That Perfect Gift

The New Year Holiday is a time of gift giving.  All of the stores were clogged with display tables filled with gifts for exchanging.  The photo above shows one of my favorites.  What do you give to the person that has everything?

You give them SPAM !

And the photo below shows the perfect gift for that gourmand on your list.  Spam and canola oil.  The lucky recipient will be able to fry up perfect little slices of crispy-meaty-goodness.

In fairness to my Chinese friends, both of these gifts were on display in front of a Korean market.

The Holiday Party

Back in China, it seemed that the whole country was anticipating the coming New Year holiday.   The Chinese Calendar, or Lunar Calendar, is based upon the ancient principles of measuring time by the phases of the moon.  Though the country officially has been using the Western (or Gregorian calendar) since 1912, the lunar calendar is still the basis of many of the more important aspects of life.  Auspicious dates for weddings or business openings are based upon the traditional lunar calendar.  Also, many of the traditional holidays, such as the Moon Festival and Dragon Boat Day are based upon it. 

The Lunar New Year is the biggest of them all.  "Spring Festival" they also call it.  It is a seven-day public holiday that begins on New Year's Eve - this year on January 22.  Tradition requires that everyone spend the holiday with their family.  So in the week before the holiday, all forms of travel become insanity as a billion people hit the roads, the train stations, or the airports.  The public holidays end after the 6th day of the new year.  Then everyone is supposed to go back to work.  So the travel insanity begins again.   And even after that, there are rituals that continue up through the 15th day after the New Year.

End of Year Parties are another part of the tradition.  Prior to the New Year holiday, every business of any sort is expected to throw a dinner party for ALL of its employees.  The idea is to have a celebration amongst colleagues before everyone sets off to visit with family.  There is a certain rigor to these celebrations.  At minimum, they are expected to distribute year-end bonus money to all the employees.  But there is also an expectation that everyone entertain each other by displaying their talents...or lack of talents. 

My company's End of Year Party was held on January 12, a Thursday.  Any date after that would have been a poor choice, as many people needed to begin their journeys home in the coming week-end.  As things go, our's was fairly late in the season.  In the first two weeks of January, every Chinese restaurant and hotel banquet facility was booked solid with private parties - for both evening and lunch.

Everyone that works in our factory was invited.  Everyone came.  Production was shutdown for the night.  Since Chinese parties often involve large quantities of alcohol, and since people often continue after the party with late nights of karaoke, everyone was given the next day off to recover.  (In trade, though, everyone was expected to work on Saturday.)  Around 300 people work in our small factory.  There were tables for 300 people and the tables were full (See second photo).  The venue was a large hotel, with a large banquet facility,  on the North side of town.

The dinner lasted about three hours, including the entertainment.  Each department was assigned a performance of some kind or other.  It started with a dragon dance, performed by the management team. (Top photo).  This was followed by the only professional performer - a gymnast that was hired by the worker's council.  (That would be the third photo.)   After that, it was all done by people that had a day job.  They had all been practicing at nights, after work, for the preceding six weeks.

There were probably about 12 or 15 performances during the night....I lost track.  The fourth photo shows the Supply Chain Team performing a skit on the history of our factory.  This particularly photo shows their take on the events of the 1970's.  It was tongue-in-cheek humor....poking fun at their history and themselves in ways I never would have expected before coming here.  The fifth photo is analytical labs performing a Spanish dance routine.  Notice that no expense was spared on costumes.

No matter where you work, you work with people every day and normally don't think much or learn much about their hobbies or their talents or their passions.  That was one of the most fun things about the performances - learning who the really good singers and good dancers and latent comedians were.  The other fun thing was the total absence of fear of litigation.  In the U.S., most of the performances would have been nixed by the lawyers out of fear of discrimination lawsuits.  Jokes were made that were mildly offensive, as all the best jokes are.  Young men danced shirtless and young women danced in tight dance costumes.  And two days later, everyone went back to work with each other with no one having made a harassment complaint.

Also, each table was provided with beer and wine and Chinese rice wine and white liquor.  Most everyone drank responsibly.  A few had a little too much, but not enough to be belligerent or troublesome.  Buses and taxis were provided for all.   No one drove.  No one fought.  No one vomited.  There was no need for anyone to sign a liability waiver.

The last photo is of a lady who works in the production department.  Every year the site has a karaoke competition, and for the past few years she has been the winner.  I didn't know this until someone told me.   I thought she was a hired professional.  She had a voice that could cover about 25 octaves or so.  She performed a song of one of the Western provinces, where Chinese and Arab and Indian music all fuse into the regional style.  She is even dressed in the ethnic costume and hairstyle of the region.  In the U.S., I would have been happy to pay money to see her perform.  Here, she is just another employee with a hobby.  Two days later, she was back at work on the production line.

