Iroha -chi-

iroha

is 

back

if you would like to see the other iroha-'s on my blog

please click the above photo

We've finished the first line...

now on the second...

starting from "chi"

chi

"Chi" is not to be confused with the Chinese "chi"(energy) which is "ki" 「気」in Japanese.

"Ki" is the symbol/character I will talk about....30 characters from now...

So, back to "chi".

Coincidentally, I found two makeup related brands that start with chi.

The first is Chikuhodo, a makeup brush brand based in Hiroshima  (try saying that sentence 3 times in a row!) which is well known for their brushes.You can find the English information about the company here:  Chikkuhodo

The below travel size makeup brushes are from a set that I received using my frequent flyer points (JAL).

I couldn't find the exact same set on their website but their brushes are anywhere from US$50 and....up...

The next makeup brand is a LOT more affordable.

Chifure

They are a relatively eco friendly company, very clear on the ingredients of their products and don't rely on lots of advertising.  They are super affordable...you can find out about the company in English here: Chifure

Their face cleansers and creams are anywhere from 5 to 8 US$.  The lipsticks are 300yen, less than US$3!!!

You buy the lipsticks in the little tube with the white cap you see above.  You purchase separate lipstick cases which are reusable...the plastic ones are 100 yen (less than $1 and the metallic ones are about  $3!)

I put the Revlon (matte lipstick in Heavenly Mauve no. 01) just to show you the shade similarities.

(The Chifure lipsticks are more similar to the Revlon Lip Butter textures than the matte ones...just in case you are interested in that sort of thing.)

Other words that start with "chi" are....

chikyu (Earth)
chikyu-gi (globe)
the "gi" is pronounced like the "gui" in guitar

My mom bought me the above globe about 10 years ago for my birthday... it was a "feng-shui" thing.
Supposedly if you put a globe in the eastern side of your office, your work will go global....or something to that effect.

It is actually kind of ...funny...?... because now I do get to travel a lot in Japan with at least one chance a year to travel abroad.

Globe power...

Chiheisen (chi-hay-sen) is horizon.  Specifically land horizon.  There is another word for the horizon you see when you are at sea..."suiheisen"..."sui" meaning "water".

There aren't very many places where you can see a "land horizon" in Japan especially if you live in the city.  This photo I took from the airplane will have to do for now...

Somewhere above the Kyushu island in south western Japan (2012)

...

 An adjective that starts with chi...chiisai (chee-sigh):

small

chiisa na ki
the small tree

I will talk more about the book someday, perhaps when I get to ki= tree.

Chi means:

blood, earth/land, knowledge 

all have different kanji (Japanese characters) but sound the same

....

a pretty important sound, "chi" is

I hope you have a great day/night wherever you are on this Chikyu!

My trip to the UK and books, books, books!

Hello.
...
Yes, I know...I have been a VERY bad blogger. SO here are my excuses and everything in between!

1. Work became really busy.  I mean REALLY busy...
2. I went to the UK!!!! in July.
Here are the pictures:

the British Museum

Spent the whole day here and still didn't get to see everything...

The weather was fantastic during my whole stay in London!

the feet of a buddha

After the British Museum, I went to a lovely antiquarian bookseller...

Jarndyce

and bought:

a 1871 edition of the Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

and a 1911 edition of Intentions by Oscar Wilde

the red book on the left is a recent buy.

It is a reproduction (facsimile) of the 1911 first edition of 

The Concise Oxford Dictionary

published to commemorate the 100th anniversary. 

It looks fabulous with the old books that I have.

The inside of the Tate Modern Museum

I spent at least 5 hours here!

London old and new.

Keble College in Oxford. The dining hall.

The dorm room I stayed in at Keble College.

I wonder who is staying there now.  

I left a copy of Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" on the bookshelf.

I had so  much fun in the UK. 

It was only a few weeks later that the riots in London started and that made me very sad...

3. In August I went to Okinawa:

and saw people dancing in the streets.

Visited Shuri Castle on my day off and found 

an interesting looking spigot!

4. At the end of August I had a few days of vacation and visited Nagasaki.  Found a very interesting structure:

that turned out to be a very long slide!

...

5. I also went to two other Prefectures in Japan (sorry no pictures) and of course Tokyo again...all for work...

But a few things arrived in the mail that reminded me of the blogging world...

first it was :

the author Lisa's bloodspot blog is here:

http://papertigertail.blogspot.com/

Finally going to start reading this now!

Which reminded me I have to write a blog on this wonderful series

but I might just wait till her new book arrives!

In the meantime check out the author's blog here:

http://cristyburne.wordpress.com/

And then IT came...

If you are a longtime blogger fan then she needs no introduction...

Tess the author of the Life at Willow Manor blog has published her first booklet of poems.

