Author: Sarah Hozumi

March 3rd this year is an event called “Hina Matsuri.” “Hina” means doll and “matsuri” means festival.

This is an event only for little girls, and it’s where your parents set up an elaborate display of dolls sitting on cascading platforms. At the top should be a woman and man in a kimono, and beneath them should be some servants and such. Each doll has its own meaning, but the two most important ones are the man and the woman at the top.

From what I understand of this event (I don’t have a daughter), you set up this elaborate doll display somewhere in your house, and on Hina Matsuri you eat some sweets with your daughter. You are then apparently supposed to quickly take down the decorations. The saying goes that the later you are taking down the decorations, the later on in life your daughter will marry.

To say this event is archaic is an understatement, but some families I know simply enjoy the excuse to put pretty dolls out and have some nice desserts with their daughter.

My main drawback for this event is the sheer price of these dolls. I see them for sale at shopping centers, and the average price for the two main dolls and a couple of servants is 1,500 dollars. That is an insane amount of money to be spending, in my humble opinion.

Of course there are cheaper options – I like that my kid once brought home two Hina Matsuri dolls he’d made at school out of origami paper.

When I first came to Japan 12 years ago, I only knew the pain of hay fever through hearing accounts of it from relatives who suffered.

Called kafunshou in Japanese, seasonal allergies is almost an art form over here. They have special glasses for kafunshou victims, special masks, special machines that clean indoor air of pollen, even special curtains to block out pollen from your home.

I think it’s due to the sheer amount of pollen-producing trees they have here, but I know far too many people here who suffer from it.

I also heard, when I was new to the country still, that a lot of foreigners start off without hay fever and then eventually get it.

I am one such unlucky person. Beginning about two years ago, I am suddenly an avid sufferer of hay fever. It feels like having a cold, but it lasts for three months for me. I’m on allergy medication, and I’m still suffering.

As the weather begins to warm here, I can’t help but both loathe and love spring. I hate the cold so the warmth is a welcome reprieve, and there are cherry blossoms to enjoy, but then hay fever comes along and puts a damper on all of it.

Here in Japan, women give chocolate to men on Valentine’s Day. Men, in turn, do nothing. When I first heard this, I thought it was grossly sexist and unfair. Why do the women have to do everything while the men just sit there? I suppose the same can be said for the reverse, however.

When I was an assistant language teacher, I asked some of the boys at the school what they thought about Valentine’s Day in Japan, and some of them said they hate it, which surprised me.

“We never get anything,” they said. “Every year we have to sit here and watch the other boys get chocolate from girls, and we get nothing.”

In this I understood the power women have in Japan with this duty of giving others chocolate. They can choose to whom they give their chocolate. Men also choose whether they accept that chocolate or not, however.

If the chocolate given is a declaration of love and the man in question feels the same way, then on March 14th, called White Day, he’s supposed to give chocolate back to her. That’s the theory anyway. I don’t know anyone who would ignore someone for an entire month before responding.

The holiday here has also become a little bit softened in that there’s something called “giri choco” or “obligatory chocolates.” Women in the workplace who work with men and women who want to give chocolate to their friends do so and call it “giri choco” so it’s clear there’s no deep romantic feeling behind the chocolate. The men at the office, by the way, are still obligated to give chocolate back on White Day, and usually way better chocolate than what was given to them.

The holiday has recently evolved to the point where, and I love this, women just end up buying nice chocolate for themselves. I did that this year, and it was completely worth it.

Small note: I wish Japan would adopt the American tradition of having everyone in the class give each other Valentine’s Day notes. I know that has to be a humungous pain to every parent making sure your kid writes to every single classmate, but it avoids the pain I saw those boys experience being so utterly left out on Valentine’s Day. I think that makes it worth it.

Also, I have no idea what people in the LGBTQ+ community do on Valentine’s Day in Japan. I’m sure they don’t let these archaic traditions of “women give chocolate to men” stop them from telling others how they feel on this holiday, though.

I also think the holiday should be more about just being an excuse to give people chocolate, and everyone should give anyone they know even just a small chocolate for fun.

I recently stumbled across another song that I’m currently in love with. I was first struck by the title, “Kakurenbo”, which means Hide-and-Go-Seek in Japanese. I was immediately curious to know why a song with such a childish title would be popular here.

The singer, Yuuri, has quite a powerful voice that grabbed my attention, but as I listened to the lyrics, the song immediately made its way into my usual rotation of music.

The song tells the story of a guy growing increasingly desperate for his loved one to return after they have walked out. The guy likens it to the lover merely playing a game of hide-and-go-seek, at one point crying, “Stop playing around, the sun’s about to go down.”

I love these kind of songs that mean more than they say. I think Japanese songs, in general, do a great job of writing intricate stories into their songs. Of course there are the vapid, “I love you. Yay!” songs here as well, but I have found more songs that have meaningful, interesting lyrics here than in a lot of Western songs I’ve listened to.

If you have time, I hope you’ll listen to it.

I’m really happy to say I have a photo that’s going to be exhibited online at Las Laguna Art Gallery.

You were guaranteed a spot in the exhibition just for submitting, but I’m still happy.

The exhibit will start on Feb. 4 (Feb. 5 for those in Japan) and is based on the theme of landscapes.

