Barbed wire kimono

Barbed wire design
Girdles purple kimono
Cowboy or tattoo?

Wearing Kimono

I have never wanted to wear a kimono, although I have been living in Japan 12 years.

A friend invited me on a recent day. At a discount rental kimono price we could sightsee autumn colors in the ancient city of Kyoto in style. I was game, but relieved when cold rain changed our attire to jeans and sweaters and umbrellas. Later that day, the rain lifted and we saw a kimono’d young woman with white face makeup walking slowly.

“That could have been us!” I said.

“No,” my companion middle-aged friend corrected with a smile, “we would have been dressed differently.”

On the other hand, the patterns of the fabric intrigue me to stare in awe at kimono wearers.

In summer, informal lightweight kimono beckon brightly as if a color had been added to the rainbow. An insect motif displayed in a department store was too small for my medium adult size, never mind that it was for boys.

A late summer model in a small shop showed a red kimono with spider web. The autumn kimono depicted scorpion. Consultation with Japanese friends revealed that insect kimono for women are modern but not avant-garde.

It is not that I couldn’t wear a kimono. But I have never pictured myself in one, and the image does not click. The silhouette is different than my Western culture. And yet the body underneath is not substantially different in curves.

I had been hiking and bathed in onsen with a Japanese family and was delighted to be invited to the kimono practice session when my friends’ elder daughter turned 20. More precisely, it was the year she would turn 20. In January, Japan has a coming of age day national holiday. To-be 20 year-olds youth dress up, hear speeches, come of age.

Mother, paternal grandmother, and the 19-year-old go upstairs. The futon where parents sleep has been put away in the closet. The box containing the mother’s coming-of-age kimono is opened. The sleeves are like the blouses we used to call Angel Wing. Only an unmarried woman’s kimono has long hanging sleeves.

The lithe young woman stands on a paper rug and is wrapped by her elders. “Like a pig,” she laments, pulling her stomach in. “It is the same phrase in Japanese.”

Magazines of the year’s kimono fashions strew the room. Rentals are popular and stores abound. The new angle to make the heirloom kimono stylish is the tying of the obi, the long wide belt. It is crossed and pleated and pinned to form sculpted designs in the back. Mother and grandmother follow the directions in the magazine. They compare the result with the picture in the magazine. Unsatisfied, they unwind the obi, and start again. Hours pass.

There is no rush. The father loudly plays a recording of an opera downstairs. The younger sister returns from a shopping trip. She enters the room, seeing her elder sister standing arms out, the mother mouthing pins. She participates by ornamenting her pinioned sister, trying on earrings and hair pins. The siblings communicate intensely in their youthful pair. Women of accordian’d ages play out roles.

The next morning, getting into a car is the most difficult manoevre for the celebrant. Young men and women approach the municipal hall.

“How will I get carry a pass for the train and bus?” the 19-year-old asks.

“You will return by taxi,” her father says.

She gets out of the car and is gone.

“Do you have this in America?”

“No, we don’t,” I reply, recalling car-hopping for other 16-year-olds at Bob’s Big Boy in Los Angeles.

Can America be transformed by Obama?

Obama – America will transform?
オバマで　アメリカは　変化　できるか。

The magazine headline hangs in the subway train in Osaka, Japan on 6 December 2008.


Several other stories in this issue are also about Obama and about America.

A Japanese friend remarks, “If I had written the headline, it would have not been so passive. Perhaps the headline writer did not agree with the idea.”

However, she adds, AMERICA cannot be the subject of a passive sentence in Japanese. Grammar restricts passive voice to sentient creatures. In this sentence, America is the subject and the verb is transform. Obama is not the subject of the sentence.

Venus in Japanese

After two days and nights of rain, Sunday is cold, clear, crisp.  An afternoon walk, and at dusk the new moon and Venus visible from a promenade along a river in Kyoto.  I know the closely paired Jupiter will appear within 30 minutes, find a bench, and sit facing West.

An elderly gentleman of about 70 offers a greeting.  I point and say HOSHI, Japanese for star.  It has the same pronunciation as the word for HOPE.

He says a phrase,  I evince interest, he pulls off my glove and spells the word onto my palm. He writes the Chinese character and explains more than I can understand--something about bright.

I walk the hour home repeating the phrase.  I think it has something to do with the bright night sky of Japan, liking stars, welcome to Kyoto.  But in fact it means only Evening Star, Venus.

I ask a friend if there is a matching phrase for Morning Star, Venus.  She guesses, but confesses that she has never heard a phrase.

