Month: December 2022

My Shichi-Go-San… I was Happy to be Born as a Girl

You might call it a reverse discrimination, but celebrating twice was better than once.

Photo of me and my mother in 1965

I totally forgot about this photo, but Diane Neill Tincher’s article on Medium has inspired me to time travel to 57 years ago!

Shichi-Go-San — The Day of Happy Shrine Visits for 3, 7, and 5 Year Olds

If you see the photo above, you might doubt if I was really three years old, but I was.  Since after 3 months I was born until 11 years old, I used to be the tallest kid in the class. 

I’m not one of these who have picture memories of very young age, so I have no recollection of what I saw, where I went, or how I felt on that day when I had my picture taken.  By looking at those photos in my album, I can only imagine what it was like back then. It’s hard to believe that my mother was once so young (no wrinkles!).  She must have been 26 then.

Another photo of me in Shichi-Go-San

Even my mother doesn’t remember which shrine we went.  It must have been an inconspicuous, a small local shrine somewhere eastside of Osaka Castle. 

My other photos from those days indicate that most of the road in the neighborhood was not paved yet.  As you can see in the picture above, houses were humble.  Back then Japan was experiencing high economic growth, but most people were poor or modest. 

Diane’s article mentions that both boys and girls celebrate at age 3, but as far as I remember,  only girls celebrated at age3.  In my memory, girls celebrated both at age 3 and 7 as boys celebrated only at age 5. 

I remember that I felt great that only girls get to celebrate twice in life whereas boys had only one chance to celebrate Shichi-Go-san. Maybe political correctness might have altered this “reverse gender discrimination”.

My Favorite Kimono was Woven by My Great Grandmother

This kimono has been passed down for four generations

The photo by Author

This kimono is the shortest I ever had, and the hardest to wear properly.  Still this is the kimono I cherish most.  Because my great grandmother wove the fabric.

This is the first kimono that my mother got when she came of age, maybe 18 or 19 years old.  Using one role of kimono fabric that my great grandmother had woven, my grandmother made this kimono for my mother. 

Before World War II, many farmers in the countryside of Japan used to be pretty much self-sufficient.   My mother’s village in Tokushima Prefecture was no exception.  My mother remembers the sound of handlooms in the neighborhood. 

Where my great grandmother lived was further deep in the mountains, and it’s no wonder to guess that my great grandmother used to grow her own mulberry trees, grow silkworm, get silk threads, and weave the fabric by hand at home. Such home-made silk fabric is called jiginu 地絹.

When my mother was born in 1938, my great grandmother was already dead. My grandmother was born 1903.  I can’t trace back when my great grandmother was born, but it’s safe to say that this kimono fabric is well 100 years old. 

If you touch this fabric, you feel slight unevenness. Far from the perfect smoothness you can get from the fabric woven by a skilled craft person in Kyoto. But you know, no other kimono can win my soul as much as this one. 

The design of the kimono is different from when it was originally made.  My mother had it redyed to much subtler colors years later.  Being able to redye is another secret to wear kimono for a long time. 

I’m trying to get more kimonos to support those skilled crafts people.  But how beautiful they may be, my favorite kimono will always be this short, uneven kimono.  Great grandma, thank you so much for making it!

A Video that Introduces You to Japanese Tea Ceremony

It shows you how a formal tea gathering is conducted.

Photo by Chado Urasenke Tankokai Seattle Association

“What is Japanese Tea Ceremony?” 

I don’t know how many times I have tried to answer this question in a short blog post, and each time I have failed miserably. 

No matter how I start the sentence, I always give up explaining the whole aspects of tea ceremony.  My writing ability is just not mature enough to condense it in short sentences or even paragraphs.

Fortunately, Medium allows me to post as many articles as I wish.  No page limits, no rigid rules on how long or how short each article should be.  I can include photos or even videos to supplement my lack of vocabulary or literary expression.

In tea ceremony, people gather to enjoy a bowl of tea.  There are range of formalities of how to conduct such a tea gathering.

The most formal tea gathering includes serving a light meal, sake, sweets, and two types of Matcha green tea.  It takes about 3-4 hours to conduct the whole process.

Our purpose to practice tea ceremony is fundamentally to conduct this formal tea gathering in the most enjoyable manner. 

Our tea ceremony study group, Chado Urasenke Tankokai Seattle Association, created a video titled “Invitation to Chakai.”

Chakai (茶会) means a tea gathering in Japanese. 

