Words of Rennyo

Recently I finished reading the new book Buddha’s Wish for the World, which I graciously received a free copy for. The book was written by the head of Jodo Shinshu’s Nishi Honganji sect, the Monshu, Kōshin Otani. Jodo Shinshu Buddhism has multiple sects, and the two largest: the Nishi (West) Honganji and Higashi (East) Honganji both have “Monshu” leaders. Anyway, the author, quoted a something attributed to the famous “restorer” of Shinshu, Rennyo (蓮如) in the goichidai kikigaku (御一代記聞書, “a record of things heard”):

In the way of Buddha, there is no talk of tomorrow.

I enjoyed this line quite a bit and reminds me of a sutra from the Theravada Pali Canon, the Bhaddekaratta Sutra (MN 131):

You shouldn’t chase after the past
or place expectations on the future.
What is past
is left behind.
The future
is as yet unreached.
Whatever quality is present
you clearly see right there,
right there.
Not taken in,
unshaken,
that’s how you develop the heart.
Ardently doing
what should be done today,
for — who knows? — tomorrow
death.
There is no bargaining
with Mortality & his mighty horde.

Whoever lives thus ardently,
relentlessly
both day & night,
has truly had an auspicious day:
so says the Peaceful Sage.

Also compare this to Rennyo’s famous letter “On White Ashes“:

Thus our bodies may be radiant with health in the morning, but by evening they may be white ashes. If the right causes and conditions prevail, our two eyes are closed forever, our breathing ceases and our bodies lose the glow of life.

Good to have the right perspective I think.

Namo Amida Butsu

Japanese home cooking: Yakiudon

Haven’t done a post on food in a while, but this is one dish people should know about: yakiudon (焼うどん). Most people who know Japanese have eaten yakisoba which is stir-fried soba noodles, but yakiudon is usually not sold in restaurants. It is more like cheap home cooking since udon noodles are very common in Japanese homes. I can’t tell you how many times my wife has cooked this dish when we have leftovers at home, so let me share with you how it’s done. The recipe is almost too simple to be worth posting about, but think of it as “poor man’s Japanese food”.

You need some basic ingredients:

• A pack of udon noodles, boiled
• Powedered fish stock or dashi.¹
• Thinly sliced “sukiyaki” pork or whatever meat or meat alternative you might have.
• Vegetables, such as carrots, sliced garlic, green beans, mushrooms (crimini, shiitake, shimeji, etc).

The actual recipe is actually very easy. First cook all the vegetables and meat together. Add dashi and season to taste. You can see me doing this here:

While doing this prepare the udon noodles by boiling in a separate pot and then drain the water:

Finally add the noodles to the stir-fry and mix them in evenly. You’re done!

Try this out and let me know what works. Good luck!

P.S. Taken a few weeks ago while we lived in temporary corporate housing after moving back to the US. Everything you see here came with the apartment as our stuff hadn’t arrived yet.

¹ For vegetarians, you may have trouble finding substitutes. I heard you can make dashi by soaking konbu (昆布) seaweed in water overnight, but I couldn’t make it taste good the one time I tried it. As for something like mushroom broth, “Johnl” recommends in the comments below, that dried mushrooms would work. Either way, you need something powdery, or at least pretty salty.

Good listening for Kansai Dialect, Masculine Japanese

From time to time, while practicing Japanese by listening to online streaming media, I watch Seebit TV, which is a local TV station based out of Hyogo Prefecture. Some of the programming appears to be public-access style programming, and there’s some amusing gems among the line-up. One comedy show is called “Kitaikan”, and their own website can be found here.

From Seebit TV, it’s a little hard to find, but you can reach it by searching “All Programs” for “キタイ花ん”. As of writing, they seem to have 8 or 9 shows lasting about 30 minutes. The reason why I mention this show is because it’s an all-guys cast, and they’re speaking in masculine Japanese, with local Kansai dialect. Speaking from experience, as a student of Japanese language, it’s hard to get good, reliable sources for listening to casual, male Japanese. Most foreigners tend to learn Japanese from female sources first, so our Japanese often sounds feminine. I honestly didn’t know this for a long time, because I learned all my Japanese from my wife, but a friend of our’s was a guy from Osaka who spoke pretty differently. Not just the dialect, but his tones and style were just different. Also, formal, business Japanese is more gender-neutral, so when you study formal Japanese, it doesn’t sound the same as casual, male Japanese. So if you’re a new student to Japanese, your Japanese may sound too feminine at times, or too formal. Of course, if you are in a formal situation, that’s to be expected. However, as you make friends, you might be too formal and not know it. It is a delicate balance as a language student.

