With a large Chinese population--in addition to cultural and geographical proximity--Japan welcomes Chinese New Year. If you are in western Japan, here is a festival worth seeing:
Nagasaki lights up for the Chinese New Year
by Jun Hongo
Staff Writer, The Japan Times
Jan 30, 2014
Enjoy the Chinese New Year celebration in style at the Nagasaki Lantern Festival 2014, which kicks off on Jan. 31 and runs for two weeks in the city’s Chinatown and surrounding areas.
After Portuguese ships arrived at its shores in 1571, Nagasaki became a major trading port in Japan, and parts of it remained open to foreign trade even during the Edo Period (1603-1868) sakoku (closed-country) policy. Today, as an international city, it’s home to one of the three biggest Chinatowns in Japan, the others being in Yokohama and Kobe.
The highlight of this new year celebration is a display of 15,000 colorful Chinese lanterns, which will line the streets of Chinatown and Chuo Koen park and light the way to the Kofukuji Temple.
2014年1月31日金曜日
2014年1月26日日曜日
From the World of Literature
Japan offers two prestigious prizes for literature. One, the Akutagawa award, is to encourage new writers. The other, the Naoki award, honors authors of popular fiction. Here's what The Japan Times online has to say about this year's winners: they are all women.
Literature prizes elevate women
Jan 25, 2014
Japan may rank extraordinarily low — 105th out of 136 countries — on the world gender gap index, but this year’s winners of two famous literary prizes were all women, an irony that will surely not be lost on the prizewinners and their readers.
The winner of the 150th Akutagawa Prize was Hiroko Oyamada for her novel “Ana” (“Hole”), a story with a woman as the central character.
The two authors who shared this year’s 150th Naoki Prize, Makate Asai and Kaoruko Himeno, also focused on women. They deserve congratulations.
All three authors winning this year’s Akutagawa Prize, for up-and-coming writers, and the Naoki Prize, for popular literature, focused in large part on the experience of women.
Oyamada’s work focuses on a young woman who resigns from work and moves to a rural area, where, after falling in a hole, mysterious events start happening.
Asai’s work describes the fate of women during the end of the Edo Period and Himeno’s explores the everyday life of her female protagonist in Shiga Prefecture.
Literature prizes elevate women
Jan 25, 2014
Japan may rank extraordinarily low — 105th out of 136 countries — on the world gender gap index, but this year’s winners of two famous literary prizes were all women, an irony that will surely not be lost on the prizewinners and their readers.
The winner of the 150th Akutagawa Prize was Hiroko Oyamada for her novel “Ana” (“Hole”), a story with a woman as the central character.
The two authors who shared this year’s 150th Naoki Prize, Makate Asai and Kaoruko Himeno, also focused on women. They deserve congratulations.
All three authors winning this year’s Akutagawa Prize, for up-and-coming writers, and the Naoki Prize, for popular literature, focused in large part on the experience of women.
Oyamada’s work focuses on a young woman who resigns from work and moves to a rural area, where, after falling in a hole, mysterious events start happening.
Asai’s work describes the fate of women during the end of the Edo Period and Himeno’s explores the everyday life of her female protagonist in Shiga Prefecture.
2014年1月22日水曜日
Meanwhile, back in Okinawa...
The news about noxious chemicals discarded carelessly by US military installations in Okinawa gets worse and worse. Uncle Sam's ears are about to get boxed good and proper, because now it isn't just the Okinawan housewives who are angry. Mothers of military dependents attending school on the US bases are seeing red, too--in the form of dioxin contaminating the land where there children go to school.
Here's what The Japan Times onlines reports. (for the full story, go to The Japan Times online)
Kadena moms demand truth
by Jon Mitchell
Special To The Japan Times
Jan 21, 2014
Six months ago, dangerous levels of dioxin were discovered near two U.S. Department of Defense schools on Okinawa Island — but only now are many service members based there learning the full extent of the contamination.
Parents whose children attend the potentially poisoned facilities at Kadena Air Base claim the Pentagon has failed to inform them of the risks or investigate whether the pollution extends onto the school ground. Many are accusing the military authorities of endangering their children’s health and now they have formed a group to demand answers.
The focus of parents’ fears are the playing fields of Bob Hope Primary School and Amelia Earhart Intermediate School, facilities operated by the Department of Defense for the children of U.S. service members.
Last June, construction workers unearthed more than 20 chemical barrels on civilian land bordering the schools.
Following tests the following month, the barrels were found to contain high concentrations of dioxin, a substance that can cause cancer, immune system damage and developmental problems in children. In nearby soil, dioxin levels measured 8.4 times the legal limit, while water peaked at 280 times the level considered safe. The land had once belonged to the adjacent air base but was returned to civilian use in 1987
Here's what The Japan Times onlines reports. (for the full story, go to The Japan Times online)
Kadena moms demand truth
by Jon Mitchell
Special To The Japan Times
Jan 21, 2014
Six months ago, dangerous levels of dioxin were discovered near two U.S. Department of Defense schools on Okinawa Island — but only now are many service members based there learning the full extent of the contamination.
