A dongba workshop in Osaka

PEOPLE WHO ARE BORED and can’t come up with a way to fill their spare hours in Japan have only themselves to blame. In every town there is at least one, and usually more, of what are known as karuchaa sentaa. There, for a modest fee, a person can choose to learn or learn about something interesting from among a cornucopia of subjects in classes offered from morning to night, all under the same roof.

If you want to study art, you can dabble in watercolors, oil colors, sketching with pencil (regular lead or colored), charcoal, woodblock prints, ceramics, pottery, origami, wood sculpture, and stained glass–and that doesn’t begin to exhaust the list at only one center in a small town.

There are classes in natural makeup, mah-jongg for women, chess, go, shogi, tarot, feng shui, cooking (just about anything), yoga, chi gung, exercises for the lymphatic system, and martial arts. Budding musicians can learn how to play any kind of instrument, Japanese or Western (including harmonica and ukulele), sing any kind of song, or dance any kind of dance. There are even special classes for karaoke singing.

Those interested in foreign languages can apply themselves to English (at several levels of difficulty), Korean, Chinese, French, and Italian. It goes without saying that there are classes in calligraphy, as well as classes in what’s called pen-ji, or writing kanji using a ballpoint pen.

And if you live in the Osaka area, earlier this month you could have taken part in a dongba workshop for free at the National Museum of Ethnology (link also on right sidebar).

What is dongba? The word is used to refer to the priests, culture, and pictographic script of the Naxi, an ethnic group of about 290,000 people that live in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan. The dongba that drew the Osakans to the workshop was the writing system, which consists of the only pictographs in use in the world today.

The system is used exclusively by priests as a prompt for interpreting ritual texts during weddings, funerals, and other religious ceremonies. By some accounts, there are as many as 2,000 symbols. It cannot be used to represent the Naxi language, but since the Naxi now write in Chinese they don’t need to use it for that purpose.

Students at the museum’s workshop listened to a lecture on Naxi culture and the use of the characters, watched a practical writing demonstration, and tried to write a letter on their own with the script.

There is what the Japanese call a quiet boom in dongba at present. Its popularity is not hard to understand. As you can see from the accompanying examples, the glyphs are simple, unpretentious, and easy to comprehend, particularly for people who use ideographic characters to begin with.

It’s exactly the sort of thing the Japanese find attractive, and the characters are even used in this country on the labels of PET bottles and as motifs on merchandise.

Some dongba manuscripts have been registered in Memory of the World, a UNESCO program to protect cultural heritage that the body thinks is in danger of dying out. How like UNESCO and the UN! To begin with, there are more than 5,000 dongba texts in libraries in the United States and Europe. In addition, the first photo here shows dongba used in a Kirin advertisement, and the second photo shows a dongba decal (translation: I love you) stuck on a cell phone. Since the danger that the world will forget about dongba is negligible–at least the part of the world that already knows about it–one has to wonder if UNESCO just finds it a convenient way to justify its own existence.

For those with an academic temperament, here’s a paper (.pdf file) comparing the development of written Chinese with dongba that you might enjoy. It explains that the dongba pictographs are a relatively recent invention (18th century), and their use became widespread when the Naxi prospered from the opium trade and had more disposable income to produce the texts.

The positive impact of McDonald’s on East Asia

DON BOUDREAUX at the site Cafe Hayek presents this post quoting a paper by Adrian E. Tschoegl that describes the positive impact of McDonald’s restaurants in Hong Kong, China, South Korea, and The Philippines.

They didn’t cite the negative impact–terrible food–but it’s worth seeing Tschoegel’s points. (I had to laugh at the improvement cited for South Korea.)

Cars losing cachet in Japan?

A NEW SOCIAL TREND in Japan? The Japanese Automobile Manufacturers’ Association revealed the results of its FY 2007 market trend survey showing that younger Japanese are less interested in car ownership than ever before.

The key figure in the survey is the percentage of primary drivers younger than age 30 in all households that own cars. (The primary driver is defined as that person with the greatest frequency of automobile operation in the household.) This percentage slid four points from the survey conducted five years ago to 7%. That’s the first time this percentage has ever been in single digits.

