Champagne crabs, known in Japanese as Matsuba crabs, in a market in Tottori City.
Posts Tagged ‘Tottori’
All you have to do is look (123)
Posted by ampontan on Friday, November 30, 2012
Posted in Food, Photographs and videos | Tagged: Japan, Tottori | Leave a Comment »
National persimmon seed spitting contest
Posted by ampontan on Sunday, November 25, 2012
WHAT sort of image do people overseas have in their mind’s eye about Japan? Other than the noodniks fixated on Edo-period tentacle porn, I mean. Perhaps they have the traditional picture of a clean, simple, fastidious elegance.
If so, it might be because they haven’t swung by Nanbu-cho in Tottori in late November every year. That’s when the Tottorians hold their annual National Persimmon Seed Spitting Contest using the seeds from the famed local fuyu persimmons. This year’s event was the 24th, and about 400 people came to see how far they could hawk an oblong spherical seed that’s about five to 10 times larger than a watermelon seed.
And when I say 400 people, that includes men, women, boys, and girls who compete in four separate divisions. That’s what makes Japan such a fascinating place — any other day of the week, some of those persimmon seed-spitting housewives might be in kimono practicing the tea ceremony. In this event, they get to behave in public like bored fratboys on a Wednesday night in midwinter and be cheered by an audience.
Of course there are rules and techniques. The seeds have to land within a four-meter lane, and there’s said to be a special body snap for ejecting the projectile the maximum distance.
This year’s winner in the men’s division was a 41-year-old company employee from Imabari, Ehime, with an expectoration of 17.46 meters. The women’s champ was a 40-year-old local who shot her seed 10.67 meters. Before you start snickering, keep in mind that both of them won free trips to Hawaii. Now isn’t that enough to make you buy a crate of persimmons and start practicing?
It might be fun to watch, or even test my seed-spitting abilities against the other competitors. But here’s where I’d draw the line: I wouldn’t want to be one of the event workers assigned to pick up the spent seeds from the mat.
Yeah there’s a Youtube. In fact, this one is a report by the Nihonkai Shimbun on last year’s event. That featured 350 people from five Chugoku region prefectures and the Kansai area. The men’s winner managed a spit of only 14.87 meters. He still won a trip to Hawaii, though.
Posted in I couldn't make this up if I tried, Popular culture | Tagged: Japan, Tottori | Leave a Comment »
All you have to do is look (80)
Posted by ampontan on Thursday, October 18, 2012
The folks in Sakaiminato, Tottori, paint a jizo with miso in the Misoname Jizosai during the Koyu-ji Buddhist temple last month. Several hundred people come each year to observe the custom that coating a particular part of the jizo with miso will cure any problems in the corresponding body part of the coater. The festival began during the Edo period, died out after the war, and was resumed in 1980.
Posted in Festivals, Photographs and videos, Traditions | Tagged: Buddhism, Japan, Tottori | Leave a Comment »
All you have to do is look (67)
Posted by ampontan on Wednesday, October 3, 2012
To follow up yesterday’s photo of three archer/samurai, here is Kawanaka Kaori of Tottori giving an archery demonstration at the prefectural governor’s residence last month. She was a member of the Japanese women’s team that won a bronze medal in archery at the London Olympics this summer.
Posted in Photographs and videos, Sports, Traditions | Tagged: Japan, Tottori | Leave a Comment »
Child abuse
Posted by ampontan on Friday, September 7, 2012
IT’S long been thought in Japan that a crying baby is a sign of a healthy baby. Now combine that with the tradition of Shinto shrine festivals, the connection between sumo and Shinto, and the multitudinous and variegated ways people find to enjoy themselves in this country, and the idea of holding baby-crying sumo matches at the shrines isn’t a stretch at all.
These events are held in many parts of the country throughout the year. The photograph here shows the battle of the bawlers held at the Hiyoshi Shinto shrine in Yonago, Tottori, an institution founded in 1637.
The rules are simple: The one who cries first wins. The infants’ wails are met with delighted smiles from their families and spectators in the audience. In fact, the best way to incur parental disapproval is to start crying before entering the ring, or to stay calm and complacent throughout it all. In the recent Tottori competition, 28 crybabies from the age of six months to one year competed. The word yama, or mountain, was attached to the end of the boys’ names, and the word kawa, or river, was stuck on the end of girls’ names to create a resemblance to the names adopted by sumo wrestlers.
The father of one rikishi said:
“I was a little disappointed that it ended in a tie with him not crying, but I hope to raise him as a healthy boy.”
The photo below was taken at another event last Sunday at Mihama, Fukui. They’ve been doing it for more than a century as part of a larger festival that also includes real sumo matches with older children and taiko drum performances.