Home to Suzhou

On Sunday, January 8, we had to get up early to catch a flight to return to China.  As I write this, it is almost 3 weeks later and Suzhou sounds like a battle zone, due to all the fireworks being set off for the Chinese New Year festival.  This means I still have to catch up on nearly three weeks and bore you now with a bunch of Chinese New Year stories.  Apologies for falling so far behind.

It was a clear blue day when we took off from Osaka airport.  About 30 minutes into the flight, Theresa snapped the photo above, of the Japanese coastline.  It was only when we got back to Suzhou that we realized that the photo shows the bay and the city of Hiroshima.  It's a perfect match to one of aerial photos on display in the Peace Park museum.  Ground Zero is about one third of the way up from the bottom and one quarter of the way from the right side.

Miscellaneous Japan

 Following are some final thoughts and images from Japan.  There is much to enjoy and admire in Japan.  And the Japanese pay extraordinary attention to every little detail.  These are just a few details.  This post should be titled "Why Japan is a Truly Civilized Country".   

One of the surprising things about Japan is that, despite the large cities and dense population, most of the shops and restaurants and bars are little mom-and-pop places.  I'd guess they have large supermarkets, but I've never seen one.  Groceries are sold from small shops or markets stalls, like the one above, that open out onto the street.  You can see the shopkeeper arranging the fresh fish on the ice for display.  In China, all the fish are sold alive because that is the only way to protect against being sold a spoiled one.  In Japan, they do not worry about such things.  Quality and freshness are taken for granted.  No vendor would ever risk the dishonor of selling a stinky fish.

 Another example of Japan's high level of culture is shown above.  Grape Mountain Dew.  (No more need be said.)

 I haven't seen Tommy Lee Jones in a movie for a while, and kind of wondered where he disappeared to.  I guess he went to Japan.  He has become the Bill Murray character from the movie "Lost in Translation". You see his face on every second vending machine that you pass.  That's because every other vending machine is selling little cans of coffee - BOSS brand.

The really nifty thing about the BOSS machines is that they keep the cans warmed.  You just pop the top and you have hot coffee.  They usually sell soup too.

 If you need something stronger than caffeine, then there is also a vending machine for that.

Finally, the photo above shows one of the rickshaw runners of Kyoto.   In China, the closest thing we have to this is the bicycle taxi - a kind of tricycle that you get by grafting the rickshaw cab on the the back of a bike.  These bicycle taxis are, without exception, always pedaled by very rough looking older men. 

In Kyoto, the rickshaws are pulled by hand and the puller runs.  Running up and down the hills of Kyoto with 300 pounds of tourists on your back is a great way to become physically fit.  Consequently, the rickshaw pullers all look like 20 year-old male fashion models.  And they're all dressed in tight, spandex pants.  So if you ever hear woman gushing over the gorgeous views to be seen in Kyoto, keep in mind that she may not be talking about the temples.

The Love Stones

The Kiyomizu-dera temple had many charming little shrines.  Here are a few...including our favorite one, the "Love Stone".
But first, the photo below shows a Japanese god of love.  The gentleman to the right would be the god.  The rabbit, to his left, is his messenger.  There is a small box at the foot of the statue in which believers can slip a small prayer...normally a prayer by the unmarried to find a good and happy match.

The god below is not so specialized.  He is a kind of a one-wish-genie.  He will answer any prayer, but only one prayer.  Believers write down their wishes on a slip of paper and drop it in the box at the foot of the shrine.

And now, for the famous Love Stone.   Actually, it's a pair of stones.  Stone #1 is pictured below, followed immediately by stone #2.  The stones are spaced about 20 yards apart in a small courtyard.  The story goes, that any person who can find their way from one stone to the other with their eyes closed will be guaranteed to find love in the coming year. 

Pictured below is a young lady who is just a step away from finding the second stone.  It took her about 10 minutes to find her way, and only then with the help of the lady in black standing behind the stone.  The task is made all-the-harder by the fact that half the population of Japan was streaming through that little courtyard on this particular day.

Kiyomizu-dera

Kiyomizu-dera is a Buddhist Temple located on the East side of Kyoto, between the Silver Temple and the train station.  It was our last tourist stop in Kobe, and we got their in late afternoon as the sun was beginning to set.  This was the site that Theresa wanted most to see; she had gotten a Facebook message on the "100 places to see before you die", and the Kiyomizu-dera was on the list along with the Golden temple.  We were a bit worried that the temple would be closed, since everything in Kyoto, it seems, closes at 4:00 pm.   We felt a lot more hopeful when we saw the throngs of people trudging up the narrow road towards the entrance.

