Category Archives: Holidays

Kinokawa, 1991

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August 18, 1991

Osaka radio, Bonchi Rice Snack, high winds pouring through my window; such is the stuff of today, the last day of O-bon. The highlight of the week was an excursion to Kinokawa, a river about an hour south by train, and then more time by car.

Last Saturday, one of my students, Aiko, spontaneously invited me to go after I ran into her at Keyston, where my friend Don and another guy were playing a gig. Aiko had been in turn invited by her friend Kumiko who – together with her sister and brother-in-law – rented a two-room “cabin” overlooking the Kinokawa. Kumiko is having an affair with Don at the moment. So I was expecting him to come along. Wrong again. Instead, Kumiko invited my friend Bill, who’s attracted to Kumiko in spite of the fact, or maybe because of the fact, that he married another woman earlier in the summer. Why? I don’t know. Maybe Kumiko just likes fanning Bill’s ardor.

[Unsurprisingly, Bill’s marriage – to a Japanese woman – didn’t last very long, and after their divorce, rumor was she dimed on him to immigration, to make sure he’d leave the country. I went to his “deportation party” just before he left, though strictly speaking, I think he left ahead legal action.]

None of those interpersonal complications really concerned me. I just enjoyed a fine two days out of town. The river wasn’t much more than a large creek. The territory, hilly and lush, reminded me of southern Idaho, minus the tall pines. The slopes down to the river were steep, meaning a climb up from the road to the cabin, and another one down to the riverbed, which was shallow, pebbly, and remarkably clean for a Japanese river.

Larger rocks lay here and there in the riverbed. For dinner the first day, we set up a grill on the riverbank and put a watermelon afloat in the cool water, tethered to one of the rocks. That detail sticks in my mind. Almost every cluster of people I saw along the river – and there were many groups – had a melon bobbing nearby.

Most of the people visiting the river had either pitched tents, or were sleeping in their cars, as we discovered when we went to a nearby bridge to shoot off fireworks at 2 a.m. (I can’t remember whose bright idea that was.) One guy emerged from his car and yelled at us a Japanese equivalent of “Shut the f— up!”, which we deserved. I was impressed at the terrific fireworks you can buy at convenience stores in Japan. Big gaudy tubes that spit sparks and fireballs and whiz and pop.

Thursday night we drove in three cars to the Hashimoto matsuri (festival). Getting there only proved that there’s no road in Japan too small for a traffic jam. At one point all four occupants of the car I was in fell asleep while waiting for the cars ahead to move. Good thing the driver had put it in Park. I woke first and noticed that cars behind us were going around us. Odd, because I think that in most places, we’d have gotten honked at.

The festival itself was a mass of people. The centerpiece of the festivities was a big dance circling a band who played continuously. The music wasn’t exactly rock, though there were elements of it, especially the drums. Yet it was bar after bar after bar of the same thing, and forming a circle around the band were the dancers, making steps and hand motions with their fans in a pattern I couldn’t quite follow. It was mesmerizing in a way that a light show is sometimes.

Happy Birthday, Dom

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August began today warmer than the end of July, which saw a string of oddly cool days. The whole month was punctuated with cool days. Been that kind of Northern summer so far.

That was confirmed when the electric bill came the other day. Total kWh we used were higher in July than June (actually June 26 to July 26, compared with the preceding 30 days, but close enough): 873 kWh in July vs. 711 kWh in June. But we had a week or so of normal heat in July, so no surprise.

The difference in electric usage between this July and last July was a lot more: 873 kWh compared with 1601 kWh. Last year was hot and dry. Helpfully, the bill also includes average daily temps for the two months: 75 F this month, 81 F a year ago. That means the average for this July was lower than where I set the thermostat during a summer day, which is 76 F or 78 F when I can get away with it.

There’s a holiday near the beginning of June – Memorial Day – and one near the beginning of July — Independence Day – and one near the beginning of September – Labor Day. You can see the missing one in that pattern. What this country needs is a holiday near the beginning of August. Too bad George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.  both happened to be born in the winter.

