Yen - Cascadian Abroad

New Year: Daruma Festival and Koma Shrine

October 6, 2024January 8, 2015 by Robert Haddan

The first week of the New Year is all about starting anew. There’s something about the changing of the calendar that invites retrospection of the year gone by and the setting of goals for the coming year.

Most of Japan is closed during the days surrounding New Year’s Day, giving people the opportunity to focus on starting the year right. In Kawagoe, that means heading out to Kita-in Temple’s Daruma Festival, held annually on January 3.

Daruma are round-ish dolls with bushy-featured faces and are believed to have inspired Russia’s iconic matryoshka dolls. Daruma dolls are about goal-setting for the coming year. They come in a variety of sizes and colors, each with a different meaning. They’re slightly weighted in the bottom so, if they’re tipped, they’ll always remain in an upright position like a Weeble. The feature is a metaphor for resiliency as Daruma are often associated with the phrase “nanakorobi yaoki (七転び八起き),” meaning “fall seven times and stand up eight.”

The Daruma’s eyes are both blank. Once you’ve decided on your goal for the year, you color in one of the eyes. If you accomplish your goal, you color in the other eye. If you don’t achieve your goal, well… I guess you have a Popeye Daruma.

2014's Charms — Kabura-ya and Daruma from 2014 pile up at Kita-in, waiting to be burned

At the beginning of the New Year, people bring last year’s Daruma and other charms (decorative arrows called kabura-ya (鏑矢) are another common New Year charm) back to the temple or shrine to be ceremonially burned. Mountains of 2014 charms piled near Kita-in’s main temple.

Daruma For Sale — One of many vendors selling Daruma for the New Year

Vendors lined the paths of the temple grounds with new Daruma and charms for sale. If you want general good fortune, buy a red one. Want to focus on love and happiness? Get a white one. Even corporations get in the act, buying larger Daruma equal to the audacity of the goal.

It wouldn’t be a Japanese festival without Japanese festival food and the Daruma Festival had plenty. Hockey puck-shaped pancakes filled with cream or sweet bean, called imagawayaki (今川焼き), are a popular sweet treat. Hot, steamed potatoes with butter, mayonnaise and kimchi are another mainstay at the local festivals. We managed to catch the okonomiyaki guy just before he sprinkled on the fish flakes, making for a filling lunch.

Kawagoe Hachimangu Mural — The new mural celebrating the Year of the Sheep at Kawagoe Hachimangu Shrine

Walking through town, many of the shrines were still packed with visitors paying their first respects of the year. One of our favorite little shrines, Kawagoe Hachimangu, featured a brand-new mural celebrating the year of the sheep.

Koma Jinja — Hanging out with Akinari at Koma Shrine in Hidaka

A couple days later, we visited Koma Shrine in nearby Hidaka. One of Viktoria’s students, Akinari, is a local and volunteers at the shrine during the holidays. He had ample opportunity to practice his English with us as we peppered him with questions about the traditions and meanings of different things.

Prayer at Koma Shrine — Waiting to approach Koma Shrine for prayers

He patiently walked us through the ceremonial hand washing process (temizu/手水) before paying respect at the shrine (toss a coin in the bin in front of the shrine, bow twice, clap twice, make your prayer then bow once).

We bought our fortunes (omikuji/おみくじ) for the year, which Koma Shrine kindly offered in English and Korean in addition to Japanese. Mine was only “Slightly Lucky,” so I tied it to the tree branch with all the others in hopes that the slight luck would attach to the tree instead of me.

Akinari’s job at the shrine is selling omamori (御守), charms that provide blessings and luck for the holder. Viktoria and Akinari each bought a ryokō anzen omamori (旅行安全御守) or a travel safety amulet to protect us on our various adventures abroad in 2015.

The search for the world’s greatest Imagawayaki continues at Koma Shrine

Akinari also gave us the low-down on some of the festival foods that we always wondered about. Hidaka’s past is intertwined with Japan’s complicated relationship with Korea and, as a result, has a lot of Korean influences. He explained toppoki (tteokbokki in Korean), which is mochi, tofu and eggs in a spicy sauce. We’d seen it before, but the mochi look like little sausages, so we always avoided it. It was delicious! We also continued our search for the best imagawayaki. This one may be the leader in the clubhouse!

