Snowy Kanazawa, Morning in Kenrokuen, & Superstitions in Japan – Life Abroad Podcast Episode 88
Moshim Moshi hello I’m Z Ram bam and I’m Annie Ram bam and we’re the rambling Ram bams our journey might be rambling but we hope this podcast isn’t and here we are just really burning the midnight oil oh it’s like 8:30 I guess that’s bedtime
For you Zeb likes to keep a very strict bedtime schedule yeah you know they say that’s um good for the body yeah guess sleep they say a lot of things are good for the body I’m big on my schedules you know my like routine I like going to
Sleep and waking up at the same time I like the idea of that but then I get really excited at night and then I don’t want to go to bed like I want to keep working on the stuff that I’m doing like I already did all the stuff I have to do
For the day so now it’s time for me to do me stuff yeah well you know what you would have a hard time going to bed with um lots of things yeah but what we’re going to start out by talking about Diary oh why is that your opener I don’t so
This is just like a funny story from from the office actually yeah listen up from the workplace I’m sure everybody’s thrilled to hear about this topic yeah it was just I so last week I think it was like Thursday and I was sitting in the teachers room at my night school and
I’m just sitting there and you know everything’s normal and it’s kind of quiet but then I hear the very distinct like Google translate voice you know how you can like translate stuff and you can click Speak yeah and Siri if you like uh hello and then Siri will say I guess the
Other thing would be like kicha and then Siri would be like hello in like a very Robo I just hear the students use Google Translate all the time and they’ll have like my one of my co-workers calls it Google Sensei because he makes fun of it
Cuz like the kids don’t actually want to talk to real people so they just use Google Sensei um but anyway so I was sitting there and then all of a sudden I heard Google sense say chime up in the teacher room and go diarrhea like robot yeah I was like
Sitting there and I was like who who is talking about this yeah like who needed who needed to know that that word in English why do they need to know how to pronounce that um so I was sitting there and like nothing ever got said about it
Until um we were walking to the class and the teacher as soon as we got to the door and like open the door she was like oh like Z are you you feeling okay I was like yeah feeling pretty good um and she goes oh well some of the male teachers have
Diarrhea and God like know sorry to hear that yeah like um but she was saying apparently a lot of the male teachers were feeling sick and so she was like make sure you wash your hands after you come out of the bathroom yeah and I was yeah thanks for
The heads up that’s a nice warning it’s funny I guess she was just warning you because I guess in her mind all of the male teachers had it but none none of the female teachers yeah so she was worried about me because I’m a male teacher so I guess she was thinking it
Was something the male teachers were doing in the bathroom they’re just spreading rampantly throughout the populace gosh but then it got me thinking about it and everyone uses the same ink pad and the same book because you got a honko stamp in when you show up to work so hopefully they sprayed it
Down and clean that cuz I mean hopefully hopefully people aren’t showing up to work with like poopy hands they might have she told me to wash my hands in the bathroom someone had some poopy hands oh H anyway we’re going to move on to a fresher topic yeah thankfully Supermarket Sushi oh why
Would you follow that topic it’s unrelated I’m assum this is actually very unintentional thank goodness it just happened to be when I was writing stuff um so I we haven’t tried this yet moving right into Supermarket sushi on that note hope everyone’s hungry after that story yeah
Which in maybe in America there’s like a stereotype of like gas station food and somewhere there’s like a very specific joke I think it comes from Futurama about gas station Sushi and how it like messes you up um but we don’t have that problem in Japan Supermarket sushi is
Usually pretty fresh and really good and high quality um very different from like grocery stores Sushi back home in America I mean it’s still really cheap like no yeah super cheap you know it’s very like you’re not going to get it for a special occasion but it’s quality
Enough to enjoy it for like a quick dinner yeah I mean you might get it for a special occasion if you sometimes seen grocery St no if you bought like grocery store platter sushi for me for like a fancy dinner instead of being like let’s go to a sushi restaurant really that is
Not the same at all you don’t remember when we were in Toyama wait you think that getting a grocery store platter of sushi is like comparable to going to a sushi restaurant not quite but remember when we were in Toyama and they were selling like the New Year’s Day meal
Platters and you could buy like the massive yeah spread so some families buy it as kind of like a special occasion like the family’s at home so you buy I guess a giant thing and I’ve heard that Costco in Japan actually sells the sushi platter that’s really good well to be
Fair the sushi platters that we saw in Toyama that you’re talking about were like 5,000 yen sushi I’m saying like but it’s still a grocery store Sushi is but I still made by Japanese hands W I still think that the atmosphere and like the freshness of somebody I would rather be
In a restaurant yeah but the quality I think the quality but you know you can get closer because the news says to get your Supermarket Sushi to taste like sushi shop Sushi you increase the quality home and you take the fish off and then you take
The rice and you microwave the rice and while you’re microwaving the rice to get it like nice and hot you take the sushi and you rinse it and then you dab it off with like a paper towel you probably don’t want the rice hot you want it warm
Warm too hot like it just came out the rice warmer yeah maybe so this is a cooworker told me this not one that had diarrhea but a different school yeah you think he told you like the day before he’s like I got this great trick for you
