Christmas in Kamakura

Have you ever wondered how a Japanese family decorates their home during the Christmas season? I have so I leaped at the chance to visit Matsuzaki-san's house in Kamakura a few days after Thanksgiving. We hadn't even pulled our decorations out of the closet yet but her house was decked out with wreaths, stockings, and all sorts of cute ceramic snowmen and angels.

Most of her decorations were things you'd find scattered around a typical American home during the holidays. I would guess she picked up lots of these doodads over the course of twenty plus years of Shonan Club gift exchanges.

The quantity of decorations astounded me more than anything else. "Where do you store everything?" She said that's a bit of a problem. Japanese houses are quite small by American standards but her walls are lined with pretty storage cabinets that soar to the ceiling.  Not an inch of space is wasted.

A few of the decorations have such a Matsuzaki flair that I'm fairly certain she didn't pick them up at a gift exchange with American military spouses.

The linen table runners, for instance, feature holly embroidered on linen dyed her signature purple.

And purple was the primary ornament color on the tree in her new sun porch.

I was in such a holiday mood by the time I left her house that I decided to tackle that quilted Christmas tree skirt I've been thinking about for the past decade.  I wonder if I have any purple fabric in my stash?

Art Imitates Art

My team raised over $700 for the Relay for Life this morning. We did this by cleaning out our closets and auctioning off our superfluous possessions to each other. Fearless and I tossed in a couple of those obis and kimono we've been sorting through, Jessica kicked in several adorable hand-knit baby hats, and Lynette whipped up a batch of tamales.

As is usually the case, I came home with more than I donated but most are earmarked as Christmas gifts and it was for a good cause. Plus, I managed to locate the box of fall decorations while I was cleaning out that closet. Life is good, and so were those tamales.

I did not bring home this statue (above) of a lion cub but only because it wasn't on offer today. I spotted this little guy at Kencho-ji in Kamakura last week. Is it just me, or does he bear an uncanny resemblance to a Maurice Sendak illustration?

I wonder how that happened.

Kencho-ji with Ishii

Ishii-san and I went searching for bush clover in Kamakura today. We didn't see much of that but we did see a whole lot of other things, munched on some very yummy fresh rice crackers, and walked our usual zillion miles.

Ishii read somewhere that Kencho-ji temple in Kita-Kamakura is a good place to see bush clover. Our route took us past Haruki-san's kimono exhibit so of course we took a little detour. Haruki and his wife were so gracious. They remembered my name! He pronounces "Kathy" the same way Yuuko Kaji does, with a very soft "th" that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Ishii was wearing a lovely sashiko vest for the occasion, a long duster she spent a year creating. I wish I had taken some closeup pictures so you could see her exquisite craftsmanship. I, on the other hand, had spent the morning shelving books at the base thrift shop in a sleeveless shirt and found a ratty cardigan in the trunk of my car to cover my bare shoulders, something I feel as compelled to do when I am out and about in Japan as when I visited the Vatican at the age of fifteen.  (As the day grew warmer, the sweater grew increasingly loathsome.  I'm going to abandon it at the thrift shop the next time I shelve books.)

Karamon at Kencho-ji

Kencho-ji, constructed in the 13th century, is the oldest Zen training monastery in Japan -- surely you've heard this before -- and the first-ranked of the five great Zen temples of Kamakura. This was my third visit since March 2007 yet I still took a dozen pictures of the statue of fasting Buddha and the dragon picture (unryu-zu) on the Hatto ceiling. No matter where you stand in the room, the dragon's eyes seem to follow you. This is quite eerie and, so far, impossible to capture in a photograph.

Fasting Buddha

The map provided by the man at the ticket booth showed a garden near the rear of the temple grounds. This seemed like an obvious place to find bush clover so off we went. Except we skirted the building on the left when we should have marched directly through the building straight ahead and, lo and behold, we were behind the garden with no way to get through the tall hedge. That's when Ishii-san got that innocent look on her face that I really ought to recognize by now, the "As long as we're on this path, let's just take a little stroll and see what we can see" look. Those "little strolls" never fail to turn into arduous physical activity. Not that I'm complaining.

