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The Christmas holiday means different things to different people, and each
country has its own way of observing it. By and large, Japan is a Buddhist
nation, although it seems that many people here don't consciously think about
themselves in terms of the religion, despite the Buddhist altar, incense and
candles in their house -- it's just "atari-mae" (ah-TAH-ree MAH-eh, "taken for
granted") that these objects should be in a Japanese home. Because there isn't
a long tradition of celebrating the yuletide as there is in the West,
Christmas tends to be a bit of an external thing here, less of a holiday (not
a holiday at all, actually, as everyone has to go to work), and more of a
special time for different segments of society, such as children who look
forward to presents, couples who are planning a special date, and friends
gathering for a Christmas party with lots of karaoke. One thing I've noticed
is that Christmas tends to be an American thing in Japan, having presumably
been filtered through the U.S. occupation from 1945-1951, and Japanese today
know who Santa Claus is but have little awareness of "Father Christmas" and
other British images of the holiday (although they have Christmas Cake here).
This is a bit of a bummer, since I've always loved the images presented in
Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters, and read them to my American/Japanese kids
often.
Just a week after Christmas comes the most important of days in Japan,
Oshogatsu, aka New Year's Day. Everyone is making preparations now, buying New
Year's decorations to hang on their doors, display in the foyers of their
homes, or in some instances, fix to the hoods of their cars. One of the most
famous types of decorations is called Kagami Mochi, lit. "mirror rice cake,"
attractively arranged pressed rice that are delicious with a dollop of soy
sauce. Tonight it's time for us to make our nengajo, or New Year's Cards,
which we mail out to all our friends here. I'm torn between choosing something
from the excellent Taste of Japan nengajo art collection we've posted to the
site today or taking a picture of the kids with our dog Chibi (since 2006 is
the Year of the Dog).
After school my son attends a juku, an after-hours study school that
compliments his school curriculum and ostensibly covers some of the subjects
he's learning at school, but in Japanese (since his school is 70% English).
His juku teacher likes to give mind-bending math problems to the students and
see if they can find the answers. Here are two such problems that stumped me.
Each of the equations below is incorrect. Add one straight line somewhere in
each of the two equations to make it correct. See http://www.jbox.com/equation
for the answer.
5 + 5 + 5 = 550
0.01 = 100
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