To prolong the life of sushi yeah no but heated told me this and he said that he read it in the news and apparently it’s like a new trend see the I understand like some slightly more warm Sushi not hot sushi but like warm rice isused not as cold and dry because
Mentally I usually think of sushi as cold but then I guess when we go to sushi restaurants it is like the rice is warm I think it’s like body temperature I don’t think it’s warm rice like there’s no steam it’s like no but I’m saying warm it’s not like boiling first you
Said hot get nice and hot yeah get it nice and hot in the microwave and then it cools off and you slap your rinsed fish on there yeah sounds delicious it’s supposed to make it taste more like sushi shop sush yeah maybe I shouldn’t be hating on it I haven’t tried it I
Think we should that maybe next episode we’ll have G to the grocery store yeah to do a little taste test um well right now we’re sitting under our little blankets in our room because there’s not we only have one heater in our apartment and it’s not in
This room yeah and so we have these cozy little blankets we talked previously about KATU which is what we should have oh my my gosh can you imagine if we had a KATU in this room that would really improve the aesthetic right of our yeah podcast and the Comfort well you can’t really
Anyone’s listening can’t see it or feel it but it would just feel Cozier yeah maybe one day we could have like a Catu Comfort would just come through our voices yeah a KATU uh Studio well I was bringing this up because I don’t have a kotatsu I just have this blanket which
Is nice but you have a KATU thing to tell me about last time we talked about I don’t think it was last week but whenever we talked about KATU it was last week you were telling me about the kotatsu train that’s up in tohoku um so last week if you remember
Annie was talking about the KATU train and if you missed it you should go back and listen to it um but that would be like an interesting way to see the countryside yeah tucked under your little heated table blanket but it doesn’t just stop at trains yeah cuz coincidentally I went
To work and and that day I was reading the news like I usually do and there was something called a kotatsu which it’s a boat with a KATU in the boat and they’re the boats that go down the rivers they’re like not it’s I don’t know how
To explain like a river boat like it’s an open top it almost looks like a really big canoe like a guy stands in the back with a pole and kind of pushes it along river the ones that you would see people in pictures of Venice like pushing along with po yeah more similar
To that push them along the river here too when you first told me about this and before I looked on the website that you were saying like oh you could rent a seat on one of these boats I was picturing a fairy like a huge boat and
Everybody gets a table like a booth just kind of the same thing as the train car and I was like I mean that’s a nice idea but like I could just sit in my kotatsu in my living room I don’t need to sit no but then when I saw the picture
And you’re not in this like enclosed large fairy you’re in a cozy personal boat yeah so it’s so much better you know what it is air yeah it’s the equivalent of when people used to drive around in their convertibles with the tops down in the winter but you have the
Heat on blast same thing it’s true so you’re just in the boat but the KATU is keeping you nice and toasty but that cold River air your upper body um but apparently it’s like a very like popular Japanese Pastime in the winter in some areas yeah I was going to say I don’t
Know anyone that’s done that but yeah I don’t know if you like asked some of your friends like maybe I could ask a coworker and they would know what this is I don’t know how like widespread but I just happened to see it in an article
And I went to work and it was just kind of talking about how it’s winter time and the kotatsu buet are out and you can go for a little river ride and these are cool because some of them it looked like you sit kind of in a row and you face
Forward and they’re like multiple kotatsu and then some I saw there’s one long like dinner table kotatsu that’s like the whole boat and you sit facing each other you could get the whole family on a boat and just yeah be paddled around that’s like the ideal family vacation you don’t have to make
Any decisions cuz once you’re in the boat you’re just going where the boat man’s taking you until and then no one you get until what a bit of an illness hits can you imagine you cannot bring it back to this every littleit diarrhea underne I cannot imagine
That just I was thinking about it you’re like shattering the peaceful image sorry and it would be even worse you know why well how could it be worse KATU buet it’s not an electric kotatsu it’s a real piece of charcoal stuck under there oh so it’s like really I guess they put it
In the cage and then you put a nice piece of charcoal that’s burning maybe this is Dum like why how do you not get your feet burned or like your clothes burned if there’s a fire under the blanket well it’s not a fire it’s like a
Charcoal it’s like a like a hot charcoal yeah like some hot coal is it’s not you know an active fire I guess yeah so you know what it reminded me of you know and Pirates of the Caribbean when Elizabeth Swan is going to bed at the very beginning of the
First movie and she’s got the bed warmer and they put the coals in the bed warmer and then shove it to the foot of the bed later she smacks the pirate in the face with it and all the coal falls out I didn’t remember that scene but I always
Wanted one of those when I was little see I think it’s like that style of thing it’s like a little metal box that’s attached to the table and they put coal in it um yeah still I mean I guess that if I guess it’s like
An iron and you don’t leave it in one spot for too long you have to like move it around but the reason I always wanted one when I was little is because my grandmother had her grandmother’s hanging on the wall and it was like too