Today's "little stroll" took us eventually to the last building on the map, the Hanso-bo, which I think means "8,000 of the steepest steps you will ever climb".  Seriously, even those cute 10-year old school children in their bright yellow caps were huffing and puffing by the time they reached the fourth or fifth flight of stairs.  Japanese landscape designers must all take a special class in Deceptive Neverending Stairs because I can't count the number of times I've scampered up 80 steps only to discover another 80 steps across a short plateau and then yet another 80 steps camouflaged by a leafy maple tree.  Wheeze, gasp.

This is the first time Ishii-san has been to the Hanso-bo.  Her husband knows about those steps which is why I am here with her today and he's not.  

More often than not there's some sort of visual reward for scaling all those steps and today is a more often rather than a not. Thank God.

The Hanso-bo is a shrine that was moved here from Shizuoka in 1890 to protect the temple in the valley below. The final stretch of hillside beneath the shrine is littered with statues of winged creatures called tengu which look like a cross between warrior angels and the Wicked Witch of the West's flying monkey minions.

There's a viewing platform next to the shrine which offers a lovely view of Mt. Fuji on a clear day.  Today we couldn't see Mt. Fuji so I might just have to reprise that ascent.  But you can be darn sure I'll borrow a couple of cell phones and a kid who's willing to scamper up those steps ahead of me to scout out the view.

Ishii-san and Tengu

We spotted a patch of bush clover as we were working our way back toward the temple entrance but it had already finished blooming and that made us laugh. The bush clover seems relatively immune to the effects of the recent Typhoon Roke. Lots of other plants have leaves that are turning brown and shriveling up compliments of all the salt the typhoon carried from the sea to land.

A Kimono Exhibition with Friends

A year ago this past May Matsuzaki-san took the Shonan Ladies to a kimono artist's studio on a Kamakura hilltop. That artist was Mitsuo Haruki and his works are currently on display in an ancient gallery in Kita-Kamakura. When Matsuzaki-san proposed visiting the exhibition today, how could I possibly say no?

My Norfolk neighbors probably couldn't pick me out in a police lineup, but Haruki-san's charming wife remembered me from our previous meeting. Being the oldest American woman in Japan -- by a landslide -- is a blessing and a curse but today I counted it a blessing and endeavored to comport myself in a somewhat dignified fashion. I even asked permission before snapping pictures. What I'm sharing here, the pictures I've spent the past three hours coaxing from my computer into this post, is just the tip of the iceberg.

The kimono featured in my May 22, 2010 post

Three old houses were connected sometime in the past to form the exhibit gallery. The building alone was worth the train fare if you are fond of ancient beams and charming courtyard gardens. I certainly am.

The first floor was devoted to Haruki-san's work - his preliminary sketches and kimono in various stages of completion -- while upstairs we found children's antique kimono, some more than a century old, lavish obis, and ornate dolls. The wall spaces not filled with kimono and obis held framed squares of Haruki-san's yuzen-dyed fabric.

Child's kimono from Taijo Era (1912-1926)

The antique kimono were displayed behind glass as were the obis. My favorite child's obi was this simple purple one from the late Meiji or early Taisho period; my apologies for the reflection in the glass.

This kimono began as a bolt of white silk

Detail of narcissis on right sleeve

One of the American Shonan Ladies interviewed Haruki-san shortly after we met him in May 2010. Her interesting article appeared in the Stars and Stripes. You can read it by clicking here.

Haruki-san and Fearless

The congenial artist draped pieces of his art across the shoulders of Fearless and Artistic but ignored my shoulders and looped an exquisite length of turquoise silk around my neck instead. Maybe he was tempted to choke me. I can think of worse ways to die.

Fearless doesn't mind having her picture taken. We're going to have to drag her along on more outings this year.

The obis were incredible. My favorite -- not this orange one -- was reversible with a traditional Japanese bridge and cherry blossoms on one side and cheerful contemporary patterns on the other.

Not my favorite, but you're getting warmer.

Here we go!  This is Side A.

Here's a tiny glimpse of Side B.

This is part of one of the staircases connecting one old house to another. Old wood speaks to me but I'm not sure what it's saying. (Here is where my mother, who was justifiably fond of her old oak staircase, would pipe up, "Please wipe me with Murphy's Soap!")

This is a closet door.  Excuse my drool.

The artist surrounded by his adoring fans

What a wonderful day in a long, long string of wonderful days.  I treasure every moment of these marvelous adventures with my American and Japanese friends.

