If you are one of the countless English teachers that arrives in Japan during the crazy month of August, then you might have had a run in with Obon. Now, I’ve rambled on before about how meticulous Japanese people are. They keep records and paperwork for everything. Even things most people wouldn’t keep documentation on. Obon, however, is one of those odds exceptions to this rule. You usually won’t find it on a calendar, and you won’t know about it until someone in your office comes up and tells you that you now have 4 “surprise” days off. If this should happen to you, don’t panic! You aren’t been fired.
Obon is a Japanese holiday that usually occurs during the month of August. During this time, most Japanese people take around three or four off days and return to their ancestral homes. Here, they welcome back the spirits of their dead ancestors to come and “hang out” with them for a while. Once the party is over, a large fire is burned in the drive way. Black smoke is used to help the spirits find their way back to where ever they usually hang. I think Obon is a great glimpse into the way ancient Japanese people dealt in issues like death and immortality. I only wish Candadians had retained some of their ancient tradtions.
The odd thing about Obon is that it’s not listed as a full holiday. However, everyone takes time off from work, the trains are set to “holiday” mode, and the traffic becomes ugly. In all senses of the term, Obon is a full out holiday.
So the next time your boss comes up to you and tells you the dead are coming back, you won’t need to grab a baseball bat and hole yourself up waiting for the zombies to crack open your skull and feast from the tasty goo within. You’ll just get a few extra days offs to enjoy your time in Japan.
I’m not usually one for advertising on this blog, but there is a first time for everything. It’s also something that is related to Japan, so how can we lose? I wanted to put in a shout-out for The Big O’s Japan Slam on the tiltyhouse Network.
The Big O’s Japan Slam is a weekly radio show hosted by the Talented James Oikawa. It features some of the most recent and popular music out of Japan. Using the Oricon top 10 music list as a basis, James brings you the hot pop hits out of Japan. He usually raps up his show with a selection of video game music. Each episode ranges from 30 to 60 minutes, and is packed full of music.
If you are into what is new in the Japanese pop music scene, then I would recommend you check this out every week. If you wish to subscribe to the Slam, just click the tiltyhouse link on the side of my page. You get also grab a torrent for it here.
My first week in Hachimantai City was quite exciting. I had a chance to check out some of the interesting sites around town. There were quite a few of them. On Friday I joined a group of teachers and headed out on a tour of some of the cultural assets of the Nanashigure(七時雨) area.
Nanashigure is a class E volcano. What this means is that it hasn’t erupted in over one hundred thousand years. At one point in the past, this volcano blew it’s top and left a concave area that led to the formation of a lake. The water receded many thousands of years ago, but there is geological evidence in the strata lines that there was indeed a massive lake in the area, and we got an opportunity to see this line in the rock.
Most of the sites we visited were ancient religious sites that were used by early Japanese people. Some of them went back well over a thousand years. We also got a glimpse of the old road system that people used to travel by. You can find many ancient stones that show what certain areas of Hachimantai city used to be called. The old road was fairly popular amongst travelers in Japan’s ealy history, right up until about 110 years ago.
I wasn’t terribly interested in the religious significance of what I saw, but there was an amazing collection of temples and torii to be found. Not to mention all the wildlife that surrounded us. There is even an old style Japanese hut. You can’t enter it, but just looking around it gives you a sense of the deep history in the areas.
And with that, my first week in Hachimantai came to an end. I was very grateful for having them bring me along on the trip. I met a number of nice teachers, and found that many people were using the same model of camera that I was. Small world!
Some of you may remember that list I made(last week) of the costs associated with moving out. It wasn’t pretty, but since I knew that Japan could be an expensive place to live, I expected it. Today, I will provide for you a list of the various cost of moving somewhere else in Japan. Let’s start with some of the basics:
Telephone and Internet: It cost me 3300yen just for them to look at my lines and tell me that everything is okay. Three cheers for bureaucracy. Is it not a coincidence that the word bureaucracy can be broken down in to bureau(which means office in French) and cracy. If you change the “cracy” to “crazy”, it all makes sense.
Parking Permit: In order to own a car in Japan, you need to prove you have a parking spot. the dealership I bought the car from took care of this from me the first time, but now that I’m out on my own and 200km away from them, I have to deal with this on my own. It’s going to cost a whopping 2750yen to deal with this.
More updates as they come.
