Author: Sarah Hozumi

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Christmas in Japan (in general, anyway)

Thanks to the time-zone difference, tomorrow is already Christmas here in Japan. You’d hardly know it, though. It’s business as usual in Japan on Christmas, but I thought I’d talk about a few things that people do seem to do here to celebrate.

First, Japan treats the New Year like their Christmas. Everything here shuts down from around Dec. 30 to Jan. 4 just like how in America everything gets shut down for Christmas.

People like to spend the New Year with family members, so Christmas is the opposite. Christmas here is like Valentine’s Day in America where you get a nice dinner reservation somewhere, give the person you love a nice gift and then go to somewhere that has Christmas lights up to just walk around and bask in the love. Most individual households here don’t put up Christmas lights, so to see anything like that, you have to go to parts of Tokyo or to a theme park. The lights usually stay up well into February, too. Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea are huge dating spots, especially for Christmas.

If you have kids or just don’t feel like splurging on expensive “Christmas dinner” packages at fancy restaurants, then you generally buy some fried chicken (the story goes Americans living here a while back were spotted buying KFC on Christmas to kind of make up for not finding any turkey, and Japanese copied them. I have no idea how true this story is), maybe some pizza, and a Christmas cake. Christmas cakes here are usually sponge cake covered in whipped cream-like frosting and topped with strawberries. To me, they taste like sugary air.

I asked a few Japanese friends who have kids about presents, and they said they give a couple of small gifts, but it’s not the mountain of gifts you can sometimes witness in America. However, I have heard these same friends say they like to just randomly buy their kids nice presents throughout the year so maybe it’s just a difference of timing.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

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Fuel

I don’t like writing short stories. I always think to myself that if I wanted to drop into a character’s life, it should be at least for the length of a novel rather than a few thousand words, if that.

However, lately I’ve come to see short stories as a nice way to create not a portrait, but a snapshot of a character. The idea intrigued me, and so recently I’ve been writing more and more short stories.

I think it helps that I finished all the books I had wanted to write, leaving my mind free to contemplate snapshots.

I’ve also recently discovered the joy of themed submissions. I stumbled across them through a writer’s newsletter I read. These are where the literary site or magazine wants you to submit a story based around a theme.

There’s something exhilarating about writing a story solely for a certain magazine and within the parameters of a theme.

I can’t tell you how much fun I’ve been having writing a series of short stories this way. I can’t wait to write more.

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Overclocked Remix

This entry will confirm I’m a huge geek (anyone else excited for Marvel’s new Wanda Vision?), but I love video game song remixes.

I think as any gamer can tell you, hearing the same songs on repeat while you struggle through an area of the game or fight the same impossible boss impacts you. The songs all become nostalgic when you hear them later on.

Remixers at Overclocked Remix take some of my favorite songs from video games and change them in ways I never would have imagined.

I have a great time perusing Overclocked’s website and finding anything I would describe as having a “dark” vibe to it, because these songs all fuel me when I write.

If you ever have a moment and enjoy a variety of music, please visit them.

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Behind-the-scenes of a photo

A cosmos

A while back I discovered there was a flower I adored – the chocolate cosmos. True to its name, it does actually carry the faint scent of chocolate to its flowers. The flower is also a deep rusty red, happily allowing the flower to live up to its name.

I consider myself to be a horrendous but eternally optimistic gardener. I tended to buy plants based on my wanting them and then would promptly water them to death.

I would just like to say it is thanks to famous British gardener Monty Don and a show on Netflix about gardening that I finally understood I should actually research the plants I want to grow. Since that ridiculously late revelation, I haven’t killed nearly as many plants.

The chocolate cosmos is my Achilles heel of gardening. I’ve tried twice now to grow them, and each time I’ve managed to kill them within a month. Of course I’ve researched them, but they still died.

Thus, I’ve been jealous of anyone who can grow cosmos of any kind. I stumbled across the garden you see above at a farm, where they mocked me with their fields of cosmos. I’m starting to think the entire world can keep a cosmos alive, and then there’s me, banished to just enjoying the scent of a chocolate cosmos whenever I happen to find one rather than going to my tiny garden to find one.

Oh well. Maybe I’ll try again one day.

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The Burning Bones

I’m excited to announce I had a short story published in an online literary journal called OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters. You can view the story here.

I thought I’d briefly talk about what prompted me to write this short story.

Unfortunately, I had to attend a funeral in the fall of 2019. It was my first funeral in Japan, and I spent a long time researching all of the etiquette involved in attending one. Beyond wearing black, there are rules such as you can’t wear anything shiny or have a shiny or leather purse, and you can’t wear any jewelry beyond your wedding ring and possibly a strand of pearls.

Thus, I was struck by the man whose wife had just died. Like in the story I wrote above, he wore a cardigan to the funeral, and no one said a word about it. Despite the strict rules on dress code, here he was in a cardigan.

It made me immediately wonder what he was thinking, and it inspired me to write my speculations as a story.

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DisneySea at Christmas

Tokyo DisneySea decorations from a few years ago

I haven’t been to DisneySea in about three years now, which might shock all who know me because I am an enormous Disney fan. I love all of the animated movies of late, especially Pixar, and it’s just a relaxing experience for me to visit the parks.

I haven’t visited the parks in about three years because I have two small kids, and I wanted to wait a bit for them to grow up first before taking them. I miss the Christmas decorations at DisneySea, though.

