Weaning (A Couple of Kitten Pics)

Would our blog readers be annoyed if we gave up talking about Japan and only posted pictures of the neighborhood cats? Well that won't happen, but how can I resist posting a couple of more fresh pictures of these guys!?

Akamimi and Chibi (our former kitten hostage)

The more cautious Oni arrived late and pushed Chibi out of the way

The Cats Are Back In Town

A few of you have asked for an update about our kitten fiasco. A couple of weeks ago, Akamimi took her kittens out of hiding for the first time. We recognized Chibi as the runt immediately. Akamimi set up the kittens in a thicket across the parking lot from our back door. She started coming around asking for food more, and eventually we bought a bag of cheap cat food and have since started feeding her morning and night.

At first Akamimi kept the kittens far from us until one day when it rained, and she let them sleep nearby, which strangely meant they were sleeping in the rain. The rain got torrential that evening, and we came home to hear one kitten crying in the bushes under the downpour. Akamimi was not in sight. Nor was Chibi. This was his sibling. We looked around for a while, a little concerned that Chibi was half-drowned somewhere. I finally grabbed the kitten and somehow avoided getting scratched by it after it FREAKED-OUT. We promptly named it “Oni,” which is something like troll in Japanese.

We put Oni in the box on our porch that Akamimi sometimes sleeps in. After sitting on the fluffy dry blanket for a moment, Oni got tired and went to sleep. We woke the next da with Akamimi and Oni on our porch and Chibi struggling to get up. Since then we find the three of them sleeping in the box almost every morning. Oni is pretty scared of us, Chibi less so, and Akamimi hisses if we get near the kittens. But they continue to sleep in the box, only at night, and Akamimi eats off our porch everyday. We’ve even see her weening Chibi, encouraging him to eat some dry food.

So now we’re obsessed with our kitty neighbors, and we hope that the kittens are friendlier with us than their mother is once they get a little older.

It’s Not Taboo in Japan?!

What do you think is the difference between these two drinks? If you don’t read any Japanese, you might just assume that one is peach nectar and one is a sparkling version of peach nectar. In actuality, the sparkling version is a collaboration between the Sapporo brewery and the Fujiwa beverage company. It contains alcohol.

I was a little shocked to see how closely one resembled the other, with the same color scheme, fonts and design cues. A child who couldn’t read could easily mistake the two. A few weeks after sampling the nectars, we snapped the below photo at the grocery store: chocolate cigarettes! The packaging looks like it was made in the 50s (back when it was still okay for American kids to have them?!).

It’s interesting to see things that aren’t taboo in Japan that are taboo back in the States. But in these two examples it makes sense. Alcohol was never puritanically protested here and is drunk by almost everyone. Anti-smoking campaigns are almost non-existent. In fact, 50% of Japan Tobacco is owned by the Japanese government, which seems like a huge conflict of interest for any governmental organizations concerned about the health of Japan.

Of course the opposite side of the coin is the things that are taboo here that aren’t at home. Taking off your shoes to go into someone’s home is the most obvious one. Some Americans (my family for example) maintain this custom but more as a way to keep the house clean than as a cultural rule. A lesser known taboo in Japan is blowing your nose in public, which is considered rude. At the same time, gargling and violently clearing phlegm from your throat is not at all rude here, things that most Americans wouldn’t stand for. Perhaps most shocking is the first time you sneeze in Japan. No one says anything. Of course that's because “God bless you” etiquette is definitely a western custom.

There are lots of other taboos/customs worth talking about, but perhaps I’ll just write more about them as we experience them anew.

iPhone 4S x Mushroom Hunting

Saturday, October 15, was supposed to be an event that we were looking to for weeks that got cancelled due to a rainy forecast. This is ironic because it ended up not raining at all and because the description of the event said “rain or shine.”

