If you thought that hanami season finished when the last of the cherry blossoms fell, think again. Even though Japan’s most famous blossoms are gone for another year, there are still chances to enjoy a hanami picnic before the sultry heat of summer kicks in.

Following signs off the beaten track to the Hiyoshi shrine in Tamana, Kumamoto prefecture, we found the Yamada wisteria (山田藤). The many vines, some of them reputedly over 200 years old, form a canopy over the shrine’s grounds - a pergola in purple.

Golden Week is a perfect time to see it, occuring as it does right around the start of wisteria’s flowering season, and I’d imagine that that has contributed to the Yamada wisteria’s huge popularity.

The lawns under the fragrant flowers were packed with picnicking folk, enjoying an al fresco lunch on blue sheets.

Not the most interesting flight path. As a result, I wasn’t glued to the window, avoiding sleep. We didn’t fly into Narita this time, but to Osaka, which meant that there was a good chance of spotting Mt. Fuji, provided there wasn’t too much cloud cover. About an hour before landing, this was the view from the plane.

Through the winter, the rolling fields of Kyushu’s Aso and Kuju highlands are a light brown, with a carpet of long, dry susuki grass as far as the eye can see.

But with spring comes a clearing out of the old, making place for the new. Spring then is a time for fire festivals in this region. Across the whole region, last year’s grass is burned away in a series of what I assume are controlled fires, making way for the spring new growth.

It’s something of a surprise to me that this age-old tradition of burning thousands of acres of grassland every year has survived into this day and age - it doesn’t jive well with an alleged concern for air pollution, for example, as visibility and air quality are reduced to Beijing-like levels for a week or more.

What is even more surprising…

is that it’s quite a spectator sport.

And it appeared it was quite a tourist draw…

Quite apart from anything else, there were of course no public safety precautions whatsoever. I think the idea was that if you’re silly enough to come up into the mountains while they’re being set alight, then safety is quite your own responsibility.

There was something quite awesome about the fire. As the wall of flame advanced, the savage crackling noise was overwhelming. And even standing in the road, you had to be very aware of which directions the fires were moving either side of the road. With the grass burning right up to the edge of the road, the heat was intense, even passing hurriedly by in the car.

Driving back along the Aso Milk Road the following day, there were odd tufts of tan grass here and there, but other than them, all was black…

…with the winding road offering the only contrast to the charred landscape.

And so with the first stage of the spring transformation complete, we’ll be back up there as the weather warms up, the air becomes breathable again, and the black gives way to summer green.

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Though it can seem hard to believe sometimes on those cold mornings, cherry blossom viewing season is right around the corner.

To help you plan your viewing schedule, here is a map (current as of February 26) of how the cherry blossom “front line” is expected to sweep across Japan in the weeks ahead.

It may have been 4° in my living room when I got up this morning, but a neighbour of mine assures me spring is just around the corner.

And with good reason.

Yes, it’s time to kick off the blankets and kick up the nature worship again. Parts of Japan might shivering be under feet of snow, but here in central Kyushu the plum trees are blooming red, white and pink. Which means not long now until the debauchery of cherry blossom hanami season! Don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.

(Picture can be seen full-size here.)

Sneak attack by Setsubun Devils?

Setsubun Devils enjoying the sudden snowstorm in Tokyo

A sudden snowstorm swept in silently and swiftly during the early morning hours in Tokyo this Feb. 3. Three centimeters of snow covered the capital in a fairly heavy snowfall. Train services were disrupted, traffic backed up, flights were cancelled, and at least 100 people were injured. Although snow is not unusual in Tokyo, these days, however, snow has become less common over the years. Last year it only snowed once and very briefly at that.

Sudden snowfall in Tokyo at Senso-ji Temple

Shrine attendants work to clear a path

What makes this snowfall particularly significant if not ominously suspicious was the date. Feb. 3 is the Japanese holiday of Setsubun, a day when Japanese seek to drive bad luck out of their homes and bring in happiness. Setsubun is a more active version of Groundhog Day where Japanese take matters into their own hands to try and bring an earlier end to winter. On the old Japanese calendar, Setsubun was considered the day before Spring - despite the real Spring being a few more weeks away.