An association source says this percentage stood at 19% in 1995. Those in the 20-29 age group also accounted for 19% of the population that year. They now account for 14%. Therefore, the decline in primary drivers in that age group has been steeper than the drop in the ratio of that group to the overall population during the same period.

A similar survey conducted by the Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living of men in their 20s uncovered a parallel trend. When asked what they would spend their money on, 31% of the guys in 1996 answered cars. That figure fell to 16% in 2006.

These surveys do not show a corresponding decline for people in their late 30s and older.

An analyst from Demeken (an abbreviation of the Japanese for Digital Media Research Institute) says this represents a shift in the attitude of the generation who grew up in the Internet era amidst the detritus of the collapse of the bubble economy in the 1990s. The people in this age group, he suggests, place more importance on use rather than ownership.

He notes that many in the youngest adult generation view cars merely as a means for transportation and not as a status symbol, as they were for previous generations of postwar Japanese.

Buttressing this analysis is the 35% increase in the number of rental cars in Japan during the 10-year period ended in 2006. Meanwhile, automobile sales fell during that period. (The largest decline occurred from 1995 to 2001).

The Nishinippon Shimbun, the newspaper in which this article appeared, views this as a matter of concern. They’re based in Fukuoka, and local governments and business organizations in northern Kyushu have been lobbying hard—with great success—to attract companies in the auto industry.

The article failed to provide a breakdown by region for these figures, however. It’s a lot easier to get around without a car in Tokyo or Osaka than it is in an area with a lower population density. With the exception of those who live in Fukuoka City, most people in Kyushu would find a car-less life quite inconvenient.

Nevertheless, there has been a noticeable shift in the attitude toward automobiles compared to the early 80s, when I first came to Japan. In those days, it was still the rule for people to work on Saturdays (at least half a day). I was surprised then at the number of people in their 20s whose idea of a good time on Sunday was to go on an all-day automobile jaunt. They went just for the drive and had no specific objective for the trip, such as to attend a concert or sporting event. After driving a few hours in one direction, they’d have something to eat, fool around a little bit, and then turn around and drive back home.

That doesn’t seem to be the case now.

Japanese bar code designs

THE WEBSITE Dark Roasted Blend has put together a post on the creative ways barcodes are used on Japanese products. Some of them are very imaginative, and you’ll find the post here.

Chin-don music Okinawan style

WHAT A LUCKY FIND! Long-time friends will know that I’m nuts about chin-don music, the urban Japanese street music that is more fun that the proverbial barrel of monkeys. (Try here, here, and here.) And I’ll stop anything I’m doing at any time to listen to the modern take on Okinawa minyo, a different style of music altogether. (Try here.)

Well, you can see where this is heading!

Yesterday I spotted an item on the web about a short segment broadcast on a Kansai television station featuring a chin-don band. I scouted around to see if a video clip was available, but unfortunately it was not.

But sometimes seeking allows you to find something better than what you were looking for to begin with, and boy, did I stumble on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The Ryukyu Chimdon Gakudan! They combine Okinawan music with chin-don orchestration, which is about as rare a pairing as the double-necked sanshin one of the band members plays. (Chimdon, the band explains, means to be excited, and was chosen because it sounds similar to the onomatopoetic chin-don.)

If you have anything approaching the blues, do not fail to click on this video! And you won’t even need that excuse. An eight-minute promo the band put together from tunes on their first CD, it is funkier than a five-legged horse and guaranteed to melt the snow on your roof. If viewing this clip does not bring a smile to your face and make the hills come alive to the sound of music, then your middle name is Grump!

And better yet, they have a website with English here!

Here’s another promotional video of the band’s more recent music. They’ve taken a step away from pure chin-don, but it’s easy to like the taste of Indonesian gamelan music in the first song.

Besides, come clean and admit that you’re dying to hear songs played by people with names like Bobzy, Yoda, and Yanba Run! (Yoda has a Mohawk and Yanba Run has a pigtail that stretches up vertically for what looks like 18 inches.)

They’ve even appeared on Okinawan TV providing the music for this short awamori (shochu) commercial.

For more bouncy takes from different bands of straight chin-don–if that adjective applies–try here, here, here, here, and here.

But brother, beware: you might bounce around so much you’ll have to pad your walls!