Parents whose children attend the potentially poisoned facilities at Kadena Air Base claim the Pentagon has failed to inform them of the risks or investigate whether the pollution extends onto the school ground. Many are accusing the military authorities of endangering their children’s health and now they have formed a group to demand answers.
The focus of parents’ fears are the playing fields of Bob Hope Primary School and Amelia Earhart Intermediate School, facilities operated by the Department of Defense for the children of U.S. service members.
Last June, construction workers unearthed more than 20 chemical barrels on civilian land bordering the schools.
Following tests the following month, the barrels were found to contain high concentrations of dioxin, a substance that can cause cancer, immune system damage and developmental problems in children. In nearby soil, dioxin levels measured 8.4 times the legal limit, while water peaked at 280 times the level considered safe. The land had once belonged to the adjacent air base but was returned to civilian use in 1987
2014年1月21日火曜日
A word about swimming with ... mollusks
If you had to choose, would you like to swim with dolphins or swim with mollusks? The wise choice is... mollusks. But why?
There is a place in Japan where dolphins love to swim, and their reason to choose that location is mollusks. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet of tender, succulent mollusks--a favorite food for dolphins. Happy dolphins, unhappy mollusks. The dolphins can come and go, but the mollusks can't. All they can do is sit there in their shells and wait to be eaten, but nobody cries for mollusks. Everybody loves dolphins.
It's only natural. Dolphins are cute. They smile for the camera. Mollusks don't. They sit there, day in and day out, sucking in seawater and spitting it out. They do this because that's how they get their food. It isn't pretty, but it works. In with detritus-laden seawater, out with detritus-free seawater. All day, every day, Mother Nature's sea filtering mollusks do their thing.
What do dolphins do, besides performing amazing aquatic gymnastics and gobbling up mollusks? I beg your pardon if this sounds gross, but after they've eaten, they poop. You can think of it as feeding the mollusks, if you like.
What happens when the water-filtering mollusks get ahead of the dolphins? The sea water stays clean, and a lot of mollusks live to be harvested--and sold--by happy humans who also like to eat.
What happens when the pooping dolphins get ahead of the mollusks?
Hmmm...
We will have that answer if the noisy humans who choose one animal to love and ignore the rest of Mother Nature's creatures succeed in ruining the balance between dolphins and mollusks in Taiji Cove.
There is a place in Japan where dolphins love to swim, and their reason to choose that location is mollusks. It's an all-you-can-eat buffet of tender, succulent mollusks--a favorite food for dolphins. Happy dolphins, unhappy mollusks. The dolphins can come and go, but the mollusks can't. All they can do is sit there in their shells and wait to be eaten, but nobody cries for mollusks. Everybody loves dolphins.
It's only natural. Dolphins are cute. They smile for the camera. Mollusks don't. They sit there, day in and day out, sucking in seawater and spitting it out. They do this because that's how they get their food. It isn't pretty, but it works. In with detritus-laden seawater, out with detritus-free seawater. All day, every day, Mother Nature's sea filtering mollusks do their thing.
What do dolphins do, besides performing amazing aquatic gymnastics and gobbling up mollusks? I beg your pardon if this sounds gross, but after they've eaten, they poop. You can think of it as feeding the mollusks, if you like.
What happens when the water-filtering mollusks get ahead of the dolphins? The sea water stays clean, and a lot of mollusks live to be harvested--and sold--by happy humans who also like to eat.
What happens when the pooping dolphins get ahead of the mollusks?
Hmmm...
We will have that answer if the noisy humans who choose one animal to love and ignore the rest of Mother Nature's creatures succeed in ruining the balance between dolphins and mollusks in Taiji Cove.
We interrupt this hiatus to talk about ... dolphins
A note to the new Ambassador from Japan:
Ms. Kennedy-san, do you think it's proper for the nation famous for feedlots, hormone injections, and other inhumanities perpetrated on innocent cattle, pigs, and chickens held in squalid captivity awaiting death to tut-tut-twitter about humane treatment of animals? Have you an opinion to share about the wolf-pack slaughters? Any comments on the absence of bees in almond orchards?
When you have solved these moral dilemmas, let us know and we will listen with deep interest.
Ms. Kennedy-san, do you think it's proper for the nation famous for feedlots, hormone injections, and other inhumanities perpetrated on innocent cattle, pigs, and chickens held in squalid captivity awaiting death to tut-tut-twitter about humane treatment of animals? Have you an opinion to share about the wolf-pack slaughters? Any comments on the absence of bees in almond orchards?
When you have solved these moral dilemmas, let us know and we will listen with deep interest.
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