This 25-minute video describes how a typical formal tea gathering progresses in a condensed format. 

By watching this video, hopefully you’ll get the idea of how a formal chakai is conducted. 

Enjoy the video!  If you have any question, please feel free to comment. 

5 Benefits to Practicing Ikebana

It is great both for your physical and mental health.

Photo by Author

Growing up, I always thought of myself as somebody getting bored so easily.  I started practicing the piano at three years old and quit by eleven.  Singing lasted only three years.  Calligraphy, maybe shorter than that.

In my life version 1.0, I never worked for the same company for more than 10 years. 

It’s amazing, therefore, that I have been practicing Ikebana for over 20 years.  Well, I have to admit there was a gap of almost 7 years, but I came back to Ikebana and haven’t left since. 

There must be some reason why I’m hooked and haven’t quit Ikebana.  Today I took some time to list up some benefits, for your reference.

#1 It’s meditative

Once you sit down in front of the container and start putting together branches and flowers, your entire focus is set between your eyes and your hands, nothing else.

How the arrange will look like at the end is secondary.  You are thoroughly immersed in the process, and it’s meditative.

Writers often talk about “flow state” of their mind.  Ikebana enables you to be in that state of mind.  

#2 It brings you closer to nature

You cut a branch or a stem of flowers from the nature, but it’s still alive.  You touch the nature directly with your hands.

Some are fragile, some are sturdy.  Some are flexible, some are rigid.  Some smell nice, some stink. 

By touching the part of nature, you find your five senses get sharpened.

#3 It stimulates your brain

You try to erect the branches by interlocking them, but you face the natural force of gravity.  Where to add another branch to support the rest? How much more tension is needed to keep it standing? 

Believe or not, Ikebana is not too different from 3-dimentional puzzles.  Or maybe engineering.  You have to think logically.

#4 It keeps you physically fit

You might find interesting materials laying on the ground on your everyday route for a walk. 

Or you want to use that rather large branch of the tree grown in your back yard.  You have to use a saw to cut branches, nails and hammer to put together branches. 

A large container is heavy to carry with lots of water in it.  Ikebana can be a good exercise.

#5 It grows your circle of friends

Ikebana practitioners are spread all over the world.  Ikebana International, a non-profit organization, has been active for over 60 years. 

If you have been practicing Ikebana for some time, normally you are given a chance to belong to a local chapter.  (There is one in Seattle.  Actually, I’m serving as president for this year.) 

No matter where you go, chances are that there is a local chapter of Ikebana International in major cities.  You get to make new friends easily through Ikebana.

See, I could easily find 5 benefits to keep practicing Ikebana.  I hope the list has intrigued you somehow.

Thank you for reading! 

Time to Apologize to My Camellia Tree

I almost killed it years ago.

Camellia buds: Photo by Author

Seattle is known for gloomy, rainy days in the winter.  Today is such a typical Seattle weather, although just about for a second I saw bright sunshine. 

Even on such a day, I found a bud with a hint of vivid pink/red dot on the camellia tree in my tiny yard.  Maybe it’s only a day or two away from blossoming! 

For about two or three months, this camellia is practically the only flower I can enjoy for my Ikebana from the yard.  Not only the striking flowers, the thick, shiny, vivid green of its leaves are so attractive, aren’t they? 

Sofu Teshigahara (勅使河原蒼風, 1900 – 1979), the founder of Sogetsu School of Ikebana, loved camellia so much and he created many Ikebana arrangements using only with camellias.  Looking at his photo books, I’m always amazed how versatile his depictions are about this lovely flower. 

I have a confession to make…

It must be over 25 years ago.  We just moved in this house and I was a new student of Sogetsu Ikebana.  Inspired by one of the works of our Grand Master Sofu Teshigahara, I decided to plant a camellia tree in the yard, hoping to use it for my Ikebana someday. 

I got a small sapling at the local arboretum and planted it. 

I didn’t realize how long it takes to grow it.  After 3 or four years I planted the tree, it was still tiny.  I gave up the idea of using this tree for my arrangement and started planting perennials next to it.  Those perennials were already in bloom. 

I lost my balance when trying to dig a hole, and inadvertently I stepped on the still tiny camellia sapling.  It was bend and also heavily damaged.  I almost gave it up, thinking it won’t last another year.