If you have a second, please check it out!

I stumbled across this song on Amazon Music, and I have to say it has a hold on me I can’t explain. It feels like there’s a story idea buried in this song beyond the lyrics, but I can’t see it clearly yet.

Songs sometimes do this to me where I listen to them and feel inspired to write. Sometimes they serve as a beat to march my stories forward, but this one might inspire me to write something new.

I need to find some time to sit down and write the story out. I’m curious.

I’m very happy to announce another literary website has chosen one of my short stories. You can read the story on the In Parentheses website here.

A little background about this story: First, I am a mother. As such, there are times when I wonder how my actions and my behaviors affect my kids. What kind of kids would they be, for example, if I was a bit more laid back? What if I was obsessed with work? What if I tried to act like their buddy? What would that all do to them? I wanted to slightly explore that idea with this short story.

I think I’m more related to the first version of Kim that we see in the story, but I worry that my being too uptight will result in the cold and distant twins that Kim has.

I’m also a huge fan of baking, like the first Kim is. I also love reading like the second Kim does. I don’t think I could ever be as sloppy as her, though, but she seems to make up for it in the love she just pours on her kids. I like that about her.

Just a side-note: I’d like to apologize to some friends of mine for just using their names. I really like my friend Kim’s name so I tend to use it a lot more than I probably should in my stories. She’s also a mother of two, but the similarities between her and the Kim in the story end there, I think.

I also borrowed the names Mary and Alice from twins I know in real life. I also couldn’t resist the temptation to use the name “Alice” considering the kind of Looking-Glass idea the story has.

Winter after Christmas is, quite frankly, miserable. Where I live, I get the added treat of it being cold enough to be horrible to venture outdoors but not cold enough for snow. The result? We get cold rain. A lot.

After years of enduring cold rain during the winter, I have decided it is my least favorite weather condition.

I had one weapon against winter, and that was the kotatsu. I had to get rid of it for space reasons, but when I did have it, my God winter was almost tolerable.

It’s a heater attached to the underside of a table. You put a blanket on the ground, put the table on the blanket, put a thicker blanket over the table and then sandwich it with a hard tabletop, as seen in the photo.

Many people in Japan endure winter in a kotatsu with mikan in hand and either some nice tea, a good book, the TV or a laptop handy. When I had my own kotatsu, I lived in it for the winter. I know some people sleep in one as well.

There’s an old TV drama called Nodame Cantabile that has an episode all about the glory of the kotatsu and the trap of not wanting to ever leave its warmth. The opening talks about the history of the kotatsu and how it is truly a wonderous piece of furniture:

https://youtu.be/mPw-MOQXpd8

I may not have my kotatsu anymore, but at least I still have mikans to enjoy.

The events I read about today drove me to write my first political entry in this little blog.

When I was in high school, my AP US government teacher told us about how remarkable America’s democracy is.

“We never have the violence you see in other countries after an election,” she said (I’m paraphrasing from memory). “Think about that. Never. Even if people don’t like the new leader, you never see them violently protest. Our democracy is absolutely amazing.”

At the time, this was absolutely true. The idea of people storming the center of government because their dear leader didn’t want to step down sounded downright absurd. That was for fledging democracies struggling to achieve the peaceful transitions of power America could do quite well.

And then today happened. What it showed me, however, was not that our democracy is over; it is that it’s still at the beginning. We still have a lot to do and a lot to learn.

I think we Americans have a problem, as comedian Hannah Gadsby put it, of confidence. We thought our democracy had reached its zenith. Many of us thought, “Here we sit at the pinnacle of what a democracy is. There is nothing better.”

Today has shown, at least to me, that we are almost at the starting line of truly attempting a democracy. What we Americans do from now will reflect the direction this race toward the idea of America will go.

This is the last entry I’m going to write for this year. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little blog so far!

In Japan, it’s customary for people to visit their relatives (pre-pandemic) and then just sit around with them for a few days, watching TV and eating mikans. I love this general tradition of sitting around watching TV, and Japanese TV during the first few days of the New Year is usually entertaining, at the very least.

Some go-getters (myself sometimes included) like to go shopping for the elusive “fukubukuro” that’s actually nice, but it’s hard. Fukubukuros are basically where a shop realizes they have things that aren’t selling, so they shove all of those items into paper bags, seal them shut and sell them for whatever price they want. You have no idea what’s in the bags, although lately shops have been just telling you, so you don’t know if it’s a bargain you’ve stumbled across or overpriced junk. I think they’re fun, anyway.

Another tradition is to visit a shrine. Some people wait at their favorite shrine all night on New Year’s Eve until midnight so they can be some of the first people to pray there for that year. You then do something called “omikuji” where you grab a slip of paper at random at the shrine, unroll it and read your year’s fortune. People who get bad luck tie that slip of paper to a nearby rope and leave the bad luck behind.

You also go and buy an arrow that has no sharp point to it. The belief is you hang it up at the highest point of your house and it’ll help ward off evil. At the end of the year you bring it back to the shrine, return it to them to burn and then buy yourself a new one.

I’m hoping to just sit around, enjoy TV and eat mikans and then hopefully make my way to a shrine at some point, probably later on in the year to avoid the crowds.

Here’s to hoping 2021 is better!