I said I would buy it if she published it and I have.  It arrived safely here in Japan just a few weeks ago.  I used to love poems but drifted away not being able to find anything new that resonated...but Patina (as is the Willow Manor blog) is filled with poems that are lovely to read out loud and lovely to read silently just like a short story.

I looked up Patina in my brand new First Edition Concise Oxford Dictionary and it says,

"Patina: Incrustation, usu. green, on surface of old bronze, esteemed as ornament. "

Hello again.  I think I am back at blogging!

unbelievably, reading books about Japan

Good heavens…you may or may not be wondering what I have been up to lately…

I have been traveling around Japan in my “areas” as a sales representative.  On my days off I have finally gotten back “my groove” and am reading, listening to music and watching movies again…

So, what have I been reading?  Well, I finished reading Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s “Picking Ash From Bones”.  In a nutshell: it was great!

I usually freak out when someone writes about Japan in English. There are often quite a few errors.  Names are irritably non-Japanese, foods are mixed up with other Asian countries and the Japanese tendencies are nothing but stale stereotypes.

However, Marie’s book gives you a REAL sense of time and space in Japan, both old and new.  Her mother is Japanese and father is American, just like me so it is not too much of a wonder that she gets everything right;-)

The story starts with a mother and daughter and how their lives are constricted because they are a family of two. Japan still holds a bit of prejudice towards single parent families, although not as harsh as in the 1950s, when the story begins.

 (You can get a short synopsis of the book here: http://www.pickingbonesfromash.com/)

As time goes by the story gets passed on to the next generation.  The new central figure Rumi, is raised in the US and has a chance to visit present time Japan.  The reason Rumi flies to Japan is unique from a western point of view.  Maybe even mystical since it has to do with a ghost, but being half Japanese myself, it actually seemed natural. 

Along with snapshots of homes, schools and society you will learn a bit about the Japanese version of Buddhism and the indigenous religion of Shintoism as well.

For someone who know Japan the way I do (because I live here and like the author am half Japanese) it made me want to give my mom a big hug for raising me up in two cultures.

So what am I going to read next???  Marie seems to have unlocked my ability to read about Japan in English so I think I will follow up with the following titles: 

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (because one of the characters has the same first name as I do!) and…

 the new book by David Mitchell “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (my husband is from Nagasaki, which is the stage for this novel)…so many coincidences….

Also:

I am almost finished with “At Home in Japan” a non-fiction by Rebecca Otowa.

This book also is a lovely one to flip through in between stuff as I sip tea and fan myself on the hot summer nights…

“Shojo no Tomo” (the girls’ friend) a magazine for girls that is no longer in print but was loved by girls in Japan during the 1950s…right around the same time Marie’s novel starts off!

Ooooh, look at the hairstyles!

My little spring day.

These flowers were blooming at the foot of a tree in front of the office... What are they?

Spring at last! So, I decided to go see the cherry blossoms!

I went to a place called Sakura Shuku Gawa in Hyogo Prefecture. There were a bunch of people eating rice balls, drinking beer and playing cards under the blooming cherry trees.

I picked a tree, spread out a plastic sheet to sit on, opened up a bottle of spring water and some snacks and started to read with the sounds of laughing children and quite a few tipsy adults as BGM.

I wanted to read a book that would fit with my surroundings...so I chose:

Those are not my hands, by the way.

I took more pictures of the cherry blossoms. Today I have only posted the ones I took from my i-phone because I have misplaced my camera cord thingy... argh.

Tomorrow I am off to Tokyo for meetings. Will be spending half my day in a hotel room getting ready for the meeting and doing an online crash course on how to use PowerPoint.

I also need to get my picture taken somewhere because I have forgotten (yet again) to renew my passport. Yikes!

Happy Easter, happy spring and happy reading!

hiding from a magical flying carpet of desert

I have just returned from 3 days in Tokyo. I visited clients with a senior colleague to learn more of "the ropes". Then we had some meetings... Then I stayed an extra night so that I could see a friend who lives in Tokyo. I had lots of fun and did a whole lot of learning but it does feel good to be home!

However, terribly strong winds kept me from having a deep sleep last night.

Those howling winds did not come empty handed. They brought along the Gobi Desert.
o_0
What I thought was fog and clouds turned out to be a trillion specks of sand.

I didn't take pictures but you can see a news clip about the yellow sand we had today( click HERE).
The sand has made cars and windows dirty and it has given me a sore throat too!

The dust that covers Japan and Korea (and of course the sandstorms in Mongolia and China) have been growing in proportion these past few years.

Today's blanket carpet of yellow sand was extra harsh....

If you are thinking "well it's just sand!" then please know that it is not only messy but it is also unhealthy.