The Japan Wave in South Korea: It’s older than you think

THE SEOUL CORRESPONDENT for the Nishinippon Shimbun filed a fascinating report today that demonstrates the recent surge in popularity of Japanese culture in South Korea—the so-called “Japan Wave” (illyu in Korean)–is by no means a new phenomenon, and that interpersonal relations between Japanese and Koreans are more amicable than the picture the popular press in other countries (including South Korea) chooses to present.

The article is in Japanese and it’s not on line, so here is my quick and dirty translation:

I formed the Aimai Club(あいまい会), a language study group consisting of Japanese, such as me, for whom the Korean language is still hazy, and Koreans for whom the Japanese language is still hazy. But as you might expect, most of our time spent learning the unvarnished truth about each other occurs when we go drinking or mountain climbing together.

We held a year-end party at a karaoke room, and the mood was immediately enlivened by the performance of songs I didn’t expect to hear. One Korean sang “Gingiragin Sareganaku” the 1991 hit by Kondo Masahiko. Another club member, a 48-year-old Korean man, told me this number was so popular during his college days that people would spontaneously get up and dance whenever it was played at a Korean night club.

Other well-known Japanese songs sung during the evening included Buru Raito Yokohama, the 1968 song by Ishida Ayumi; Koibito Yo, Itsuwa Mayumi’s 1980 hit; and Endoresu Rein, released in 1989 by X Japan. The beauty of it was that every one of those songs was popular in Korea at the same time they were hits in Japan.

It’s been just 10 years since the South Korean government gradually began to lift the restrictions on the import of popular Japanese culture in 1998. For the Koreans to have been familiar with the songs they sung at the karaoke room, either their countrymen in Busan and other areas in the southern part of the country heard them from radio and TV signals coming across the Korean Strait from Kyushu, or they became hits after they were taped and smuggled into the country.

Regardless of what actually happened, however, either way would have been fine. The important lesson is that things which resonate in the human heart resonate even when they are prohibited. The Aimai Club chair, a 37-year-old Korean woman from Busan, immediately designated Buru Raito Yokohama as the official club song when she was chosen, perhaps because it has stuck in her memory since childhood.

This sort of popularity of Japanese culture before the import restrictions were removed has been referred to as the ‘underground Japan wave’. Now a new Japan wave is at its height. Last year, 10 films based on original Japanese stories were filmed in Korea, including Kanna-san Daiseiko Desu! (written by comic book author Suzuki Yumiko). Also last year, Japanese works had a higher share of the Korean fiction market than did Korean works by a margin of 31% to 23%.

What was it that created the intense motivation to understand the real Korea during the Korean wave that hit Japan several years ago?

From my perspective, regardless of what happened in South Korea 10 years ago, Japanese-Korean relations–which had been capable only of creating a historical pattern pitting the victims against the victimizers—will thrive in the future.

Japanese-Korean relations at the person-to-person level are a lot healthier than some people would have you believe, and are likely to keep getting better.

Endnotes: Aimai is usually translated as “vague”. When the author wrote that the club consisted of people for whom their understanding of the other country’s language was hazy, the word he used in the original was aimai. I don’t think “vague” works well in that context, however, so I came up with “hazy” off the top of my head. There is probably a better alternative.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Koreans at the southern end of the peninsula can pick up Japanese radio or television without special equipment. The regulations governing broadcasts in the two countries are different.

In the U.S., for example, it is easy to pick up distant commercial radio stations at night. (I could regularly pick up stations seven to eight hundred miles away on a 10-transistor radio during my high school days.) The same is true for South Korean stations; the reception for KBS radio in Busan at night here in Kyushu is very good, and I can tune in even more stations if I’m driving out in the country.

Japanese radio stations broadcast with a lower wattage, however, so it’s easier for me to pick up stations from Korea than it is other Japanese stations even nearby in Kyushu.

That’s why I suspect music and TV programs were either smuggled in or picked up using satellite receivers.

One further note: Suzuki Yumiko’s website is in Japanese, but even those not fluent in the language might be interested in discovering the consuming passion of her life by paying it a visit and clicking a few of the categories at the lower part of the screen.

UPDATE: Reader Aceface reports that the reception of Japanese television is possible somehow in Busan and points south, and that many in Korea’s entertainment industry made special trips there specifically to watch it.