Praying to a snowy Buddha for perhaps warmer weather

The bad luck is represented by Oni - Japanese devils. There are many devils in Japanese folklore which can be good, bad, or neutral. The Setsubun Devils are known for being one of the bad ones. They are typically believed to be invisible intangible spirits that will inhabit places to bring misfortunate to all if they are not driven out. Their visible appearance is that of a shirtless devil with horns, shaggy hair, sharp claws and teeth, and wearing tiger pants. They come in red, green, and blue colors. If their sharp teeth and claws aren’t enough, they have heavy iron-studded clubs as well. This fierce creature is partially based on the Chinese Zodiac signs of the ox (ushi in Japanese) and tiger (taro in Japanese). Ushitaro means “North Gate.” North was considered a very unlucky direction in Ancient China (probably because so many invaders came from that way) and this belief was adopted by the Japanese in the 8th and 9th Centuries.

A Snow-covered Kabuki Star

Snow at Senso-ji Temple is Asakusa, Tokyo

Along with bad luck, Setsubun Devils represent Winter and the old year too. The ceremony of driving the devils out symbolizes the ending of Winter and the coming of Spring while making everything new for the New Years. Setsubun is close to the Chinese New Years and before Japan switched to the Western calendar system, Setsubun was the day before the Chinese New Year. Japanese want their homes to be free of all the old bad feelings of the previous year. Setsubun is a bit of “out with the old; in with the new” of New Years, spring cleaning, and exorcism at the same time.

Zojo-ji Temple in Tokyo

This Setsubun if one were inclined to see the supernatural in everything and believe in omens as people did in olden times this, they might believe the sudden snowfall to be devil-wrought. Perhaps the snow was a diabolical sneak attack by the devils in the early morning hours to thrawt the Setsubun exorcism activities at shrines and temples. In these places, beans and other such items are thrown “to” not “at” gathered crowds. This is known as mame-maki. It is believed that to catch such items, a person will have good luck all year.

Some Ninja and a walking bag of chips prepare to do Mame-Maki at Zojo-ji

Ninja Chips - crunchy and deadly snackfood for the assassin in all of us

Although the devils threw quite a bit of snow which caused a number of train delays, there were still crowds of people at temples and shrines, their hands outstretched looking for a bit of luck. I went to my favorite temple for mame-maki: Zojo-ji in Hamamatsucho. Zojo-ji always has a few celebrities and a sumo wrestler doing mame-maki. Their mame-maki has more than just a handful of tossed beans. I got several bags of snack food, two wash clothes, nine packets of bean, and six health bars. the health bars were dangerous! I got hit in the head twice and once right smack in my face.

Snowfall at Kanda Myojin Shrine

Decorations at Kanda Myojin Shrine

After that I went to Kanda Myojin Shrine where I saw two Setsubun devils prance about on a catwalk seeming to enjoy the mayhem the weather had caused. At Kanda Myojin Shrine they do a traditional mame-maki where they throw handfuls of individual beans rather than packets. The beans were rather difficult to pick out from the heavy snow flakes that were coming down. No one bothered to pick any of the beans up that had fallen on the ground. At Zojo-ji because everying is in a package, you have people going up and down for mame-maki. This makes for a writhing crowd as some people are jumping up to catch packages while others are diving down to get the fallen ones and getting bumped heads in the process.

A Devil revels in the mayhem of an unexpectant snowstorm

A Kimono-clad girl indulging in mame-maki at Kanda Myojin shrine

After Kanda Myojin’s mame-maki, we were lead into a room where we could choose small packages of beans, candy, and oranges. All in all I had a decent Setsubun mame-maki haul by the end of the day.

A decent Setsubun Mame-Maki haul

In the end despite the weather, the Setsubun exorcism ritual must have worked. The next morning the sun came out and melted the snow away. Better luck next year, devils!

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“A 200-strong army of beady-eyed, ball-shaped robots” is being deployed nationwide, says Pink Tentacle.