The video below was taken at yet another baby-crying sumo match on the same day in Kanuma, Tochigi, at the Ikiko Shinto shrine. The shrine’s name is written with the characters for living and child, and I don’t think it was a coincidence they selected it as the site.
Would something like this be possible in the West, or would some adult crybabies looking for a cause find a way to turn it into an issue of child abuse?
To decide whether it’s cruelty or an innocent good time, all you have to do is click on the video and see for yourself.
Posted in Festivals, Traditions | Tagged: Fukui, Japan, Tochigi, Tottori | Leave a Comment »
All you have to do is look (39)
Posted by ampontan on Wednesday, September 5, 2012
The 48th Tottori Shan-Shan Festival last month in Tottori City. An estimated 3,800 people in 95 groups danced in the streets with umbrellas decorated with bells and silver and gold strips of paper.
Video from the Asahi Shimbun
Posted in Festivals, Photographs and videos | Tagged: Japan, Tottori | Leave a Comment »
Kagura Koshien
Posted by ampontan on Monday, August 20, 2012
THE climactic stage of the 94th annual national high school baseball championships has arrived — the semifinal games will be played today, and the finals are tomorrow. One of the most well-known sporting events in Japan, the championship is commonly referred to as Koshien after the name of the Hyogo stadium where the games are played. (It’s also the home park of the Hanshin Tigers major league team, who are forced to take a long road trip every summer at this time.)
This event is so well known that the term Koshien is now used colloquially to refer to any national high school championship competition. This post presented the Koshien for a new competition featuring the combination of calligraphy with dance and music. One of my college students this spring said performing with her club in a similar competition was her favorite memory from her high school days. (There’s also a brief description of the Manga Koshien.)
Another new and different Koshien began last year with content that might surprise even Japanese — the performance of kagura. That’s an ancient Shinto ritual of dance and music for the divinities whose origins are at least 1,300 years old. It is also performed in some areas of the country as a folk-drama during shrine festivals. The appeal of kagura in the latter context is easy to understand when you realize the art contains elements similar to that of a Broadway musical comedy, albeit from a different millennium.
This year’s Kagura Koshien was the second, and it was held at the end of last month in Akitakata, Hiroshima, at the Kagura Monzen Tojimura. In addition to a kagura dome, that facility also has a hot springs resort with lodgings.
Ten schools from five prefectures took part, with representatives from Hiroshima, Shimane, Tottori, Kochi, and Miyazaki. Last year’s inaugural event featured five schools, and while the first three of those prefectures are in the same region, Miyazaki is in Kyushu, which is some distance away. That suggests the idea is catching on in other parts of the country. The event organizers reported there were about 1,600 spectators. Said one of the students, 17-year-old Fujii Riiya:
“I learned a lot by watching the kagura of the other schools. I hope the younger students take part next year.”
Here’s an explanation of the origins and more formal varieties of kagura, and here’s a description of the pop variety, with a blow-by-blow account of one of the plots.
And in an excellent example of synchronicity, this YouTube video digest of the Kagura Koshien was uploaded just this weekend. Watch it to discover how an ancient ritual could capture the imagination of high school students.
Posted in Arts, Education, Festivals, Imperial family, Traditions | Tagged: Hiroshima, Japan, Kochi, Miyazaki, Shimane, Tottori | Leave a Comment »
Another way to make lemonade from lemons
Posted by ampontan on Wednesday, December 8, 2010
THE FOLLOWING ARE some excerpts from an article that appeared in today’s Nishinippon Shimbun.
——
Production of paper diapers for adults is skyrocketing as the population ages, and local governments must consider how to dispose of them as garbage after use. In 2009, paper diaper production was 1.7 times that of 2003. Efforts are spreading nationwide to reuse them as a fuel source to reduce garbage volume, and some local governments in Kyushu have begun recycling them. Potential hurdles to their reuse, however, are the difficulty of separating them from other refuse and the recovery costs.
The municipal government of Hoki-cho, Tottori, teamed with local businesses to begin trial production of solid fuel using a system that processes used paper diapers. If the system is shown to be effective, they envision using it at such facilities as hot spring resorts to heat boilers. Trial calculations suggest the system could result in savings of up to JPY three million annually.
One of the first local governments in Kyushu to become involved is Oki-machi, Fukuoka. They formed ties with the Total Care System company of Fukuoka City, which has a recycling plant for paper diapers in Omuta. The municipality has conducted trials in which the residents collect the diapers separately in special bags and a municipal vehicle stops by to pick them up.
