Flower Arrangement

I've been at the museum for the past two days, helping set up the upcoming special exhibit. It has been a lot of fun and has given me the opportunity to work on something different from my usual translation and editing. The museum is currently preparing two different special exhibits, one of the cover art for the magazine/journal published by the foundation, and one of dolls recently donated to the museum. The exhibits are completely unrelated and being held in different spaces, but the same curator is in charge and much of the preparation is going on together.

I spent most of yesterday scoring, cutting, and folding plastic sheets to make protective covers for some of the nearly 150 magazines to be displayed. The actual work was repetitive and somewhat dull, but we worked in the special exhibit space where the dolls were being set up, so I enjoyed watching the curator responsible for the exhibit as she ran about, the doll specialists as they arranged the dolls, and the exhibit professionals as they worked on exhibit cases/made stands/pinned labels/any of the other million little tasks that go into putting together an exhibit.

I spent most of today attaching branches of fake plum flowers to three wooden screens. Two of the screens will block off a doorway that won't be used, and the other screen will be placed in the main lobby, holding pamphlets and enticing visitors upstairs to the exhibit. The curator in charge of the exhibit gave me free reign to arrange the flowers, saying it was up to me how they were displayed. The exhibit specialist (who had built the screens) kept an eye on me as I started. When I finished the first screen he complimented me generously, saying I had a good eye. He and the curator chatted a bit, admiring the work, and she assured him that I was the one to give this type of work to. I was pretty happy to catch that comment. As the only English-speaker at the museum I know I have a valuable skill set, but it sure is nice to be useful for something besides my English ability! As a good friend remarked, I'm anal about this kind of thing, which I guess is a good thing?!

My screens:



When I left today the exhibit guys were using brightly coloured material to cover the bottoms of cases and as bunting from the ceiling. The curator was also plotting to make a wreath of fake plum blossoms to adorn the large stone bust in the lobby... There is also a small discount offered to visitors who wear pink (the favourite colour of the women who donated the dolls). It should be an amusing change for the face of the museum which can be rather serious most of the time!

Friendship

I've noticed that quite often foreign bloggers in Japan comment on how difficult/impossible it is to make meaningful and close friendships with Japanese people. While I agree it can be difficult, days like the past few remind me just how possible and rewarding those friendships can be. Here are just two examples.

On the weekend I spent a few hours at a museum with a good friend from school. She is my sempai (student senior to me), having graduated last year, and was assigned as my tutor my first year at school. We became friends quickly, sharing a love of museums (duh, we're both in museum studies!). We both tend to spend far far FAR longer in any given exhibit than those we call "regular people." We are a good fit and have gotten to know each other really well. Her tendancy to be late drives me crazy on a regular basis, but I feel very lucky to have met her.

I recently met a different kind of somebody else. It is still very new and I don't know where it is going, but it has brought a smile to my face and a skip to my step. This is a bit of a change from the past few months when I have been rather frustrated and unhappy. Many of my friends have noticed both my uncharacteristic blues and my recent happiness. Today at work I had two close male Japanese friends tell me how happy and relieved they were to see me smiling again. I was touched by their evident concern and realized how lucky I am to have two big brothers to worry about me. Just like big brothers, however, they gleefully took every opportunity today to make fun of me and my goofy grin.

So there is my two cents...

Barentine Day

I remember in elementary school we used to decorate Valentines boxes that we would then hang on our desks or by our lockers. Kids would make cards, or normally just write a name on the back of a store-bought card and slip it into the boxes of other students. Our teacher would always urge us to be fair and give cards to EVERYBODY in the class, but there seemed to always be one or two boys who didn't get anything. The rest of us would sit there with our cards, often from box sets with cutesy illustrations and some sort of bad pun or the line "Be my Valentine."

Outside of elementary school, Valentines Day seemed to be about flowers and chocolates, and maybe a nice dinner in a romantic restaurant.

Valentines Day in Japan is another one of those Western traditions that has been adopted and... well... changed quite a bit in the process...

Here February 14th is a day for women to give chocolates to the men in their life. If there is a guy they like he gets preferably a homemade treat, although expensive store bought goodies will also do. Other men, men that the women do not like but feel they have to be nice to, get what are called "giri-choco" (literally duty-chocolate). These chocolates, as with any gift in Japanese society, must be reciprocated. The occasion for this reciprocation is March 14, "White Day," when men give women (white) chocolate or candy in return.

My host father in southern Japan is the principal of an elementary school. Every year he gets chocolates from various students and brings it home (he doesn't actually like chocolate, but makes a big fuss over every gift and the girls LOVE him). My host mother (who loves chocolate but hates the work involved with Valentines) then makes a list of all the girls who gave chocolate, with a guesstimate of how much they spent on the gift. Prior to White Day she will then go out and buy reciprocatory gifts which my host-father will endeavour to give to the girls who gave him chocolate - without singling them out (so as not to make the other kids jealous).