Now, I mention all this for informational purposes only, and for practicing listening. Just because the guys around you might speak very informal and use something like Kansai dialect doesn’t mean you should do it too. Oftentimes, the safest approach for a foreigner studying Japanese is to stick with standard Japanese (hyōjungo 標準語), and be fairly gender-neutral. Don’t be feminine (unless you are a girl), but don’t try too hard to sound masculine either. If you use masculine Japanese wrong, you’ll rub people the wrong way. My wife gets annoyed when I do that, for example. Her father uses masculine Japanese typical for his generation so she is used to hearing it, but when I use it, she thinks it’s abrasive. So, for me, it’s important to unlearn feminine habits I picked up from her, but also to understand, but not really emulate, masculine Japanese. As long as I can understand what’s being said, and respond in a way people can understand clearly, that’s a big accomplishment and more than enough. Don’t get fancy, in other words.

Since a lot of comedians in Japan come from Osaka, you’ll hear a lot of Kansai dialect on TV, so it’s good to get familiar so you can enjoy the show.¹ But when communicating yourself, stick with a safe bet. Foreign languages are hard enough, without trying to act cool and emulate a dialect. Imagine a beginner student of English from Beijing trying to show off a Brooklyn accent to his friends, and you’ll see how out-of-place it sounds. :-p

Anyway, enjoy the show! These guys are funny and a half-hour can teach you a few things.

¹ Okamura from グルナイ is genuinely a funny guy. I never get tired of him.

Shichigosan

Mid-November marks a very special time for children all over Japan: Shichigosan (七五三)! Shichigosan, which means “Seven Five and Three” marks a kind of coming-of-age ceremony for children everywhere, when they dress up in kimono or haori jackets and go visit a Shinto shrine with their families. Lots of pictures, candy and so on.

As Wikipedia explains, the roots of Shichigosan probably originate with the Heian Court aristocrats, who wanted to protect their children from evil spirits that might take the lives of their children. I talked before about religion and ritual in the Heian Period when I mentioned Lady Murasaki’s Diary, and this is another example. But if this sounds archaic, remember in those days child mortality rates were much higher. A simple flu really could be lethal then, as there were no antibiotics, ibuprofen, or emergency medical services, especially for the commoner class. Malnutrition or unsanitary conditions were something most people had to live with throughout their lives, but it could really make the difference between your child’s life or death. So, if a child survived to three years old, that was a good cause for celebration.

Life was more fragile then, and it was no wonder that parents found solace in spiritual matters by getting blessings for their three year old children. On the one hand, parents would offer thanks to the Shinto kami for their protection so far, and pray that they continue to watch over their children in the future. As 5 is also an auspicious year for boys and 7 for girls, celebrations would continue on these years as well. By this age, children are stronger, healthier and can look forward to life ahead. The tradition extended to the ruling samurai families, and then all people in Japan over the centuries into the tradition you see today.

To reiterate, both girls and boys celebrate Shichigosan at age three, but at age five, only boys celebrate and at age seven, only girls celebrate.

Among the popular places families go now to celebrate Shichigosan is Hie Shrine, or hie jinja (日枝神社) located in Tokyo. The Hie Shrine is among the more important shrines in Japan due to its central role in Tokyo, cultural treasures, and accessibility, so if you want to see Shichigosan celebrated in style, that’s a great place to take your kids.

Regardless of which shrine children go to, they can look forward to some candy called chitose ame (千歳飴). This means “1000 year-old candy” and symbolizes auspicious and long life. In East Asian culture, cranes were though to live 1000 years and turtles lived 10,000 years, so on the chitosame candy, you see pictures of cranes and turtles on the wrappers.

