabi are the ninja socks. There are many different types of shoes too, either those called geta (if they look like wooden beach shoes), okobo (the tall ones that maiko's usually wear) or zori.

They also change the type of underwear they are wearing depending on the weather. It's either ro, if it's summertime, or hitoe, in September. On top of the underwear but under the kimono there is the koshimaki, or thigh wrap, that is a silk cloth wrapped around the geisha's thighs. 

And you wonder how the geisha keep on putting things up their sleeves, such as fans or handkerchiefs, and nothing ever falls out? That's because there is a pocket inside the sleeves called a furi.

But what I find most hard to understand is the art of their hairstyles.

The momoware hairstyle (lit. "cut peach")is usually what the young geisha and maiko wear. It's an up-do with a (usually) red piece of cloth inside the bun. Men say that this is provocative because it looks like a madam's cave. If it has a pattern on it, the geisha has not yet had her mizuage, meening she is still pure.

Two other examples of hairstyles that maiko and geishas wear are the wareshinobu and the tsubushi shimada.

 

The photo is of a geisha wearing the momoware hairstyle. You can also see that she hasn't fully painted the back of her neck. She does this so that the men she will later compliment take more notice of the skin under the make-up. A geisha's neck is will always be shown until the first back bone, since it's "the most attractive part of a geisha's body". Something that would be like us seeing a girl wearing a mini-skirt.

 

In case you are curious, you should know that geisha try hard not to un-comb themselves, since doing so would mean a trip to the hairdresser, which not only is expensive but also painful the first few times. How do they sleep then? A geisha’s cushion consists in a stump of wood that makes your neck go stiff but permits you to stay beautiful the next day, called a takamakura.

A geisha isn’t a geisha just by wearing a kimono and having a funny hairstyle though; make-up is almost just as important. To put it on, a geisha uses many different brushes. I don’t know much about make-up, meaning nothing at all, so I’ll just tell you more or less what they use to paint their face and we’re done. First of all, they sometimes put a yellowish cream around their eyes and mouth that is made of nightingale excrements because it was supposed to be good for the skin. I say ‘sometimes’ because it was very expensive and I doubt they use it anymore. Then they spread wax all over their face and neck to later cover it up with the white paint. After this they add colour to their cheeks to not look like white pandas and then paint their lips and eyebrows. Kuroyaki is a black (hence the name) perfume that comes from crushed wood.

A geisha that has reached 30 years old no longer paints her face all white, but rather uses other kinds of make-up.

Clearly geisha do more than just try to look pretty. They have to learn all kinds of arts to be able to entertain men, such as knowing how to play a tsutsumi, a shamisen and a fue, they have to learn to dance and sing in the geisha way (nagauta). But I’ll tell you about this another time.

 

Kamisama no Iutoori

For those of you who read manga, I recommend Kamisama no Iutoori. It's not only well drawn and a really great story, but I learnt a lot of Japanese culture, legends and such from it, such as who Urashima Tarou was, what a daruma doll is and many other things that are best not spelt, in case somebody is going to read it.

Basically the story is about a boy who is living his boring everyday life, until he finds himself forced to play a Japanese version of the "Red light green light" game with deadly consequences. He has to play game after game, all traditionally Japanese, with only the rules of win or die. Psychological, action, shounen and a bit of gore, but I loved it even if I myself am not a fan of too much blood.

 

Here I will post three images that will help you understand and enjoy more the story, but beware of spoilers. The 'Daruma doll' image you may look at it when you finish the first chapter. The 'Kokeshi doll' picture must wait until the Kokeshi's game is played, and the third when Urashima Tarou does.