On Kappa

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Eryk Salvaggio

It takes time for new places to seep into my dreams. When I’ve left a place, my dreams take me back instead of forward.

Places go first – the familiar coffee shops, restaurants and bookstores stop serving as backdrops. People from the past populate new places, meet new people and occasionally trade faces or bodies.

Dreams about places in Japan have taken about 8 months to catch up. First was the shrine near my house, dreamlike even in life and never the setting of anything in either world.

And this is where I met my first kappa.

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Posted in Tradition, Uncategorized, Video, Weird | 5 Comments

On Walking On Fire in Japan

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Eryk Salvaggio

The most difficult part of walking on burning coals during a typhoon was finding the right train.

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Posted in Shinto, Shrines, Thinking, Tradition, Uncategorized, Video, Zen | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

On Watching a Baseball Game in Japan

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Eryk Salvaggio

American baseball spills beyond pastime and into national ritual, with more performances of the national anthem than the most fervent political race. But baseball in Japan strips the bleachers of their red, white and blue flare and keeps it firmly in the realm of the rising sun.

Here, the game is literally called “fielding ball,” and the twists on the game reveal as much to observers of Japanese culture as any sumo match.

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Posted in Fun, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

J-Cin Sundays: “Air Doll.”

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Eryk Salvaggio

Title: Air Doll
Director:  Hirokazu Koreeda
Year: 2009
Notes: Based on the comic “Kuuki Ningyo,” by Yoshiie Gōda.

TLDR: Amelie, if Amelie was an inflatable sex doll that magically came to life, and if Amelie made you really, really sad.

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Posted in Movies, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

On Being Homeless in Japan

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Eryk Salvaggio

I mistook her for a hump of discarded flannel until I saw her face, the unmistakable color of braised meat. She’s sleeping, sprawled across a cardboard box in front of a taxi stand. Her head rests on a plastic shopping bag filled with crumpled newspapers.

Her feet are on the mat, in stockings. Two blue slippers are on the sidewalk. The Japanese take this bit of hygiene seriously – shoes bring the filth of the outdoor world into clean domestic spaces, introduce mites to the tatami, kick rocks into the bathtub.

The homeless woman doesn’t let her shoes step on the tattered piece of discarded cardboard that she calls her home, tatami room and futon.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

How to Bow in Japan

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Eryk Salvaggio

On the first day in the office I met an intern I had mistaken for a teacher. I had taken a default position of addressing everyone with safe formalities and bowing at an angle just short of tying my shoes.

The intern returned a deeper bow and I bowed in return, which he returned even deeper. This action recycled itself until the intern literally ran from the bowing radius.

I’d find out later that the poor guy was bound by tradition to bow deeper than me. I was actually being an asshole.

Since then, I’ve learned a bit more about bowing in Japan.
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Posted in Culture Shock, Tradition, Uncategorized | 7 Comments