Oki-machi is currently paying a substantial amount of money to neighboring Okawa for the incineration of burnable refuse. Said a municipal official, “Paper diapers account for about 10% of the town’s burnable refuse. Recycling them would lessen the burden on the environment and reduce public expenditures.”
Total Care System also collects used paper diapers from hospitals and long-term care facilities. They treat and process the diapers and recycle them as fireproofing material.
The Japan Hygiene Products Industry Association reports that 5.019 billion paper diapers for adults were produced in 2009, an increase from the 2.996 billion paper diapers in 2003…The association points out, however, that few municipalities dispose of the diapers separately and treat them as burnable garbage…Those local governments with their own incineration facilities find that to be a more efficient and economical method of disposal.
(end translation)
Here’s a Kyodo article on the same subject from April, and another from CNET. Speaking of incontinence, the author of the latter managed to hold in the “Weird Japan” snark for most of his entry, but still wound up wetting himself in the last sentence.
*****
Noborikawa Seijin is 78 years old, but I don’t think he needs special underwear yet. He just released another CD this year.
Posted in Business, finance and the economy, Demography, Environmentalism, Government, New products | Tagged: Fukuoka, Japan, Tottori | 2 Comments »
Bait and switch
Posted by ampontan on Monday, October 19, 2009
NOW THAT the Japanese electorate has unwittingly jumped from the frying pan into the fire by selecting the country’s Democratic Party to lead a government, people are starting to get scorched. Everyone knew before the election that the DPJ’s principal talents were obstructionism and harangues more suited for postgraduate seminars and smoky union halls than a legislature, but people held their noses and voted for them anyway. Entropy had finally had its way with the Liberal Democratic Party, and that party’s mudboat wing stepped up to the challenge by committing the de facto equivalent of hara-kiri.
By trying to implement a platform whose individual provisions never polled all that well and won’t work well at all, the new government is making manifest its shallowness, petit authoritarianism, and disregard of anything outside its self-interest.
From the Mainichi Shimbun
The vernacular edition of the newspaper carried a story that described a chilly conversation last week between Sengoku Yoshito, the Minister of State for Administrative Reform, and Nagatsuma Akira, the Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Mr. Sengoku initiated the conversation about the JPY 12.4 billion-program for one-time payments of JPY 36,000 to parents of children aged 3-5. That program was started by the Aso Administration at the behest of its New Komeito coalition partners. The payments were supposed to have been made by the end of the year.
The Mainichi quoted Mr. Sengoku as telling Mr. Nagatsuma:
“The special child support allowance was begun by New Komeito, so it has to be cut”.
He also said this was a “Cabinet decision”, though why Mr. Nagatsuma—a Cabinet member—was not present when the decision was made was not explained.
The program was a likely candidate for the axe anyway, because it was adopted to please the former government’s junior coalition partner and to deflect attention from the DPJ’s more extensive child subsidy proposal before the election. That alone doesn’t explain the antagonism, however.
What does? Despite sharing a similar political outlook, the DPJ has shown no interest in bringing New Komeito into their ruling coalition. Indeed, they’ve gone out of their way to harass them in the Diet. They’d rather try to reconcile the irreconcilable paleo-old guard of the PNP and the viperous left of the Social Democrats and govern as if they were in a four-legged race.
That’s because the DPJ’s Shadow Shogun, Ozawa Ichiro, has detested New Komeito for years. If the Mainichi report that this was a Cabinet decision is true, now we know who’s making decisions for the Cabinet.
For an insight into the inscrutability of Japanese politics, by the way, Mr. Sengoku is considered to be an Ozawa opponent within the party.
In the end, the Government canceled the program and held a press conference to “apologize to the people and local governments.”
No one was mollified.
From the Asahi Shimbun
The Aichi Prefecture Mayors’ Conference was held last week in Nagoya, their first meeting since the new government took office. All but one of the prefecture’s 35 mayors attended. The mayors passed a resolution asking the Government to assume full financial liability for the DPJ’s own child allowance proposal, as per their political platform, instead of sticking local governments and the private sector with part of the bill. Some participants complained that the DPJ’s ineptitude is causing turmoil in local government.
Said Inuyama Mayor Tanaka Yukinori (affiliated with the opposition LDP):
“The ministers just jump the gun with these statements, without specifying what is wasteful and what was wrong about the previous expenditures.”
Here’s Toyota Mayor Suzuki Kohei on the work his his city already performed for the Aso Administration policy:
“Our efforts wound up being a waste of time and money. (Some municipalities had to hire temporary employees.) When (the Government) says, ‘We’re a new administration,’ some local governments think that’s an insufficient reason or explanation.”