My little girl is turning 3 years old at the end of the year, and we wanted to take her to Shichigosan at this time, but as we just returned from Ireland and are buying a new house, we decided it would be best to wait until early next year. This is not typical of Shichigosan celebrations, but places like Hie Shrine are open all year to the public, so there’s no reason why we can’t celebrate a few months later, when the weather is pleasant.

Once we visit ourselves, I’ll be sure to post some pictures online for you to enjoy. If you do have kids in Japan, or even at home, take a moment to reflect on how much they’ve grown, and how lucky we are as a society to have good healthcare. There are still many societies in the world, where children are lucky if they can reach age 3, just like the medieval days.

Karma, Relation and “En”

A common idiom in Japanese I’ve heard a few times over the years is the phrase en ga aru (縁がある) or the opposite en ga nai (縁がない). These phrases are highly idiomatic and according to JapanesePod101.com, could mean things like “it was meant/not meant to be” or other such things. The key to these idioms is the word 縁 (en), which again JPod101 states that it could mean an emotional or social relation or bond. If you don’t have a bond with someone, something else, then it wasn’t meant to be, in other words. This is a mundane way example of the term.

The Buddhist notion of karma is a difficult subject as it is in Buddhism, and a frequent point of confusion about Buddhists themselves.¹ However, when you add linguistic issues, things get even more complicated. A quick consultation of my favorite Japanese-English dictionary revealed many terms for karma with subtle differences in nuance, and sometimes the word 縁 is used in those terms, sometimes not. I’ve also heard the term 仏縁 (butsu-en) used in Buddhism to refer to a kind of karmic relation to one Buddhist figure or another. Someone might be really drawn to Kannon Bodhisattva for example, while someone else might be drawn to the founder, Shakyamuni Buddha. The idea is that this is thought to be related to events in a past life that affect one’s disposition in this life.²

This same idea can also be found in the Japanese phrase: sode furiau mo tashō no en 袖振り 合うも多生の 縁 （そでふりあう も たしょうのえん ）, which means “even when the sleeves of two people brush together, this is the result of a past life”.

In any case though, the term 縁 denotes the idea of karma, inter-dependency and by extension “fate”. Fate, of course, in the Buddhist context denotes a sense that actions in the past come to fruition in the future when the right conditions fall into place. By extension, your actions and intentions now will do the same, so choose wisely!

However, speaking of relationships, there’s an amusing relationship between the two words 縁 (en) and 円 (en). Both are pronounced the same way, but the second kanji refers to round things, and of course, coins. Hence, in Japanese culture, it’s customary to thrown in a 5-yen (5円, “go en”) coin thrown in to donation boxes at Japanese Buddhist temples (お寺, otera) or Shinto shrines (神社, jinja).³ People may do this for a number of reasons, but there’s a sense in trying to bring events around in their favor. But if in the end it doesn’t work out, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.

P.S. Also for you Buddhists out there, note the frequent use of “en” in the popular Japanese Buddhist liturgy, the 10-phrase Kannon Sutra.

¹ For reference, see the Nibbedhika Sutta ( AN 6.63 ) in the Pali Canon:

“Intention, I tell you, is kamma. Intending, one does kamma by way of body, speech, & intellect.”

Or, for an exhaustive coverage of the fruition of karma and by extension the creation of Buddhist Hells, see the Earth-Store Bodhisattva Sutra, chapter 3:

“Fifthly, if a person falls into this hell, he will die myriads of times and be revived myriads of times each day and each night from the time of his initial entrance unto hundreds of thousands of future kalpas, and he will never have any relief or rest whatsoever from his suffering and torture even for one instant. It is only with the exhaustion of his sinful karma that he will finally be able to gain rebirth. Owing to such continuity of suffering and torture, this hell [the worst level] is, therefore, known as Avici [Unending].”

² Do not think that Asian Buddhists are all naive literalists though. This is a common stereotype that Westerns and even Western Buddhists make toward Asians, and really bothers me.

³ Of course, you can throw in more or less than this. I tend to have a lot of leftover change toward the end of my visits in Japan, so I tend to donate it. Also, many smaller, less popular temples/shrines may struggle to make ends meet, so those little coins do help. I can think of at last some temples who do use the funds for charity work, supporting monastics and other noble deeds, not just meeting operational costs or other pointless extravagances. In any case, giving is always better than hoarding.