The trunk of the camellia tree: Photo by Author

You can see how crooked the trunk is at the bottom of this tree.  That’s my doing.  But the tree is still alive, and each winter it gives me so much joy with the abundant flowers. 

I’m sorry, Camellia.  It must have been painful when I stepped on you.  Thank you so much for thriving now regardless.  You look so beautiful!

How to Prepare Yourself to Welcome the New Year

It starts with deep cleaning.

Photo by ochimax studio on Unsplash

Year 2022 is coming to an end. Twenty-six days left, to be exact. How would you like to spend these remaining days?

There may be a lot of holiday parties you are invited to.  There is nothing wrong with saying farewell to the passing year with your friends. 

If you want to welcome and head start a fresh year 2023 come in January, however, why not spending a few days in December to prepare yourself for that head start?

In Japan, Christmas is not even a national holiday.  I used to go to work on Christmas Day.  The largest holiday is the New Year’s, and in order to welcome the New Year, people spend extra time to deep clean everything at the end of December.  They call the deep cleaning “Oo Soji” (大掃除).  It’s been 28 years since I moved to Seattle from Japan, but I still continue this deep cleaning custom to mentally prepare myself to welcome the New Year.

My focus on this deep cleaning is to take a closer look at each space and get rid of things I don’t need.  In the drawers, in the closet, on the bookshelf… I go each space one by one.  I find things I had thought I might need later, but I ended up not using anyway.  Do I really need it in the future?  Not quite. Then toss it!

This simple process of tossing things methodically, is quite meditative.  Not only getting rid of things physically, I feel I’m emptying my mind.  Clearing out my mental clutter. 

Once I toss out things I don’t need, I now find enough empty space in each drawer, closet, and shelf.  When the new year comes, I’m prepared to fill in such empty space with brand new items. 

Just like I emptied the physical space, I feel as if I have created empty space in my mind, ready to welcome whatever comes the next year. 

Maybe you need only a few extra hours.  Or a coupe days.  How about spending some time in December to prepare yourself? Make empty space physically and mentally to welcome the brand new year?

No, Time doesn’t Fly Any Faster in December

Let’s face it.  It’s all in our heads only.

Photo by Lucian Alexe on Unsplash

Thanksgiving is behind us.  It’s already December.  Soon year 2022 will be over. Time flies scaringly fast, doesn’t it?

Really?

We all know that time passes at an equal pace.  There is no short one minute nor long minute.  Then why do we use such an irrational expression as “time flies fast”?

If you look back the past three years since the world experienced the COVID-19 pandemic, do you feel that each year, 2020, 2021, and 2022, has passed at the same rate?  Maybe not.

Depending upon what you accomplished or didn’t accomplish, what happened or didn’t happen, the length of each year seems to be so different. 

As for me, year 2021 seems to have been as short as only a couple of months.  I can’t quite recall what I did that year, that’s mainly because I didn’t travel by plane at all. 

I had to go back the calendar, tracing all the online classes, meetings, and events that hosted or attended, in order to convince me that 2021 was actually the whole year.

My inclination is to blindly follow my perception where time is elastic like a rubber band. Hence words like “time flies fast” slips.  But let’s not.  Let’s acknowledge that elasticity is happening only in our heads.  Let’s face the existential reality.

The nature has been marking the passage of time on a constant pace. (I’m not a physicist and General Relativity is beyond my comprehension.) A day in December is no different than a day in January or a sunny day in August in terms of length. 

There are still 27 days left this December.  We can get a lot of things done in 27 days.  Let’s not give our mind an excuse to let the time slip by.         

How Can a Japanese Career Woman Learn Ikebana?

I had to come all the way to the US to be free from my stigma

What is the first thing that comes to your mind if you think about Japanese culture?

Anime? Manga? Sushi? Ramen? Geisha?

For someone like me, a Japanese woman who came of age in the 1980s, they were Ikebana (flower arrangement) and tea ceremony. 

In those days, it was the social norm in Japan that a woman should become a good housewife, rather than pursue her career. Ikebana and tea ceremony were the two main things that she should learn before marriage.

I was a rebellious, ambitious girl, pursuing a modern career.  Why would I want to learn such outdated things? 

When I was in college, my mother said, “why don’t you learn ikebana and tea ceremony? Kyoto is the birthplace of both, so there should be good teachers there.”

“Hell no!” was my answer.

I graduated from college and got a job in Tokyo in 1985. I was one of only two women out of 250 college graduates that my company hired on the main career path (sogoshoku in Japanese).