If you have hay fever, then a spell of a runny nose and watery eyes is "normal". The real danger is in the toxins that attach themselves to the sand as they "fly" over China's industrial zones... of course Japan has industrial zones too, but the chemicals found in the sand are said to be quite toxic and have matched with the chemicals China has been founds to use.... thus the sore throat?

this is a picture I took in Kitakyushu, Japan (2010 March)

So...I have had to hang my wash "out to dry" in the house instead of outside as it is usually done.

socks and shawls

Since I did not want to go outside and get wrapped up in a veil of sand, I decide to clean my room...which ended up being a mini treasure hunt instead.

I found out that I must be liking the colors blue and green since that seems to be my latest buying trend:

blue wrapping paper, green envelopes, blue and green tape, blue bird clothes pin, a blue silver button and
in the very back...a four-leaf-clover tin box

Even a book that I have been meaning to read has a beautiful blue on the cover...

Marie Mutsuki Mockett.

I have not been deliberately looking for authors with an "Asian background"... but one book has led to another...

bought this one by Jamie Ford last week

which led to this one

The Asian American Superhero Anthology "Secret Identities"

which led to this one...

a graphic biography of the mathematician/philosopher Bertrand Russell

Oh dear...the top layer of things on my desk are what I bought last week....what will I find if I dig any deeper?

i-ro-ha #6 "he" and my attempts at youtubing

it is important to know that this character "he" is pronounced like the "he" in "head" or "helicopter"

I think it is a "silly" character.

When the "e" sound is drawn out "heeeee" it is the sound people make when they mean "is that so?" or "really?!".

Two nouns that start with he:

he = a fart

...

heso = a bellybutton

...see how "silly" it is?

Well then, how about this...using the characters he, no, mo and ji
you can draw a frowning (but funny) face...
(I have no idea when and who thought this up but it has been around for a long time and I am pretty sure all Japanese people are familiar with this...)

"henohenomheji" starring I_am_Tulsa:

If someone says that your mouth is shaped like a he that means you look unhappy.

(BTW, I couldn't upload video from my computer so I had to make a youtube account....argh. I soooo wanted to stay away from this... I think it is some kind of google conspiracy...)

...

A colorful time in Japanese history, for someone who enjoys literature, would have to be...
the Heian Period. (794-1185)

This is when that famous Harlequin-like story about a prince and his "conquests" (The Tale of Genji) was written by Murasaki Shikibu (a court lady). It is said that Murasaki Shikibu didn't actually finish the tale (some even say that she didn't write it :-S), but with things like this...you just never know.

The Pillow Book, a witty diary written by Sei Shonagon (another court lady!) was also written during the Heian Period.

Then there is "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" ("Taketori Monogatari" ) a story about a moon princess being raised up by a bamboo cutter and his wife, that was written during the Heian Period. There was a great movie that was released in the 1980's titled "Princess from the Moon" which made me realize that this story could very well have been one of the first science fiction stories in the world!

Another era that begins with he is the Heisei Period.
It began in 1989 when the current emperor ascended the throne and since it is the current era, I find this to be a rather important period!

The unveiling of the name for the new era was of course shown on tv back then, and I found a clip on..yes, youtube:
speed it up to 56 seconds and you will see the kanji...



The man "unveiling" the name is Keizo Obuchi.
At this time he was chief cabinet secretary. Later on he became the 84th Prime Minister of Japan.
Unfortunately, he passed away while still in office in the year 2000.

The kanji for Heisei is supposed to mean Peace on earth and heaven....

The word for peace in Japanese is HEIWA

a nice word in any language I suppose...

But, back to the silliness of he


hesokuri = a secret savings (usually a wife's)

a silly phrase...
heso wo mageru = to turn your bellybutton....this means to "become perverse"... which usually happens when a husband finds out that his wife has a secret savings ;-)

Sorry that I didn't have any pictures of Japan to post today.... it has been a really weird week...and I am surprised that I even got this post posted...

Hope you all have a great and heiwa-na (peaceful) week!

i-ro-ha #5 "ho"

Some of my favorite words start with "ho".
So for today's edition of "i-ro-ha" you may learn more about me than Japan.

For example:
hon = book
hondana = bookcase ... some people say you can judge a person's personality from their bookshelves...in that case, I could have all sorts of personalities!

hoshi = star

Tonight is cloudy, so no stars. Well...not very many stars can be seen in this city anyways...
(by the way the book you can sort of see in the picture... has been with me for about 30 years)

...

hochoucho = E major ... Chopin's Etude No3. in E major "Vhanson de l'adieu" Op.10-3 is one of my          
                      favorites...(I like Fujiko Hemming's piano performance.  She is a pianist who I will post        
                      about  someday.)
...

"ho" is also the sound of relief... when you say "hotto shita" it means "I am relieved."

...

