Moldy Housing Blues 

My face has been feeling pretty gross over the last few days ¡½ rather itchy and tight, like the skin is too dry. The fall flowers are blooming, so I'd been chalking the grossness up to allergies. Upon further consideration and a look at the tatami after I picked our futons up this morning, I think I've identified the culprit: mold.

You'd think that living in humid Maryland for eight years would have taught us everything we needed to know about controlling mold in our house, but no. That was only a basic education. Japan is so humid so much of the time that things take on moisture very easily and never really dry out. I've heard stories of people leaving their apartments in Tokyo for August vacations and returning to walls covered with mold. There are lines of desiccant products for all areas of your house, including the shoebox that sits in the genkan. We've got some charcoal, but we've never investigated any of the other products. Perhaps we should ¡½ ever seen moldy shoes? I hadn't, until last week.

Mold is most disheartening to find in the tatami. It gets into the weave of the mats and can only be gotten out by lots of careful scrubbing (with the weave, please) with a rag or small brush and vinegar. Nothing makes me feel like Cinderlawyer quite as much as cleaning mold out of the tatami. There I sit, methodically wiping the mats, peering closely at each newly cleaned patch and watching the rag turn black as I go. Sadly, no cartoon mice entertain me during my labors.

Tomorrow, we deploy the charcoal.
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Harmony 

Lanterns are a common festival decoration. At the city museum's festival today, the road was lined with small lanterns decorated by children from a local elementary school. This one was particularly wonderful.



The kanji is wa, meaning "peace" or "harmony."
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The Real (Tall) Thing 

Beverages that come in tall cans have a sketchy reputation in America, at least where I'm from. They're usually full of cheap malt liquor or beer. They can often be found lying in the gutter, surrounded by the brown paper bags used to conceal them from the eyes of people who might happen upon the people drinking them. Which is why these amuse me tremendously:



The all-American drink, now available in tallboys!
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School's Out! 

Like all kids, young oni are happiest when school is out for the day.



Actually, these boys are preparing to dance Onikenbai as part of a local junior high school's sports day.
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Not What It Sounds Like 

I can't believe we've been here over a year and only mentioned our primary grocery store in passing.



Here's hoping the bar associations I belong to don't hold our frequent trips here against me!
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Races with Trains 

Every week, I ride my bike to the other side of town a few times. The route runs under the shinkansen tracks, then turns to run parallel to them for a while. Often, a train will come along while I'm riding, preceded by its magnificent roar. It's a race I never win, but for those few seconds that we run along together, it's pretty cool to feel like its companion.

Bullet trains are at the same time common and exotic. Tens of them pass through Kitakami, and thus right by our house, daily. We see many of them while walking the dogs or just looking out the window. They're as much a part of daily life as the commuter and freight trains, prefectural and city buses, and other road traffic. On the other hand ¡½ hello! They're bullet trains! They set the air abuzz as they approach at hundreds of kilometers per hour, and are audible before they're visible. They roar overhead on elevated track, filling the space beneath with sound. They're sleek, beautiful, and they nearly blow you over as they pass through a station without stopping.

The shinkansen will always win the race against the girl on the mountain bike. Frankly, I'm just happy to be there, sharing space with these gorgeous machines.
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Rainy Season, Part Two 

Summer gives us one more reason to be skeptical of the weathermen. They are the ones who declare the opening and close of rainy season. The rainy season, tsuyu, is supposed to last from early-to-mid-June until mid-July throughout Japan (except Hokkaido). This year, the Japan Meteorological Agency declared tsuyu over in Tohoku on July 19.

Over, huh? Then why are we sitting inside, huddled in our warm dotera, on the third day of constant rain that we've had in the last two weeks? If the last two years are any measure, we get more rain after the rainy season than we do during. Both years, there have been smatterings of rain throughout tsuyu, usually in the form of brisk afternoon showers reminiscent of New Mexico's desert storms. It's only after the end of the rainy season is declared, however, that we get strong daylong downpours, sometimes two or three times a week. Sometimes, they last for twenty-four hours or longer.

