Dec

Mochi: A Cultural Encounter

by Janine Boylan on December 31, 2012

Japanese New Year's mochi decoration, showing a cultural encounter

Japanese plastic mochi © Janine Boylan

Japanese Traditions for the New Year

When I was living in Japan, I made every effort to have as many cultural encounters as possible. I picnicked with friends under the cherry blossoms in the spring. I participated in a formal tea ceremony. I attended events at the local museum. I even threw pots with a local potter.

So, around December, when these bright, shiny plastic packages started appearing in grocery stores, I knew it was time for another cultural encounter!

I was ready and eager. I stared at the package. A cat with raised paw! I had seen many of these already. The raised paw is meant to be beckoning wealth. These cats are considered good luck charms.

But what was that flattened, faceless snowman with the crazy bow tie? And what does one do with it? I searched the package for clues, but, since I couldn’t read the writing, I found nothing that helped.

A few days later, I was walking by the train station. Several men in traditional robes were chanting. One man had a giant wooden hammer and was pounding something white and sticky in a huge wooden bowl. Understandably, a small crowd had formed.

However, no one but me looked concerned. In fact, the entire crowd was quite amused when the man turned and placed the hammer in my hands. He gestured to me to hit the sticky glob in time with the chanting. I obeyed.

I had no idea what was going on. After a few half-hearted whacks, I returned the hammer, smiled, and gave a small bow. Then I shuffled away as quickly as I could. I did note just before I left, however, that the glob looked suspiciously like the mysterious faceless snowman (just with no bow tie).

After that, I saw more and more faceless snowmen appear around town. I noticed that, in addition to the shimmering bow ties, many snowmen boasted small oranges like perky caps. Thankfully, there were no more real men with big wooden hammers.

Japanese New Year mochi, showing a cultural encounter

traditional Japanese mochi for the New Year © Thinkstock

Since, at the time, I didn’t have a computer to look up “faceless sticky snowman with orange on top,” I had to search and find someone who could explain the mystery to me.

I learned that it is a Japanese New Year tradition to make a sticky treat called mochi from rice. Often there are ceremonies, like in front of the train station, where the public can participate in the pounding. The rice gets walloped until it submits into a stretchy, thick, white blob. Then it is covered in rice flour and formed into two disks, a smaller one on top of a larger one.

The disks represent the old year and the new year. The orange on top, called daidai, represents the continuation of family from generation to generation. Oh, I see. I had had my cultural encounter without knowing it was happening!

People can either get fresh mochi, or they can purchase plastic-encased mochi like the ones I originally saw in the store. Then they place these New Year’s offerings in their home until around January 11. By then the mochi is dry and cracked. Families break it apart (never cutting–that would be bad luck!) and cook and eat it.

Japanese New Year mochi, ready to be broken and cooked © Thinkstock

Since my first cultural encounter with mochi, I have learned to love the sticky rice treat. And my mochi-making career still has hope.

Just last year, I found myself in San Francisco at Japantown Peace Plaza pounding mochi again. This time I was chanting and pounding with confidence.

But I’m not sure I’m ready to compete with the skilled mochi-pounding children featured in this video. It was filmed in San Francisco’s Japantown at Kristi Yamaguchi’s Children’s Day Festival when they gave a mid-year performance of this Japanese cultural tradition.

If the video does not display, watch it here.

As the New Year approaches, people around the world, like me, who love Japanese cultural traditions, are proudly displaying faceless snowmen with glittery bow ties and orange caps.

Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございます

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Janine Boylan 1 Comment

Cultural Encounters/Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Japan

Dec

Ten Christmas Traditions Stuffed in Stockings ‘n Shoes

by Janine Boylan on December 24, 2012

Christmas stocking showing Christmas traditions in different cultures

American Christmas stocking
© Janine Boylan

How Different Cultures Fill ‘Em Up

Every Christmas morning, plump velvet stockings line our hearth. And Christmas tradition dictates that each stocking has a tangerine and a brand new penny in it.

Getting the Hang of Stockings and Shoes

According to legend, the Christmas stocking originated when three impoverished girls hung their freshly-washed socks by the fire to dry. Walking by their home that evening, Saint Nicholas saw the stockings, and, feeling pity for the girls, secretly filled each sock with a generous bag of gold. The gold changed the lives of the girls forever.

Shoe stuffed with gifts representing Christmas traditions of different cultures

Traditional gifts in a modern shoe
© Thinkstock

Today, oranges or tangerines symbolize the bags of gold. I never thought too much about this until the first Christmas with my husband. Finding his tangerine, he said, “What’s this for?”

A basic Oh, I see moment—not everyone has the same traditions around stockings! In fact, in many different cultures, the shoe is the item of choice for stuffing.

Though the concept of giving is common across cultures, timing and traditions differ, bringing a true gift, the gift of cultural diversity, to our world.

