My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed Akinari’s Tales of Moonlight and Rain – eventually. Unfortunately, the translator’s introduction is long and gives the impression that one simply will not possibly be able to understand or enjoy the tales unless one is a scholar of Japanese history and literature – if that’s not bad enough, the intro also contains spoilers! This is a great shame because, while of course one will get more out of them if one has read the same texts as the author and has in mind the same history as readers of the day, they are perfectly accessible stories which can be enjoyed for their own sake.

If I may be so bold, I’d like to suggest a different order in which to read this book.

1)skip the book introduction and the introduction to each tale and go straight to the tales themselves (marked by a dark moon and a large, illustrated first letter) and read them for pure enjoyment, first. The footnotes that the translator supplies relate to notes at the end of each tale (not the notes at the bottom of the pages which are essentially language notes) and they provide plenty of information, if not a little too much, for pure enjoyment.

2)AFTER you have read each tale, read the translator’s introduction to each one, they will give you historical notes etc… which will shed a little more light on what you’ve just read but will also make more sense to you after you’ve read the tale, and you’ll also avoid spoilers.

3)After THAT, if you want to know more about the author and the place of the Tales in Japanese literature, read the introduction and the bibliography and throw yourself into an academic frenzy!

If you do enjoy the tales, then look for the works of Lafcadio Hearn

View all my reviews

Oh, and if you have happened upon this post because you are wondering if you want to live in the Kakuozan, Chikusa area, I definitely recommend it (in fact the main character of my current novel lives there!)

View Kakuozan Life! Google Map.

It took me a year to get my 10-17mm fisheye lens and I finally managed to get down to the building in the dying light of our last day in the city. I was terribly sad that day, and much of it was spent doing obligatory things with other exiting ex-pats who couldn’t give a damn that they were leaving, were actually excited about it and even laughed when they noticed I was struggling with tears, so snatching those couple of hours to do a walk about the city I’d fallen in love with and spend some time with ‘my building’ was precious.

I really should have got around to it earlier as I learned a lot from looking at the images afterwards, and would have loved a second go, but here are some of the results.

Do full screen the slideshow if you can, it will heighten the fisheye effect. I hope you enjoy this beautiful building.

The plan was to do our best to treat Sydney as though it were Japan and continue to travel, playing tourist in our own land, and continue to blog about life as an ex-pat wife, hopefully hitting on the odd issue that could be helpful to someone. It seemed a good plan; we lived here for 18months before we moved to Japan and it was, indeed, like moving to a foreign country (I genuinely found Japan easier), so clearly there were difficulties worth addressing. Now that we’re here, however, the cost of living prevents us from being able to travel as we did in Japan, so travel and photography will be limited to the, not unattractive, metropolitan area. What is more, in the few months we’ve been here, I’ve found solutions to the main problems we had living here last time and, while I will eventually write those posts, there really aren’t that many ways to say "Have lots of money" and "Don’t live in The Shire".  

Nevertheless, life is not lacking excitement, even if it is the kind of excitement which only that percentage of the population which identifies as ‘writers’ (and possibly musicians and other creatives) would define as such. Perhaps it’s the lack of beautiful architecture luring me from my desk, and/or the removal of the constant, low-grade stress of living in a land in which you do not speak the language, but my narrative disorder has returned with a force I have not experienced for many years, perhaps even since high school. Characters are tramping through my head all night, scenes are playing like movies in my mind’s eye, often from the moment I wake. When sitting down to write each weekday, my only creative angst derives from trying to unravel the big ball of scenes which seems to have replaced my brain. It’s bliss!