Another word that starts with "ho" is "honki", which means "earnest" or "seriousness".
In kanji, written by poet and calligrapher Aida Mitsuo (last name comes first in Japanese), it looks like this

The meaning of the kanji for "hon" means "real" (also is the same kanji for book!)
"ki" means "mind, spirit" (also means atmosphere).

...honki...

This is from the cover of a book my dear friend  Blossom gave to me a few years ago...

(book design by happy and happy, book published by bunka shuppan kyoku)

The title of the book "Honki" comes from a poem in the book also featured on the above cover.

This book contains English translations but for the sake of copyright and stuff...here is my own translation of the poem:

Earnestly


Anythings is fine - just be sure to do it earnestly
It will be fun - if you do it earnestly
You won't get tired - if you do it earnestly
And even if you do get tired - it will be a refreshing kind of tired


As you might be able to tell from the above cover, Aida Mitsuo's form of calligraphy looks care free and not confined to strict rules...

So, in the same vein, without thinking too much, yet being earnest...my attempt at writing the letters for the word "hotaru" which means "firefly"...  posing with my firefly stationery!

Here's a sentence using some words we learned today...
本気でやればほっとするでしょう。
Honki de yareba hotto surudeshou.
If you try in earnest, you will surely be relieved.

Now I must earnestly go and make (a late) dinner!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

i-ro-ha #4 "ni"

The fourth character to introduce in the "i-ro-ha" series is "ni".

Words that start with "ni":

ni = two

niji = rainbow

ningen = human

not to be confused with...

ninjin = carrot

oh, oh, oh NINJA!

and of course another word that starts with "ni" is NIPPON or NIHON. You know this as JAPAN.

a land of grey buildings and red gates...

Here is the kanji for Nihon

Rice paddy near my mother's home...

I started this series as an attempt to describe Japan, and here I am trying to explain the word Japan (Nihon) in one session.

...uh... not going to happen.

So allow me to focus just a little on religion.

Japan is often called a Buddhist country and although that is not a false statement it only captures one side of Japan's spirituality.

Buddhism was popularized in Japan during the Kamakura Period (1185~1333).

One of the most well known religious figures of the time was a man whose name starts with todays letter "Ni"(に).

Nichiren (1222~1282).

He founded the Nichiren sect which focuses on the Lotus Sutra.

The most influential sect that embraces the teachings of Nichiren would have to be the Soka Gakkai. They are popular overseas as well, with many famous musicians and other celebrities among their followers. They are known in Japan for their ties with the Komeito, a political party that is now one of the ruling parties.

Other Buddhist sects are the Jodo, Jodo-Shin and of course Zen, just to name a few.

So, if Buddhism doesn't have that long of a history in Japan... then, what is an indigenous Japanese religion?

Shintoism?

The kanji characters mean "the way (or path) of god".

a shinto shrine I pass during my commute...

I'll try to take better pictures someday.

Two chronicles written in the 8th century (the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki) are known as Japan's first history books. They are books that show how mythology and history are intertwined in this country.

Amaterasu-no-omikami is one of the 3 original gods and is part of the root of Shintoism. There are more gods though...Izanagi-no-mikoto and Izanami-no-mikoto were husband and wife and they gave birth to dozens of gods who also gave birth to gods...

Included in the ranks of the gods, was the Emperor. Emperors were deified up until the end of World War 2, after which religion was separated from government.

(I remember seeing a picture of the Showa Emperor (the current Emperor's father) hanging on a wall at my Japanese grandmother's house when I was about 4 years old... I don't know what happened to it after my grandparents passed away.)

Another aspect of Shintoism that started before the word Shinto was put into use, is the belief in...well...almost everything!

Japan is the land of ... Yaoyorozu-no-kami (八百万の神）. It means, 8 million gods.

I'm not kidding.

Eight million gods.

There is a god in everything. Not just the elements like earth, wind and fire, but also in all species.

Animism?

There are spirits in all things and all spirits are divine, and have powers.

There is another saying in Japan...

Iwashi no atama mo shinjin kara. = Even a sardine's head can be worshiped.

This means that "faith can make anything holy".

Although the saying is rather critical and not used as praise, I think there is a lot of wisdom and beauty in worshipping nature.

This philosophy has enriched Japanese culture (example: paintings and kimono designs.) and literature (example: haiku which has now become quite the phenomenon!).

Although the Japan I know of now seems to be letting these ideals slip through their fingers

new buildings being built all over the place...

I have hope that some of the ancient philosophy will be revived and live on.

Movies like "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away" show the basics of the Shinto philosophy...without the preaching.

oh and another word that starts with "ni":
ninjou = human nature
this is always used in a good way, focused on the warmth and kindness of humans...

Thank you for reading this extremely long post...and thank you for visiting!