Old and antique to use I mean I’m sure it still worked yeah it’s just a huge chunk of metal yeah but it was like Rusty well it was kind of ornate it was like a very nicely designed one I guess and it was old but I asked my parents
One time like can we can we put that in my bed try and they were like I don’t think so yeah it does seem pretty dangerous yeah but this you’re on a boat so the worst that happens you just get in the river you know well when you put it like
That no it does sound really fun yeah and I think it really sounds nice and pleasant too because you know coal has like a nice smell to it yeah and so you would get like you know Pleasant and you get all the nice outdoor river smells yeah it’s a full sensory
Experience unfortunately so Annie and I are thinking about a trip to kushu well and one of the popular places for KATU buun is in Fukuoka there’s the yanagawa the Jana river is down there and they have these boats unfortunately it looks like they end at the end of February like the last
Day of February is kind of the end of kotatsu boat season um and we would potentially be going in March so I think we’d miss it oh it’s probably still cold in March but yeah maybe I mean I think it’s still cold but it looks like on on
The calendar they’re like nope it’s February 29th we’re done I guess welcome to Spring like I don’t know how you’re supposed to say yanagawa but the way that you said it sounded really North Carolinian yanagawa going to yanagawa yanagawa it just reminded me CU I was talking to somebody one time and I
Said like Kagawa and they were like what and I was like oh Kanagawa it was like when we had like first come here and like when our buddy Kyle visited and he kept calling it like kazawa Kwa we were like brother listen like it’s fine I do
It all the time and we are American yeah so it made me think when will they have the kotatsu airplane oh yeah I don’t know trains boats well I guess there’s no risk but it just seems more risky in my head to have like hot coals on an
Airplane well they probably use the the electric heat yeah maybe first class like on Ana or J maybe they have yeah KATU plane maybe there already is KATU plane like somebody private jet yeah some rich Japanese businessman from the Yakuza probably flies around in his I
Would too plane if I could yeah yeah you’ll have to ask your cooworker that really loves your KATU if she has ever been on a KATU Boon yeah so when I I was actually talking to her about KATU because I was repurposing some of our like podcast notes for a listening test
Or listening practice with one of the students so I was talking about kotatsu and she really likes hers and she’s very proud she went to a store called shimamura which apparently is kind of like Unico and they have so Unico has like heat tech um but shimamura has heat
Fiber and so I think it’s the same idea it’s like fiber that really holds heat and she bought a blanket on sale last year in May she said if you go like kind of at the end of winter when Spring’s on like they put everything on discount and
So she went and bought a really nice heat fiber blanket that she uses for her kotatsu and she said it’s so warm do you have to have I don’t think you have to have a specific blanket for a kotatsu do you like don’t you just put it on the
Whole part of the KATU is you have to have a special table yeah you have the table with like the basket that holds a heater and then you just put the blanket over top I guess in my head you also have like a kotatsu blanket but that
Doesn’t really you could use any blanket I guess I think you could use any blanket but they probably make ones that are like you know the right Dimension to fit the table and be comfortable and but she said she was so pleased because she actually took it
With her to wajima when she was there for the earthquake and so she said that she was so happy to have it cuz her whole family was like sleeping under it oh cuz it’s really funny she says that her family routinely like falls asleep around their kotatsu I think that’s a
Common thing like it’s a really cute idea yeah yeah I in my head it seems like if my whole family just decided to like fall asleep on the living room sofa together one day like it just seems like crowded and uncomfortable but also really cozy and like loving so maybe if
It was we can’t all fit on the couch and comfortably sleep but I don’t know yeah just picturing my dad being like trying to be like a good sport about it but just like laying awake being like this is so uncomfortable but I’m trying to be
A good family man like yeah but I guess you know the KATU you’re are like on the floor yeah you’re already kind of like halfway laying down so it’s only one more step like like falling asleep yeah but she said that because her family is
With her and kazawa and so she said that they often fall asleep around their kotatsu which this gave me a chance to ask her oh do you actually eat tangerines in around your KATU MH and she said that they actually do that’s like a popular thing that they’ll eat
Their little meons when they’re sitting there at the KATU but she said because ishaka are known for their love of ice cream that they typically eat ice cream sitting around their Kat That’s my kind of family I know you just sit around a warm blanket environment together and
Eat ice cream cuz she says perfect cuz like your bottom half is like really warm so then you like have your hands out and you eat ice cream oh that’s perfect yeah that did sound really nice you know how meon or how oranges are like a in air quotes hot food if you’re
Following like if you listen to the um like Chinese medicine yeah that was a whole new concept to me this year that someone told me like oh well they were Chinese they are Chinese and well when they were a child their mom was like don’t eat too many
Tangerines because like it’s a hot food it’ll make your nose bleed or something yeah and I was like that’s so interesting because I guess then I was looking into it and people that are listening probably know this but there’s cold foods and hot foods that have nothing to do with the phys physical