For an expat such as myself, you miss the Christmas lights around this time of the year. Some Japanese gamely put up a few lights outside their houses, but it pales in comparison to the insane decorations you can often see in neighborhoods in America. Disney Sea seems to have come to pick up the slack.

Especially around their Cape Cod area, I walk there as the sun sets, admiring the Christmas lights, and for an instant it feels like I’m right back in the best memories of America I have.

The park is insanely crowded during the regular holiday season, but if you have no particular plans in mind beyond walking around and riding a couple of rides, you can still have a great time eating white chocolate popcorn, nursing a hot cocoa and viewing some lovely illuminations. I hope in the next few years I can go back again.

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“Hiten”

While I am able to write stories in a completely silent room, I have to say music really helps inspire me.

I end up making playlists for every book I write and for some short stories, too, but there are some songs that basically go well with everything I write.

One such song is called “Hiten” by Naoki Sato.

Mr. Sato composes a lot of music for Japanese TV and films, and this song was made for “Rurouni Kenshin,” which is a film series I love (sorry to say I can’t get into the anime or manga for this). I think my love of Takeru Satoh combined with a love of action movies really fueled my love for the series.

The song is a perfect way to describe the main character of the movie series, Kenshin, but it’s also a song that motivates me to write almost every time I hear it. I love the somber undertones of a woman almost wailing while music that I can only describe as “ridiculously cool” continues furiously driving the piece forward.

If you have time, I really hope you can listen to it and see if it motivates you, too.

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Behind-the-scenes of a photo

Shirakoma Forest in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, famous for the moss covering the forest floor.

You can find this photo on my Viewbug site as well.

I have a hate/love relationship with hiking. I hate the effort it takes to get anywhere, I hate how insects are usually absolutely everywhere, and I hate the fear of believing a bear might be nearby. I love, however, taking photos while hiking, and this love drives me to continue hiking despite my hatred of a lot of things found out in nature (mosquitoes, I’m looking at you).

With the ongoing pandemic, hiking in solitude has become a great way to get out of the house and take a better variety of photos, so I was excited to visit Shirakoma Forest in Nagano Prefecture, which is famous for the moss covering the ground.

I have to say that considering how incredible it was seeing the moss everywhere, I was impressed the locals hadn’t turned the area into a tourist trap. I can just see some spots in America milking the area to death, but as far as I can recall, this natural wonder had a sign indicating the name of the area with a little ball of moss with eyes standing next to it, serving as a kind of mascot.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve been dealing with a Canon DSLR for quite a few years now, and it took until this trip to realize I have a “natural light” setting on my camera. It’s been driving me crazy for years now that the photos I took did not express the lighting I saw with my eyes. And then destiny finally guided me to the “natural light” setting. Finally I feel like I’m taking photos that better represent what I’m seeing. It’s an exciting time for me.

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Mikan mania

A lot of people in Japan have mikan trees growing in front of their houses. I’m beyond jealous.

I hate winter after the holidays are done, much like I think everyone else does. After the cheerful glow of Christmas and Japan’s own version of that glow during the New Year’s holidays, we in the Northern Hemisphere are left with the dark, the cold and the dreary.

Where I live it rarely snows, too, which means nothing ever has that slightly cheerful look to it that snow can bring to your local landscape.

I survive winter with two things. First, the kotatsu, which deserves its own entry later on.

Second, mikans. They’re similar to tangerines and clementines, and they are the reason I can go entire days through winter without complaining about the cold because they’re in season only during the colder months of the year.

I love how easy they are to peel, how sweet or sour they can be and how there are usually no seeds to be found within. The juice also only rarely seeps out when you’re peeling it, making it mostly mess-free to eat.

One of my dreams has been having mikan trees growing on our balcony, from which I can pluck some mikans every morning. Year after year I’ve looked at them being sold at Japan’s answer to Home Depot and year after year I’ve looked at the price tag and kept walking.

Finally, though, I took some seeds from a mikan that did actually have seeds in it and planted them in the ground. I now have three mikan trees growing.

The internet has been swift to tell me this is a horrible way to grow mikan trees because they will probably not give me a single fruit for about ten years or so, but I don’t care. I like watching them slowly grow. I think I can wait.

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Behind-the-scenes of a photo

A bench in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan

Every now and then I’d like to take a minute to briefly describe what went into making a photo either posted on my Viewbug account or that I have on here.

I thought I’d start off with the main image on this site, which is something I plan on changing with the seasons.

For a long time I’ve always declared myself to be a summer fanatic. I’m almost always cold, which means winter is out. Thanks to hay fever, spring is out, too. I thought of summer as the best of all seasons…until the heat got worse. Lately in Japan, it’s been nothing but supreme heat and humidity over the summer. The heat is just oppressive.

That’s when autumn saw its chance and creeped onto my radar. I have to admit there’s a lot to like: fall colors, crisp air, insects dying or hiding underground, lots of days of sun.

While enjoying everything autumn has to offer, I stumbled across this bench. The black bench and the dark hardwood deck it was on offered the perfect contrast to the bright yellow leaves behind it. I knelt down in front of it and spent a couple of minutes trying to get the framing just right before finally taking this photo.

I’m a huge fan of natural lighting, and usually cloudy days are my natural enemy. However, I have to say I like the softer light the clouds offered for this picture.