The sentiments were echoed by Aichi Gov. Kanda Masaaki, a guest at the meeting:
“There is uneasiness and turmoil in the communities. I’m going to do everything I can to hold local conferences to convey our concerns to the government.”
From the Nihonkai Shimbun
Tottori Gov. Hirai Shinji was even more scathing. At a press conference on the 15th, he said:
“The people ordered kabayaki (grilled eel), but they were served up something already eaten alive by a viper.”
In reference to the new Government’s inability to deal with the Finance Ministry bureaucrats, Mr. Hirai noted:
“Whenever the Finance Ministry says anything, they just swallow it whole and keep putting it on the tab of local government. Nothing at all has changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse.”
It might be that local governments could be a more effective check than the nominal opposition party, the LDP, which seems to be missing in action at the national level.
Then again, the Hatoyama Administration isn’t in the mood to listen, regardless of the number of conferences Aichi Gov. Kanda holds.
On television
On the 18th, Deputy Finance Minister Noda Yoshihiko reiterated that the Government is still considering having local governments and businesses cough up some of the money for their child allowance scheme.
Bait-and-switch, inflexibility, and policies that smack of Mussolini-style corporative fascism are no way to run a government, son.
Let’s reduce reliance on the bureaucracy by expanding it!
Back to Sengoku Yoshito, the Minister for Administrative Reform, who also appeared on TV on the 18th touting his latest reform idea. He wants to reorganize Mr. Nagatsuma’s MHLW:
“Its jurisdiction is so broad in scope that the problems arising there every day come up nowhere else.”
The Aso Administration was also interested in reorganizing the ministry last May, but, as with the Aso Administration itself, nothing came of it.
His proposal would seem to be hypocritical for a party that co-opted local reformers by promising to disassociate from the bureaucracy, and then changed its tune to disassociating from a reliance on the bureaucracy once they took office.
Instead, he suggests creating three new Cabinet ministries, each with a name that only the left could dream up:
- The Ministry of Children and Families
- The Ministry of Education and Employment
- The Ministry of Social Insurance
The LDP had the capital idea of privatizing the Social Insurance Agency, but the agency itself torpedoed that plan by leaking the news of the colossal, decade-long foul-up of pension records. (All the more reason to privatize, is it not?) Then-DPJ-head Ozawa Ichiro said it should be merged with the National Tax Agency.
But now the DPJ is the party in power. Now they want to make it into a ministry of its own.
The idea behind coupling education with employment was that the Education Ministry, which also includes culture, sports, science, technology, and God knows what-all, was another candidate for reorganization. Mr. Sengoku did not explain why there was a need to end one Rube Goldberg bureaucracy just to create another. Nor was any justification provided for the existence of full-fledged Cabinet ministries focusing on labor, children, or families; it was as if no justification were needed.
In other words, Mr. Sengoku’s idea of governmental reform is to create three useless ministries where one existed and none are needed. Yes, let’s not rely on bureaucrats any more. As if that weren’t enough, he also said he was going to think of other ways to efficiently reorganize the central government.
Well, what sort of administrative reform can one expect from a former labor lawyer who was first elected to the Diet as a member of the Socialist Party? Did anyone really think he was going to consider central government downsizing?
Here’s another one on the inscrutability of Japanese politics: Mr. Sengoku is affiliated with the DPJ’s Maehara-Edano group/faction, which is considered to be on the Right within the party.
Meanwhile…
People outside of Japan are starting to draw conclusions about the new government, particularly those in financial circles.
Phill Tomlinson thinks stagflation will continue:
Many Keynesian economists are still baffled by Japan. Over the years, policy after policy has been proposed by their school of thought, all of which involve some form of government action, but time and time again they all seem to fail. The classic Keynesian rebuttal whenever these policies fail is “Well, the authorities didn’t do enough”. Just like they apparently didn’t do enough during the Great Depression.
And:
The reason why they never recovered to their previous highs was exactly what the Government did, they took over and tried the command economy approach. Roads to nowhere, propping up banks that were insolvent, not allowing private enterprise to take over the means of production. Rather than money going into the private sector, Japanese savings that were accrued during their economic miracle were funneled into Government bonds, wasteful Government consumption. It was quite simply a classic stagflation that is still ongoing.
That was published on the same day it was reported the Government would try to prop up debt-ridden Japan Airlines by putting its ownership in the hands of a quasi-public corporation without having it go through bankruptcy.
Meet the new boss.
Even worse than the old boss.
Posted in Government, Politics | Tagged: Aichi, Japan, Local Government, Nagatsuma A., Ozawa I., Sengoku Y., Tottori | 5 Comments »