Temperature it’s what it does to your body it warms the body or cools the body or actually there’s um ones that dry and also like wet the body I guess but anyway oranges are a hot food which is interesting I guess they warm the body yeah cuz so ice cream could technically
Be a hot food I think it would be because weren’t when we looking at it isn’t it like the meons are um very like sugary so it gets your blood sugars up so that like makes you feel warm yeah ice cream do the same thing yes but I
Don’t think it’s that simple like warming Foods I was looking up they include things that seem kind of obvious in that respect like pepper chili cumin turmeric coriander like kind of hot spices like that but then other ones that are kind of um ambiguous to me like tomatoes are warming food onions garlic
Mangoes and I don’t know maybe if I grew up with that it would make more sense or or there’s probably a reason yeah other things like coffee and energy drinks that make sense oily Foods sure red meat but yeah and Beyond me cooling Foods there are some fruits that are cooling
Like bananas watermelon strawberries and then raw foods are cooling leafy vegetables bitter herbs well we’ll have to Circle back around to the ice cream maybe we can ask an expert yeah yeah email us chines medicinal expert it is interesting I’d like to know more about that yeah well we should have brought some
Warm foods with us on Thursday when we went to Canin in the snow it was a bucket list item for you yeah I think so Thursday so it’s what day St now Tuesday Tuesday so Tuesday night oh time flies but I guess yeah on Thursday we went to
Ken Rin because snow is in the forecast and Zeb has since we’ve been here Zeb has really wanted wanted to go see krin one of the three great Gardens of Japan in the snow but not only just in the snow he wanted to be like first tracks
Kind of yeah seeing it in the snow like early morning I get it like I guess when you’re a kid and you wake up and you’re like oh my gosh snow day like nobody woke me up for school because school’s been cancelled it’s such a fun feeling
And then you like get on your snow boots and you go run outside and it’s still snowing and it’s like freshh or you’re inside and you like peek out oh yeah cuz you’re like you’re indoor cat yeah yeah like go out there but it is nice you
Know that being that like early morning first person when everything’s still soft and soft and fresh yeah so there are a few reasons like one that is part of it that it’s you like everything feels a bit more like crisp and pristine because maybe overnight some snow fell
And so there aren’t there haven’t been like a lot of people there to kind of really muck up the snow you know and also a secondary benefit was like getting to see the sunrise because I was trying to think about it there aren’t I don’t know if there are many
Opportunities to see the sun set at kenroku you can see the sun rise if you go early you don’t think oh does the park close before Clos like five or six oh yeah so maybe in the winter you could see the sunet yeah but yeah so it’s just
Kind of nice to be able to see the sunrise and I had been told this by a cooworker that and he had actually told me that he thought it was just for like ishak Collins for people that lived here um which would be okay of course because we
Do live here and we have like our cards to we have our membership cards we can prove it um but it’s actually for everybody so this is a hot tip if you’re ever coming to kazal when you’re a morning person um but it’s free in the morning for an hour and 45 minutes
Before it opens so for example when we went um the opening time was I think 8 a.m. 8 a.m. so you were allowed to be in the garden from 6 until 7:45 mhm for free which is nice and that’s like the ideal time I know it gets that’s the
Latest early time yeah in the summer it’s like 4 to like 545 yeah sometimes it’s not so bad like in the shoulder Seasons which are honestly beautiful times to visit cuz spring and fall but when it opens at 700 you have from 5 to to 6:45 mhm which is fine like very
Early but like okay but I would I just can’t imagine myself being like all right it’s 4:00 a.m. I’m like ready to be at krin I think it is predominantly for like elderly people that live in the area and they probably incorporate you know kenroku and as part of their daily
Walk yeah um so I think that’s really what it’s for but you can take advantage of it if you’re visiting and it is really cheap to go to the Garden it’s only 320 Yen for adults and6 n for kids it’s like well worth the entry fee yeah I’ve like probably mentioned this before
But kokin is one of the attractions that I will always feel good about paying to go into because I always feel like I get my money’s worth and it’s the only attraction in kazawa that I’ve been to more than probably like four or five
Times and paid but I can see how if you we’re like truly local like we’re local in air quotes like we still had to take a 20 minute journey to get there by train and then walk there yeah um but if you truly like if you were just out for
Your morning walk every day that would kind of add up price-wise like if you paid yeah 3 320 every day so it’s walk in the garden well it’s really nice it’s nice that they offer that for local people I think it is really cool and also because I was thinking about the
Poor um security guard that has to get there oh and he so he’s there 2 hours before the Garden opens just to I was surprised he there monitor yeah anyway uh so that’s kind of like that’s what sparked the idea of going super early in the morning is when I realized oh you
Can kind of like go in before the garden technically opens yeah like secret time yeah a little secret time um so that’s what gave me the idea so you know I was and then last year there was this crazy snowstorm and we didn’t go and and so
After that I didn’t like have like a real regret but I kind of have been thinking like what if that was the prime time to go and we missed it uh so I’ve been keeping my eye out on the forecast and this winter we really haven’t gotten
Nearly as much snow as we got last year so once it was it’s like late January now I started to get a little worried because in February February is like the month where it kind of starts warming up like everything’s been getting colder into January and then February kind of