“Becoming” a good Japanese speaker

First of all, I apologize for the bad pun. One of the many things about Japanese language that has frustrated me is describing that something became something else. Japanese has a few ways to describe this. That wonderful fellow Tae Kim has a nice overview of the subject so I won’t reinvent the wheel.

However there is one point worth mentioning that still confused me. For example I didn’t understand what the difference was between 中止になる and 中止する. The word 中止 (ちゅうし) means cancellation or to cancel. The first word above means to be canceled, such as a meeting or baseball game. The second word means to cancel something. The first is a state that something has or will become, while the second is an action undertaken by someone. Although I knew this I still got a little confused on how to translate this into English.

For 中止になる I think this can be translated as “to get canceled”, while 中止する means just “to cancel”. For another word like 再開 (さいかい reopen, restart, etc) it’s the same thing. 再開する means to reopen while 再開になる means to get reopened. Or for getting fired from a job, 首になる (くびになる) means to get fired while a boss might fire someone using 首する.

Little bits like this help us Japanese-language students take one step closer toward proficiency. Good luck!

Basho Haiku in Japanese II

A continuation of the post I had before on haiku poetry by on Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉). These were both featured in the children’s TV show Nihongo de asobo, which is a nice Japanese TV program for kids.

Disclaimer: These translations are my own amateur efforts, and should not be considered professional translations at all. Please use at your own risk.

夏草や　　（なつくさや, natsu kusa ya）
兵どもが　（つわものどもが, tsuwamono domo ga）
夢の跡　　（ゆめのあと, yume no ato）

To me, I would translate this as “Summer grass is all that remains of a soldier’s dreams”, which has a clearly Buddhist message about impermanence, but also about the end result of ambitions, violence and so on. The や (ya) at the end of the first line is a kind of “filler” syllable sometimes used by haiku authors for dramatic pause (and maybe to achieve the 5-syllable requirement ).

閑やさ　　（しずかやさ, shizukayasa）
岩にしみ入る　　（いわにしみいる, iwa ni shimi iru）
蝉の声　　（せみのこえ, semi no koe）

This one evokes a nice feeling of late summer or early autumn. I would translate this one as “Peace: a silverfish crawls into a rock, the sound of cicadas”. The word しみ, according to the online dictionary, refers to silverfish insects, and cicadas are famous insects who make loud buzzing noises during the warmer months when they come out of hiding. In Japan, it’s common for kids to go “bug collecting” in the summer, looking for things like cicadas and rhinoceros beetles.

Enjoy!

Countdown to the JLPT!

Starting today there are four weeks left until the JLPT test in the US! Hopefully by now if you’ve been studying, you have been able to absorb the material and practice it. Or have you? If your just starting the JLPT now, you may find yourself in over your head, unless you’ve had extensive Japanese experience before and just need to refresh your memory.

Regardless of your situation, now is a good time to make some last minute preparations:

• Don’t forget to get some No. 2 pencils (or HB pencils in the UK)!
• Do you have your test voucher?
• Do you have your identification ready? Review the JLPT test site for valid identification.
• Do you know where the test area is? Have you confirmed directions and transportation? Accommodations?
• Have you taken any practice tests yet? If not, do so right away! You can find old tests available for purchase online. This is worth the money spent.
• If you did take practice tests, did you evaluate your weak points? Listening? Reading Comprehension?
• If you can, focus on your weakest area right now. Don’t spend too much time on your strong points, or you get diminishing returns.

Before the day of the test, you might do one of two things depending on your personality:

1. Relax and get lots of sleep.
2. Cram all night, just in case.

Whatever works for you, just remember some advice:

• Sleep is very important. It will keep your mind focused, and not wandering. Caffeine is not a very good substitute.
• Eat a good meal before the test! Nothing too sweet, or you will get tired.
• Get to the test site early, so you won’t be rushed, or risk getting late.
• And most importantly, if you fail the test, you can always take it again, but this time with a lot more experience!

Although the test is a month away, you should now take time to prepare for the test itself. You’ve had time to study, so like a good athelete, visualize the day of the test, imagine success, and you’ll do fine.

Best of luck!

Good Japanese Drinking: Mugicha!