All that is not to say that it’s easy. No matter how quickly or slowly scenes come to mind, rarely do they come in order, and, despite the phrasing sometimes used to describe the process, nothing actually writes itself. What is different at the moment is that the scenes come so fast that it’s all I can do to get them down, and there is simply no time for self-doubt. For years, I’ve understood intellectually the theory that you have to take off your editor’s hat while writing your first draft. I’ve repeated the advice as mantras: "You can’t edit what you haven’t written"; "If it’s worth doing well, it’s worth doing badly till you learn", trying to convince myself not to second-guess as I go, but I’ve never before managed to achieve it. I’d like to think that I’ve reached some kind of personal and professional turning point, that this new state is the result of my continual practice and study of the craft, and that it will be, if not permanent, at least something I can call upon at will, but I daren’t tempt the Gods by assuming such a thing.

And so, the answer to my original question becomes clear: the blog will return to its original subject – my Adventures in Wordcraft (I wonder if I still have any readers from when the blog was called that?) Whether this blissful state is permanent or not, I’ll be doing everything I can to nurture it and, while I probably won’t share my actual writing with you here, I will do my best to share anything that helps me to keep this state going. Off the top of my head, I can imagine posts might include: reviews of books on writing; alerts to a writer/agent/publisher whose blog or tweets I find inspiring; recommendations of tech that make reading or research easier; reviews of fountain pens and inks I use to slow down and create less frantically; or even a recipe for some comfort food to soothe a ragged, creative soul. 

To those of you who came to this blog because it was about Japan, I want to say thank you for reading these past eighteen months, I hope I was able to help your own Japanese experiences in some small way. I have a few posts on Japan left in me, but only a few. Many of you are also writers and I hope you’ll stick around to see where this goes, but I won’t be surprised or upset if I see my subscriptions and views dropping substantially – it’s quite a ride, the whole ex-pat jBlogger thing, even from the sidelines where I’ve been hanging out!

Of course, the most important way to nurture the muse is to answer its call to write, so chances are there will be awfully long gaps between posts, but I imagine only family, friends and writers will be watching for Narrative Disorder to go bold on their feed readers, so I’m sure I’ll be forgiven. 

From my desk to yours, happy writing!!

A quick caveat: make sure you know what the importation rules are for your country before you buy them – you don’t want to find them confiscated at the other end!

I’ll break this down into a few sections:
Where to go
Handy Japanese Phrases
How to decide what to buy

Where to go

Kappabashi, specifically Kappabashi Dogugai Dori between Kototoi Dori and Asakusa Dori, and its side-streets, is the place Tokyo restaurant and cafe suppliers go to get all the hardware they could possibly need, whether it’s cooking supplies, ceramic ware, bento trays, enamelware, plastic utensils and storage, or four foot tall,ornamental (I assume) cheese graters – and it’s where you should go, too.  Even if you aren’t shopping for knives, if you have any interest in ceramics or home wares, plan at least a half a day there. It is a dedicated supply area, though, so bring water and expect to have to go elsewhere to eat as there’s not much around. Also expect the occasional store person to grunt “20 minimum” at you in some of the shops – but only some, most are happy for the tourist trade.

The district is easily walking distance from Tawaramachi, Ueno, Iriya and Asakusa Stations.

So, where to go for the knives?

THE BIG SECRET:
Don’t buy your knives on the main street!!

As I said, Kappabashi Dogugai Dori is the main street that you will turn down when you get there and you will soon come across plenty of knife shops with many of the brands you know (including some German ones) and the prices don’t look so bad – a bit cheaper than they would be in the States but not impressively so. These guys are very welcoming of tourists and so they should be because I’d say tourists would be the only people who don’t know that they are spending soo much more if they buy there than if they just went up the street a bit more and round the corner!

If you keep heading down the K. Dogugai Dori you will find Kappabashi Hondori – a very small street which doesn’t look like much but it’s the place to go.

Turn East up Kappabashi Hondori and just a couple of doors up you will find the tiny, but chock-full-o-knives, Union Commerce knife shop.

In Union Commerce we found the same knives that we saw in the main street for 50 to 120 US dollars LESS.  Yes the extreme examples were on sale but, and here’s the trick, some of it will always be on sale because there is another little knife shop directly across the street and their blackboards and posters were clearly competing with each other!