Starting to like get out of it a little bit so yeah I started getting nervous I was like what have we missed it well and then it it did snow and we had planned to go like the next day or whatever yeah so the forecast was snow on Tuesday
Wednesday and Thursday Well it snowed and then we were like oh it’s coming and then by the time you were home from work it had stopped snowing and then the next morning the snow was kind of melting so at that point we were planning to be
There the next morning and I was like I don’t know like I I was very pessimistic yeah but I didn’t want to get there and you to be disappointed I wasn’t I was feeling confident because on Tuesday night so on Tuesday the forecast was like snow all
Day and we were sitting out here in uchata and it’s not snowing at all and this is the night that I had to go to my night school and thankfully didn’t get sick um so I went to my night school and when I came like out of the station in
Kazawa it was like snow in the streets and then I got on the bus and I took it to my night school and it was like a blizzard there was like fullon like like lightning and snow and everything was blowing around and the parking lots were
Filling up and so I was sending pictures to Annie and Annie was like it’s not even like it’s like drizzling here there was nothing here yeah so I was only I don’t know like 10 miles away maybe and it was like a blizzard so I was pretty
Optimistic and then Wednesday we woke up here in uchinada with like a light dusting of snow so I thought well surely it must have snowed even more in kazawa well Ze was clearly like really thinking about this so yeah it was a big plan because then of course I didn’t have
Class again until the evening on Thursday so I had the morning off so it was like a nice window we had like a couple days of snow so hopefully on the third day it was ideal it was like perfect because you had the night class you you taught night classes on that
Really snowy day yeah so that’s why I was like this is this is the prime time we got got to go and so we got over there into kazawa and there was a lot of snow yeah and then we got to Ken rokuan and there was a lot of snow it actually
It started snowing again while we were in kokan and it felt very magical yeah I was I was so happy because I was really worried that I mean I knew it would be fun either way like early morning snow time cuz there was going to be snow on
The ground but the fact that there was fresh snow and that it was actively snowing and we certainly weren’t the only people in the garden even at 6:00 a.m. even on a snowy it was honestly dark at 6:00 a.m. still um it was still like really
Dark and we weren’t the only people but there’s one old lady she walked by and gave us like the nice Ohio goam M and we do have some audio from the day so we had our microphones so I’ll put in a little bit of audio um from the
Day we’re about to go into a Lawson which is one of the many convenient stores of Japan and we’re going have coffee and maybe a little snack coffee a cheese steamed bun SS good too and two I guess small Coffees I it is I got to go somewhere else the wind is cold the wind is cold no I just said the same thing I have my hands outside of my gloves so I can hold the hot coffee but I don’t know if it’s worth it CU that wind is pretty biting
Yeah but it does feel really good on my the inside of my warm hand yeah the coffee feels nice the snow has the perfect crunch to it it didn’t snow very much last night so there’s just a little bit of powder on the top but then there’s yesterday’s
Snow underneath so it’s like a soft crunch how bet the crows of kazawa have a good life I bet the crows of anity have a pretty good life yeah but kazawa has a lot of I’m going to put this in your backpack unique places to
Fly around AOW yeah I got all my cerms let me uh I got to put my little my little spoon up we got a lot going on here um got bowls spoons cameras coffees yeah we look crazy we uhoh you look crazy by association well yeah I guess so time is 7:45 back
I we almost have slight miscommunication but we’re good I thought he was saying that free time didn’t start until 7:45 yeah me too but it’s until 7:45 and then you have to leave it’s a pretty little Lantern in the snow it is like a cool like how the blue right now is so
Vibrant it’s very pretty so blue right now it’s like a crisp morning blue wow really coming down it’s fun look at us a little snowstorm out here yeah this is great very unexpected I thought all the snow had already happened last night yeah Annie was not um was pessimistic about the snow
Yeah it’s very wintery back here yeah it’s nice to see the snow covering the branches still there’s like an inch on top of the branches so it looks like really fresh still yeah especially in this region this region of the the park that we’ve ventured to yeah isn’t this our
Expedition isn’t this the Plum Grove or something yeah something like that the plum blossoms the there’s only been one other person to walk through here yeah and there little Footprints have been filled in by snow we’re just really ventured into unknown territory we’re just really out here listen brother block away from Main
Street and so yeah it was it was just really nice and just really fun to be there so if you do go to kenro Quin you’ll see especially in the winter I don’t know I don’t think they I don’t know when they put these up but around
The winter time they put these ropes on the trees that make it look like a cone kind of and these are called yukii and it literally means snow supports but they’re ropes that hold up the branches of the tree and kind of help keep it strong against the really heavy snow
Because kazawa well the whole Ishikawa area um not the whole Ishikawa area but this area the Hoku region yeah it gets a lot of wet heavy snow and it hovers around freezing but it doesn’t it doesn’t get that cold but because of but we get a ton of precipitation so because
Of that there’s a ton of just dense heavy snow and that it’s it is very heavy on the branches of course yeah and so that’s part of like the attraction apparently that’s kind of like a bit special to kenroku and Ishikawa and I think they start putting them up in like
