• Thursday, 30 May 2024 8:47 am

  Rebuilding Ise Shrine

  Here's a video (in Japanese) about rebuilding the Ise Grand Shrine (in Japan). The shrine is rebuilt every 20 years as part of a longstanding ritual to preserve the cleanliness of the building for Amaterasu, the Shinto sun deity that purportedly lives there. The building process itself—chopping down Japanese cypress, cutting and forming the wood, crafting the adornments, and assembling the whole thing—takes 8 years. The current buildings were opened in 2013; the next ones will be finished in 2033, which will be the 63rd time that they've done this.

  via Scope of Work

  Japan Art Video

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  Friday, 20 Oct 2023 6:32 pm

  Classy Bear

  When we lived in Japan, Sam used to collect these mugs that would show up every now and again at recycle shops (that is to say, secondhand shops) with a little painting of a teddy bear in Ivy League-style outfits, labeled The World of Classy Bear. All of the mugs had a little trademark at the bottom indicating that the eponymous Classy Bear was the property of Takara, a Japanese toy company that I remember from ads growing up.

  

  The mugs (and other associated crockery) seems to be relatively available on eBay, where they fetch decent prices.

  Anyway, we've still got the mugs, so imagine our surprise when we spotted Classy Bear—unmistakably Classy Bear—on a £180 t-shirt at Gatwick Airport, labelled (rather unimaginatively if you ask me) "Polo Bear by Ralph Lauren".

  

  Who the heck is Polo Bear?

  Japan

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  Tuesday, 18 Oct 2022 9:30 am

  2015 Gokibiru 30K trail run

  On 18 October 2015 (7 years ago today!), I participated in a trail run from Atsuta Town to Gokibiru Town and back—30 kilometers. I didn't do it particularly quickly, but I did it, and I think that at the time (as now) I'm more proud of it than I am of the Okhotsk Marathon, which I'd run a couple weeks earlier.

  I know that, with time, I'm going to forget the details—so I'm writing them down now to hold on to as long as I can.

  It started reasonably early in the morning; we all gathered at the starting line. I’d filled my Camelbak with Aquarius instead of water, and my backpack was full of SoyJoys. I was wearing my green Brooks Cascadia 10s, which I’d gotten especially for this occasion, and which, 800 km later, I still wear sometimes; and my red Salomon backpack, which I still use for bike riding and other light-backpack applications.

  I don’t remember feeling outclassed the way that I do nowadays whenever I’ve done a trail running event (Causey Pike, etc). We first ran up a hill, then down the back; then back up the hill and down the front, before a long run along the seafront.

  A little while in we came to a layby, where the Gokibiru Sandou started: a steep climb up into the forest and then a long run along a trail heavy with leaves; I guess we were getting on for fall and the leaves were turning.

  I don’t remember a lot about the run out to Gokibiru; at one point I had to cross a stream and for some reason it didn’t occur to me that I could put my feet in the water and I faltered while the marshal told me to just run through it. A little ways further on it occurred to me that we were using the trails that maintenance crews use to access power lines.

  Further on still I saw the leaders coming back the way they’d gone; I had the presence of mind at least to get out of their way as they came racing down the hill—they had more claim to the trail than I did, by virtue of their raw pace, I figured.

  The long descent into Gokibiru was rough on the knees, being made up of rounded-off stones; and then a little loop through the town where, at a set of fold-out tables erected by the elderly of Gokibiru itself, I drank probably more than my fare share of lukewarm Ribbon Napolin before continuing. The glucose would have been really good for me but the carbonation not so much.

  The climb back up into the hills was rough and I lost some ground to a guy who’d stuck nearby throughout most of the run; it turns out that he was a photographer from Yubetsu, whose services I’d use a few months later when renewing my passport.

  I don’t remember much of the run back. The weather started to turn just as I was nearing Atsuta Town—a light bit of rain. Coming back down off the hill was awful on my ankles, which were just about shot by then. I remember running along the seafront mostly on my own—everyone ahead had taken off, and everyone behind had fallen back. There were surfers out on the sea, I remember: people coming in off the waves and peeling wetsuits off next to Toyota Hiaces with the doors wide open, parked alongside the road.

  When I finished—I don’t remember the finish itself—I went into a gymnasium to record my arrival. It took me only 2 minutes less to run the 30 km than it took me to run the 42 km of the Okhotsk Marathon a few weeks earlier. Afterwards I drove back to Asahikawa to be with Sam.

  

  Links

  • The run on Strava
  • The event page
  • A write-up of an independent walk along the same trail

  Running Japan Outdoors

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  Thursday, 17 Mar 2022 11:42 am

  Hybrid online/offline transactions

  Patrick McKenzie's (@patio11) recent post about how online transactions work in Japan, where relatively fewer people have methods of online payment (e.g. credit cards) is a fascinating and nostalgic read for me. The tl;dr is that the convenience store (aka konbini) has over time become the locus of remote transaction: ubiquitous, powerful, and highly automated, it connects to merchants to process payments in cash via a integrated set of networks that overlie (but are accessible from) the konbini.

  Japan actually takes it a step further than online payments by providing a number of physical certificates that can help merchants (and, well, anyone else) verify your identity. I had to use a Residence Certificate (juminhyo) when I bought my Subaru, for example—because just showing my driving license wouldn't be secure enough to prove who I am. (This makes sense: some people don't have driving licenses; some hotels to whom I provided my driving license probably employed less-than-Fort-Knox-worthy levels of digital security.) I took a trip to Yubetsu's Town Hall for this, but it sounds like nowadays you can get it printed remotely—at your local konbini.

  I've long lamented the fact that the konbini doesn't seem to exist in western countries, despite being such a critical piece of social infrastructure in Japan. What I wouldn't give for a late-night meander through the dazzling white aisles of a 7-11 these days, the sound of muzak Daydream Believer overhead.

  Hybrid online/offline transactions, Bits about Money

  Web Japan

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  Monday, 28 Mar 2016 12:35 pm

  Flavor of the Now: Orange

  Hey so has anyone ever noticed that Japanese snacks, especially the candies and drinks in convenience stores, follow a bit of a flavor pattern? Like one month, the different brands all release a bunch of x-flavored candies, and the next, almost in sync, you start seeing y-flavored candies and drinks?

  (Which totally sidesteps the weirdness of products that must go through a lot of testing and development only to exist for like a month, which we see pretty often here. Examples: pink lemonade (last month; this month is coconut-pineapple) Mentos, yuzu Hi-Chew, lemon Coke.)

  Anyway, as a heads-up to anyone paying attention, last month's flavor was peach, but we're currently slowly transitioning into orange and orange-associated flavors, which I guess includes the tiny 'kinkan' fruit, an olive-sized citrus fruit that the Japanese eat like grapes. Skin and all. Apparently the skin is quite sweet. Anyway.

  Last month, we had peach-flavored I-lohas flavored water, peach-flavored gummies, and Kamu Kamu Peach, which are chewy, tart little candies.

  

  

  

  If you're wandering around a combini in late March/early April 2016, you'll probably find (clockwise): orange "Fettucine" (more sour chewy things), Hi-Chew in 'bitter orange', a bag of orange-flavored energy jelly by Weider, then more Hi-Chew, kinkan-flavored, and your standard orange gummies. I also found some orange-flavored I-lohas water but I forgot to take a picture of it.

  

  Japan Food

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