Fashion Trends: Tunics, Taupe, and the Ubiquitous Umbrella

The Charities Committee held its second and final meeting tonight. Our chairman is stunned. "Last year we had to meet four times!" That's because last year the Queen of Compromise couldn't squeeze any of those meetings into her busy schedule. Yup, that's right. The Queen of Compromise. I scarcely recognized myself tonight.

About halfway through the meeting I remembered that I had a family readiness group website to create by 9:00 tomorrow morning. I'll work on that while you catch up on the latest fashions seen on the back lanes of Kamakura.

It was not raining.  This is why they look younger than us.

No umbrella?  Then wear a hat.

"Feminine" is in this spring. 

Hasedera: Hydrangeas, and Crowds, and Caves, Oh My!

Three or four iris clumps near the gate leading to Kamakura's Hasedera Temple drew quite a crowd  Tuesday afternoon. You'll just have to imagine the irises since my camera was more interested in this enthusiastic photographer than flowers by that point in our garden marathon. Would he lean too far and fall into the pond? No. Almost, but not quite.

A thought crosses my mind.  Do Japanese tourists sneak pictures of me the way I sneak pictures of them?  Maybe I'll start combing my hair and slapping some mascara on my eyelashes before I leave the house.

Hasedera was by far the most crowded hydrangea mecca Weather Explorer and I visited this week.  We did not get in the long line waiting to climb up the hydrangea-bedecked hillside but took pictures of the people taking pictures of the people strolling through the flowers. 

Then, because this was Weather's first visit to Hasedera (and my jaw dropped when I heard that since it's still my favorite temple in Japan and I've been remiss in assuming she's been there), I dragged her through the cave of Buddhist saints.  Which was something of an Act of Contrition on my part, since that cave gives me the heebie-jeebies.  You have to bend at the waist to get from the first chamber to the second and the thought of earthquakes and being buried for eternity in that cave never fails to cross my mind when I make that bow.  Especially now when we are still feeling aftershocks almost every day.

More Hydrangeas, or Why I Slept Through Dinner the Night Before He Deployed

The Ancient Mariner trudged aboard the USS Blue Ridge this morning. A few hours later the Seventh Fleet sailed out of Tokyo Bay bound for exotic and not-so-exotic ports. By the time I see my Ancient Mariner again, my stepdaughter Jewls will be married (with her father in attendance if all goes according to plan), I will be another year older (shudder), and Pip will be heading back to college.

Pip and I did not give the Ancient Mariner the send-off he deserved. One of us feels awful about this. The other one of us will no doubt feel similar pangs of guilt about twenty years down the road.

We were going to have a nice "last supper" at home but the Ancient Mariner suggested going out for sushi instead when I limped through the door after a long afternoon of gazing at hydrangeas in Kamakura.  To cut to the chase, I dozed off at 6:00 pm and didn't wake up until after midnight.  Pip disappeared with a friend whose family is leaving Japan today. He said he didn't know we were going out to dinner so he ate with his friend instead.

The Ancient Mariner tells me I snored through two telephone calls, one doorbell ringing, and -- incredibly -- a siren on an emergency vehicle that parked across the street from our house for twenty minutes.  He says this is my typical sleeping pattern prior to one of his deployments, that he's come to expect it and doesn't take it personally.  This made sense fifteen or even five years ago when my body needed to store up energy for the long weeks of single parenthood stretching out ahead of me, but now?  Sheesh.  Old habits die hard.

Engaku-ji in Kita-Kamakura

More likely my body was simply exhausted from hiking the length of the grounds at Engaku-ji after viewing the hydrangeas at Meigetsu-in. The property is narrow. Mainly it's a central path lined with interesting buildings and views. The views and buildings are so interesting that it's not until you've reached the last shrine at the end of the path that you realize you've walked nearly a mile and will have to walk another mile to get back to the exit.

The gardens here are more orderly than the garden at Meigetsu-in. There are fewer varieties of hydrangea and the colors are more traditional, meaning white, pink, and blue.  There's a pond on one side of the path where we stop to admire irises, ducks, and turtles, and one long stretch of hydrangea bushes on the other side of the path that's attracted a pair of amateur artists who look so cute in their little caps and smocks.