He also sends along this article in Japanese that says former South Korean President Kim Young-sam’s television channel of preference is Japan’s NHK. Mr. Kim says he tuned into Korean television for the first time in several years to watch the recent election day coverage.

Nippon Noel: Japanese Christmas tree finale!

MOST OF THE JAPANESE CHRISTMAS TREE designs we’ve seen over the past few days have been recognizabe as Christmas trees, albeit from a unique perspective. This Christmas night post, however, features three trees that really stretch the envelope for Yuletide design.

The arrangement of lights shown in the first photo isn’t even called a tree, though it is conical in shape and definitely suggests a Christmas tree. The creators refer to it as an objet, however, and it has been on display in a park in Sumoto, Hyogo Prefecture all month.

As with two of the PET bottle trees shown in the previous post, this is also a project of the local JCs. The group has been involved with public lighting displays in the city during the Christmas and New Year’s season since 1999, but they substantially changed the exhibit’s design this year.

The tree–sorry, objet—is 15 meters high and five meters in diameter. An estimated 10,000 red, orange, and yellow LEDs were used in its creation. There is also a tunnel created by lights nearby, and both are surrounded by a 1.5-meter wide path, along which are hung 6,500 PET bottle lamps carved by local kindergarten students.

The object at the top of the objet is what appears to be an upside-down human figure, but none of the reports I saw included an explanation of what it was supposed to be doing. If we let our imaginations roam freely and look at the exhibit upside down, we could say it resembles the Spirit of Christmas from Outer Space beaming his Noel Ray down on the people of Sumoto.

Whatever it is, it will be lit every night from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. until 6 January.

The next tree doesn’t need electricity to create a glow—a subtle illumination emanates from it naturally. That’s because it’s made out of an estimated 10,000 cultured pearls.

On display at the Japan Pearl Center in Kobe, the two-meter long tree is worth about 30 million yen (about US$ 263,000).

Assembly of the tree required about three months. The pearls, which range from eight millimeters to one centimeter in diameter, are hung like chandeliers on 400 threads from the ceiling and illuminated vertically. The creation–pearl objet?–is said to shine with a mysterious milky white color when viewed in a dimly lit room.

The pearl tree (on which no partridge could roost) was made by the Pearl City Kobe Association, a group that consists of 70 companies in the industry. Their objective was not only to celebrate Christmas, but also to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the development of the Akoya Cultured Pearl technique, which was the key to making pearls more inexpensive and therefore accessible to the public at large.

The Akoya Cultured Pearl technique for coaxing oysters to create pearls on demand was invented by two Japanese, Tokichi Nishikawa and Tatsuhei Mise, and successfully commercialized by Kokichi Mikimoto. The story is fascinating, and you can read more about it at the bottom of this page. Mikimoto had a long history of creating elaborate structures with pearls, so it is likely the association did not come up with the idea of making a large pearl Christmas tree on the spur of the moment.

The next tree is my personal favorite for the sheer brilliance of the idea alone. This Christmas tree is located in the Omotesando Station in Minato Ward, Tokyo. In Japanese, a subway is literally an underground railroad (chikatetsu[do]). Since the station is underground, it only makes sense that the portion of the tree visible there would be the roots. Therefore, this decorated Christmas tree is not the part above the ground, but the part below the ground—the Christmas roots.

The tree—sorry, roots–are in the Echika Omotesando section of the station, which is a commercial area with restaurants and shops. Instead of giving the tree’s height, the reports say it is “two meters deep”.

The pink ornaments hanging from the tree are actually Christmas cards on which messages can be written. Every Friday for the past month, the nearby shops have distributed the cards to customers, who jotted down their Christmas wishes. The cards are then placed on the tree.
　
Japanese readers and those familiar with Japan will recognize this as a custom borrowed from Tanabata on 7 July, during which people write their wishes on colored pieces of paper and hang them from a bamboo tree. For as often as it is claimed that the Japanese are an insular people with a tendency toward xenophobia, there are in fact more spontaneous expressions of multiculturalism here than people think–and this represents another one.

Finally, lest you think the country has floated over the edge into the Christmas twilight zone, here’s a more conventional decoration on a more conventional Japanese piece of architecture.

