Moebly’s Blog

Fatboy Slim

Show us a musical genius.

I choose Norman Cook, a.k.a. Fatboy Slim. I don't usually like techno music, but I have loved his music since the first time I heard it, about ten years ago. He has a real talent for seemlessly piecing together seemingly incongruous clips of music from different genres and eras, into really catchy melodies. His work is pure genius.

Coming Of Age Day

Each year, it’s getting harder and harder to see people wearing kimono in public. They’ve always been hard to put on, and over the years, even a simple kimono has become fairly expensive. Nowadays, there are few people you are willing to go to the trouble and expense to wear them. For most people, the kimono has become something that one might wear once or twice in one’s life, on formal occasions, kind of like a tuxedo or a ball gown would be in western countries. One such occasion for wearing a kimono, has always been Coming of Age Day.

The first Monday after New Year's Day is the national holiday, Coming of Age Day, on which 20-year olds are invited to attend a ceremony at the city hall in their hometowns, to welcome them into adult society. Those attending the ceremonies usually dress up in formal wear, which until recently meant wearing a kimono. For many average Japanese people, Coming of Age Day is one of only a handful of chances they get to wear kimono. However, due to Japan's low birthrate, the population is shrinking, so there are fewer 20-year-olds each year to participate in the ceremonies, and few of them are interested in going to listen to some speeches by some old politicians who are out of touch with today's youth culture, and receive a small gift that they don't really need or want. Also, among those who do choose to attend such ceremonies, the wearing of western-style is becoming more and more popular each year. Sadly, I saw only a handful of young women wearing kimono today, and I didn’t even one young man in kimono.

After all of the eating and drinking I did over the winter holidays, I managed to go back to work one pound lighter than I was before the start of the winter holidays, and I’ve managed to keep the weight off. I attribute this to the Wii Fit. Over the holidays, I was exercising with it every night, and now that I’m back to work, and can’t use it as often as I like, the thought of the embarrassment of having my wife see a rise in my weight or BMI each successive time we do use the Wii Fit, is motivation enough to get me to make healthier choices during the work day. The only problem I've had with the Wii Fit so far, is that I can't get the background music of the step aerobics game out of my head. It's too catchy.

Mochizuki

I’m feeling full and content, but a little sore after making "mochi" at Amy’s school today. Mochi is hardened cakes of edible rice paste, that’s made from pounding piles of steamed rice until it forms a substance somewhat thicker, and a lot stickier than tapioca.

Yesterday at school, the kids, teachers and moms washed about 20 kg of glutenous rice, and then put the rice into buckets full of water, to sit overnight. This morning they drained the rice, and divided in into a series of large bamboo steamers; like those used in a Chinese restaurant for making dim sum.

The rice was steamed over a fire and then batches of it were dumped into huge, stone and wooden bowls. Next, the fathers took turns pounding the rice into a malleable, dough-like substance, with heavy wooden mallets, that were build like an axe, and were heavier than a sledge hammer.

After that, the mothers and kids tore off pieces of the dough and rolled them into bite-sized balls. They were later covered with cocoa powder, sheets of seaweed, "anko" (sweet red bean paste), "kinako" (soy been flour), and “natto” (fermented soy beans), and then were served with bowls of pork and vegetable soup, called “tonjiru”.

MAR061

Just after sunrise, all five of us hoped into Aki’s dad’s car, and we went for a drive to the seaside town of Chikura, on the other side of Tokyo Bay, in Chiba Prefecture. Instead of making the lengthy drive around the bay, we took the Tokyo Bay Aqualine through the bay. The Tokyo Bay Aqualine is a highway consisting of a 5 km long highway over a bridge that spans a third of the bay, and then plunges into a tunnel, to a depth of 60 metres below sea level, which allow cars to cover the remaining 10 kilometre distance, by driving through the water of Tokyo Bay.

Part of the town consists of a narrow strip of flower orchards, sandwiched between a chain of mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. For about three dollars, the owners of the orchards give you a basket and pair of shears, and will let you cut 30 to 40 of their flowers to take home with you. As you we stood with our backs to the mountains, there was a stunning 180 degree view of surf flying over a Technicolor horizon of flowers. Once we had filled our baskets with daffodils and poppies, we went to a nearby restaurant for a bowl full of fresh, local seafood over rice.