Green triangles, red cylinders: Japanese soup

At the 7-11 in Japan in winter, you can get hot soup.  You use tongs and a ladle to chose from among some 12 cages in hot broth.  If a clerk helps with the slippery exchange, you can name the shape--if you know it or can read. The descriptions are written for triangular grey green herb gelatin; weiner; egg; tofu.  

Or you can point. 

Green tea and horseradish

Below the revolving sushi  a conveyor belt holds big teacups.  I put a teacup under the spigot at my place in the Tokyo Station fast food restaurant. Hot water pours into my cup.  But where is the tea?  

I give up on the tea and take a plate with one piece of sushi.  I tap green powder from a can into a dish the size of a silver dollar and mix in some hot water.  I wait -- I know powdered horseradish must set for five minutes.  Alas, the liquid does not thicken; there is no piquancy.  It tastes like tea. 

The powder I tap onto the now lukewarm water floats.  The waitress helps as I mime:  first  put the tea powder into the cup, then add hot water.  Nobody says anything--not the sushi master nor the guy eating next to me.

North east corners are unlucky in Japan, and called the "devils' gate."  My cat exits through a small space between a cinder block fence and a chain link fence; he thus gains entrance  into a quiet cul de sac.  But my stack of boxes was repeatedly removed by my landlords.  Finally, they explained that this was the KIMON, and nothing could block the 30 centimeter square corner.  Thus, the suspended plank leads over the "sacred spot" to the hole between the fences.

Pun on name

The last day of a summer intensive essay writing class for Osaka University graduate and undergraduate students, the class poses with the teacher.

The pun on my name is standard word play.

Fire bucket, Kyoto

Kyoto fights fire with water buckets outside many residences.  The middle symbol means fire--see the two flames?

Cat cave under stairs

In the hot summer, my cat finds the  recess for shoes cool.

Writing Japanese

Japanese children spend years learning what I can practice with small effect.

This effort at writing Japanese carries red corrections by the professor who teaches cadets from other countries at the Defense Academy.

I thought when I learned the syllabalary -- corresponding to a phonetic alphabet-- I would be able to read.  But all the interesting words --and word parts--are written in Chinese characters.  These pictograms are  called Kanji (CHinese letters, literally).

Metamorphosis: cicada

A cicada emerges.  The winged insect metamorphosis took a few hours.  I thought at first two creatures battled.

The close up took place on a Yokohama porch in the summer.

Curvy bamboo

Not all bamboo is straight!  Here is a curvy bamboo in Kyoto at a sightseeing area called Arashimaya in November 2008.   I thought it was fake, but my Japanese friend assured me that it was real.  

"It is curved like a tortoise shell," she said.

Kiko-chiku in Japanese--internodes at stem base are suppressed until 3 feet high.  Phyllostachys herterocycla

My class wanted to pose with me next to the rescue truck after the fire drill at the campus of Osaka University, October 11, 2008.

A fire drill on the university campus today brought this rescue truck in Osaka, Japan.

Tokyo-Osaka hiking trail

Walking around my new neighborhood in Kyoto, I asked a passerby to pronounce this sign. I could enter phonetic into a word processor and match the six kanji and search on the web. It is long hiking trail between Tokyo and Osaka, a few hundred miles. An access point is 20 minutes by foot from my front door in the northern suburbs of Kyoto.

Tokai shizen hodou=long distance nature trail

Kyoto autumn hike

I take a cell phone photo and ask a Japanese friend to translate. Luckily, she is an avid mushroom hunter.

"The sign which says 'dont enter from 25 sep to 10 nov because of harvesting of matsutake mushrooms.'

I have never seen the place where matsutake grow! you know, matsutake grow only under the special paintree and it's so rare to find them!! I wish I could visit kyoto in this season and eat a lot of matsutake."

Don't study in the university cafeteria

Want to Publish: journal about learning Japanese?

Professor Pun Name

Writing Japanese lesson

Armadillo Guitars, Kyoto

China: street vendor. sign in arabic and chinese

Cicada metamorphosis

Nara, Japan

The scorpion motif kimono appeared in late summer. I had feared that insects and creatures were only on boys' summer wear.

The small store in early summer showed a spider motif kimono.

A surfeit of riches.

FIre bucket

Kimono image: spider lady

How long in Japan?

Morning jog, I point to leaves changing to yellows and reds on the trees.  "Autumn comes," I say in Japanese.  A restaurant gardener carrying tools assents.  

"Do you live in Kyoto?" he asks.

"Since April.  My first autumn here."

"How long in Japan?"

"12 years."

"Two months?"

"12 years."

My  Japanese is not as fluent as my cousin's son.  "Why aren't you fluent?" my uncle asks.

"I don't know."  But the reason is that I speak Japanese only in occassionally and in short phrases.

It is a garden variety Japanese and suffices to share expressions of the beauty of nature.