I took a quick look at notable Americans with August 1st birthdays whom we could honor with a national holiday, say on the first Monday of the month. Maria Mitchell had a Google doodle today, and strange to say, I knew who she was because I saw her telescope at the Smithsonian a couple of years ago. It’s good to remember pioneering female astronomers, for sure, but I doubt she rates an entire holiday. No more than other notable Americans born this day, including explorer William Clark, songwriter Francis Scott Key, Lt. Col. William Barret Travis (who died a Texan, of course), authors Richard Henry Dana and Herman Melville, presidential son Robert Todd Lincoln, and entertainers Jerry Garcia, Jim Carroll and Dom DeLuise.

Dom DeLuise Day? No. Maybe the holiday doesn’t need to honor anyone or anything. National Mental Health Day, or the Just Because Long Weekend.

Independence Eve ’13

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What’s up with the weather this summer? High summer isn’t very high this year. Rain this morning and about 60 F., and not a lot warmer during the day. A complete contrast with the hot-for-Illinois, thirsty-dry summer of 2012.

It was a bit warmer at 10 pm tonight when I went out and the smell of gunpowder, ever so faint, wafted by my nose. Occasional pops of minor fireworks were part of the night’s background noise. It’ll be a lot smellier and louder tomorrow night.

No posting till July 8 or so. Maybe I’ll be back with an image or two to publish, and a handful of brief descriptions.

Dogs From Space

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Back again after Memorial Day, which falls three days before Decoration Day this year. Another example of an earlier occasion within a later one, such as Armistice Day within Veterans Day, or to take it back further, the various pagan holidays bundled up within Halloween and Christmas.

Lilly threw a tennis ball in the air not long ago, intending for the dog to chase after it. To everyone’s astonishment, the ball stuck in the back-yard tree. Not in a thicket of branches, but jammed between two small branches that aren’t budding yet, and in fact might be part of a dead branch. You’d have to throw a ball I don’t know how many times to get a result like that. This isn’t the first time Lilly has managed to toss something with astonishing results.

We’ve been expecting the wind to bring it down, but so far – it’s been roughly two days – the ball has stayed in its arboreal home.

Also not long ago, we were out in the back yard with the dog when she took a sudden, inexplicable interest in the sky, running around, looking up, barking a little. I thought she might have spotted a bird, which happens sometimes, sending her off on a vain ground-based chase of airborne creatures. We couldn’t see any birds, or even distant airplanes, which she occasionally looks up at (baffled, maybe).

“She’s getting ready for dogs from space to rescue her,” I suggested. No one was impressed. “No, really, an intelligent race of dogs are on their way from a planet around Sirius to free their brother dogs. Sister dog, in her case. Earth dogs have been waiting for thousands of years for their freedom. One day, they’ll come.”

Again, no one was impressed. I don’t think I made that idea up, but I can’t remember where I heard it.

Spring Break

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Had a weird interlude recently during which this entire blog vanished. Found some 404s and one of those ads offering the domain name for sale. That was unnerving. Then it came back, as if nothing had happened. (And what happened? I like to imagine some guy tripping over a cord at a server farm on Malta.) For all its faults in the end, Blogger never did that. Guess the lesson is, don’t run your mouth for years and years at any one site.

And do some backup. Also: if you’re look for this site and it’s gone, it isn’t because I pulled the plug.

But enough of the mechanics of Internet posting. That’s like telling someone else about your dreams: dull, unless they’re in them, and I’m not sure how someone else would be involved in my posting.

This year, spring break for the school-aged among us coincides with Holy Week, and I have much to do so that I don’t have to do as much as usual next week. Back again around April 1 — Easter Monday, which we ought to have as a holiday, as many other countries do. We could secularize the name, if that would make it more palatable.

Hinamatsui 2004

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Sequester Day came and went on Friday without much fuss here in the heart of North America, though we may come to rue it eventually. Texas Independence Day was Saturday (177 years now). According to our school calendar, March 2 is also Read Across America Day. Someone might have noted that day at our township library, but I didn’t go there this weekend, and every day can be that as far as I’m concerned.

All the while, about a foot of snow covered the ground. It hasn’t been warm enough to melt most of it. That’s a little unusual for early March, which typically sees the beginning of mud season.

Today is Hinamatsui, or Girls’ Day. We’ve been hit-or-miss over the years in marking the day, which is a Japanese festival, more about which here. This year, Yuriko brought out those few dolls we have appropriate to the day. Back in 2004, we went to some kind of event for the occasion. I don’t remember what we did, exactly, or where it was, but I did take a picture. It isn’t that great as a picture, but I like the subject matter.

