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Last night after dinner,
Last night after dinner, our dining companion took us down the street and around the corner. “Here it is,” he said. We were standing in front of BoPeep, a tiny walk-in closet of a shop. With just room enough for a single file of customers, the store was crammed floor to ceiling with drug paraphenalia…
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I got lost in
I got lost in my own train station yesterday. When the Odeo subway line opened last month, Kasuga station was enlarged to include access to the new line. In fact, the Oedo line forms a perpendicular bridge between the parallel Kasuga and Korakuen stations. So when I got off the Odeo line yesterday on my…
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Fukubukuro are grab bags
Fukubukuro are grab bags for grown-ups. The name means lucky (fuku) bag (bukuro) and it is just that. For a set amount of money, you select a sealed shopping bag full of merchandise. You get at least as much as you paid for and if you are lucky, you get more. I decided to search…
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When I rolled out
When I rolled out of bed just now to start my day (OK, I admit that I’ve been awake for a few hours but lying abed and finishing a book I started yesterday), Tod sleepily asked me to turn up the heat. The front panel of the heater was blinking. That’s an indication to me…
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The Japanese have a
The Japanese have a very nifty tradition for new year’s greetings. People mail postcards (called nenga hagaki) to one another. The post office sells pre-franked cards with cartoon charaters or other scenes and lottery numbers printed on them. The lottery is drawn in mid-January and these cards are very popular–a greeting and a potential gift…
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At 1:00 am, there
At 1:00 am, there were hundreds of people at the temple. Stalls along the walkways hawked daruma dolls, wooden arrows, and all sorts of good luck charms. Food sellers were doing a brisk business with fried noodles, “baby custard” doughnuts, and warm sake. It seemed as if all the residents of Sugamo had turned out…
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Click. Click. Click-click. The
Click. Click. Click-click. The rhythm of wooden sticks has echoed through our neighborhood for the last few evenings as “fire patrols” make their year-end rounds. Groups of four to eight men (and a rare woman) from the neighborhood walk through the streets, looking at each building to make sure none is on fire. The leader…
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Yesterday was the last
Yesterday was the last business day of the year and most employees spent their afternoon cleaning. At the printer’s across the street, they washed and buffed the delivery trucks and the forklift. In restaurants, wait staff dusted picture frames and scrubbed all the corners that are normally overlooked. In the subways, uniformed cleaning staff halted…
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Everyday tongue twister
Although there’s no phrase for “tongue twister” in Japanese, the language has quite a few words that are challenging to say. Japanese has 5 vowel sounds (plus a few dipthongs) ah (a), ee (i), oo (u), eh (e), & oh (o). Paired with the 11 consonant sounds, this means pronunciation is very regular. Ko is…
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There are four days
There are four days left to complete the year-end cleaning. Before the new year comes, everyone in Japan cleans the slate–and the house, their accounts, broken relationships, and all the other loose ends that are dangling. It’s a great system, giving everyone a fresh start for the new year but it sure is a lot…
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