I can’t tell you what the customer service was like in the shop across the road because I didn’t do much else but peek at the sales board but it’s probably worth a look inside.  At Union the staff (owners?) are passionate about knives and have seemingly endless patience for broken Japanese and charades! I left very happy with my beautiful sleek black boxes having saved approximately 450 USD over the five that I bought.

Handy Japanese Phrases

Hocho= Knife (you will also hear the word ‘bocho’ if you are listening well – this is the same word but ‘h’ is turned to ‘b’ after some syllables for easier pronunciation)

[Brand name] no hocho = [Brand name"] knife. Use this if there is a particular brand of knife you are looking for (though I suggest you have some flexibility unless you’ve really done your research!)  e.g., Shun no hocho; Misono no hocho; Maku (Mac) no hocho

Misete kudasai (Meesehtay koodahsigh) = Please show me. You can use this any time, it’s very handy when shopping, just point to what you want to see and say “Misete kudasai” with a bit of a question in your voice and they will bring the item for you to see more closely.

You now have a sentence, btw,  Misono no hocho, misete kudasai? = Could you please show me a/the Misono knife/knives? (no plural in Japanese)

Kore o kudasai (koray oh koodahsigh) = Please give me this one (or I’ll take this one) Use this after you’ve done all your exploring and decided on a knife that you want to buy. Try not to use this one before you are ready to buy – use “misete kudasai” if you want them to just show you a knife so that they don’t get confused.

Note: “kore” means “this” or “this one just here that I am pointing to right at the moment, see?” and is used when the thing is close enough to touch – store people will often point and say “kore?” to confirm it’s the one you want – to which you can nod and say “hai” (yes) or, if you want to sound clever, “Hai, sore” (which means yes, that one just out of my reach and close to you over there )

to (toh) = and. As in “kore to kore to kore to kore o kudasai” because, seriously, who can buy one knife?

Kirenaga (keeraynahgah) = a term which means the length of time that a blade will hold an edge. Using this term got me a big smile and guided toward another shelf of knives entirely – the Damascus steel ones, see below for why

Honyaki Another type of forging which uses only one high carbon steel. These knives have longer kirenaga but are less flexible and so more easily damaged. They also need oiling and greater care because they are, obviously, not stainless. These knives are more expensive than kasumi knives because this process is less common because of the precision required. The knives made with this process tend to be the traditional and professional Japanese knives (like the Usuba) and often have an edge on one side only, and so are usable only by either right or left handed person, AND require a curved cutting motion which takes both instruction and time to perfect.

Kasumi This is a type of forging in which a high carbon steel and iron are used so that the knife has strength and flexibility – this is the process by which samurai swords were made. Knives made with this method of forging don’t hold their edge as long as Honyaki but they need less care to be kept sharp, too so, especially for a non professional, it evens out.

NOTE: There is a Japanese knife brand named after this process so if you ask for “kasumi” you are likely to be shown these – not that it’s a problem they are very good knives at a very reasonable price (in Japan lol).

San Mai = Damascus/Damascened Steel This is another kasumi forging method which uses layers of laminated steel, and achieves a very pretty but also stronger and longer kirenaga result (still not as long as Honyaki but better than plain kasumi). The knife companies seem to be bringing Damascus into the home knife ranges whereas previously it was much more of a specialized blade (particularly popular with assassins blades, from my web research lol).  There is a great post on the forging style on a bladesmith’s blog, here.  I can only imagine that either they have found a way to make it more commercially viable or the home enthusiast market has just expanded to make it so, and considering the number of people who recently watched the final of “Masterchef” in Australia, that is a definite possibility.  I mentioned that it makes for a very pretty metal, this is because you can see the different layers of metal in the end result – as you can see in this shot that Superman took when I brought my knives home and he went into enthusiastic-husband mode

How to decide what to buy

When talking about knives, a lot of talk focuses on the blade but the most important thing about choosing a knife is actually the handling of the knife, and that’s a very personal thing. Hence the rather tortured heading of this section – I’m not going to recommend any particular knives just give some suggestions (from an enthusiastic amateur cook) on what to take into account.