Traditions Across Different Cultures

Just take a look at how variations of holiday stocking and shoe traditions abound worldwide:

United Kingdom Stockings are hung on the mantle or from beds in order to catch the coins that Father Christmas drops down the chimney. If there are no stockings, the money will be lost.
Ecuador Some children tuck Christmas lists into their shoes. The lists are replaced by Papa Noel with new shoes and presents.
France French children neatly arrange their shoes in front of the fireplace on Christmas Eve. Père Noël comes during the night and fills the shoes with candy and toys. In anticipation, wooden renditions of Père Noël often grace the doors of homes in Southern France.
Wooden Père Noël in a Provence village
© Sheron Long
Slovak Republic St. Nicholas leaves candy and fruit in children’s shoes. Unruly children find coal.
Hungary Children set boots in the window. Mekulash, the Hungarian Santa, fills well-behaved children’s boots with fruit, nuts, and chocolate. Misbehaving children receive a stick or switch. Apparently few children are perfect: many children find their boots have both candy and a switch.
Iceland During the Christmas season, children leave their shoes on the windowsill. Thirteen mythical elves called Jolasveinar visit one at a time over thirteen days to leave gifts in the shoes of the good children. Bad children receive potatoes!
A European window ready for Christmas boots
© Thinkstock
China Although Christmas is not widely celebrated in China, some children hang muslin stockings for Dun Che Lao Ren, Old Man Christmas, to fill.
Italy Broom-riding La Befana visits Italian children and delivers toys, fruit, and candy. Disobedient children find coal-filled shoes instead.
La Befana fills children’s shoes in Italy
© Thinkstock
Netherlands Children fill their wooden shoes with hay and carrots for St. Nicholas’s horse. He exchanges their offerings with toys and candy.
Spain Children leave their shoes near the door, fireplace, or balcony for the Wise Men on Three Kings Day. Children may leave hay for the camels as well. In the morning, the children’s shoes are stuffed with toys and candy.

And What About That “Naughty or Nice” Idea?

Not only does the custom of shoes or stockings vary in different cultures, but also whether or not the stuffings reflect that concept of “naughty or nice”—coal and switches on the naughty side; toys and candy on the nice.

If you participate in Christmas customs, do you follow the tradition of “naughty or nice”? Take our reader poll and let us know what you’re expecting this year.

Silly Santas, showing Christmas traditions in different cultures

Santas bearing trees
© Sheron Long

[polldaddy poll=6786830]

If poll does not display, take it here.

VIA Museum of Science and Industry

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Cultural Diversity/Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Worldwide Sites

Dec

Teaching in Japan: A Cultural Encounter with Language

by Janine Boylan on December 3, 2012

The letter J symbolizing a cultural encounter with language while teaching in Japan (Image courtesy of Thinkstock)

What sound does the letter J make?

This Lesson Brought to U by the Letter J

After over a dozen years of formal “foreign language” instruction, I should be able to communicate in a language besides English with ease. But I can’t.

Sure, I have managed enough language to have ridiculous conversations like trying to explain, in Russian, why some Americans drink green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. And I’ve been able to ask, in Japanese, where to find baking soda in a grocery store. Unfortunately, those may be my greatest language accomplishments.

More typically, my cultural encounters with language seem to involve a lot of very puzzled looks.

The Sound of the Letter J

Fortunately, I do feel pretty comfortable with English. In fact I felt comfortable enough with it that I took a job teaching English in Japan. In my school, I was the only native English speaker. The other teachers had grown up speaking primarily Japanese, but they were quite fluent in English (thank goodness—they could answer all the questions I had about living in Japan).

So I felt confident when one of the other teachers asked me a phonics question: What sound does the letter j make?

I knew that there wasn’t an exact transferrable sound in the Japanese language so I could understand why there was a question about it. But, then again, this was someone teaching English, so why was she asking me this?

She explained that the school supervisor had told the teachers that the letter j makes the sound “joo” (rhymes with shoe), and they should not be teaching that the letter j makes the sound “juh.”

No, I explained, j says “juh.”

By this time, a group of teachers had formed around me. One cocked her head as if to challenge me, “Are you sure?”

In this cultural encounter, my confidence flickered. But, no, I knew the letter j was pronounced “juh.”

The Sound of Respect and Honor

The teacher circle scattered, but the whispers remained like ghosts. For several days, one or another teacher would graciously ask me again about the letter j and how to pronounce it. If the truth is questioned long enough, you begin to doubt it. Was I wrong?

Then, as if by magic, the questions suddenly disappeared. The letter j magically and confidently had the sound “juh.”

I’ll never know exactly what happened to make this change. I assume it was the work of the teachers. And, looking back, now I see that it wasn’t phonics or language that was the issue.

The unspoken issue in this situation was the Japanese value of respect and honor.

Questioning the supervisor’s knowledge might make him lose face, which may be one of the worst infractions in the Japanese culture. The situation needed to be handled tactfully so that the teachers could teach the correct lesson and the supervisor would not be embarrassed. The teachers knew this and must have handled it accordingly.

They also, wisely, did not take the headstrong American girl (me) directly to the supervisor to explain what sound the letter made. Instead, they continued to gently question me until the truth became clear—even though I felt like their motive was to change my mind about it!

At the Heart of Communication

I learned that a critical part of communicating in any language is learning what’s behind the words—the culture, the ideas, the traditions. Memorizing the sounds the letters make and how to form verb tenses is the easiest part of communication.

Although the j linguistic cultural encounter happened in another country in another language, this “Oh, I see” moment often helps me in my daily attempts to communicate. It’s important to consider not only what is being said, but what isn’t being said.

And, by the way, finding baking soda in a Japanese grocery store is a piece of cake.

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Image of the letter J courtesy of Thinkstock

Janine Boylan 2 Comments

Cultural Encounters/Japan/Language & Culture

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