Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Summer solstice 夏至

June 21


Tokyu Hands advertising their rainy season selection

Today is officially summer solstice, or geshi. We're not doing anything special. It's the middle of rainy season, so sales of umbrellas, Crocs shoes, Wellies and raincoats are up! Biwa (loquat) are coming into season and my neighbours are curing their onions.
Neighbourhood onions hanging like laundry

Last year, Google had a groovy Takashi Murakami doodle for the solstice, but this year, nothing!



It's getting hotter and more humid every day. My main concerns now are keeping the clothing and bathroom free of mould, or "kabi". My MIL has about 6 drawers of kimono stored at our house, so I have to be vigilant! Actually, being stored in washi paper wrappings rather than plastic, seems to help keep them free of mould, but I'm stocking up on drying sachets and charcoal. Last year, I found her extensive collection of zori - the traditional shoes - had been damaged by damp.

Not my MIL, but I like this lady's summer kimono.
Kimono are stored flat, wrapped in paper. There's a handy window to show the colour and pattern.

Looking fashionable in the rain is a big deal here. "Hunter" wellington boots are very popular this year, as well as the brand's rubber ballet flats. Then, you need to co-ordinate your umbrella to your boots and outfit. Slip-on foam handles are also popular for umbrellas this year, both the make it easier to hold and distinguish yours from dozens of others. Hotels and big restaurants have lockable umbrella storage and most department stores have plastic sheaths for your wet umbrella at the entry. I love the day after a rainy day, when my neighbours hang their umbrellas on their garden trees to dry out, making "umbrella trees".

Co-ordinating your rain gear.


Katana umbrellas...may give you trouble at the airport

For compact samurai and ninja

You can send cards to friends in rainy season, or more usually, in high summer

This shop in Nezu with pots of hydrangeas makes me happy just to look at it!



July and August will bring all the festivals and fireworks. I can't wait!

Monday, June 11, 2012

Tsuyu 梅雨


June

Rainy season is here! The kanji for Tsuyu is 梅雨 which literally means "plum rain". It's not that the rain is heavy like dropping plums - in fact, it tends to be light and misty - but this is the season for plums.

June 11th was "kasa no hi" or umbrella day - the official start of rainy season, which should last till early July. I kind of like rainy season, despite the bother of umbrellas and raincoats. The soft rain intensifies all the lush greens. It's humid, but not yet too hot, and the evenings are still pleasantly cool. Japanese summer is something else - hot, unbearably humid and like last year, we'll be subject to voluntary power saving, which means offices and trains will have their aircon set to 28 degrees. More on that later.

My 80 year old neighbour is an excellent gardener, and over the past week, tiny eggplants have dropped, runner beans have shot up as if over night, along with what looks like pumpkins, potatoes and flowers. Small green plums (more like apricots, but they call them plums here) are growing on another neighbour's tree and the supermarket is selling big plastic jars and bags of rock sugar, to make your own "umeshu", plum wine.

My MIL's umeshu. Smells good!

It looks a bit daunting, but I think it'll taste good. You can see she made this on June 7th, 2 years ago.


We have a jar that my mother in law made a few years ago... might be time to try it! Pickled plums, "umeboshi" are also popular. The best come from Wakayama - they're big, soft, juicy and salty/sour, all at once. They're supposed to be a good remedy for heat fatigue and have an alkalinizing effect - which is apparently good. They're also meant to be a guard against food poisoning and a good cure for nausea, so they're a popular hangover cure. I guess if you have too much umeshu, you can pop an umeboshi the next day - a kind of 'hair of the dog' cure.

Here's an umeboshi, with shiso leaves, which help make it a more vivid red, and add to the taste.


Our 'garden', which is more like a strip of grass that taunts me with weeds, is now overgrown with dokudami, with white, four-petal flowers. In fact it's all over the neighbourhood now. It doesn't smell very nice. I looked it up and in English it's called 'heartleaf', 'lizard tail' and sometimes "fish mint"! The Japanese meaning is "poison blocker", and it was used as cure for poisoning in the Edo era and now it's used as a detoxifier and diuretic. You can make a tea from its dried leaves. I imagine it tastes pretty bad. My friend Atsuko told me it's also used as a face lotion - if you don't mind the smell.

The family bikes lost in a jungle of dokudami.


Tsuyu is also the time for hydrangeas - "ajisai", followed in a few weeks by morning glory - "asagao". The colours of ajisai - those lovely soft purples and watery blues - look even better on a softly rainy day, so last weekend, we ventured down to Kamakura, which is famous for its flowers. Actually, my husband pointed out there are many shrines and gardens all over Japan with gorgeous displays of ajisai right now, but Kamakura has marketed itself as "the place" to see them. I went to Kita Kamakura for the first time, to see the "ajisai dera" or hydrangea temple, Meigetsuin,  which is a lazy 15 mins walk from the station.