Kiyomizu-dera hangs on the side of a mountain.  It appears to be suspended in mid-air.  To me, the mention of "Buddhist Temple" has always conjured mental images of Shangri-la or mountaintop retreats in Tibet.  Kiyomizu-dera fits that stereotype.

 

The temple complex is old;  the site dates back about 1400 years.  The current structures are not that old - most were built about 400 years ago.  Though not ancient, that still makes them pretty darned old. 

Though it was January 7, most of the temple's visitors were still celebrating their New Year rituals.  People were getting their fortunes told, and rubbing statues for good luck, and throwing coins toward the temple's altars.  The temple has evidently built up a lot of it's own, special rituals over the years.   It has an assortment of little shrines, each with a specialized purpose of bringing luck of finding fortune, finding love, or improving one's love-related skills.

I'm not really sure what the photo above shows.  I believe these little wooden tablets contain prayers of some sort.  The photo below shows the "thousand stone Buddhas".  These, and any other image of a Buddha, were all dressed in their colorful New Year's garb.  (Again, I'm not sure what this symbolizes.  It looks as if they are all wearing baby bibs.)

Some of the visitors, too, were traditionally dressed.  You can see a group of young ladies below in their kimonos.  They are in the process of obtaining their fortunes for the year.  The lady in the white-dotted-blue kimono is shaking a wooden cylinder filled with sticks.  Out will come a numbered stick.  The stick will be traded for a likewise numbered piece of paper.  Whatever fortune is written on the paper will, supposedly, be her's for the coming year.

The temple site was originally chosen because of a natural, and now sacred, waterfall - the Otowa waterfall.  The waters are now channeled to a pavilion where the visitors can catch them in tin cups and drink for good fortune.  You can see these water-catchers in the photo below, at the left-hand side.

Gold and Silver

After Nijo Castle, our next two stops in Kyoto were the Golden Temple (Kinkaku-ji) and the Silver Temple (Ginkaku-ji).  The Golden Temple, above, is a quick visit - you go there, you see the famous view, and then you leave.  Well, there is more to do there than just that.  But it was raining and the spot was crowded with holiday visitors.  Theresa took the time to throw coins at the "good luck" bowl. (see below)  There were also a few little shops to visit.

A cross-town-bus-ride later,  we were at The Silver Temple.  The Golden Temple is something you go to look at.  The Silver Temple is someplace you go to visit.  Our Japanese friends said they actually prefer the Silver Temple because of it large, traditional gardens and mountainside paths.  It is a place you can go to again and again, and still see something new with each visit.

The temple itself is shown above.  The dark brown wood doesn't have the sex-appeal of gold, but it blends well with the surroundings.   Rather than a single, iconic image, the temple provides different views from different angles as you wander through the garden.

The Silver Temple belongs to Zen Buddhism.  A typical feature of "Zen gardens", we learned, is dry landscaping with rock and sand.  The sand is teased into elaborate geometric patterns using rakes and trowels.  Zen is all about meditation and contemplation.  The raking of the sand is a meditative exercise which, to master, requires technical skill and deep concentration.  The finished product also provides something for others to meditate upon.  The patterns are a bit like an ink blot or modern art - everyone sees something different in them.

You can take a virtual tour of the Silver Temple gardens, thanks to Bowdoin College.  You can also take a  Golden Temple virtual tour.

Nijo Castle

Our first stop in Kyoto was Nijo Castle.  The castle is located near the center of the city - an easy stop on the way to those sights farther afield.  The castle dates back to around the year 1600, when it was built by one of the Edo Shogun.   It's certainly not a castle in the European sense.  True, the castle grounds are surrounded by a moat and a substantial wall.  But the castle itself is a wooden structure.  And, where the castles of Himeji and Hiroshima towered five or six stories into the air, the Nijo castle was just a cluster of simple, one-story buildings.

But though not Cinderella's castle, the Nijo Castle still had a Disney like feel to it.  The castle was surrounded by Japanese gardens that were incredibly beautiful.  Every directly you looked, every angle, was a picture perfect moment made by Kodak.  (Or at least it was at the time of our visit...prior to Kodak's declaration of bankruptcy.) 

Inside the castle buildings, it was just as magical.  The castle was a series of rooms - very large rooms - that progressed from the reception halls for guests, to the grand hall of the imperial court, all the way to the living quarters for the Shogun.  The floors were covered in bamboo mats and the walls and ceilings were decorated with masterful paintings.  Unfortunately, there were no photo's allowed inside.  So you will have to take my word when I say it was impressive.