It was a really fun day trip and our house is filled with the beautiful sights and smells of freshly cut flowers.

Here is a short video in Japanese with English subtitles about sushi, made by the Japanese comedy troupe, "Ramens" (ラーメンズ). Don't take the advice in it too seriously! You may recognize the guy with the glasses and pony tail in the video, as the guy who plays the role of the PC, in the Japanese "Buy a Mac" series of commercials for Apple.

Osechi Ryori in a Jyubako

For the past three days we’ve been dining on “osechi ryori”: traditional Japanese New Year’s cuisine. "osechi ryori" is a collection of dried, boiled or pickled seafood, vegetables, and other non-preishable foods; served up in a multi-tiered, lacquer-ware "jyubako" box. It may not sound very appetizing, but the foods in "osechi-ryori" are quite tasty, and each one has symbolic meaning. Eating those foods is supposed to bring you happiness, prosperity and progeny. Traditionally, "osechi riyori" was also designed for convenience. In the days before refrigerators, homemakers wanted to be able to prepare a lot of food for the whole family and relatives coming to visit, before the New Year's holiday began, that would keep for several days, and could be served and stored in the same container. That way they didn't have to cook and clean so many dishes over the holidays, and they could spend more time relaxing with their family. Even though we have refrigerators nowadays, we like most other families in Japan continue the tradition of eating and serving "osechi ryori". However, few people continue to make the more than a dozen dishes that go into "osechi ryori" from scratch anymore. Like us, most families buy the foods at the supermarket, and then just arrange them in their "jyubako" box on New Year's Day. Or a lot of people like Aki's parents place an order at a restaurant or department store for a ready made "jyubako" full of "osechi ryori" to be delivered to their door by courier on New Year's Eve. The foods in “osechi ryori” are traditionally eaten together with a kind of soup, called “ozoni”.

Sweating Buckets

We don’t have any bowl games to entertain us over the New Year’s holidays, but that doesn’t mean that there is a lack of sporting competitions on Japanese TV. There’s an annual K-1 kickboxing-martial arts tournament on New Year’s Eve, and the final match in the Emperor’s Cup national soccer tournament kicks off on New Year’s day. There are always the semi-final matches of the national university rugby tournament on January 2nd, and the finals of the national high school soccer championship. But the most watched and talked about sporting competition held over the winter holidays, is definitely the Hakone Ekiden. On January 2nd, teams of six runners from a dozen or so elite Japanese universities, run from downtown Tokyo to the mountain resort town of Hakone. Then the teams run the return leg of the race back to Tokyo on the 3rd.

Torii: A Shrine Gate

In keeping with Japanese tradition, we all went to our local shrine today, to pray for happiness and prosperity in the new year, to get some lucky charms, and to get your fortune told for the next 12 months. To get your fortune, you shake an octagonal box until one of numerous long, thin sticks comes out of a small hole in one end of the box, and you read the number written on that stick. Then you get the piece of paper with a number on it that corresponds to the number on the stick you had drawn earlier. Written on the paper is your fortune concerning finances, travel, relationships, health, and a number of other things. This year, my fortune was really positive, and Amy's and Aki’s were just alright.

After reading one’s fortune, people often buy lucky charms from the shrine, that are supposed to bolster their luck in certain areas, and help protect them from harm. We got some road safety stickers for our bicycles, and some small, embroidered pouches, called “omamori-bukuro”. Each pouch contains a piece of paper with a prayer for a particular purpose written on it. I got one that’s supposed to help me more successful at work, and Amy got one that’s supposed to bring her success at school.

Festival Food Stands

Then it was time to for a snack. In and around most major shrines on festival days there are a number of stands and stalls set-up to sell things. They give the normally quite shrines the atmosphere of a carnival or a county fair without the farm animals and rides. You can usually find stalls selling things like spices, calendars and toys to take home with you, and lots of things to nibble on while you're visiting the shrine, like candied apples, grilled seafood and barbecued shish-kabobs. They also sell hot and cold alcoholic beverages and soft drinks. Amy wouldn’t let us go home without buying her a big bag of white cotton candy, in a bag decorated with pictures of Hello Kitty on it.