The right knife for the right job
This might seem obvious, but it’s actually a safety issue to have the right knife for the job. A good paring knife will have a slightly different centre of balance to a chef’s knife, not just because the blade is smaller but because of the way it is used. A great list of all the Japanese knife types with links to individual descriptions can be found here.

If you can only afford one good knife then either a Chef’s knife or a Santoku is the best way to go – the Santoku being the more Japanese of the two, obviously. “Santoku” means “three graces” meaning that it can be used for meat, fish and vegetables. The Santoku was developed after the Japanese were exposed to the European chef’s knife and saw the utility of a single knife which could do everything.

A pairing knife for topping & tailing beans and peeling etc… is a good second knife if you have to choose, so that you have a safer option for smaller jobs.

The right knife for the right kitchen!
A confession. When I went to Kappabashi, I fully intended on buying a professional knife: a Misono UX10 to be precise. At the shops on the main street, the store men nodded with a smile and said “besto hocho” and praised my good taste. In Union Commerce, the store man gave me that fond, grandfatherly smile (which is only a hair away from patronizing but an important hair), picked one off the shelf and handed it to me. I nearly dropped it. The thing was soooo heavy and the blade was almost 2 feet long – just the BLADE, the whole thing was almost 3 feet long – that’s longer than the width of the bench on which I would use it! I asked if there was a smaller one – and he giggled and said “Profeshonal hocho”.
There is no shame in buying a knife made for the home kitchen – that’s what you are going to use it for. There are lots of companies that put as much quality into their home kitchen knives as they do their pro stuff. A home kitchen doesn’t need the same durability as a knife that is being used eight hours a day, every day (or second day if the chef alternates sets) and so can also get away with being a little more design friendly (in the same way that at home you can use much nicer pans than would be financially viable in a working kitchen.)

Be open to brands you haven’t heard of
Which brings me to the issue of which brand knife to buy. As I said, I’m not actually going to recommend any specific series of knives but if you’re reading this article, and continuing through this section then I’m going to assume you are going to be doing all the research on good quality blades from the various brands available. Try to remember there are going to be brands here in Japan that you might not have heard of but are equally good or better than those you may have so what you want to do is know your stuff about blades rather than having brand blindness.

It’s the knife series you want to research, not the brand.
Why? It’s the same with any products that have professional and amateur markets, a company might corner the market in quality on, say, full-frame cameras but not put anywhere near the same quality into their mini-digital ones – amateurs buy them because of the reputation within the pro community and are usually disappointed with what they have purchased, but assume it must be the best they can get because of the brand – and this is often not the case. So, while you’re researching, take your notes on the reviews of the specific series of knives, don’t just assume all knives from a brand are going to be great.

In the end, forget the blade…
Sacrilege? Not really. Once you are looking at the quality series across the brands, the practical differences are so minor that it really won’t matter; after all, you’re not using them solidly eight hours a day. What matters is how it feels in your hand.
One of the things you will notice about most Japanese knives is that most have plain, wooden, very straight handles rather than the ergonomic handles of Western knives. These handles are also very light and make for a knife with a lot more weight in the blade than Westerners would be used to judging as ‘good balance’.  Shun and some other Japanese knives strike a balance by using similar materials to Western companies, addressing the balance issue but keeping the traditional shape. Other Japanese companies address the comfort issue by copying the Western shapes but using extremely light materials (like pressed linen) so that the Japanese-style balance is achieved.
In my exploration I found that Mac, Misono and Kasumi seemed to err on the side of Western handle shapes and balance (which makes sense since they do sell a lot of knives in the West); this, as well as the extra weight of the knife overall, was the reason for my final choice – the Mac Damascus series. My friend chose some Kasumi blades because she enjoyed the balance and she prefers lighter knives.