This hydrangea had unusual purple edging.

There's a tea house offering matcha, ice tea and coffee and sweets

The jizo statues also get offerings of ajisai





The ajisai paths






It was terribly crowded on a Sunday, but very beautiful (and, ironically, bright and sunny). Meigetsuin is famous for its long, sloping paths up to the main temple building, which are lined with ajisai.

The temple also has a room with a round window, which frames the garden beyond. At the moment, the back garden has irises. There's also a small waterfall and a koi pond. The window is one of those classically "Japanese" views, but seeing it without the crowds is almost impossible.

The famous round window from the outside

And from inside. It costs 500 yen to get to this room and 500 yen if you want to walk in the garden beyond, so make a choice: either just look at the garden through the window, or walk in it.

The "back yard" irises

The shrine opens at 9am, so you could possibly get there super-early, or at the end of the season (say, late June, on a weekday), to see it without the crowds.

There are ajisai everywhere you look in Kamakura

You'll also find ajisai designs on summer fabrics.

Pots of ajisai decorate almost every store.

Summery sweets at Toshimaya, the home of "Hato Sabure"

More wagashi at Toshimaya. The lower right one looks like ajisai.

You can find more about Toshimaya and Hato Sabure in my other blog, here: minimeibutsu in Kamakura



Sunday, June 3, 2012

Holidays are golden

Golden Week

Golden week is a series of public holidays at the end of April – early May. With the weekends, you only need take a day or two off work to get a 10 day holiday. The weather is usually lovely: warm but not yet humid (except this year, we had freakish storms), and for everyone who started a new job or school in April, it’s prefect timing to get a little breathing space. You see, it truly is a golden week.

The main holiday is children’s day or “kodomo no hi” on May 5th. Originally it was ‘boy’s day’, but it was renamed in 1948 to be more inclusive. However, the main focus is still boys: families with sons display replica samurai helmets or dolls, or other figures of strength like Kintaro, in the hope that their sons will grow up strong and healthy. It’s very similar to the girls’ doll festival in some ways.

This is our "Kintaro" doing a sumo pose, while his bear friend flies the carp flags.

There’s an amazing doll shop near Asakusabashi station in East Tokyo, which displays all the traditional warrior dolls, but this year they also had “Darth Vader” and “Storm Trouper” heads; a nice reference to the way the Star Wars costumes referenced samurai armour.

The glass was too reflective, but you can just see the Storm Trouper, for about $1,800

This is the traditional style with helmet, sword, arrows and irises

Japanese Irises - “Hanashoubu”  - are just coming into season and often feature in displays, thanks to their straight, sword-like leaves and proud purple flowers. The Japanese word “shoubu” also sounds like “victory”. Some people put the leaves in the bath, to hopefully make their kids strong and ward off bad luck.

It's too early for the spectacular iris displays in parks like Horikiri Shoubuen, but you'll find random clumps of irises growing around the neighbourhood.

One of my favourite things about Golden Week is seeing all the carp streamers. Families put up “koinobori” or carp streamers, which symbolise the energy and strength of carp swimming and jumping upstream, overcoming any obstacle. Usually there’s a large black carp for Dad, then a red one for Mum, followed by smaller ones for the kids, in order of age. We went up to Tatebayashi in Gunma to see the famous koinobori strung across the river. There are over 5,000 carp streamers! If you time it right and go in early April, you can see the carp and the cherry blossoms together.

These koinobori were set up as tunnels for kids to play in

The spectacular carp streamers flying over the river in Tatebayashi




These are sembei- rice crackers - wrapped up like koinobori, with a plastic iris.

The traditional treat for Children’s Day is kashiwa mochi – mochi sweets wrapped in oak leaves. The story is that oak trees don’ t drop their old leaves until new leaves appear, symbolising the strength and continuity of the family. Anyway, kashiwa mochi is delicious! It comes filled with sweet bean paste or a mix of bean paste and miso. You shouldn’t eat the oak leaf, but you can enjoy the imprint it leaves on the soft mochi. One of these days I’m going to try to make some mochi sweets. We have a few kilos of mochi rice here, thanks to our relatives up in Tochigi who send us a couple of big bags of rice every year (though they stopped sending them last year due to radiation concerns; we got local tofu and yuba instead). I almost cooked the mochi rice by accident once, which would have made a gloopy mess of my curry! 

Kashiwa mochi wrapped in fresh oak leaves. They smell sweet and "green".

Inside: this one is a mix of miso and white bean paste.