Ok...two things that struck me.   One is shown by the photo above....specifically, the Japanese use some really big stones to build their walls.   We've become used to seeing Chinese walls.  Though impressive, the Chinese walls are almost all built from bricks of modest size.  The walls of Nijo Castle are made with stones of Herculean size.   You can't  look at these walls without wondering...."how the heck did they do that? ".

A second thing that was really interesting:  what they call the "Nightingale Floors".  Nijo Castle is built with all the main rooms at the center of the structures.  All are tied together through a main hallway of wooden planks.  The hallway runs along the perimeter, with the outer wall on one side and the interior rooms on the other.  The floors of the hallway are purposely built to squeak....to chirp like nightingales.  This is the 9th century version of a burglar alarm.  It's impossible to walk the floors without creating a squeak.  These squeaks, or the chirping of the nightingales, provided warning of unwelcome visitors in the night.

The final photo, above, shows the New Year's decoration at the door of Nijo Castle.   Note the typical mixture of evergreen, and bamboo, and of cabbage flower.

Kyoto

Our two weeks in Japan was scheduled to end with an early morning flight to Shanghai on January 8.  January 7 was a Saturday, and more importantly, a day off of work.  So Theresa and I finally went to Kyoto.

If Tokyo is the heart of Japan, then Kyoto is the soul.  Kyoto is to Japanese culture as is Xian to China, or Rome and Athens to Western Culture.  Kyoto was the primary city of Japan for nearly 1100 years, until the emperor moved to Tokyo in 1868.  You can't walk a block in the city without tripping over history - either a temple or a palace or a artifact of some sort.  Even in Chinese, the spelling of Kyoto, 京都, means the "capital of all".

Thanks to a quirk of fate, the historical beauty of Kyoto is well-preserved.  You see, during World War II,  Kyoto was chosen as one of the original targets for the atomic bomb.   We learned this when we visited Hiroshima.  With Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Kyoto was placed off-limits for conventional bombing.  No one knew how destructive an A-bomb would be.  So these cities were preserved to serve as true test cases to measure the power of the bomb.  It was only through the insistence of  Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, that Kyoto was taken of the list.  Seems he was familiar with the legacy of Kyoto and thought it would be a travesty to destroy the city.

Kyoto is nestled inland, up in the mountains.  (See top-most photo...the city of Kobe lies in the valley below the setting sun.) The location betrays an origin in times when defense was more important than commerce.  If you drew lines between Kyoto and Kobe and Osaka, then you would have an equilateral triangle of 40 miles or so for each side.  From Kobe, it is about an hour by commuter train.

Today's Kyoto is very much a modern tourist city.  The second photo shows the Kyoto Tower looming over the train station in the city center.   This is the first site seen by the thousands of tourists that arrive each day.  Luckily, Kyoto is tourist friendly.  There is a huge tourist information center in the train station.  When we arrived, a very nice older gentleman gave us a map and laid out our travel plans for the day.  He even sold us a bus pass for the day.

Anywhere there are tourists there are bound to be lots of tourist shops.  Kyoto has it's share.  Nothing could be more touristic than a shop selling Japanese fans, like the one shown above.  Many of the tourist shops are bakeries for Yatsuhashi - the famous cinnamon cookies of Kyoto.  The third photo shows a woman hard-at-work making the Yatsuhashi.  She rolls the dough into thin sheets, cuts rectangles of about one inch by three inches, and then cooks the pieces on the griddle under the weight of wooden blocks.  When cooked, the cookies are still pliable.  She then places them on a cylindrical mold until they cool hard in the shape of a roof-tile.  The resulting cookie is like crunchy ginger-bread...except the taste is cinnamon instead of ginger.

By the way, the making of a Yatsuhashi is remarkably similar to the making of a Chinese Fortune Cookie....both are shaped while warm and only become crunchy upon cooling.   Truth-be-told, the Chinese fortune cookie has nothing to do with China.  It actually comes from Japan.  The baking methods of Kyoto were brought to America by Japanese immigrants and then co-opted by Chinese-American restaurants to produce the fortune cookies.  It's the same dough but with a lot less cinnamon.  And also a piece of paper twisted into the center of the cookie before it cools.

By the way, I've never seen a fortune cookie ANYWHERE in China.   Never.

Camp Zama

Theresa spent a good deal of her teen-age years in Japan, when her father was stationed at the U.S. Army Base, Camp Zama.  For as long as I've known her, she has wanted to get back to Japan and visit her old home.