A final recommendation:
Nothing to do with the knives, really, but if you do have a passion for cookware and home wares, consider making it the focus of a couple of days in Tokyo. I jumped on the Shinkansen in from Nagoya one morning, met a girlfriend who lived just outside of Tokyo (another expat I now miss) and we got ourselves a lovely room for the night and spent two whole days just exploring Kappabashi. My knives now are not only a wonderful treat every time I use them but also a memory of a lovely time spent sharing a passion with a friend.

The overall impression of the place? Urban SPRAWL. From the outskirts of town right through to the ports, Osakans live, work and play in high rise boxes which give way only to the extraordinary network of roads and railway lines winding in and around, over and through every available space.

Highlights of the trip were the evening spent in Dotonbori (a bustling shopping and dining district which is open all hours), the night view from the Floating Garden atop the  Umeda Sky Building (where I played with my gorgeous new f1.8 lens purchased for just such evening photos) and the Sumiyoshi-Taisha Shrine. Sumiyoshi-Taisha is a pre-Buddhist Shinto Shrine, built in the 3rd century but, like most active shrines in Japan, it is kept looking like it was built yesterday – thatching and all.  We arrived just in time to see a wedding procession and ceremony. I did not take shots during the ceremony though afterwards I turned and found, to my horror, that Superman had filmed the whole thing!

On Sunday we headed down to Kobe but it was pouring with rain so we headed for the Tezuka Osamu Museum and spent a lovely afternoon amongst the works of the man whose stories so inspired me as a child (sorry, no pictures allowed.) Though there was little English, it wasn’t hard to understand his early four-panel comedy strips and it was fun getting some bemused looks from the Japanese as I laughed out loud. Catching chickens seems to have been the bane of his young existence! We also watched the full first episode of Atom Boy (Astro) which I had actually never seen (except the “alive!” scene, of course) again, you didn’t need to understand the soundtrack to know exactly what was going on.  It was wonderful to have made the pilgrimage!

As always, here is the Flickr Slideshow for you to peruse – apologies for the order, I really need to work that out. Enjoy!

I’m not sure what we were expecting but we weren’t expecting a riot of colour and the ringing of children’s laughter through the trees. The village was interesting but probably would have been a little of a let-down if it weren’t for the festive, family fun atmosphere.

The view from my study window was just too beautiful today and I took my camera out for a play in the sunlight. The flickr slideshow is below, there are around 50 shots you can full screen it for your own virtual hanami experience. I hope you enjoy it.

Apologies for the blur and the poor exposure, it was raining heavily the night we went so I had to use my itty bitty pentax to capture the evening.

That the cough was clearing up this weekend was excellent as the time had come for us to make our trip to Kyoto – finally! ‘Twas a lovely weekend coinciding (deliberately) with the opening of the lantern festival which is essentially a chance to experience Kyoto’s old town (the Gion district) in flickering light which hides electricity wires and other such things which, in daylight, take away from the olde worlde experience. It was truly magical.

All that means that, with Sapporo in there too, there is an enormous backlog of photos to edit and post! Essentially, I’m writing this little post to break the back of it so that it feels less overwhelming and to give a pre-warning that I might just be doing photo posts with very little commentary but it is all coming! I know the pics are all you want to see anyway hehe!

So, here is a taste of the first blossoms at the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Enjoy, more on the way.

Superman and I rarely make much of New Years Eve but since we were here in Japan we decided to join in the local tradition of heading to a shrine (that’s shrine as in Shinto, not temple as in Buddhist) for the turning of the year. Atsuta Jinja is one of the most sacred Shinto sites in Japan, where the goddess Amaterasu dwells in the form of an ancient sword and it also happens to be a 20 minute train ride from our house so, at about 10:30 that night we bundled ourselves up warmly (long coat, scarf, gloves, hat, double socks – the works!) and headed off. At our little station there wasn’t much of a buzz but when we switched to the Meijo line it was clear that we would have no issue finding where we were going we could just follow the crowd! As apathetic as we’d been told most Japanese were about this tradition it didn’t feel that way!