The event was an educational mushroom hunt at the Miki Yama Forest Park, which we have blogged about before. The basic premise was that 40 people would all scour the forest for mushrooms, gather them to one place, and a mushroom expert would teach us about them. Hunting for edible mushrooms is a common practice all across Japan for those who live near the many mountains. Some places even have organized hunts where you pay admission to collect mushrooms like you would for fruit picking, and then afterwards you barbecue them along with other foods.

I have become a little obsessed over mushroom hunting after I started observing them everywhere at the forest park. I have always been a fan of learning survival skills, and foraging for wild foods is a big part of that. I’m also intrigued by the mushroom hunting tradition in Japan. In the States, serious mushroom hunting is limited to very specific regions and is probably largely restricted to die-hard mycology fans. I’ve never met someone in the the States who hunted for wild mushrooms.

But in Japan, where 73% of the country is forested and mountainous, the mushroom plays a much more critical role in the cuisine. The average grocery store has at least six or seven different species of mushrooms. And while mushroom hunting is not a national past-time, it is definitely more common in Japan, and probably most people have eaten a dish at some point that contains wild mushrooms.

All the pictures in the this post were taken with my new iPhone 4S while I was hiking in Miki Yama. A lot of the pictures are out of focus, which I blame more on me than the camera. The get the pictures, I was often squatting in the bushes with spiderwebs in my face and mosquitos buzzing around me, not the best conditions for a steady hand. I hope as I play with the camera more that I can capture some really good mushroom photography in the future. I'm also hoping that they reschedule the mushroom hunt soon!

Suzurandai Hike

Miki sits just north of the western end of Mt. Rokko, which is actually a range of mountains on the north side of Kobe. I have gone hiking on various parts of the Rokko range, my most favorite being the trails near Ashiyagawa Station, close to the Frank Lloyd Wright house there.

The best way to start a hike: Mr. Donuts.

Suzurandai Station is a 25 minute train ride from Miki, and I found out about some trails that go from there all the way to downtown Kobe. The trail that we chose lasted four hours and brought us over two different Rokko peaks. The amount of steps we hiked up and down was incredible. Becky and I are both in much better shape than when we arrived in Japan almost three months ago, but we struggled to get up the longest stretch of steps. We were embarrassed to see all the old people making the same journey, some seemingly struggling less than us. Hiking is largely considered an old person’s past time in Japan, and I would say at least 70% of our fellow hikers were retirees.

Toward the end of the hike, we met a nice Japanese man who asked us if we wanted to see some old growth forests. We kindly went with him, which was enjoyable, but which took us off of our intended path down the mountain. We ended up going down a trail that was not well traveled or maintained. The spiderwebs everywhere were annoying, and the amount of dead leaves and branches covering the steep trail was a little dangerous, but we finally made it down.

The trail ended in a drab cement park in Kitano, a neighborhood north of Sannomiya, downtown Kobe. Kitano is where many westerners settled when Kobe was opened to the west in the 19th century, so there are a number of historical homes there. Most of them cost about $7 to enter, so I have not known many westerners who have paid admission to tour western mansions in Japan. The neighborhood itself is very nice and is one of Kobe’s most upscale. One of the many historical houses that was destroyed in the Great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 was later rebuilt and is now home to one of the coolest Starbuck’s we’ve ever been to.

Miki Aki Matsuri

Miki’s Aki Matsuri, or fall festival, took place on Oct 8 and Oct 9. Festivities included a street filled with stands selling festival food, which not unlike a state fair back home, consisted of mostly fried items and desserts. Although the fried items are much less outlandish than what has become the norm in Oklahoma and Texas.

The main event at most fall festivals across Japan is carrying mikoshi, or portable shrines, through the city. In Miki, a number of different neighborhoods all carried their own mikoshi to the main shrine in the city. The shrines literally weigh thousands of pounds. Carrying them is a chore for the dozens of men that join in, and this is doubly so in Miki where a gigantic staircase stands between the road and the main shrine. This year represented the 900-year anniversary since the original main shrine was built. Coming from the United States, it’s hard to imagine a historical site that continues to be used for the same purpose 900 years after its inception!