Afterwards, he took us to nearby Kinchakuda-Manjushage Park, close to one of our favorite restaurants (Alishan Cafe). The park is famous for its red spider lilies, which bloom by the millions in the fall, flooding the rice field in a sea of red. Goats and horses at a farm opposite the park were apt as we closed out the Year of the Horse and rang in the Year of the Sheep (goats… sheep… close enough!).

Getting the local experience was really valuable and we couldn’t be more appreciative of Akinari giving up a Sunday night to show us around. It’s a great memory of our first New Year in Japan.

“Isn’t Japan Expensive?”

December 17, 2014 by Robert Haddan

A few weeks back, I asked for your burning questions to be answered in future posts. Here’s a question from Cascadian Deni:

We’re really enjoying your blog. You asked for questions a few postings ago. Here’s mine: We understand that Japan is very expensive vis-a-vis food. lodging, etc. Are you finding it so?

We’d heard the same thing before coming to Japan. After nearly nine months on the ground, my answer is “It depends.”

Food

Standard grocery items are similar in price. Here’s prices from last week in Tillamook, OR (thanks Mom!) for some staple items compared with current prices in Kawagoe (converted to USD and comparable measurements).

Item	U.S.	Japan
Eggs	$2.19/12 pk	$1.75/10 pk
Bread (premium)	$2.19/18 slices	$1.92/8 slices
Bread (store)	$1.67/20 slices	$0.82/8 slices
Milk	$0.99/pint (473 ml)	$0.88/500 ml
Apples	$0.88/lb	$0.95/lb
Bananas	$0.79/lb	$1.60/lb
Red bell pepper	$1.79/ea	$1.08/ea
Potatoes	$0.59/lb	$0.64/lb
Yogurt	$0.59/cup	$0.71/cup

*Prices compared on 12/12/2014 (exchange rate $1 = ¥119.03)

Pretty comparable. One thing that’s a little unique is that many items are sold in packs. For example, you can’t buy a single banana in our local grocery stores. They’re pre-wrapped at a standard weight (usually four or five to a pack). Because apples are in season, we can currently buy them individually, but they’re still priced per apple, not by weight.

Buying bread is probably the trickiest thing. The loaves are packaged in five, six or eight slices with different thicknesses. The most common is called shokupan—a soft, white, chewy milk bread. The thicker slices are kind of like “Texas Toast” while the thin slices are more like Wonder Bread. As with most things, the preference for slice thickness differs by region. We occasionally find whole-wheat bread but usually buy sesame bread (goma no pan/胡麻のパン) or brown rice bread (genmai pan/玄米パン) from the local bakery.

There are some exceptions on both sides. Some fruit—especially melons—is much more expensive in Japan. During the past summer, a whole cantaloupe cost around 1,000 yen ($8.42 USD). One with Hello Kitty’s face carved in the rind went for 5,000 yen (about $42).

Eating out seems to be similar to the U.S…. some places are more expensive than others. When we eat out in Tokyo, we’re usually picking cafe-style vegetarian restaurants where we pay about 1,000 yen for an entree. Japanese fast-food restaurants offer the lunch crowds big bowls of udon or soba for under 500 yen ($4.21 USD). In my opinion, Tokyo is no more expensive than any other large city in the world when it comes to dining out. In fact, I thought prices in Melbourne and Sydney were far higher than anything we’ve experienced in Tokyo.

The one area I’ll concede is more expensive on average is Tokyo’s craft beer bars. It’s common to pay 900-1200 yen ($7.58-10.11) for a pint of craft beer. Even the big brewery beers are 500 yen for a large glass.

Shelter and Transportation

Living expenses are where “it depends” really comes into my answer. Our lifestyle in Japan is significantly different than it was in the U.S.

Our two-bedroom apartment in Japan is about 1,400 square feet smaller than our house in Oregon. Our rent is much less than our mortgage and it’s less expensive to heat. The garbage bill is covered by the rental company. However, we pay less for rent than I paid in Salem, OR in 2005 for a place roughly the same size.

