It’s always interesting when a part of Japanese culture (that isn’t anime or manga) becomes really popular across the world. When I was job hunting in my last year of university, I heard the term “やりがい (yarigai)” so many times! And as it turns out, yarigai (which can be translated as “the motivation to work”… Read More Book Review: The Little Book of Ikigai by Ken Mogi
My love for folklore should be pretty well-established by now, so I don’t think you’ll be surprised to know that I made a trip to Library@Orchard just to find a copy of Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopiedias of Toriyama Sekien. As with An Introduction to Yokai Culture, I found this by searching “yokai” in the… Read More Book Review: Japandemonium Illustrated by Toriyama Sekien, translated by Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt
I found this book by typing in “yokai” in the NLB’s search bar, because I can’t keep track of all the books coming out and I need my folklore fix. While this is not your standard collection of folktales or an introduction to Yokai in the style of Yokai Attack, I absolutely adored this slightly… Read More Book Review: An Introduction to Yokai Culture by Komatsu Kazuhiko
Last Saturday, I met a geisha online!! This would be my second time meeting a geisha (first being the Kimono competition in Kyoto) and my first time meeting a Hakone geisha. As a quick background, Geisha (or Geigi) can be found in the following prefectures [1]: Kyoto : Kamihichiken Geigi (上七軒芸妓)、Gion Koubu Geigi (祇園甲部芸妓)、Gion Higashi Geigi (祇園東芸妓)、Pontochou… Read More I met a Geisha online and you can too!
This will be, I hope, the start of a new series. One of the things I planned to do more of this year was to read in Japanese, and I had the perfect opportunity when I was given a stack of books for the World of Genji project. It was pretty hard to decide what… Read More Reading in Japanese: Family and Sex in the Middle Ages by Takahashi Hideki (中世の家と性）
I went for a talk on Ikebana today, and it was hugely instructive. The instructor is from the 草月流 (そうげつりゅう; Sougetsu school) of Ikebana, which is a pretty popular school derived from 池坊 (いけのぼう; Ikenobo School). She was arranging flowers as she talked, and I learnt quite a few things that I thought I’d share… Read More Ikebana Lesson
Yamakasa (山笠) is on the 15th, but they had the 山笠集団山見せ (Yamakasa shudan yamamise) today, which is a like a pre-Yamakasa event. Since I was in Tenjin to meet a friend anyway, we decided to go and take a look. We arrived about 30 minutes before the first float was supposed to reach, so we managed… Read More 山笠集団山見せ
Hey everyone! The really busy two weeks are over, and I can’t believe I said that. I have a presentation next week, but after two weeks of two or more presentations per week (or was it three weeks?), just one presentation seems fine. Even though, you know, I have a ton of research to do.… Read More My First Flower Arranging Lesson
This post is for +Whitney Yee, who requested that I write something about Yamakasa. So today marks the end of Hakata Gion Yamakasa. It actually has this really early sunrise march, but after yesterday’s match (YAY GERMANY WON), I really needed the sleep. But, I did go to one of the earlier events on Saturday –… Read More Yamakasa Oiyamanarashi （山笠追い山ならし）
Sometime back, I blogged about 船乗り込み (funanorikomi) and mentioned that I was excited to watch my first Kabuki show. Well, yesterday was the day! Thanks to KUFSA (Kyushu University Foreign Students Association), I got to watch 劇団やまもも (gekidan yamamomo – Yamamomo acting troupe) for free at 那珂川 (Nakagawa). Before the show. Once we arrived, we we brought to… Read More My First Kabuki Show!