Although good weather is long gone (unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere!) there is one drink my wife and I frequently enjoy: mugicha (麦茶), or roasted barely tea. As the name implies, this has nothing to do with tea leaves and is instead made with roasted barley. The taste is very earthy, roasted and best of all has no caffeine. Mugicha tastes really good chilled, so it’s a popular summer drink in Japan and similarly in Korean. Our little family drinks it all year though.

Despite the unusual style it’s thankfully easy to get in Seattle, and back in Ireland at Asian food stores.^{1 2} I can’t say I have a recommended brand myself (others are welcome to add opinions). I just usually picked something that looked good and authentically Japanese. Usually they come in large boxes that contain many “bags”. These are not small tea bags, but much larger. To use them, put one bag into a pitcher of water, and leave it in the refrigerator overnight. By morning, you have a nice, concentrated pitcher of mugicha. It’s probably too strong to drink straight (unless you’re my wife!) so pour some into a glass of water and enjoy.

I found it useful to also take the concentrated mugicha and pour it into a smaller water bottle I can take to work. When mixed with “water cooler” water, it makes plenty for you to drink all day.

One word of warning: mugicha can go rancid, so if you buy it, make sure to use it up fairly quickly or else. I didn’t know that, and while living in Ireland with my wife in Japan, I had a bunch of mugicha I didn’t finish. I drank some (possibly rancid) mugicha and it didn’t taste very good. I didn’t get sick thankfully, but it’s a good idea to listen to food warnings more carefully. :-p

I wanted to talk about mugicha for quite a while but didn’t find the time to write the post until recently. Summer’s long over, but ask any Japanese person and they’ll tell you that mugicha inspires lots of memories of summer. The supposed health benefits of decreased stress are a nice bonus if true. Frankly since I started mugicha to work a few weeks ago, I lost the urge to drink soft drinks from the vending machine at work. No joke. I had a hard time beating that habit for years, sometimes I succeeded, sometimes I lost the willpower. But lately, I never miss it. Mugicha is that good in my opinion.

P.S. As linked above, this blog is an excellent overview of food and Japanese culture.

P.P.S. By the title, you probably thought I would talk about drinking places like izakaya (居酒屋) or preferred beverages found therein. Let’s just say that I prefer not to drink.

¹ Compared to Seattle, Dublin was a much more tea-drinking society (probably owing to British influence) than coffee. This made very useful omiyage gifts for my wife’s family and friends when we visited Japan that year. My wife still misses the good tea and such.

² By the way, if you’re looking for a good Asian food store in Dublin, I highly recommend the old Asian Market on Drury St. Their selection varies a lot depending on what gets imported at the time but their variety is good and prices reasonable.

Japanese Summer Festivals and Shinto

Naoko, a Japanese mom over at “Heenai Heenai”, has a great post about local festivals in Japan, particularly the one in her hometown. Great pictures, and good stories. I wanted to share this with a wider audience because it is a great example of something many Westerners don’t get to see: a local Shinto festival in the countryside.

When I talked before about Shinto Kami, I mentioned that many kami were very local, and so many places in the countryside developed very specialized rituals and festivals for their kami. However, despite the variety of rituals, some things are very common, very Shinto to these festivals:

• Use of o-mikoshi as explained below.
• Usually takes place in summer or autumn, often to celebrate harvest.
• Expresses the village’s gratitude to the local kami for their protection over the year.
• Supplication to the kami for another good year ahead.

In Naoko’s post, she talked about the o-mikoshi (お神輿), which is a kind of portable shrine. In Ian Reader’s book on Shintoism he describes the common practice where the kami is “transported” in a ceremony to the portable shrine, then carried aboard a portable shrine through town, with lots of noise, drinking, and excitement. The shrines are often pretty large, so this is a big team effort that can last all day. Whether the kami is real or not, it’s a day for the town to gather together as a community, and celebrate the season, while carrying on an ancient tradition.

Westerners usually don’t get to see such things because most live in large metropolitan areas where festivals are less common, or more touristy, but I often hear of foreign-exchange students living in remote areas, so I would love to hear some stories if you have them. I think these festivals, large and small, reflect a lot about Japanese religion and spirituality that can’t easily explained in textbooks, so sometimes pictures and stories are more helpful.

Anyway, go visit Naoko, enjoy the pictures, and say hi!