August, 2016 | Howdy Japan

Ainu, the indigenous people in Hokkaido Japan

In Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan, there is a people called “Ainu”. Before the Japanese expanded to the north and started living in the island late in the 19th century, they had lived there and had kept their traditional lifestyle based on hunting, fishing and gathering.

Now in 2016, somehow changed, but the Ainu people is still trying to preserve their culture. In Hokkaido there are some of their communities, called Kotan in the Ainu language. And Poroto Kotan located in Shiraoi-town in central Hokkaido is one of such communities.

In fact most of the Ainu people doesn’t keep the same lifestyle of hunting and gathering as they had in 100 years ago. They have Japanese nationality. And in daily life they live like the other Japanese people live. Nevertheless with the identity as “Ainu” they try to preserve their traditional culture.

For example they have their own language, music and dance. This Poroto Kotan is not only their community but also their museum. And they show their music and dance to the visitors with their traditional clothing.

Their culture is deeply related to their religion. In their religion all the stuff in nature is considered as gods. For example salmon, one of their main food is called “kamuy cup” in the Ainu language, meaning fish of god. Since it is a god, they treat salmon so respectfully and eat all the parts of its body. In the picture below they hang salmon from the ceiling of their house to smoke and make it to the preserved food for harsh winter.

Among the animals as gods, bear is the most holy animal for them. In the community they raise 4 bears in the cage. It’s my first time to see bears raised in the place in Japan other than zoo or safari park.

For the Ainu people the ceremony called “Iomante” was the most important for their culture. In one winter they bring a baby bear to their community and grow the bear with great care as if it’s their own child. But when the bear has grown up in a couple of years, they have Iomante celemony and “send back” the bear to the world of gods with a lot of food and drink. They think a god of bear come down to the world of human with the shape of the baby bear, and thus they treat it very respectfully.

It’s my fist time to meet with the Ainu people while I have learned and heard about them many times. It was so impressive! I believe it’s a key for Japan to be a multicultural society if they can keep their identity and preserve their own culture in the 21st century.

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Below is the website of Ainu museum in Poroto Kotan (English availalble).

http://www.ainu-museum.or.jp/en/

Godzilla is attacking on Kabuki-cho

Godzilla is a series of monster movies which have been made in Japan and the US since 1954.

Now in Japan Shin-Godzilla, a new movie of Godzilla, is a big hit again. While Godzilla was made by Hollywood in 2014, this Shin-Godzilla is a Godzilla movie made in Japan for the first time in 12 years.

In a lot of recent Godzilla movies there were many ones on which Godzilla and other monsters fought and sometimes Godzilla looked like an ally of human being. But this time Shin-Godzilla is coming back to the original concept of Godzilla, fear of a gigantic and unknown monster. In this movie Godzilla is approaching to Japan, especially to Tokyo, and the Japanese were deeply terrified.

I really enjoyed this movie and I respect Mr. Hideaki Anno, a film director of Shin-Godzilla, who is also well known as a creator of the popular Japanese anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, for his challenge to return to the original of the long lasting legendary movie series.

But even before Shin-Godzilla was published, Godzilla had arrived at Tokyo. See a picture below.

This is the picture of the intersection at Kabuki-cho, an entertainment district in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Maybe it was taken from too much distance. Let’s go closer to the center of the photo.

Now you can see Gozilla’s face from the top of the cinema building. He looks like gazing and roaring against something with his mouth wide open. Then let’s see there is what beyond his gaze.

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So he is gazing the board of “I love Kabuki-cho”. In fact that cinema building with Godzilla was built at the place where Shinjuku Koma theater, former cultural center of Shinzuku, was located in the past. And back then surrounding Shinjuku Koma theater, there were many bars, gentleman’s clubs and adult shops, like the chaos in Tokyo.

Tokyo’s local government has been trying to “clean” Kabuki-cho many times and now making another campaign to make it cleaner for Tokyo Olympic in 2020. However, as long as I can find, there are many such kinds of bars and shops newly opened maybe by the people who love Kabuki-cho as well as money.