Tomorrow's forecast is for rain; the day after is for rain "at times." We don't trust the weathermen to tell the truth about such things, but relying on our own experience, it seems that we're in for a damp couple of days.
related link
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The New Yardstick 

Here's an interesting test of your language skills: how quickly, and through what means, can you deflect the solicitors?

Last year at this time, I had a very limited arsenal. Someone would come to the door wanting to talk me into something. All I could do was look uncomprehending and say, "I'm sorry, I don't understand." Again. And again. Sometimes, the solicitors would ask a few basic questions about where I was from and how long I'd been in Japan (testing?) before trying again to push their agenda, but we always ended up back at the Blank Look of Incomprehension and Gomennasai, wakarimasen. Inartful and more than a little embarrassing, but so it goes. I was new.

Now, I can tell them something that will get them to go away. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's only almost true because I can't quite pull the proper word to mind. I'm also confident enough to be a little more forceful about it, which is not to say that I'm rude. Or that I can't have a laugh with a solicitor about it. A couple of weeks ago, a newspaper salesman came by with the the following spiel:

Newspaper Guy: Hi, I'm from Newspaper. You can't read the newspaper, can you?
SKD: That's true. I can't read the newspaper. I'm sorry.
NG: Where are you from?
SKD: America.
NG: How long have you been in Japan?
SKD: Oh, about a year.
NG: Your Japanese is very good.
SKD: Oh, it's really not so good. And I still can't read the newspaper.

I had a harder time convincing him that a subscription would be lost on us than I would have at the same time last year. It's a nice measure of how far I've come, though, to know that the Blank Look of Incomprehension is there as a fallback, rather than a default when communicating.
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Bitter, Lumpy Goodness 

A friend gave us a couple of goya this weekend, one green and one white.



Goya, or bitter melon, is a staple of Okinawan cuisine. It's very bitter but refreshing, and tastes of quinine and grass. Its juice is refreshing when mixed with shochu and soda in goya sours, and its flesh can often be found in chanpuru, Okinawan stir-fries.

I made goya chanpuru for lunch today. Besides goya, the chanpuru involved eggs, tofu, thinly sliced pork, ginger, and bean sprouts.



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Bon Odori 

Last Friday night, our ward held its Bon Odori. Bon Odori, or the Bon Dance, is a community event associated with Obon. According to Buddhist custom, Obon is the time when the spirits of the deceased return to visit their families' household altars. Bon Odori is a joyful dance that commemorates the ancestors' sacrifices, and traditionally involves people dressing in yukata and dancing around a stand built especially for the festival musicians. This was our first time to participate in the event, so we dressed up in yukata and went out to join the dancing.

As it turned out, only a few adults wore traditional clothing ¡½ mostly, children wore them (so cute!). The children seemed pretty excited by us, cheering us on as we circled the drummers with the rest of the dancers. We'd strategically positioned ourselves behind a woman who'd clearly been dancing these dances for decades, so we were able to catch on reasonably quickly. Some of the dances were easier than others, with the Kitakami dance being one of the easy ones. As we understand it, the music and movements of each community's dance tend to represent the activities and traditions for which it is known. We can only deduce that whatever goes on in Morioka is really hard, because the dance that originated there was the most difficult.

Early in the evening, one of the ward leaders came over to chat with us, ending with a request that we stay until the end. We had already intended to, but his request made us feel a little suspicious, possibly because he was one of the guys who sprang the yakudoshi speech on me. We learned the reason when, at the end of the evening, we won the prize for "Naisu Fuufu" ("Nice Couple"). Even more than the dancing, the announcement caused the children to cheer wildly. As they waved and shouted congratulations at us, we were touched by their infectious joy. The celebration reminded us how grateful we are to be part of this community.

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