My feet were pointed toward the exit when Weather Explorer spotted a directional arrow pointing off to the left toward a National Treasure, the O-gane, one of the three great bells of Kamakura.  I was less than enthusiastic.  I remembered climbing those 200 stone steps to see the bell last year.  Then a wave of guilt washed over me.  She may never pass this way again.  We made our ascent, we glanced at the bell, we admired the view.  Good thing, too, because I don't think I could bear having two things to feel remorseful about today.  One is bad enough.

   

Hydrangea in Kamakura



Meigetsu-in, Kita-kamakura

 A friend of mine who lives in Kamakura has never seen the hydrangeas blooming at the four shrines and temples most renowned for these flowers in her hometown.  Twice she's gotten as far as the Kitakamakura train station near two of these gardens but the sight of all the crowds surging from the station toward the hydrangeas paralyzed her.  She didn't get off the train.

Crowds don't bother temporary residents like Weather Explorer and Bossy.  This is Weather's first and last chance to see hydrangeas blooming in Japan and by the time June rolls around next year Bossy will be frantically rolling bottles of sake in Japanese fabric and hiding her plunder in Rubbermaid bins as a moving van chugs up to her door.

It's not just the "last chance" nature of this hydrangea outing that makes the crowds endurable.  Crowds are part of the attraction of visiting gardens during peak blooming seasons here.  We can and do grow hydrangeas back home, although not (yet) all these remarkable varieties, but enjoying them there is more of a solitary pursuit.  We like the social aspect of peak blooming seasons in Japan.

Our first stop is Meigetsu-in, a temple in North Kamakura with a gardening philosophy that can best be described as abundant, unrestrained, and eclectic.  A stark Zen garden of raked gravel and large rocks is an interesting counterpart to the profusion of hydrangea varieties on the other side of the grounds.  Off to the side there's a rabbit hutch ruled by the biggest tweedy brown bunny I've ever seen. 



This is what I mean by "eclectic"



Get Thee to a Nunnery: Eisho-ji in Kamakura

Ishii-san at entrance to Eisho-ji

You've seen this little door before, perhaps twice. The Explorers spotted it a year ago on their way to the money-washing shrine and a few months later Ishii-san and I crawled through that door to view the garden on the other side. The garden is attached to Eisho-ji, the only remaining temple for nuns in Kamakura.

Today Ishii-san and I returned to Eisho-ji to see the recently reconstructed gate (left). This gate was destroyed during the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. An enterprising man hauled away all the fragments of the gate and rebuilt it in his backyard, which must have been enormous, and not just by Japanese standards.  The gate changed hands again 88 years later and was returned to the temple where it was once again reconstructed.

There's been a bit of construction in the neighborhood surrounding the temple over the course of the past 88 years.  Train tracks have been laid, houses have been built, roads have been diverted.  Visitors these days approach the gate from the interior of the temple complex, through the garden, after paying 350 yen to a nice man who sits in a booth just inside the little door.

Passing through the gate, we turned around to experience the perspective of a 17th Century visitor (above).

There's a ladder to the second story of the gate to Ishii's right (your left). A piece of plywood blocks the ladder. I did not succeed in goading her into removing the plywood and clambering up the ladder, more's the pity, but she was intrigued by a cave on a nearby hillside so we inched our way up that slippery slope and caught another view of the gate.

Later I found out that Ishii-san spotted some very special flowers while we were scaling that slope. These small purple wildflowers, called iwatabako, have a short blooming season in a limited area. She says only lucky people can see this flower. Had I only known, I would have taken a picture for her.

It was another lucky day for both of us.

The Three Bookateers in Kamakura

Kyoko, Tsuneko, and I meet every two months to trade opinions on a book I've selected. In February we discussed Major Pettigrew's Last Stand and I assigned The Girl in the Blue Dress for April. As I was distributing the books, one of them -- Tsuneko, I think -- noted that we never run out of things to talk about in our three hours together. She proposed getting together in March for lunch and a leisurely discussion of non-literary matters. Calendars were whipped out and a date was set: March 29.

At the time, of course, I had no way of knowing how important this appointment would be in the wake of the March 11 earthquake. Yet I used a pen to mark the date in my calendar. I never, ever let a pen anywhere near my calendar.  I have no idea why I made an exception in this case.