We got off the train at Jingu Nisshi station and emerged at ground level via exit 2, joining the crowds making their way along the outside of the temple grounds stopping to have something to eat from the now familiar red, yellow and white stalls of festival food lining the route. There were a lot more sweets this time, though, and (after we had finished inside) Sups had a chocolate dipped banana (which also came in blue and a rather suggestive pink chocolate dip) and I tried and fell I love with a new delicacy – toffee strawberries, like toffee apples but a lighter toffee and a perfectly ripe strawberry inside. 

Upon entering the grounds we realised that our goal to get to the might be a little optimistic – the line was an enormous python of a people, filling the 8 metre-wide path to the Shrine itself and moving in ripples (of which Superman had a view and said it looked fantastic) every 15 minutes or so. So for about 40 minutes on New Years Eve the very green picture was my view! Nevertheless it was actually quite pleasant because it was both warm and their was a friendly camaraderie as everyone waited patiently and exchanged updates on the time with each other – even we foreigners. “Ni hon!!” a woman said excitedly to me, grinning madly. “Hai! Ni hon!” I agreed and we shared a giggle. As midnight arrived we had probably a full minute of scattered cheers and ripples of well-wishing as the variously set phones and watches determined when it was midnight!

Only a minute or so after midnight there was another ripple of movement and our group was let through to the shrine-proper – we had timed it perfectly!!

Once through the main gate we made a prayer and tossed a handful of coins at the temple steps and then joined more queues at stalls opposite the shrine building and purchased some omamori (or prayer amulets) for luck, health and drive  as well as a New Year arrow to drive away any bad luck demons for the year. Apparently we should bring them back next New Year to have the old year’s luck burned and get some new ones. We didn’t join the Japanese in paying 200yen to shake a fortune scroll out of a hexagonal box (since we wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway) but it seemed to me that this was the most popular part of the whole night.

When we got home, we hung the omamori on the side of the stairs where we will pass it everyday (the amulet for my drive kept falling down – I’m trying not to read anything into it lol!) and we turned the Yule tree into a New Years tree by inserting the New Year Arrow into it – I think it works… kinda lol! Note the wooden tablet with the cow and calf on it – this relates to the next Chinese year being the Year of the Ox but in an oddly diluted way which confuses me – in Celtic animal lore the Bull and the Cow have very different symbolisms and I doubt it is different here. Nevertheless the whole concept is obviously contorted since everyone insists the animal year has changed despite the Chinese astrological year not changing till later next month. Just another thing to add to my list of things I don’t understand in Japan lol!

Apologies for the lack of quality and quantity of shots but I was shivering so much from the cold that most of my shots turned out too blurry to make out what they were (not to mention I hadn’t charged the camera so the IS turned itself off and the colour cast it picked up was mostly green lol) – these are the good ones! I hope that the new header photo makes up for it. believe it or not that was taken at high speed on the Shinkansen a couple of weekends ago on our way up to Tokyo for the afternoon – it’s quite view of the great mountain, don’t you think?

My best wishes to everyone for a happy, peaceful and satisfying 2009!

From Tony’s post, I clicked on the link to the official Ghibli Museum site and was presented with Miyazaki Hayao’s philosophy for building the museum. Most of it was positive and about what he wanted the museum to be and certainly each was a reason to visit. The last paragraph, though, was a list of what he did not want the museum to be like and it struck me that it was something that every film director should have framed on a wall, or tattooed somewhere on their person where they can read it daily – except replace the word “museum” with “film”!

“This is the kind of museum I don’t want to make!
A pretentious museum
An arrogant museum
A museum that treats its contents as if they were more important than people
A museum that displays uninteresting works as if they were significant”

- Miyazaki Hayao “A few words from Executive Director Miyazai Hayao” on the Ghibli Museum website.

There are probably any number of words which could replace “museum” here to create an excellent philosophy to live by!

Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?