Two years ago, when I was teaching English my cousin visited me just before Valentines and we made a huge batch of peanut butter cups. I gave these out to students and co-workers and it was a big hit - many of the young Japanese guys who taught at the cram school were sooooo excited to be given home-made Valentines chocolates, it was really sweet! The trouble was I quit at the beginning of March - before White Day! Sigh.

This year I'm making peanut butter cups again. I started by melting the chocolate and peanut butter in a pan...



and then I spooned the mixture into heart-shaped foil cups...



and... ta da!



This year, the chocolates (one box of milk and one of dark)



got wrapped up real purty-like



and are going to be given to one particular guy. He isn't Japanese, however, so doesn't feel the need to wait until March. He didn't even wait until Valentines Day to take a page from my elementary school memories and ask me to be his Valentine!

Another new look...

I'm feeling more colourful now and the black was just... well... here's a new look again!

Well-mannered Valentines

So its February, which means Valentines Day is just around the corner. Stores in Japan certainly don't let you forget that. Chocolates and chocolate making supplies are displayed front and centre to entice the female population to buy or make all sorts of treats for the men in their lives.

This month's Tokyo Metro poster is also Valentines-themed. The couple from last month have been enticed up off the floor but are still in the way. They are sitting in the priority seats, snuggled up together and eating heart shaped goodies. After watching the antics month after month, poor old guy has finally come to serious harm and has broken his leg. He looks truly annoyed as he glares at the young couple, who in their love-struck (and sugar-overload hazed) state are oblivious.



This is actually an issue that does need to be addressed. Whether the poster will do it or not, I don't know, but it is a problem. The other day I had a friend ask me whether "priority seat" was the proper translation for the Japanese term. I thought for a minute and got confused. I couldn't figure out what term was used in Canada. My friend suggested "Disabled Seating" I remarked that with PC language that wasn't used. My friend was somewhat amused by my inability to come up with the proper English term. I finally came up with "Courtesy Seats." But I'm not sure that that is even used in North America? The more that I thought about it the less sure I was that buses and trains actually had special seating areas, except those for passengers in wheelchairs - with seats that fold up and belts and whatnot. Help! What term is used? Or do they not exist?

Either way, I told my friend that even if such seats existed, the average person would still give up their seat, wherever it was, to somebody who looked like they needed it more. The lack of such action by your average Japanese train passenger is something commented on by a large number of foreigners. Especially noteworthy is the people (normally younger) who feign sleep (you can occasionally see them peeking out and closing their eyes really quickly) so that they don't have to give up their seat.

To their credit, the average Japanese commute is longer than that in Canada. If you're only going 10 or 20 minutes it isn't a big deal to stand, but 40 minutes? an hour? That's a different story. Not that excuses anything, because the little old lady nearly bent in two, well she's probably going more than 5 minutes too, and it is even harder for her to stand.

That rant aside, I'm not sure this poster has framed the message properly. The young guy is the one doing everything wrong and yet here is is in February cuddling with his girl and eating homemade goodies. The creepy old guy is a goody-goody and does nothing more than look on in disgust at the various antics being had. He is left alone and injured however.

The message of these posters seems to be coming clear to me now - disobey the rules and have fun or obey them and be bitter and alone. Huh. Maybe I should stop giving up my seat, and start sitting on the floor, drinking till I pass out, running for closing train doors, and shaking my wet umbrella all over everybody...

A Not-Naked Emperor

The latest installment of the Tokyo Metro's manners isn't much more inspiring than the past few months.


As Green-Eyed Geisha remarks, it isn't terribly realistic in Tokyo. You don't normally see people stretched out on the floors of Tokyo subways. Not because the floors aren't clean enough to sit on - because they are amazingly clean - but because it just isn't done. You do occasionally see school sports teams - groups of kids in high school uniforms lugging big bags full of equipment for baseball, kendo, or (once, on my way to a hockey game) ice hockey. The kids will normally pile their bags and make some attempt at keeping things out of the way, but if they can't all find seats they will likely eventually sit on their bags and stretch out, taking up most of the car and annoying the elderly passengers.

If people in Tokyo don't sit on train floors, they definitely don't tend to get naked in public (well, except for the old guys who urinate on walls in alleys near the station...). Which is why it amused me when I figured out the fairy tale behind the Tobu train line's latest manners poster - The Emperor's New Clothes!



The emperor is not naked, which is why it took me a bit to figure out which story they were using. The poster's caption reads "The emperor isn't aware of his shameful appearance." In the fairy tale it is a little boy who points out that the emperor is naked. Here a little boy and his mother look on in disgust as the emperor and his men make a drunken nuisance of themselves.

This one makes me smile everytime I see it.