November like late November you see people starting to put them up and what it is it’s kind of like a pole that runs up the tree and then they tie ropes from the top of the pole down to the branches like out in a cone shape kind of yeah
And so it’s it’s really pretty and it’s very unique like when you see it in the garden but it’s not specific to the Garden only of course they do it in the garden because it’s a very special Garden they take care of the plants there but my friend for example has she
Has to like call the yukti people to come out to her personal like yard and to support her trees in her yard yes there’s a really big kind of like gardening culture it’s funny because in America in a lot of places especially you know the sub suburbs there’s a very
Big like lawn culture where you really take care of your grass but in Japan they have you know the little Gardens at home and there’s a really big culture about taking Tak care of those and there will be certain times of the year where you’ll see you know almost everyone will
Have some dude with loppers in their yard and they like all like go around all the houses in the neighborhood and like prune all the trees and make them look fresh I know that this area is not the only place in the world that gets a
Lot of heavy snow in like in that kind of thick way so I wonder what other places do to protect the trees or if they just don’t and the branches like rarely snap I don’t know yeah let me know if you have maybe another place in Jordan yeah they do this but
It’s like supposed to be known I just met other places in the world oh yeah I know some places do the thing where they like wrap the trees up have you ever seen that no like a little gift well yeah they kind of look like a mummy or
Like a body bag or something they’re all wrapped um huh I like this because it’s still pretty like you can still see the tree yeah but it’s supported so did you think it was worth it to go in the morning yeah I did I’m just so relieved that it was what you
Expected yeah act think I was going to have like a problem no I I don’t like you weren’t going to be dramatic I just would have been sad for you cuz you were so excited about it and it’s like Christmas day yeah like what if you didn’t get your gifts from Santa that
You wanted you know would have had a problem but yeah it was actually and it was so nice it did make me think about I want to go again in the morning especially during the blossom season yeah so we’ll get Plum blossoms not super long from now kind of like late
February early March it seems really soon I know and then late March they’ve released the Japan meteorological agency released the cherry blossom peaking they’re coming map and I think ours the peak is supposed to be like March 27th so if we could go like super early
That last week in March that would be fun that would be fun be kind of unique um but I have some snow adjacent terminology for you H let’s hear it to go with our snow talk um so this is it one also from my coworker is Yuki kaminari
Sama which I guess means like honorable thunder snow Yeah Yuki is snow coming out Thunder Sama is what you would end someone’s name with in a very honorable way like more than just son you don’t really say Sama unless it’s a store clerk talking to a
Customer yeah or if you’re like a guest on like the Shen Consin sometimes the announcements will say like if you’re a paying customer though yeah but it’s like very formal but that’s what she calls like the thunder snow yeah that makes sense cuz that’s what you would call Kamisama for Gods
Yeah so I think like she’s kind of like personifying it that’s really cute um yeah but and we’ve talked about it before but it’s a super rare weather phenomenon it’s but it’s very common on the Sea of Japan coast it’s also common on Norway’s coast and Mount Everest it’s
Interesting yeah but did you know from 1981 to 2010 kazawa averaged 42.4 days with lightning per year it’s a lot of electricity in the air yeah and most of those or many of them were in the winter and by comparison Tokyo had 12 hm yeah that is pretty wild the first time that
There was thunder snow I was like oh my gosh that like something is happening outside like this is not this is like apocalyptic because it rumbles through the air yeah it feels super dramatic and then the way like the lightning kind of like reflects through the snow it looks very like dramatic um
You keep coming out yeah that’s what she said like when we were in school on Tuesday night it was like a lot of thunder snow and we’re just like standing in the classroom and every time she was like ooh she would get a little like SM oh yeah
Spooky yeah but then I also recently learned Yuki okosi and then also uh yam no OSI yam no yam no yam no okosi okay what’s that okosi um so Yuki oosi is thunder before snowfalls H so it’s common in mid November and December and like it it’s
Also called yam no okosi and it’s that means it’s waking up the Yellow Tail like the fish yeah so like buy is Yellow Tail but the fish goes through multiple life stages and each life stage has a different name um but that term apparently means waking up the Yellow
Tail and that’s because that has to do with I guess they say the Thunder wakes the fish up and helps start their migration for that part of the year it’s kind of cool that’s very like 72 Seasons of Japan I like that that’s how you’d like
It I do it just is very it’s like a little noticing like appreciation for each little seasonal change yeah very nice I already told you my yukii snow supports word so just some bonus words of the week some fun snow words hopefully we’ll get to use those again
Maybe it’ll snow again I hope so maybe in February but also I’d be kind of happy if it just kind of I’m I’m really looking forward to Spring yeah me I keep thinking about cherry blossoms and I love spring yeah spring last night was just so nice spring last night last
Night last year oh sorry I was like where were you in my dreams I just thinking about just tucked in dreaming of spring well after we were at kenu and having a little snow day it is nice to have a snow day and then like go inside