The Presidents Day Blackout

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At 5:10 p.m. the electricity flickered, went out, returned for a few seconds, then went out for about 50 more minutes.

Time to be dramatic: Blackout! NW Suburbs Without Power! Family of four plunged into uncertainty of powerless, dimly lit Monday evening! Forced to eat dinner and play a board game by candlelight!

But it wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t that cold today, so the house didn’t even lose that much heat. There was no obvious reason for it — no windstorm or ice buildup on power lines. Just one of those things.

Only three of us were here, since Lilly was visiting a friend at the time. I checked the block and everyone else’s power was gone as well, though the lights outside the school behind our back yard were still glowing. Lilly reported later that Twitter had informed her that some undetermined local area was dark — her friends were tweeting about it, I guess, but it couldn’t have been too large an area, since her friend (about a half mile from us) didn’t lose power.

Our TV and Internet were gone, but how can that be a bad thing for a few minutes, especially that fine silence where the TV used to drone? We discovered that our camping lantern, which contains four D batteries, has actually been a container for dead batteries for a while now. But we have about a half-dozen candles, and so ate our Japanese curry-rice by their light. Good thing the rice had cooked by the time the juice went off, though we could have boiled pasta and had curry-pasta.

Ann wanted to play a game: Sorry! As we prepared the table to set it up, the power came on again. I told her we could still play, and she still wanted to play by candlelight, so we did, though her mother was watching TV in the same room, so it wasn’t quite the throwback experience it might have been. Her yellow men edged our a victory over my green ones, four home to three home.

Lingering Lights & St. Nick’s Chopper

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This is the real mid-winter, about half way between December 1 and March 1. Whatever pleasure the December holidays might have bestowed is long gone, and weeks and weeks of cold lie ahead. Very little snow so far this year, however, only a bit more than last. Odd.

There are still a few houses displaying Christmas lights. Strangely enough, the only one on our block to retain their lights has downsized their display. During the height of the holidays, it’s one of those places with lights strung all around, bright figures in the yard, and a couple of inflatables. Now all they’re showing is one string of white and one string of blue along the roofline.

In the holiday décor Go Figure category this year: inflatable Santas in helicopters. I saw more than one of those. One chopper piloted by Kris said on the side, Ho Ho Helicopter. Does a helicopter really fit into the Santa story? It would have to be a pretty quiet helicopter, otherwise he’d wake everyone. And St. Nick might be in danger in areas of civil unrest and a repressive regime that uses helicopters. (If I had a rocket launcher, that jolly old elf would die…)

Crystal Pepsi Girl

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Twenty years ago for the 92/93 New Year’s, Yuriko and I were in Boston. We spent some of New Year’s Eve downtown, including a short visit to the Massachusetts State House. Out in front of the building, PepsiCo was busy marketing a new drink, Crystal Pepsi.

Even then, the detachable pop-top was a thing of the past, but the costume wouldn’t have worked without it. I returned to Japan shortly afterward and thought little about Crystal Pepsi. Years later I learned that it was a famed new-product flop.

Reading about that flop now, I found an interview with Yum! Brands CEO David Novak in Fast Company in 2007. He’s credited with creating Crystal Pepsi, and when asked about the flop, his money quote is: “People were saying we should stop and address some issues along the way, and they were right. It would have been nice if I’d made sure the product tasted good.”

Vain Bibble Babble

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Back on a work schedule. Full schedule, that is, because work didn’t quite stop, even between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Yuriko’s back at work, too, even though her employer is Japanese and were this Japan, the New Year’s holiday would last through the third.

The Christmas tree still lingers, but oddly enough the dry tree-removal schedule this year has the tree out on the curb on the morning of January 7, so the last day of the tree being up coincides with Twelfth Night. Not that I’m particular about that, but Epiphany does seem like a good time to clear away the last of Christmas.

I saw the following on a sign at a grocery store today: Miss Your Twinkies? It was advertising a house-brand cream-filled sponge cake. Judging by the box, at least, they looked very much like the product of the defunct Hostess. But I decided I didn’t miss Twinkies all that much. And besides, they won’t be gone all that long.