There's A Ninja Everywhere You Look

While I'm waiting for the rest of the pictures from my parents, I'd like to jump forward in time a few days to just after they left.  Somehow I lost my passport (I know, I know...) and I was staying near Osaka with a friend on the weekend of April 3rd until the US Consulate opened on Monday the 5th.  That gave us Sunday to take a two hour local train trip into the heart of Mie prefecture to the town of Iga Ueno and its ninja festival.

We went to meet and on the recommendation of a friend of mine from Ishikawa, Stephen Phelan.  A free-lance Irish journalist, Stephen's girlfriend is a JET and he's taking the opportunity of living in Japan to write a book about ninja.  He was visiting Iga Ueno to write a travel piece for The Guardian.

The day was just about perfect.  The weather was warm and breezy and clear, and Iga Ueno on a Sunday is a wonderfully quite, sleepy place.  The town bills itself as the birthplace of the ninja, but Stephen was able to explain that the word "ninja" is actually a catch-all for many kinds of assassins, spies, and mercenaries in the Edo period of Japan.

You might expect that the town would have a really serious, authentic approach to ninja, but in fact it's quite campy and heavily influenced by pop culture.  The festival runs through May 5th, and if you dress like a ninja you get free train travel all over Mie prefecture.

Around the castle grounds there were a few food booths and a live demonstration of ninja skills that was a distant cousin of the caped knife-thrower at a county fair.  Much more theater than ninja, but still entertaining.  A ninja museum had some interesting artifacts and information (much of it fudged, Stephen said).

 A chain mail vest that has been put on by thousands of snickering gaijin before me.

The skills demonstration.  Couldn't get any good pictures of the action, but there were low-budget pyrotechnics and exaggerated slapstick duels.  Oh yes.

The best part of the day, however, came when we ventured into the town.  Ninja were everywhere.  It was like a middle of the day Halloween, with kids and adults and dogs dressed up everywhere.  Ninja logos were on most of the businesses, the trains, even some street signs.  Hilariously awkward ninja mannequins were "hidden" around the city.

No words.

 

Ninjas on patrol.

 

 Ninja Abbey Road.

Can you spot the ninja???

 

And then we went to the ninja cafe.

The owner of this cafe was one of the most remarkable and hilarious people I have ever met.  Dressed in a camo-patterned ninja outfit, he immediately came up to talk to us as much as he could, and proceeded to give us free snacks.  Then he started bringing out the guns--19th century Japanese guns, including a tiny Derringer-like one and an incredibly heavy cannon-like one. 

Stephen with the cannon.

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An unfortunate picture of my friend Ruth, but a good one of the guns.

 

Peashooter.

Then he sidled up to the table in a completely different outfit and wearing a wig, taking several of us by surprise to demonstrate the ninja value of disguise.  After a while he told us about his grandfather, who he said was a "real" ninja.  He said he had his sword, but after World War II it became illegal to carry a real sword without a license, so he got a fake sword to show the police when they came by.  He showed us the real sword.

It was a bit rusty, but it was a perfectly balanced and breathtakingly authentic feeling katana.  This fanboy, for one, was completely swooning over it.  The guy was goofy and over the top and campy but another example of the wonderful generosity of spirit I've found often here.

The ninja cafe and its proprietor, shooting fake guns at us on our way out...

 

It was a wonderful time in quite a random part of Japan.  The adventures continue...

From the castle hill.

 

Wonderful, sleepy Iga Ueno.

Check out the ninja painted onto the train.  There's one pink one (girl) and one blue one (boy).  Those are the only trains running in the area.

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Dr. and Mrs. Hofeditz in Japan, Part 2

Photo issue (partially) resolved.

My parents on the most photographed street in Japan.  In the omnipresent rain.

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Some Japanese sweets we had with matcha green tea.

My mama with her new enormous Japanese umbrella.

Some of the first sakura (cherry blossoms) of the season in Kanazawa.