That’s the Megane Bridge in the Isahaya Park in Isahaya, just outside of Nagasaki City, shown in the fourth photo. The word megane in Japanese means eyeglasses, and the reason the bridge was given that name is obvious once you look at the photograph. Built in 1839 in imitation of the older and smaller Megane Bridge in Nagasaki City, which is reportedly the oldest stone arch bridge in the country, it has been designated an important cultural treasure by the national government.

This year the city decided to festoon the bridge with lights, and they used an estimated 5,000 of them for the project. They’ve been on from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. every night since the 15th. The bridge has been decorated in conjunction with a larger event that also involves a 10-meter-high light tower and roadside bushes and trees hung with another 25,000 lights. (This is what the bridge looks like when it’s not decorated for Christmas.)

The show will last until 14 January, after which the lights will be removed, the objets will be dismantled, the PET bottles recycled, the roots restored to the dirt, and the country again returns to normal!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Nippon Noel: PET bottle Christmas trees!

POLYETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATE—or PET for short—is a type of polyester used to make fibers, bottles and jars, and injection molding parts. Synthetic fibers account for more than 60% of the world’s PET production, and in that application the material is called polyester.

Because it is clear, safe, light, and recyclable, as well as excellent for maintaining product integrity and creating containers of various designs, 30% of the PET produced worldwide is used for bottles or other containers.

And the Japanese have employed their ever-fertile imaginations to find a new application for used PET bottles: Decorations for Christmas trees and the Christmas trees themselves, particularly for public display. The results, as you are about to see, can be visually stunning.

The first place we’ll visit is the last place you’d expect to see a tree made of recycled trash—Fukuoka City’s Tenjin district, Kyushu’s largest shopping and commercial area. Every year, the Daimaru department store erects a large Christmas tree for exterior display, and last year they came up with the idea of using PET bottles to make the tree. They did it again this year, too, incorporating 6,000 bottles in the 14-meter high tree shown in the first photo.

Store workers cut open the bottles to create an estimated 1,000 flower ornaments in 290 different designs. To make the tree more attractive at night, they also trimmed the tree with 30,000 LEDs in three different colors. The tree will be up through Christmas day.

The Tenjin tree is a part of a commercial enterprise, but just as often, the creation of PET bottle trees is the work of a civic group. One example is the trees shown in the second photo, which were put together by the Hamasaka JCs of Shin’onsen-cho, Hyogo Prefecture, and placed in front of the JR Hamasaka Station. The trees are illuminated from the interior, which creates a floating effect that viewers are said to find attractive.
　
The JCs hoped their project would attract people to the shopping district near the station and raise local awareness of recycling. They put together a total of 14 trees ranging in height from one to three meters by using 340 two-liter bottles and 830 500-milliliter bottles

Not content to do things by halves, the JCs also held a lighting ceremony to present their handiwork. During the ceremony, parents of students attending the Hamasaka Kindergarten sang Christmas songs and performed music with hand bells. The tree will be lit from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. every day until the 26th.

The creation of five-meter PET bottle trees made with 600 bottles each in Toyosato-cho, Shiga Prefecture, is another JC effort. They were erected in the parking lot front of the town’s municipal offices and are lit every evening at 5:00 p.m.

For the past four years, the JCs have been holding classes for kids to provide instruction in building PET bottle rockets. (I’d like to take that class myself!) This year, however, they decided to do something different and created the trees instead. Each of the trees has conical bases and eight large light bulbs inside.

The groups started collecting used bottles during summer vacation, and the whole project took about six months to finish. The trees will be lit until 11:00 p.m. on the 25th.

The last PET bottle tree is the result of a much larger project in which the whole town participated. The bottles were collected in special boxes placed in front of the local primary school, post offices, and other locations throughout Geino-cho, Tsu, Mie Prefecture.

The tree is 25 meters high and required an estimated 10,000 PET bottles to make. It too was first presented with a lighting ceremony, dubbed Geino Christmas 2007. Performing Christmas songs during the ceremony was Geino Brass, the brass band from the local junior high school. The event also featured a parade with seven cars, which carried smaller trees, reindeer and a sleigh, and model houses with chimneys.

The tree will be lit every day from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m. until the 25th.