Utilities are reasonable as well. Our fiber-based internet is fast and less than we paid for Comcast high-speed service. Electricity and gas is also less, which only seems fair with the difference in home size.

Japan also suffered a housing bubble burst in 2008-09 as the U.S., but the market in the metropolitan areas has rebounded in recent years. New construction in our area also seems to be booming. Since we arrived in March 2014, four very large homes have been built on our street. Watching them being built from the ground up, I’d guess they’re about 2,200 square feet, which probably puts them in the $300,000 price range.

As I mentioned before, our lifestyle here is significantly different than it was in the U.S., which makes comparing some things difficult. We chose not to have cell phones while in Japan, which average more than $100 a month in the U.S.

We used to commute 45 minutes each way and, even with our gas-friendly Toyota Prius, we were still paying $40 a week for gas. Viktoria commutes to work through the courtesy of her own two feet, so we’re not paying for gas, vehicle maintenance or insurance. We regularly use trains and local buses, which can be as much as 1,500 yen each if we’re gallivanting around Tokyo, but usually 1,000 yen will last a couple weeks for trips around Kawagoe.

We have three large grocery stores, a giant home goods store and a 100 yen shop (like a Dollar Store in the U.S., although with the current exchange rate, it’s more like the 84 Cent Store) within a few blocks of our apartment, so we’re not paying jacked-up prices as a result of shopping local.

Health

Fortunately, we haven’t had to exercise our Japanese national health care plan yet. Upon becoming residents in Japan, we received our national health care cards. I’d rather not have to write the experiential post about how the health care system works. I’ve heard second-hand stories about how it seems more inconvenient than U.S. health care (requiring doctor visits for every prescription refill, preventative dental care isn’t as common), but I can’t validate those myself.

In the U.S., we were both public employees and had access to affordable, quality health care through our employers. In the last couple years, we had to start making small monthly pre-tax contributions, but it was still far better than what most private-sector employees contribute.

Travel

Traveling in country can be expensive, but it all depends on your lodging and transportation choices. For example, we found an excellent deal (less than $100/night) at the Hilton overlooking Hakata Bay and Fukuoka Tower when we went to Fukuoka in June. We used Airbnb (affiliate link) to find apartments on our recent trip to Osaka and Kyoto. We loved Airbnb when we traveled at home and usually found it to be far more affordable, convenient and comfortable than staying in hotels.

Transportation is usually the most expensive part of any trip and that’s no different in Japan. We flew from Tokyo to Fukuoka (548 miles) for about the same price as a flight from Portland to San Francisco (536 miles). The Shinkansen (bullet train) to Osaka was about 300 miles and was more expensive than flying, but that’s without considering the cost of the Shinkansen from Tokyo to the airport and back again. In the end, it was probably still more expensive to take the train, but also much more comfortable.

“Isn’t Japan Expensive?”

In our experience, I’d say the answer is “For some things, yes, but generally it’s no worse than the U.S.” Our personal cost of living is much less in Japan than in the U.S. For tourists, I don’t think it’d be much worse than our experiences in San Francisco, Chicago or Washington D.C. as far as dining out or lodging goes.

Thanks to Deni for the great question!

Lost in Japan… Again

June 20, 2014 by Robert Haddan

When I set out for my runs, I always have the same plan. Go halfway, turn around, go home. I’ve yet to actually do this. I always try to take a different route, and when I reach the halfway point, I see something that looks interesting and check it out. I usually add a mile of walking to my run as a result.

Yesterday, I set out for my run early on a 77 degree morning. I had a general route in mind for a 45 minute (roughly four miles) run. I turned on my Garmin GPS running watch and was on my way. But it happened again…

I did manage to turn around at the halfway point, but as I crossed the street, I discovered the narrow bridge in the road didn’t have a sidewalk. Instead of dodging traffic, I headed down a side street parallel to the bridge. I was looking for the river path, which I found, but it also led me into Kawagoe Park, where I hadn’t been yet.

It’s a fantastic park, complete with a pond and the ever-present swan boat rentals, tennis courts and a great running path with some shade. I followed the path for a bit until I came to the river path which would take me home. Here’s where it all went wrong.