Three years later I was one of 20 employees selected to study for an MBA in the US. After getting an MBA, I quit my first job to work for the Japanese subsidiary of an American high-tech company. In the summer of 1994, I moved to Seattle to work for the company’s headquarters.

My work at the headquarters required me to visit Asian subsidiaries, including Japan, quarterly.  On my first or second business trip back to Japan, I picked up a book called “Ikebana for beginners” at a bookstore.     

The book was full of illustrations, which looked like the geometry textbook in high school.  “Ikebana explained in X-Y-Z axis, how cool is that!” was my honest impression.

When I came back to Seattle, I called the Japanese consulate general office and asked if there is an ikebana teacher in town. (You know, it was before the world wide web era.)   They introduced me to a Japanese lady who was teaching Ikebana in Mercer Island, halfway from my house to work.  How lucky!

To this day, it is not clear why I picked that book at the bookstore, and why I was determined to learn Ikebana in Seattle.  Maybe I felt a strong need to find my identity at work. Among the 60-plus-people worldwide marketing group, I was the only Japanese representing the whole “Far East” countries. 

Whatever the reason, it is the fact that I had to come all the way to the US to get rid of my stigma against Ikebana.  Had I stayed in Japan, I would never have thought of learning it.   

Anthurium and Japanese Anemone Arranged by Akemi

My response to A to Z challenge with my ikebana arrangements

Photo by Author

I have been practicing Ikebana (the art of Japanese flower arrangement) over 25 years, and have been taking photos of my work. 

In my early days, I never thought of keeping every arrangement I made in a photo.  Only it became easy to take a shot with a digital camera and now with a photo, I accumulate my work as pictures.

When I learned about the A to Z challenge, I wondered how many flowers that start with A I can find… I just found two, if Japanese Anemone can be counted as A. 

Anthurium

Last December I was asked to make a festive arrangement by a local restaurant. 

The vivid, shiny, thick red of anthurium was my choice.  In order to emphasize the shape, I combined the three anthurium with a large palm leaf, bending like a circle to create a dramatic shape in the back. 

I added white baby breath to soften the overall impression.

Japanese Anemone

I planted Japanese Anemone in my backyard.  From late summer to all through the fall, the pinkish flowers decorate the corner of my yard.  I have Jasmine vine right next to the anemone and decided to put these two together. 

The vase is made of bamboo.  The almost perfect circle shape of the vase inspired me to replicate the circles with the jasmine vine.  The only one anemone flower in the center, as a focal point. 

Akemi

And here is a picture of me demonstrating ikebana in front of 20 people at a private event.  The challenge of the demonstration is I have to arrange from the back, imagining how it would look like from the front.

Ikebana is a very easy way to bring the beautiful nature into your everyday life.  Utilizing nature’s creation, you create something totally new with your own creativity and imagination. 

I hope to share with you the joy of Ikebana more in my future articles.  I hope you will enjoy it.

The Magic of Christmas Market in Vienna

It was the best place to catch up with our old friend

Photo by Author

In the flights from Seattle to Vienna (via Amsterdam), we seldom slept.  Two o’clock in the afternoon in Vienna time was five in the morning in Seattle.  We lost almost a day of sleep and we were pretty much exhausted. 

“Would you like to rest in bed for a while?”  Asked our friend.  If we sleep now, we won’t be able to sleep at night.  In order to get rid of jet lag as soon as possible, it’s best we keep awake until the night comes. 

Fortunately, the weather on that day was accommodating for an afternoon walk.  We didn’t see the sun, but it was not raining, snowing, nor windy. It was not too cold, either.

After unpacking and enjoying a cup of coffee and the apple pie our friend baked, we put on our shoes again and went out into the town. 

A large campus of Vienna University was within a walking distance.  The building used to be a hospital.  At a first glance, the building looked so huge that it encircled the whole block.  Without our friend’s lead, we would never have crawled the entry way inside. 

Inside the walls of intimidatingly long building was a nice courtyard-turned-to Christmas market and a little amusement park.  It was Sunday and there were many local families with little children.    

Sorry, the market folks.  We didn’t do any Christmas shopping.  All we bought was a cup of warm liquor and a small bag of roasted chestnuts.  Over this drink and snack, and by strolling around the pathway under the twinkling illumination, we (especially my husband and my friend) were able to fill in the gap of over 10 years quickly. 

The magic of Christmas market in Vienna.