Nara and Valentine's Day in Japan

As they say in Japan, 久しぶりですね (hisashiburi desu ne—it’s been awhile). The past week has been quite busy between exploring, spending time with friends, and of course keeping up with classes and studying. Unfortunately, the fact that I don’t have internet at home doesn’t help with my communications with friends and family back in America, so I have fallen behind on posting. I think the only way it’s going to work is if I type out my posts in a Word document at home and post them once I get to the Kansai Gaidai campus in the morning. I will attempt to catch up this week.

Also, I have at least been better about uploading and organizing my pictures. They are accessible here if you are interested.

Going back, then, the weekend of February 13-14, naturally, featured Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day in Japan works differently than in the US; it is still an overblown romantic holiday featuring chocolate, but here the roles are reversed. Of course, on the US Valentine’s Day, boys are expected to present roses and chocolates to their sweethearts, but in Japan, it is rather an opportunity for girls to give chocolates to any and all boys that they may have a crush on. Then, on March 14th, a month later, there is a holiday called White Day (or as they say, Howaito De) on which boys are expected in turn to give white chocolate to any girls from which they received chocolates, especially if they like them too. Maybe it’s because here I am living around a big city as opposed to small, sheltered, and alternative Oberlin, but it seems to me that Valentine’s Day in Japan is a way bigger deal than at home. Starting a month ahead of time, stores begin to stock up on beautifully presented boxes of chocolates, and many others carry prepackaged kits for making brownies, truffles, and other chocolate-flavored baked goods for that special someone(s). Apparently Japanese girls do not skimp on the presentation of their homemade gifts, either: the entire entryway to a stationary store that I visited was stocked with various kinds of bags, ribbons, and boxes covered in hearts so that your Valentine’s Day gift would be presented in just the right way.

The Thursday before that weekend, February 11th, is a national holiday called National Foundation Day, which I believe celebrates something about Japan’s becoming a modern country with a democratic government. Anyway, we had no classes that day, so I thought I would look around and do some shopping. Every day when I’m on the train to and from campus I pass a big mall called Kuzuha, so that Thursday I decided to finally look and see what they had there. Additionally, I had been seeing ads for something they called a “Valentine’s Chocolate Museum” there, and I wanted to check it out because I enjoy gawking at food.

Shopping around the mall was quite enjoyable and I spent more money than I meant to on gifts for friends and family at home, and in the end I stumbled upon the Valentine’s chocolate area. It was huge. I think that “museum” is an inappropriate word for it, since it implies a degree of spectatorship as opposed to plain consumerism, but nonetheless there was a lot more than I was expecting. It was reminiscent of a very large Macy’s perfume or jewelry department, all very brightly lit and everything, just with chocolate instead of cosmetics, and bigger. It was packed with Japanese women of all ages bustling around and looking at all the displays, and very noisy with the constant shouting of “irasshaimase!” (the customary word that a shopkeeper says when a customer approaches). I had already run out of money by that point and for some reason my debit card only works at the ATM on Kansai Gaidai’s campus, but anyway I don’t think I would have spent much money there because it was quite overpriced. Although the presentation was lovely, I don’t think that my foodie friends from home would have been all that impressed with the quality. Still, it was an enjoyable experience, and I got to eat my share of free samples. (There still weren’t as many as I’d hoped there would be, though.)



A picture of a tiny piece of Valentine’s Day preparations at Kuzuha Mall

On Saturday I decided to continue with exploring, as I still really have not seen any of Yawata-shi at all outside of my house and the path that I take to get to the train station. I ended up looking at a shrine in front of a wooded mountain that I pass on the way to the station, and within it I saw a little staircase that led up the mountain and into the forest. I figured it would be a short climb and I’d find some other little piece of the shrine. How wrong I was. I didn’t really understand the signs along the way, not that there were that many anyway, but it turns out that I was climbing a mountain called 男山, or Otoko Yama, Man Mountain. I’m not sure why it’s called that, unless it’s just because you have to be manly to climb it because the staircase was ridiculous. I estimate that it took me about half an hour, although I’m not really sure. Nonetheless I made it to the top on foot, and I discovered not a secret little spot for prayers, but quite a large and crowded shrine called 石清水八幡宮. (I’ll have to get back to you on the reading.) Turns out that you can drive up by car from the other side of the mountain, and also there’s a cable car that runs up and down the mountain for a minimal fee. Oh well. Maybe it was just my partial delirium from having climbed that far, but I felt a strange sense of peace and belonging there that I had not experienced in Japan thus far. It was really nice, and totally worth the climb. When I hear the word “shrine” I usually think of just a little folksy stone gate and maybe a little statue and something set up for prayer, but this was really quite grand.



The entrance to the shrine


The front of the shrine at the top of the mountain

The next day, Sunday, I met my friend Alex and together we headed to Nara. Nara is a very famous historical city accessible by about a 45-minute train ride from where I live. It is known mainly for its numerous shrines and temples, as well as for the deer. In ancient Japan they thought that deer were vessels of the gods, so they were sacred, although most of the deer I saw were plain mean and greedy. We did not have specific plans for where we wanted to go, but I think that Nara is very good for a day trip in that almost everything that you would want to see is contained within about a 1.5-mile radius. We headed in the direction of the main temples as pointed out by a map at the train station, and after awhile we came across a tourism center where they offered free green tea and coffee, and oh yeah also they had free maps of the area (in English!). We managed to hit pretty much all of the main sites on the map and had time to spare before dinner.

I think the highlight of the day temple/shrine-wise was definitely Todai-ji. It is a very famous and historical temple, and I believe it has the largest figure of a Buddha contained in a building anywhere in the world. It was quite impressive. Near the great Buddha they had a little stand where you can donate 1,000 yen (about $10) to cover the cost of one new roof tile, since evidently they need to redo the roof of the temple sometime in the not-too-distant future. Then you write your name, country, and a wish on the tile with a calligraphy brush and black paint that they provide, and they claim that “this will bring you eternal happiness.” I don’t know about the eternal happiness, but anyway Alex and I decided to go in together on a tile. So one of these days my name will appear on Todai-ji’s roof.



The front of Todai-ji


The great Buddha


Me with our tile

The deer in Nara are everywhere. They are maybe at most 3 feet tall at the shoulder, but they’re used to people feeding them, and if you don’t give them what they want, they get aggressive. Shops and stands everywhere sell Japanese rice crackers for the deer at 150 yen for a little packet, and once the deer spot you holding them, they will flock to you in herds and nudge you and mouth your clothing until you feed them. It was cute at first but I got pretty freaked out after awhile, and we spotted more than a few little kids crying and running to escape particularly pushy deer. And there are a lot of them.



A lot of deer


A piggish deer eating a piece of paper...


I just thought this one was really cute

After we had visited everything we wanted to see, we went to a shopping area vaguely reminiscent of Shinsaibashi in Osaka, although smaller, that featured a lot of cute and interesting stores, and ate dinner. The people at the tourism center told us that we were there for the last day of the light shows in Nara. I’m not sure what the lights were for, except for maybe the New Year or something. They had set up a big light design on the side of a hill that they turned on after sunset, and then in a park they hung several lanterns, and had lighted things along the walkway. Not a very good description perhaps, but it was pretty.



My dinner


The lights

Oh yes, and there may have been chocolate involved. ;)