I’ve decided that my navigation issues in Japan are due to the fact that none of the streets are straight. In the U.S., you can typically follow a street, pop up a block and still be running parallel to the previous street. In Japan, streets curve without reason and if your attention wanders for even a second, it’s all over.

As I approached the river path, I saw that the running path ran alongside it under some nice, shady trees. I stayed in the shade and then crossed the road to head for home. Apparently I got turned around, because instead of heading north for home, I was heading south.

Kawagoe’s a decent-sized city, but I saw enough potential landmarks that I thought I was still heading in the right direction. After about five miles though, I hadn’t seen the landmarks I was expecting. I did, however, see a giant battleship, a DeLorean (Back to the Future car!) on a roof and an oversized fiberglass chimpanzee in blue overalls.

I stopped in a 7-11, bought a water with my last 100 yen and asked for directions.

Matoba-eki wa doko desu ka? Where is Matoba Train Station?

The clerk drew me a map on the back of my receipt, indicating the station was just up the road a bit. I headed in that direction, his map perfectly guiding me… to Minamiotsuka Station on the south side of Kawagoe.

One thing I’ve come to learn about the Japanese is that they will give incorrect information before they come off as being unhelpful. The clerk basically gave me directions to the nearest train station, which sent me another mile in the wrong direction.

Things only got worse as I saw a sign for Belc Grocery Store, one of the landmarks I was seeking. I headed toward that, which is sort of like heading toward a Safeway in the states… there’s probably half-a-dozen Belc stores in Kawagoe. Finally, I came across a lady with a small produce stand. Huffing and puffing, I asked again… Matoba-eki wa doko desu ka?

She gave me a sort of pathetic look and said, what I gathered to be, you’re nowhere near Matoba Station. Totemo tooi desu ka? I asked while pulling distance between my hands in case my Japanese was faulty. She nodded yes with something between pity and empathy.

I usually don’t mind getting lost on my runs. I know I can’t get too far from home on foot and will eventually find my way, but for the first time, I was nervous. I had no clue where I was and knew that every step was likely taking me further from home. We had an appointment in Tokyo later in the day and I needed to be home. Usually I throw 1,000 yen in my pocket, just in case, but I didn’t have any money with me. About seven miles into my run, I alternated sprinting and walking back toward the main street.

That’s when my rescue plan came together. When we first arrived in Kawagoe, we took a taxi to our hotel. The driver lets you in, takes you to your destination, then collects payment. I headed back toward Minamiotsuka Station, where I hoped to find a taxi stand. Sure enough, two taxis had just pulled in and I flagged one of them down.

I gave the driver my address, he wrote it down to verify and we were on our way. I got a chance to try out a new phrase I’d just learned.

Nihongo ga chotto wakarimasu… I paused as I found the next words… demo ganbarimasu! The driver chuckled, my comedic timing translating to Japanese.

I only understand a little Japanese… but I try my best!

I guess the same can be said for my navigation skills. I made it home, safe and sound, and ran upstairs to grab my wallet. I was so far away from home that it cost 1,900 yen (about $19 USD) for the taxi ride. Best 1,900 yen I’ve ever spent.

In all, my 45-minute, four mile run became a one hour and 50 minute, 8.25 mile trek. My favorite part of the Garmin mapping of the run is the end. I’d left the watch on for a minute in the car, so the last split is a two-minute mile as we sped toward home.

One Yen

April 2, 2014 by Robert Haddan

Since arriving in Japan, the big topic of conversation has been the tax rate change. As of April 1, 2014, the sales tax rate is increasing from 5 percent to 8 percent. There has been a mad rush to buy goods before the change, especially higher-priced items where the rate has more impact.

NHK’s news had an interesting side story related to the hike. The one yen coin is basically a throwaway here. Most prices are rounded to the nearest tenth, so there isn’t much need for them with a 5 percent tax rate. However, the 8 percent rate increases the need for the coins.

Japan’s one-yen coin supply isn’t sufficient enough to handle the increased demand, so production of the coin has been restarted with new coins being created for the first time in four years. Since the coins are made of aluminum, there’s also an impact on acquisition of raw materials to make the coins.

As a former tax agency employee, I know lawmakers typically don’t think of all the impacts associated with a tax rate change. Apparently it’s a universal issue.