I finished up the last few days of the school year as my parents looked around Kanazawa, then we got ready to head to Kyoto.  The day we left I had my eikaiwa (English conversation club), a group of adults with whom I have two-hour classes two Saturdays a month.  They were very excited to meet my parents, and to my astonishment, they marked this excitement with a huge assortment of gifts, from a nice furoshiki (cloth used to tie up several items, like a hobo bag but of decorative material) to cookies to flyfishing flies made in Kanazawa to charms made by one woman's daughter.  Their generosity was impressive to say the least.

My lovely eikaiwa.

And so we set off for Kyoto.  The end of March and beginning of April is cherry blossom season in Japan, and the whole country more or less turns inside out for it.  I asked some of my eikaiwa students why the sakura are so important to the Japanese.  A few said that it was because they are pretty and they signify the beginning of spring, then one said "They are the spirit of the warrior".  I thought that was interesting, then another said "Transient existence."  I didn't teach her either of those words, in case you're wondering....

That explanation makes more sense to me than anything else, though, because the Japanese connection to the sakura goes far beyond a pretty mark of spring.  People mark their calendars for them, file news reports on them, take endless pictures of them when the trees are in full bloom, and then quite suddenly they're gone.  In fact, as I type this the luster of the sakura has suddenly and dramatically dimmed.  We had a rainstorm a couple days ago, and many of the already weak blossoms fell.  It's pretty striking, and while I've had a chance to see tons of sakura, I already regret I didn't do more.  The whole thing is chock full of metaphors for, yes, the transient nature of existence and what we take for granted.

But like I said, I got quite my fill of sakura.  Kyoto was swimming with people, most Japanese tourists drawn by the onset of the sakura in a picturesque setting.  Some of these pictures will look familiar to frequent blog visitors, because we spent two days touring Kyoto's temples and shrines and spent one day in Nara.

 First taste of a traditional Japanese hotel.

The base of Fushimi Inari shrine.

 Fushimi Inari identifies itself with foxes, and there are many statues dotted through the...

 ...endless tunnel of torii gates.  Eat your heart out, Christo, you big plagiarist.  Thousands of wooden gates create tunnels around paths that go all around one of the hills outside Kyoto and give the shrine a unique character.

The Hofeditzes in the bamboo forest.  Sounds like a wacky children's adventure novel.

 We wandered through the forest to an extensive and deserted graveyard.

 

 Not a small hill.

 Even the fox is checking you guys out.

Bikes: hands-down the best way to see Kyoto.

 Sakura photography: what the entire country of Japan does for three weeks.

 My father's first and possibly only squid-on-a-stick.

 A famous giant tree in the center of Maruyama Park.  It was cloudy so it looks more satanic than usual...

 

Look familiar, Jonathan and Carrie?

Todaiji again.

 

 Isuien Gardens in Nara.  This may have been a bit posed.

 Up above the main area of Nara park.

This is currently my desktop background. The template cuts off extra large pictures a bit, click for full size.

Our last night in Kyoto we were planning to go to the light-up at Kiyomizu Temple, where I spent New Year's Eve.  During sakura season they have light-ups of some of the major temples and shrines so you can visit at night.  This is much preferable at Kiyomizu because it's disgustingly packed during the day.  

Somehow there was a bit of a snowstorm.  My dad accurately remarked that we saw something that night that not many have ever seen.  The cab driver who took us up to the temple said (I think) it was the third time this year it had snowed in Kyoto, and it was snowing on sakura in full bloom lit up at night.  

Smiles all around.

The thing that looks like a laser beam is a spotlight shining into the city below.

Definitely click through the full image on this one.  You can zoom in on it, too.

Because of a strange camera situation that is too complicated and mundane to go into here, I only have half the pictures from our trip for now.  I should have the rest soon, so I'll be able to add the post-Kiyomizu stuff.  Our last day in Kyoto was sunny and beautiful, and we did some more sightseeing before getting on the train to Hiroshima, where we'd have one of the more impactful and surreal days of my life.