Every other commitment in my calendar is written in pencil, which is fortunate since I had to take an eraser to most of March and April and part of May right after the earthquake, but lunch with Kyoko and Tsuneko is incredibly indelibly blue. Our date was the North Star by which I set my compass in the sad days of bidding so many American friends sayonara and mata ne.

We had lunch at Arkadas, a Turkish restaurant on the third floor of a building overlooking the Kamakura train station. None of us had been there before but I knew it must be good since both the Seventh Fleet officer spouses and the Oakleaf Lunch Bunch crowd went there last fall. We ate shish-kabobs - beef, chicken, and lamb - and Kyoko insisted the occasion merited dessert so we scarfed down sweet pastries that I'm calling baklava although they were shaped like tubes rather than squares. I simply had to try Turkish coffee because who knows when I'll have another chance. (When I mentioned this to Dr. T, he said, "It tasted like mud, right?" "Pretty much.")  Kyoko, who has actually visited Turkey, pronounced the food authentic.

We exchanged earthquake stories, of course. Tsuneko and her husband were in their car, driving to the nursing home where they installed her mother-in-law a few months ago. Their car was positioned between a large truck and a tall building when the earthquake hit. The tall building began to sway. "We were so frightened," Tsuneko confessed, "We were so worried that the building would crush our car, that we . . . we reached . . . we reached for each other and held hands until the earthquake stopped!" Tsuneko was blushing. Public displays of affection are unusual in Japan, particularly for Tsuneko's generation (she will be 70 this year). I am pretty sure that Kyoko will still be teasing Tsuneko about the "romantic earthquake" long after I have left Japan.

After lunch they took me to the shrine where they had prayed for easy labor many years ago when they were young pregnant ladies.  I thought the straw sculptures scattered around the temple grounds were quite interesting.  "Do they represent pregnant ladies?"  No.  Kyoko laughed as she poked her finger through several of layers of straw to reveal a peony bush.  The straw protects them from cold temperatures.  That rock star topknot is sheer whimsy on the part of the temple gardener.

I knew this picture would not turn out very well when the Turkish restaurant owner insisted on posing us in front of the red crescent flag displayed in his window. He also gave each of us little trinkets dangling from safety pins to attach to our lapels. I pinned mine to my backpack instead because these days my lapel is reserved for my Japanese-American friendship pin.

Kamakura-Bori: Don't Try This at Home

Every February the Ikebana ladies converge on Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura to learn a craft. Last year we made kimekomi balls, this year we took a stab (a carefully chosen word, that) at carving cherry blossoms on wooden plates. This carving craft is called Kamakura-bori and there are shops all along Kamakura's main streets where carved plates fetch lots of yen.  Those plates don't look anything like the one I made.

After receiving a blessing from the head priest, watching a shrine maiden dance, and tossing down a shot of sake, we confronted our tools (above). Carbon paper, a pencil stub, a pointy blade, a flat blade, and a disk of paulownia wood to which a paper cherry blossom pattern was taped. (The paulownia link is for the benefit of David Peck and my readers in the Netherlands).

A few of us brought supplies of our own. It's true that great minds think alike. A savvy lady at the table behind me sported fingerless gloves with thick padding between her thumb and forefinger. I brought a box of band-aids which - miracle of miracles - I did not have to open.

We traced the pattern onto the plate using the pencil stub and carbon paper.

We levered the pointy blade against our thumb to etch the pattern into the wood. The older teacher (there were two) stopped by to correct our technique. A little while later he wandered over to correct our technique again.

We then used the flat blade to carve out a trench along the lines of the pattern. The technique for holding the flat blade involved both hands to guard against inadvertently amputating a thumb. After correcting my technique several times, the older teacher was able to communicate "tsk, tsk" to me from across the room simply by wiggling his eyebrows.

This is the Kamakura-bori plate that my children are all praying will go to Aunt Cathy or Aunt Sandy come Christmastime. Those are the raffle tickets that brought me three lovely necklaces and a CD of Dragonball Z symphonic music. Any takers?

Ishii and my other friends invested an additional 6500 yen (roughly $80) to have their plates lacquered, a process that takes three months. This is how their finished plates will look.

Tune in tomorrow (or later today, depending on your location) to see how I intend to spend the money I saved by not having my plate lacquered.