Lest anyone misunderstand the intent of this post, be assured that every aspect of this activity has my admiration. Though a mere handful of Japanese are Christians, their own traditions have given them a complete understanding of and appreciation for festivals derived from religious ceremonies, not to mention how to conduct those festivals to promote public enjoyment and civic unity. A quick scroll through the Festivals category on the left sidebar will attest to that.

The Japanese have taken the Christmas tree, one of the symbols of what is now a secular global winter festival, and turned it into a public art form. The examples described in this post are made from a recyclable industrial product that has been disposed of after its initial use. It has been employed as the art material to create objects of beauty in public places.

All but one of these exhibitions were created by volunteers with the intention of adding brightness and cheer to their communities during the dark winter months, and they were presented in those communities during ceremonies that offered volunteer entertainment provided by the members of those same communities.

You can call it what you like, but I call that the Christmas spirit!

Nippon Noel: Let them eat Christmas cake!

There were plums and prunes and cherries,
There were citrons and raisins and cinnamon, too
There was nutmeg, cloves and berries
And a crust that was nailed on with glue
There were caraway seeds in abundance
Such that work up a fine stomach ache
That could kill a man twice after eating a slice
Of Miss Fogarty’s Christmas cake.

- Miss Fogarty’s Christmas Cake
Words and Music: C. Frank Horn, 1883

THE ONLY CAKES I ATE during my American Christmases were fruitcakes, and we children didn’t care for them any more than Mr. Horn cared for Miss Fogarty’s creation. They were dry, lacked icing, and had strange gummy things baked into them that didn’t taste like fruit at all.

Even at a young age we suspected they were made more for the sake of tradition than for delectation. Luckily, not every family served them and they weren’t an important part of the day. I’ve never met anyone who says they enjoy eating them, though fruitcake aficionados must exist, as they’re still baked and sold. Perhaps it helps to be nutty.

Shortly after we were married, my Japanese wife saw an advertisement for a bona fide fruitcake available by mail order, and she was curious enough to try one. Well, curiosity didn’t kill the cat, but it almost killed me. She didn’t like it at all, and I wound up eating most of it because I dislike throwing away food. My fruitcake quota has now been filled for the next three lifetimes.

And that is the extent of my connection with Christmas cake or its related traditions. As many people now know, the Japanese have their own Christmas cake tradition, and most Japanese are surprised when they discover that Americans don’t. (There is a tendency here to think that all imported customs are American and all loan words originate from English.)

There are as many Christmas traditions as there are ethnic groups, but perhaps the Japanese borrowed the idea of Christmas cake from England and the Commonwealth countries. There, fruitcake seems to be (or to once have been) a regular part of the day.

The Japanese do not prefer heavy cakes, however. The French influence is apparent in most of the pastry dishes produced and sold here. But I’m not sure that the French would want to claim parentage of the Japanese Christmas cake, as it more closely resembles an American strawberry shortcake that uses limp sponge cake instead of the firmer, more masculine variety. Though it can be as large as a regular cake, it’s probably more accurate to think of it as a glorified pastry.

There is some debate about when Christmas cakes became popular in Japan. Most people seem to agree that the confectioner Fujiya Co. came up with the idea, but the attributions for their time of introduction range from the 1920s to the 1950s.

It might be that they were first sold in the 20s, but became popular in their present form in the 50s and 60s when most households had refrigerators. Before then, sponge cakes had butter cream icing that didn’t need refrigeration.

The first photo shows a special Christmas cake made by Radishbo-ya, a Tokyo-based company that sells additive-free food products for home delivery. This year, they began sales of Christmas cakes without allergens to meet the demand for the estimated 330,000 Japanese children with food allergies.

Radishbo-ya (or Radish-boya—their Japanese website has both spellings) has developed 12 Christmas confections that use no dairy products, as well as three products for the traditional New Year’s dinner. One way they pull this off is to substitute pumpkin cream for fresh dairy cream. Cake prices range from 268 yen ($US 2.35) to 1,512 yen ($US 13.26), tax included, and they also sell the ingredients separately for the do-it-yourself bakers.

Perhaps you would prefer the Christmas cake–actually, the news report called it a “monument”—in the second photo, unless you are allergic to ostentation and conspicuous consumption. The lady in the picture leaves no doubt about what her choice would be. The photo was taken during its display at the Osaka branch of the Takashimaya Department Store. It’s not designed for eating, however. Rather than toppings, it is garnished with roughly 300 million yen (more than $US 2.63 million) worth of gemstones.

