So I've been here for 4 and a half months and over that time, its become apparent to me that an understanding of Japanese culture can be difficult to put into words, due to the very nature of it. It seems to me to be based in a very corporeal, ritualistic setting, as opposed to the heady, idea ridden style of 'the west'. This, I suppose, is an interpretation I have been toying with over the past while, and the more I partake in the traditional activities here, the more that interpretation seems fitting. So here are some tales about a few particularly Japanese things I have done over the past few months:

Cultural experience number one:
I'd mentioned to my friend Uchiyama that i was interested in learning about Buddhism here and what meditation was like, so she offered to take me to a Buddhist temple for meditation, even though she never usually goes, which is soo nice of her. She hardly speaks any English at all but she still offers to take me places all the time and I have heaps of fun hanging out with her, its a good way practise my japanese too. So anyway it was really cool! Everyone sat on cushions in the tatami room at Zuiganji temple. There is a big display of ornaments and stuff in the front half of the room. The monk sits in front of these and plays a gong at varying intervals. Then the group recites this mantra type thing called the "hanya shingyo" all in japanese of course. Then everyone sits still and silent together for an hour! Time went by amazingly quickly too. Uchiyama and her friend Hana, both in their 50's, were hilarious... They were shuffling around and fidgeting and uchiyama kept almost falling asleep! It was such a cool experience to be that still and silent (well almost!) with people for such a long time. I went again by myself a fortnight later, and got invited to tea ceremony afterwards - japanese people are sooo sooo nice and welcoming! but tea ceremony will have to wait until one of the next paragraphs...

Cultural experience number two:
Last week i went to a Shoudou club at another temple in the city with Uchiyama. Shoudou is japanese calligraphy. We began the session by rubbing some dust on our hands, eating a clove (gross) and lighting three incense sticks. and bowing to the shrine of course.. There were about 6 or 7 other ladies there, all definitely over 50. Its actually really suprising that i can enjoy hanging out with a bunch of old ladies! It feels like they're alot more young at heart than people of similar age in NZ. The language barrier makes it hard to tell though.. So we spend an hour tracing kanji. I started iff trying to do the normal sized ones, but it was alot more difficult than i thought! so i was given the extra large "training wheels" Kanji to trace. Kanji are the complex characters adopted from Chinese and they are near impossible to learn.. The ladies went through the pronounciation for me in japanese, but i still had no idea what it meant, so i explained that i would take it home with me and figure out what it meant in English. But then they said that even THEY didnt know what it meant in Japanese, that it is just a string of words/sounds with no meaning!! And that what we were tracing was actually called the "hanya shingyo" ... Amazing!!

Cultural experience number three:
Tea Ceremony. I've done this quite a few times since ive been here, at different places like school festivals and temples. I was really happy to be able to do it with a teacher at my techincal school, because she was teaching some other students so i was able to learn about all the specific methods that are involved. Everything has to be done in a particular way, even down to the folding of a napkin and how you set it down on the table. The basic idea is that, in proper tea ceremony, people take turns at being the server of the tea and being served the tea. There is a certain way to serve and be served. And the enjoyment comes from the pure ritual of the whole thing. At first i didnt understand why people did this kind of thing, because, from my perspective, drinking tea is drinking tea and thats all there is to it. you should be able to drink tea however you want to drink it, right? whats the point? But the whole thing is basically a form of meditation, as i realised when an hour had gone by and all i had been doing was pouring and drinking tea!! and it wasnt like id exactly been caught up in conversation, cos my japanese is terrible... so yeah, as i said, its really hard to articulate the exact significance of this kind of thing, but all i can say is that it really ties in with and compliments the lifestyles of people here.

number four! a taste of the local crafts:
the two main traditional crafts that are specific to this area of japan are the indigo dyeing (throughout tokushima) and the otani pottery (mainly naruto area). i went to a pottery class at my technical school with some students parents. we used little hand spun wheels to make little bowls and cups and stuff. i went to the class intending to be experimental with the clay and make some kind of crazy sculpture thing, which i love to do, and was kinda disappointed when everyone started making bowls and cups exactly the way they were told to. Since then i have realised that being original/experimental is really not important to people here. Here, the enjoyment comes from going through the required steps to make something simple and to the point. This was strange to me at first, but after being here for a while and doing some of these activities like tea ceremony and calligraphy, I've come to understand that it is the process that is important, and not just the glory of the final product (like with tea ceremony, drinking the tea is merely a part of the process of making and serving it). So this was just kind of a normal pottery class. the otani pottery is special because they use clay straight from the ground in naruto and fire it right onsite in a natural underground kiln. The professionals make huge pots, the size of three 10 year old kids. After they have made and glazed the pots to perfection, they 'ruin' it by smearing some bleach on the side, and this is the signature of the pot, to make it distinct from any other.
I was lucky enough to dye my own handkerchief at the indigo dye studio at my agricultural school on their festival day. There are techniques for sewing and scrunching up the material to make specific patterns. i sewed five flower shapes onto mine and then pulled the threads so they bunched up. Then i dunked the cloth into a huge pot of the natural dye (it was actually a giant otani pot too!). The dye is quite thick and gets really frothy like sea water on the top. You hold it under for three minutes, then out for three under for three etc until you get the desired colour. mine didnt turn out very well though.. its a long process and amazing that they still do it that way! i now understand why its so expensive to buy the indigo products too..

Thats enough for one post! More to come later..

Hajimemasu!

Let's begin!
Here's a place where I will recount some of my experiences while living and working as an assistant language teacher at some highschools in Tokushima, Japan. I'll attempt to make them concise, but forgive me if I tend to get into alot more detail than is necessary. The differences between my own culture and that of Japan become clearer everyday, and I love that this understanding continues to grow and change. I hope to communicate some of this understanding through this blog. I will try to be as objective and balanced as possible, but of course this is just my perspective, and a warped perspective at that. The language barrier makes it difficult to be sure about any interpretations, but as long as we don't generalise or assume, we should be ok.

Please enjoy!