Some thoughts on Japanese culture

Last night at my ikebana (flower arranging) class, I was enjoying, and marveling at the complexity of, tea ceremony and my teacher asked me what I thought about Japanese culture. Upon thinking about it my own experiences in Japan, I said that my answer is two things: organized beauty and the beauty of organization.

Tea ceremony is meticulously done, all for beauty’s sake. The handle is held like so, the dishes put here, moved there and served carefully. The bowl you drink out of, the sweets you eat, everything has been carefully organized to be beautiful. The same goes for ikebana. The flowers are organized to be beautiful, put into their correct places for the right meaning. You are presented with uncluttered and intentional beauty. This also applies to nature. There is an entire mountainside in my town that has been deforested of the natural cedars and planted with cherry trees, because cherry trees are beautiful. Neatly organized by type and blooming time, it is.

I think this also applies to what is considered beautiful in Japan—the organized things. Simply think of the stereotypical Japanese tour group. People capable of going on their own choose to go with a bus full of strangers. A ride in Japanese person’s car gives me even more organization: everything in its place, each place specific. Perhaps this isn’t the most straightforward definition of beauty, but rather one that also includes desirability. Organization is desired, and thus when things are organized, it serves to act as a thing of beauty. You are presented with uncomplicated and intentional organization, it is deemed beautiful.

Conversely, my first instinct to describe Canadian culture it is to say “multiculturalism”—which only broadens the mix. I grew up in my own subset of multiculturalism in a community made of largely of Dutch immigrants. We have our own traditions: ollie bollen on New Year’s Day, chocolate letters on Christmas. The traditions seem to be mostly food orientated… certainly not anything on par with the Japanese celebration of beauty and organization. Leaving Japan this summer will be also be bringing bits of Japanese culture with me and it’s somehow reassuring to know that when I come back to Japan, these things will still be here. Only 2 months left, I better soak it in while I can.

Sharing

1. Today school is back in session. I taught 1st period, and my following 3 periods of 1st year classes have been cancelled (for a moment, realize that this means on regular Monday mornings I teach 4 classes in a row, and 3 of them are identical, who came up with this plan?), so I have the rest of the day to make sure my desk chair doesn't escape. I will do this by sitting on it for long periods of time, with breaks to: make bad tasting instant coffee, pick things up from the printer, maybe a bathroom break, lunch, and the usual "avoid the funny looks about not cleaning during cleaning time because no one gave me a job" walk around the school. So far it's only been an hour of not being in class and I feel like my week long house arrest broke all my skills at sitting and patiently doing nothing.

2. On school days I always wake up at 6:20. My alarm doesn't go off till 7:17 (well, a little earlier than that because my alarm is set to an indeterminate amount of fast), but I always wake up at 6:20, look at the clock, roll over and keep sleeping. I wonder if this is because
a) There is an alarm clock going off somewhere in my building that I can hear?
b) The sun reaches a certain amount of brightness and that wakes me up?
c) My body is done sleeping and by sleeping more I am really just going to be sleepier?
I can't decide.

3. I enjoy reading blogs, but oddly 2 of the ones I follow are written by young mothers and I have no interest in being a mother anytime soon. I justify these blogs because these young mothers are sassy and witty, which is what draws me to them. Right?

4. I just spellchecked this blog (I can hear your laughter from here, I know there are errors aplenty in the general content of this blog), and no misspellings were found! This delights me! I almost failed spelling in the 4th grade (I was maybe 8?). I've come a long way (sort of?)

5. The smell of fresh cut grass combined with the smell of paint made me think of home. What smells will make me think of Japan next year? Seaweed.

Japan is amazing (2)

Hyogo Prefecture has closed all prefectural schools until the 22nd due to the "outbreak" of H1N1. This affects 1440 schools and 640,000 students. But no teachers, who are expected to still go to school. I had 3 classes this morning, but the afternoon off. So students who got infected over the weekend could pass it to their classmates?

Yesterday in Kobe I saw more face masks than you would expect in a hospital.

Calm down Japan, please.

Update: I am now under house arrest, meaning I am not supposed to leave my town, but I don't have to go to school. A friend of mine is in Japan, visiting from Korea, so I emailed my supervisor saying that I was going to visit her in a city. He wrote back saying that, Ok, I could go, but I have to wear a mask, wash my hands a lot, and gargle. He also mentioned if I do get H1N1, I have to go to a special hospital.

Cambodia in photos

This is Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, in Phnom Penh. We arrived in Cambodia in the morning of the 29th, and then spent the day learning about Cambodia's depressing history.
It was sad to think that everyone we met over the age of 30 lived under the Khmer Rouge's opression, and likely knew someone who died. Added to this were the many crippled people and beggars. The next day we took a 6 hour bus to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat to soak in some ancient history, less depressing. This is Ankor Wat at sunrise, shortly after we toured, we went back to bed to resume our tour 2 hours later.
And here is Ankor Wat at sunset, complete with monk. There were monks all over the place, checking things out, taking photos, doing the tourist thing.

A closer look at the detail of the walls. This is at Bayon, but nearly all of the temples have the same amount of meticulous detailing.

Me at Ta Phrom-- this shows how much work has been done to restore the temples, and this is also home of some scenes from Lara Croft. Our last stop of the day was the floating village on Tonle Sap- the largest fresh water lake in South East Asia. In this photo you can see some of the fishing set up, and in the back ground is a gym. It was really interesting to visit, but it also fell on the trap of scamming tourists. We were guilted into spending over $15 USD on notebooks and pencils (worth a max of maybe $5) for students-- and once we got to the school we saw that they weren't even using them. Frustrating.

The next morning we caught another 6 hour bus ride back to Phnom Penh (this time we were lucky enough to enjoy 3 straight hours of traditional Cambodian music videos!), and then caught a flight to Bangkok.