And get warm somewhere you know like have that kind of feeling and of course we love coffee and we went to one of Japan’s I mean one of kazawa mini cafes uh cuz kanazawa really does have such a good Cafe culture so many good Cafe options but we went to curio coffee um
Which is by the station I’m just shouting them out because uh the owners are are friends of ours that are really kind people and make really good coffee if you go to kanazawa they do and they’re one of the few cafes that actually opens early yeah that’s their
Thing they open at 8:00 a.m. they’re closed at 3: I think the only place that opens earlier than them them is Starbucks yeah and you go to Starbucks when you could go to a local coffee shop that’s what I’m saying but most CAF is
Open at like 10 or 11 it’s true so yeah you should go to curio if you’re in kazala but we went there to kind of warm up and and have something hot to drink afterwards and we were talking to our friends there and I forget how we got
Onto this topic but we were talking about superstitions in Japan and I thought it’d be interesting to share uh because the example they had so our friend was saying that his wife puts money in the wallet where the head you know how you know how a a bill
Will have a person on it mhm so the head on the bill faces down into the wallet and apparently that’s so that it’s harder for like the money to get out harder for the person in the wallet to they’re like stuck in there climb out of the wallet or whatever so it it’s
Supposed to save your money and um be a Superstition to keep it safe in your wallet and I I thought that was pretty funny so then I was looking up other superstitions in Japan and have you ever heard that you’re not supposed to cut your fingernails at night no I haven’t
Yeah it it’s dramatic it it brings death closer actually so it’s really just again I feel like we talk a lot about this with pronunciation things and different the same pronunciation having different meanings yeah but it’s another pronunciation game so I might not be saying this right but yotsume the kanji
For one set of kanji for yum means night nails and it’s the same pronunciation for different three conji which mean reaching the end of one’s life y also so when you just say it and you don’t have the Kani out you don’t know which one you’re saying yeah it’s the same reason
That four is the like is the number that’s bad luck in Japan cuz the pronunciation for four can also sound like death yeah so yeah there’s a lot of those so another one um breaking a comb apparently that’s kind of like breaking a mirror and I don’t I don’t know how
Many countries have the breaking a mirror being bad luck but definitely in America I remember people saying like oh if you break a mirror it’s seven years of bad luck that seems like drastic because it’s so much easier I’d imagine to break a comb breaking a mirror is kind of hard
Yeah like you kind of have to mess up if you break a mirror but if you break a comb like I feel like you can just be combing your hair and they snap because they get old I guess if you were using like an old comb where it was wood or
Bone or shell or something like a really nice comb that would be a pretty big deal to break a comb so I would I would just stop using it once it got a certain age like after a few uses i’ be like all I need a new comb cuz this one’s
Probably getting fragile maybe you’re like telling your kids like oh be very gentle when you brush your hair because I don’t know I used to be really scared of breaking a mirror cuz I thought like I would literally like 7 years I mean it still sounds like a long time but when
You’re an 8-year-old kid you’re like that’s my entire life like yeah so another one is whistling at night attracts snakes so don’t do that unless you like snakes I don’t know the snakes don’t have ears listen they can tell when you’re whistling also do they
Not I don’t think so can’t can they just feel do the yeah they they flick their tongues cuz they’re like tast tast the yeah H I guess right if you’re a snake lover shoot us an email I’m pretty sure snakes don’t have ears we have Google we
Can just that’s true figure this out I just prefer the mystery you know we’ll Google it after the episode does Suchi noo have ears no actually yeah suin noo has to have ears because that’s how he runs away so quickly you can hear the people looking for him coming really yeah okay
Oh I just made that up I don’t know I don’t I don’t know either anyway what about spiders you got spiders down here yeah so Kumo is actually the same pronunciation for cloud so cloud and bear Kuma is bear and Kumo is cloud and it always messes me up
And then I learned that Kumo is also spider anyway if you find a spider in your house in the morning it’s good luck and you should never kill it but if you find it at night then you have to kill it because then they’re the workers of demons so dang I know
Yeah that’s all I have there’s lots of other why are the morning spiders good guys and the night spiders are these agents of the Demons I don’t know those poor guy’s got a bad I I feel bad for them it’s kind of like women at night oh
You see him walk in the streets at night oh that’s so dark sorry do you have any uh superstitions from just life I mean I’d have to think about it it to like the mirror but then I also always think about salt like did you ever have that one yeah we had that
My grandma wouldn’t take it from your hand you had to like put it on the table and then she would pick it up oh that wasn’t what I was talking about oh really yeah I was saying if you spilled salt you had to throw a pinch of it over
Your left shoulder oh we probably had that too we just had at the dinner table you couldn’t hand her salt directly oh really yeah you had to like put it on the table and then she would pick it up oh my mom has a thing where it’s really
She says it’s rude to to hand just the salt you have to always do salt and pepper together even if someone this more like an etiquette thing not a Superstition it’s not a Superstition you’re going to die wait so your grandma’s was only a Superstition yeah Superstition that’s interesting