With that in mind, we bought a Japan Railway Pass before coming to Kobe for Theresa to use.  The Railway pass entitles you to ride almost any train in Japan for a 7 day or 14 day period.  We bought the 7 day pass, and it pretty much paid for itself with just the one round-trip to Hiroshima.  On top of that, Theresa used it to go to a Osaka and Himeji and other nearby spots.  It was only on the last valid date of the pass that she worked up the courage to try to get to Zama

Now, keep in mind that Theresa had no idea how to get to Camp Zama.  All we knew is that it is located on the other side of the island, between Yokohama and Tokyo.  All of the on-line travel information was aimed at servicemen flying into Tokyo.  So, she had to rely completely on the nice people at the ticket window of the train station. 

Also keep in mind, that the two week period around New Year's day is the heaviest travel period of the year in Japan.   Of course, we didn't realize this beforehand.  But we soon came to realize that the whole country was traveling toward or in return from a family visit.  So in her quest for Camp Zama, Theresa had to take her chances.  She went standing-room on the train out, and only got a seat for the last hour of the three hour Shinkansen leg.  After that, she took local trains to get to the Soubudai station, near Camp Zama (see photo above).

To tell the truth, she didn't get to see much.  By time she arrived, there was only about an hour's worth of daylight left.  And when she got to the base, the guards would not let her pass without valid military ID.  Security and all that stuff.   Theresa doesn't look all that crazy, but in this day and age we are all presumed to be security risks.  So, she had to settle for walking around and looking through the fence (see top photo).

But just getting back to Camp Zama after 35 years was a victory.  She got to see a few things that stirred up memories.  And then she got back on the train and headed back to Kobe.

New Year Rituals In Hiroshima

January 2nd was scheduled to be a working day, but just barely.  Luckily, we were able to work a little late on January 1st and complete all the tasks for the next day.  So January 2nd became a day off.  Woo Hoo Hoo.

By the Shinkansen bullet train, it is only 1 hour and 15 minutes from Kobe to Hiroshima.  So, Theresa and I grabbed a couple of tickets and went.  Our first stop was the Peace Park.  After that, we walked the 5 or 6 blocks up to Hiroshima Castle. 

Due to the New Year's holidays the castle was closed to entry.   So the photo at top is the best we can do.   There has been a castle on this site since the 1500s.  The previous version of the castle was incinerated on August 6, 1945.  The current version of the castle was built shortly after that.  It is a great reconstruction and, from looking at it, I couldn't tell if it was 50 years old or 500 years old.

Adjacent to the Hiroshima Castle is a Shinto temple, the Gokoku Shrine.  On January 2nd, the people were still in full-on-New-Year mode.  Tons of people were headed to the shrine to obtain their good luck for the year.   Once again, we encountered a throng of people that self-organized into a line for entry to the temple complex.  Once again, it was a bit like the state fair ....with all the food vendors flanking the path.

The line snaked its way through booths that were selling food and smelling wonderful.  Above, you can see a meat-on-a-stick vendor.  I'm not sure exactly what all the meats are, but I know the meat to the right is octopus.  Below you see a new-and-improved version for sale....meat on a stick with egg.

Many of the booths along the way offered fortune telling of all sorts.  Below is a photo of one of the palm readers.

The line moved steadily but slowly.  The photo below shows when we finally arrived at the temple gates.

The line led up the steps of the temple itself.  The photo below attempts to show how people were throwing coins as offerings....and how the temple keepers had built temporary catch basins to pick up the coins.   I suspect that the New Year Holiday must fund the majority of the yearly operations.

The photo below is a fortune-telling booth.  Basically, people would shake a container full of randomly numbered sticks to extract a single stick.  They would then give stick to one of the ladies who would retrieve the fortune associated with the number on the stick.

Below is a photo of people tying their wishes to a wish-line.  I call it a wish-line because it looks like a clothes-line.  I am not sure what the offical term is for this.  But at the temples you can see hundreds of paper wishes tied to lines like this one.

In the photo below, visitors to the temple are buying a ritual drink of hot sake to start the new year.

The photo below shows the booth were they are selling lucky "arrows".  In the Shinto tradition, the arrows are said to have powers to ward off evil spirits.   But supposedly, the arrows are only good for one year.  With the new year you are supposed to start over by turning in your old arrow (for burning) and buying a new arrow for the new year.

Theresa had to buy one of the arrows.  Below is a photo showing her with her fine selection of purple color, of course.

The photo below shows another one of the New Year rituals.  Visitors are washing their hands in the temple fountain. 

The New Year holiday also brings out a lot of people in traditional dress.  The photo below shows a young girl in her kimono.    Many kimonos were seen out and about during the holiday period.