February 2005

Greetings! I don't know where February went. Hope you are all well. I heard the northeast got lots of snow. We are very jealous!

Despite our cool and rainy weather, February 3rd was the first day of spring. The Japanese tradition is to throw soy beans or peanuts around the house to chase out bad luck. The school seemed particularly interested in ridding itself of bad luck and Bridget and Eric got to throw peanuts at their classmates and particularly at the kid with a red devil mask on. I bought the supermarket kit (mask and nuts) and our two experts had a great time destroying our apartment. I don't know if they felt it was good luck or bad luck, but I had them clean the place afterwards.

The following week we celebrated the Chinese New Year in Nagasaki's Chinatown district where a beautiful Lantern Festival was held. All the streets were decked out with intricate lanterns strung overhead. The main display was in a park and featured oversized lanterns and glowing statues. It was quite a sight and the hustle and bustle was augmented by the street venders hawking their wares.

The next celebration was Valentine's Day, and here it is not a romantic day. On February 14th, women give men (co-workers, friends, etc.) dark chocolate. White Day, March 14th, is the reciprocation day when men return the favor, only they give the women white chocolate. White chocolate signifies sweetness (like the women), while the dark chocolate is supposed to be more manly.

We had a fun weekend with Underhill friends (the Exlers) visiting us and sharing a slice of home. We spent a night at a Japanese ryoken (inn/hot spring resort) and took in the local sites. The Holland theme park, Huis Ten Bosch, was awash in tulips, so I got some great photos. Later on we went to the well-done Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. It didn't take many images from August 1945 to scare the pants off of us. I'd like to think that if we had a museum like this in every country in the world, the public would ensure that there were no more nuclear weapons.

Anne and Josh also got to experience a pachinko parlor. Japan's entire landscape is being taken over by tasteless, yet creative and fantastically-built architecture. These huge buildings are cartoonish and garish on the outside and unbelievably loud and smoky on the inside. Players line up in front of vertical pinball machines and insert a stream of ball bearings. If the player is extremely lucky, they win hundreds of ball bearings and can exchange them for cigarettes or candy at the counter. These goodies are then taken to an outside window (gambling is illegal in Japan, you know) and traded for cash. I read that pachinko is now the single largest industry in Japan, outpacing cars and computers.

We are off to Okinawa this weekend. We are visiting Aya, our Vermont Japanese language tutor. She is back home after finishing her master’s degree at St. Mike's. Okinawa's climate and culture is unique and I expect will differ in many ways from the Japanese mainland. We are looking forward to seeing Aya again!

All our best,

barbara

Photos at http://photos.yahoo.com/~iverlink folder called February2005.

Blog at http://iversonjpn.blogspot.com