Even Godzilla might not be able to destroy the desire of human being who try to earn money on night life…

Hot summer and shaved ice with fruits

Like other areas in the world, in this summer it’s incredibly hot in Japan. But Japanese have many ways to feel cooler.

For example, in Yanaka, a traditional shopping area close to our home, they had Hyakkoi festival. Hyakkoi means cool in a dialect of eastern Japan. They put big blocks of ice on the street so that visitors can feel cooler by seeing and touching them.

However, on some days it’s too hot to walk around on the street even with seeing the ice. In such case we can “eat” ice as shaved ice as well.

Shaved ice with fruit flavored syrup, called Kaki-gori in Japanese, is a traditional sweet in summer in Japan. Normally they use an automatic ice shaving machine and pour artificial flavored syrup to make Kaki-gori. I like the taste of such Kaki-gori since I was a child. But in some shops they serve more special Kaki-gori and its special taste helps us to feel cooler.

In Yanaka, Himitsu-do is one of such shops. Even though it’s so hot outside, people makes a long line to eat their special shaved ice, Kaki-gori.

At Himitsu-do they use specially ordered ice and shave it by hand with a traditional ice shaving machine. Compared to normal shaved ice for Kaki-gori, their shaved ice is very soft and it melts on tongue once we put it in our mouth.

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And their specialty is syrup. As mentioned above, it’s normal to use artificial flavored syrup. But at Himitsu-do they pour smashed real fruits with special syrup. It perfectly matches with manually shaved ice.

They have a variety of menus such as strawberry, melon, pineapple and green tea. So we can enjoy not only its taste but also its color. A photo below is shaved ice with strawberry and milk.

After eating Kaki-gori shaved ice at Himitsu-do, we can feel much cooler and continue walking around for shopping in Yanaka in summer.

Sado, golden island in Japan

Long long time ago, Japan was known by the West as a legendary golden island. And many sailors who looked for gold such as Christopher Columbus headed to Asia. But it was true that Japan was a golden island in the sense that Japan produced a relatively big amount of gold at that time and Sado, an island northwest of Niigata city, had one of the biggest gold mountains in Japan.

We can go to Sado island only by ship. If we use a car ferry on which we can bring our own cars, it takes 2.5 hours from Niigata port to Ryotu port, main port in Sado island. But if we use a smaller jetfoil ferry, it takes only 1 hour.

Sado Kisen (Ferry Service to Sado Island)

Apart from Japanese main 4 islands (Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu), Sado is the 2nd biggest island in Japan next to Okinawa’s main island. And it has approx. 56,000 population. The people in the island are proud of the beauty of its sea and its peaceful atmosphere. The sea is so clean that we can get a lot of abalones in the shallow sea.

However, in the 17th century, when Sado golden mountain produced its biggest amount of gold and there was a “Gold Rush” in the island, there were more population and Sado was one of the most active cities in Japan at that time.

Sado golden mountain is located in the western part of the island. In the 17th century at first they used a method of open pit mining to find gold. And finally the top of the mountain had been cracked as a “V” shape.

Then they drove a lot of tunnels throughout the mountain. Soon the tunnel reached under the sea level so they needed to drain water in order to continue digging. Now in the old tunnel there are a lot of dolls which shows us how to dig gold at that time.

Sado golden mountain had been producing gold almost 400 years and had been an important fiscal source for Tokugawa shogunate. Now the people in the island try to register it on World Heritage of UNESCO and maintain old tunnels and equipment as a museum.

When you visit the mountain, you might be interested to get some gold with you. But are you afraid of expensive prices of golden jewelry? Don’t worry ! Here you can eat a lot of food with gold dust such as gold ramen noodle and gold ice cream.

Please visit Sado, golden island in Japan and clarify with your own eyes if the legend of golden island was true.

Sado Kinzan (Sado golden mountain)