More pictures coming in this post when I get them.

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Dr. and Mrs. Hofeditz in Japan, Part 1

My parents came to visit Japan for two weeks and we had quite a time.  From suffering through futons on my floor and no central heating in a still wet and cold March to being dragged behind me on my breakneck travel pace, they put up with a lot.  They also had a great time, and I managed to see some parts of Japan with them that I hadn't yet.

First they spent 5 days in Kanazawa, meeting my friends and seeing a bit of my life here.  When I brought them to school there was almost a riot of kids trying to talk to them and astonished that they existed at all.  I always thought it was weird when I saw my teachers outside of school, and I'm sure it was equally weird for my kids to realize that maybe I wasn't born out of the Gaijin Cloning Box.

Here's a great picture of my dad with some of the boys in the class they observed (right after class all the girls went up to my mom and all the boys went up to my dad, no exceptions).

I'm having some technical difficulties with pictures tonight and it will take quite a bit longer to resolve them, it looks like, so I'll end it there for now. 

Up next--some of Kanazawa in the rain (it is ALWAYS raining here), interesting Kyoto and Nara pictures, an excursion to Hiroshima, and a ninja festival in the middle of nowhere.  Stay tuned!

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Pomp and Circumstance, Japanese JHS-Style

I should have a number of posts up in the next couple days.  I was traveling with my parents who were visiting for two weeks and only got back two nights ago.  After a brutal March of drizzly cold weather, spring has finally come, bringing with it warm breezes, cherry blossoms, and the ending of the Japanese school year.

Unlike America, where the school calendar was determined when parents needed their kids at home to work on the farm during the summer, Japan's academic year begins in April and ends in March.  It's a time of happiness but also great stress for the 3rd year students in junior highs across the country because they have to take the public school exam.  I strongly disagree with it in almost every way.

High schools are ranked academically from high to low, the lowest functioning as trade schools with no college expectations for their graduates while the highest are essentially college prep.  Each 3rd year junior high school student has to choose between the available options and take an entrance exam.  If they fail the test, they have to study for another year and take an exam again. 

So not only does their test performance decide the rest of their lives at the age of 15, they have to aim at specific schools at their level--if they aim "too high", it's their teachers' job to recommend they take the test for a lower school.  Again, high school level determines college accessibility.  A student who goes to a trade school has basically no option to change their mind/habits, study hard, and get into college.  I'm sure in the short term it helps organize curricula and teachers' plans; in the long term I believe it hurts the country.  I've heard failed tests result in suicide sometimes, too.

Anyway. 

The school emblem in purple for the ceremony.

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Me with the 3rd year teachers.  Kimonos are incredible.  It was pretty surreal to see these women, who I have known for eight months in casual clothes or at most suit jackets, come into school looking so gracefully beautiful in a completely different way.

 

After taking the test on March 11th, they graduated on March 16th this year (they didn't get the test results until after the graduation ceremony).  Because of the test and because junior high marks the end of compulsory education, it's a big deal.  The teachers dress in their finest suits or kimonos, and most of the parents fill the school gym.  There are some traditional songs, some modern songs, and speeches by the principal and an elected student.  Some important business and education figures from the neighborhood observe as well.  All in all it's pretty similar to American graduations, if quite a bit more formal and stiff-backed (several students fainted in the rehearsal from standing too straight).

A highly formalized way to receive diplomas.

 

 I had a bad seat to watch it, but this happened about 245 times.

After the ceremony, the younger students, teachers, and parents made two lines leading out of the entrance for the 3rd years to walk through.  They got their backpacks and umbrellas and left one last time.

I asked a couple of the boys what they were going to do that afternoon.

"Go to his house (pointing).  And...games."
"Oh, you're going to play video games"
"Yes yes yes, bideo games."

Sounds about right.

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