Well, to be accurate, it’s partially edible. The base is a confection made with the sugar used for baking. This Christmas cake was created by a young Kansai-based artist named Rei.

Takashimaya says it is displaying the monument to get everyone into the Christmas spirit, presumably because coming down to the store for a look will cause customers to splurge once they see all the other wonderful merchandise available. Following its presentation in Osaka, the monument was sent to the Takashimaya Kyoto store, and it’s now at the JR Nagoya outlet until the 25th.

In keeping with the traditions of the season, you can buy it if you really want it. A Takashimaya spokesman said that anyone was welcome to come in and talk turkey about the price. Perhaps they would have found takers during the Bubble Period about 20 years ago, but I’m not so sure about 2007.

And what would an Ampontan Christmas post be without another great tree? The one in the third photo is on display in the lobby of the JR Marugame Station in Marugame, Kagawa Prefecture.

The tree itself is trimmed with 250 uchiwa, or hand fans, made using traditional techniques. No, they are not leftover giveaways from summertime promotions. They are originals created by a local design studio, so it’s a shame we can’t have a close-up of the illustrations on the fans themselves. The report says they mesh well with the lights on the tree.

The tree itself is four meters high, 1.6 meters in diameter, and made with a bamboo framework to which have been attached leaves of the hinoki, or Japanese cypress. It will be up until the 25th, so if you’re taking the train to or from Marugame today or tomorrow, don’t pass up the chance to see it!

Nippon Noel: Eco-candles, chrysalises, and seashells!

IT’S FASCINATING TO SEE the many ways that Japanese have taken the foreign concept of Christmas and made it their own. Here are three more examples.

The Yubara hot springs district in Maniwa, Okayama Prefecture, has been presenting the Candle Fantasy in Yubara since the 20th. The organizers display what they call eco-candles: they were made with used cooking oil received from local ryokan (Japanese inns) and restaurants.

They were even clever enough to get other people to do the work for them. The 6,000 candles were made by an estimated 300 people, primarily area children and tourists staying at local lodgings, since last October. They will be lit from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. until the night of the 25th.
　
The first photo shows a scene from the Candle Fantasy. It’s unlike any of the images that I associate with Christmas from my childhood, but the combination of hot steam, candlelight, and Japanese design in a spa resort on a cold winter night does create a memorable sight.

How would you like to see a Christmas tree in which the decorations are suddenly transformed and fly away? That’s not a Science Fiction Fantasy—that’s the reality of the Christmas tree displayed in the Itami City Museum of Insects in Hyogo Prefecture. As you can see from the second photo, the 1.5 meter-high Christmas tree is decorated with chrysalises of the tree nymph butterfly, which are naturally gold. The tree has been set up in the museum greenhouse, where an estimated 1,000 live butterflies dwell. It will be on display until 24 December.

The tree nymph butterflies, one of the largest butterflies in Japan, inhabit the southwestern islands below Kyushu. The butterfly itself is known for its black and white speckled wings as well as its gold chrysalises, which are four to five centimeters in length. The butterflies hang them upside down from tree branches, and the museum has utilized this to decorate their Christmas tree for several years.
　
They’ve also placed green and pink chrysalises from other butterfly varieties on the tree. It takes about two weeks for the butterflies to emerge, and the museum encourages people to visit by reminding them they might get to see it happen if they’re lucky.

And it’s no surprise that an island country would find a way to celebrate Christmas with a maritime theme. The Sea and Shell Museum of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, is holding its special Shellfish Christmas 2007 exhibit until the 24th. One of the features of the exhibit is a Christmas tree trimmed with seashells, as you can see from the third photo.

The tree is 3.5 meters high and is decorated with 150 shells of 55 varieties from around the world, in addition to the usual lights.

The museum has a collection of 110,000 shells, and it is also exhibiting another 150 shells of 28 varieties whose names are derived from the word snow. The curator said there were a surprising number of shellfish from the South Seas whose names are derived from the word snow, despite the fact they don’t have any there.

Well, there are very few Christians in Japan, but that doesn’t stop the Japanese from having fun at Christmastime!

Note: I’ve add the link to the website of the Itami City Museum of Insects to the list on the right.