Something about she wouldn’t take the salt directly from your hand H you’re not supposed it’s not a Superstition but you’re not supposed to take money directly from someone’s hands in Japan it’s why they have those trays at the cash register you’re supposed to put the money yeah cuz you don’t want to seem
Like you’re wrestling it away from them so you money whenever you’re checking out you put the money on the tray and then the cashier takes the money out of the tray and then yeah anyway well do you have a word of the week I do after all the words we’ve
Already said yeah a lot of bonus words in this episode so technically I have two oh gosh obasan and oisan oh okay these are pretty similar mean grandma and grandpa or they can also refer to your ants and uncles or they can refer to literally any elderly person middle-aged and older
That you see that is obasan a woman or oisan a man um and they don’t have to be related to you at all and the reason I’m bringing this up is because I had a student and she was using Google translate and she was trying to answer a
Question that was on a worksheet and she kept she wanted to write like I gave gave my grandmother directions mhm but then I was reading what she had typed into Google translate and I was like oh like I think she had typed like Ohan and I was like oh like literally your
Grandmother like your mom’s mom MH and she was kind of like really confused and so I had my like cooworker come over when we talked about it and he thought it was really funny because he had never really thought about it he was like and
Then he was like asking her he was like oh was it just an elderly lady you saw or was it your grandmother yeah and she was like oh no it was just an elderly lady and so then we had like you know a mini a mini lesson where we were trying
To explain oh like in English you I mean you kind of can but not really yeah it is interesting I mean also the difference between the words old and elderly like I guess a lot of it’s like tone too the way I would emphasize a
Sentence but if I said I help this old lady cross the street it’s a little less polite than I help this elderly woman cross the street you know like one is more kind of like this old lady couldn’t do it so I had to help and the other is
More like oh this poor elderly woman like yeah well all she kept coming up with was I helped this grandma or I helped my grandma because you know Google actually puts a lot of subjects in sentences when it translates and usually they’re totally wrong um but
Yeah so it was just like an interesting like note about the difference in Japanese that they don’t really make a big distinction using that word it’s kind of like for if that maybe this is too like theoretical but I wonder if that comes from a community in the past where it would be
A more tight-knit community and you would be raised by like multigenerational families kind of thing and there would just be more elderly people in your life or in your town and like more nice grandmother figures that you were just around a lot and it didn’t really matter if they were blood related
Could be maybe not it up well what’s your word my word is shuju oh yeah and I’m can technique actually yes really how do you know oh because you saw the kanji well yeah but also I know jutsu’s technique the I can see the kanji is looks like hand so it’s actually it
Means surgery oh but that is I guess a hand technique hand technique you have to be really skilled yeah but it’s it doesn’t have anything to do with surgery but I was talking about surgery with uh a friend of mine but she was saying it
And the way she was saying it was so quick I was like what what did you just say because if you say shuju it’s really like and I had to get her to write it down because the way she was saying it so quickly I couldn’t distinguish
Between like Sue or with the T or yeah anyway I felt really like silly but sometimes when people speak quickly I can’t distinguish all the syllables yeah catch off guard yeah oh so sh it’s fun to say quickly yeah but that I mean surgery fun and often obasan and ojisan
Needs a little bit of shujitsu I mean I guess if you want to connect the words yeah trying to draw a thread through it they sometimes have diarrhea my gosh sorry I just really bringing it back full circle we really should end it now yeah sorry okay
Well thanks for listening and we’ll see you guys next week I hope you have a good week thanks bye bye
This week we visit Kenrokuen (兼六園) in the snow, very early one morning! Zeb included some soundbites from our walk – did you know that every morning there’s a time you can enter the garden for free? We also talk about a coworker’s tip for making supermarket sushi taste better, a kotatsu river boat, and some superstitions from Japan.
28:49 – Jump to the snowy walk audio 🙂
You can see the snowy photos Zeb took of Kenrokuen here: https://www.ramblingramsbothams.com/blog/a-kenrokuen-snow-day
More info about the garden grounds: https://www.pref.ishikawa.jp/siro-niwa/english/info.html
You can listen to the podcast version here on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/14YWkQrsannDAufAcsLjP3?si=d2c565a5e55e4230 here on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rambling-ramsbothams/id1631197533 Or wherever you listen to podcasts!
🚲 Don’t forget to listen to the end to hear our Japanese “words-of-the-week,” visit our site at https://www.ramblingramsbothams.com, and head to @ramblingramsbothams on Instagram to see behind-the-scenes photos!
⚡ Have a question or idea? Send us an email at ramblingramsbothams@gmail.com
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🎙️ About Us: Ever wondered what living in Japan is like for foreigners? We’re Annie & Zeb Ramsbotham, hosts of “Rambling Ramsbothams”. While our journey in Japan might be rambling, we hope this podcast isn’t! Join us as we move from the United States to Ishikawa Prefecture, work in the JET Programme, explore Japan by bike, and navigate our new home. This podcast is for anyone curious about moving abroad, or what life in Japan is like for a couple of Americans. Listen and subscribe to Rambling Ramsbothams anywhere you get your podcasts!
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