Not quite as scary as they might sound, these spherical chaps are “Pollen Robots” and are to be employed by Weathernews.jp to monitor the pollen count. And this being Japan, they have built-in Cute - the ‘eyes’ light up different colours as the level changes.

As the Asahi reports, when the Japanese cedar and cypress get that lovin’ feelin’ and go into their springtime overdrive, data on the pollen count will be sent from these robots to the site. They’ll be stationed outside the homes of a couple of hundred volunteers, all hay-fever sufferers, who will also be reporting on their symptoms.

As the Asahi gravely intones, “Pollen levels from Japanese cedar and cypress are expected to be higher than last year in many parts of the country.” Oh joy.

Gizmodo has a scary photo showing a lightning bolt striking an airplane taking off at Osaka’s airport recently, then hitting the ground. There’s an even scarier video on the site.

Apparently lightning is not dangerous for airliners, since the charge just flows around their aluminum skin, but still… Gizmodo says no plane has crashed in the US because of lightning bolts in 40 years, even though every airliner in the country could get hit at least once, according to statistics.

But they also wonder “can anyone explain to this ignorant (me) person how 100 trillion (million million) watts can hit a plane and nothing happens to the electronics inside, while my cell can wreak havoc emitting just a few microwaves?”

Let’s be honest, Coolbiz hasn’t been what you would call a success, has it. Better than Warmbiz, perhaps, but these things are relative.

Well there may be an answer out there. You’ve seen plenty of unnecessary and expensive USB devices in the past. Is this just another one, or something different? Kuchofuku Inc. have their own take on personal air-conditioning.

From Newslaunches.com -

Everyone actually does have a natural air conditioner which is sweating and the air conditioned clothes are designed to give that mechanism a shot in the arm. The clothes have two 10 centimeter fans located at right and left sides at the back of clothing at waist level. These fans draw in a large amount of air which helps to vapourize thus dissipating sweat and bringing down the wearers body temperature. The clothing comes with a switch to adjust the fan speed. Just connect your shirt to the USB port and be cool.

Kuchofuku Inc don’t just do air-con clothes, you know. They can do you an air-con bed too if you require.

Since it’s apparently the rainy season right now, it’s appropriate that Ame no hi mo tanoshii na! Kaeru bento (Rainy days are fun too! Frog bento) won the first “Character Bento” competition at Tokyo’s Chiyoda-ku, according to Mainichi Daily News.

The contest was designed to choose the best designed bento lunch modeled on animals and other characters. The winner was chosen by eight judges from among 220 entries submitted over the Internet.

The nutritious winning bento was modeled on the theme of a frog on a rainy day. “The brightly colored lunch incorporated ideas such as a red pepper made to look like an umbrella. The judges praised it for its nutritional balance and its seasonal timeliness. The rainy season had already started in many areas of Japan.”

Mainichi points out that, while the bento features a cute design and looks tasty, some wonder if children may think it looks too good to eat. More likely some kid had to go hungry at school while his or her lunch was in the competition.

Frog in bento box
Rainy days are not funny
Only French eat frogs

Japan’s vulnerability to natural disasters is increasing as skyscrapers mushroom in cities, shopping malls go underground and the population ages, a recent government report says.

“In addition to growing risk of natural hazards, our society has become more vulnerable to disasters,” the disaster prevention white paper said. According to an Associated Press report in China Post:

Densely populated cities are crowded with high-rise buildings and apartments that are at higher risk in earthquakes and storms. Proliferating underground shopping malls are also vulnerable to quakes and flooding. The growing percentage of elderly in the population also presents rescuers with more people likely to be hurt in a disaster, coupled with fewer able-bodied who can help them.

The report called for awareness-raising campaigns, more active participation in disaster prevention activities by companies, and research and development of earthquake and tsunami alert technologies.

While Japan’s vulnerability is growing, so is extreme weather. Over the past decade, the number of torrential rains have nearly doubled and major earthquakes occurred in areas not considered usual danger zones, such as Niigata and Noto in northern Japan.

The report said the number of skyscrapers exceeding the height of 100 meters (330 feet) has more than quadrupled over the last 15 years while the number of single elderly households nearly doubled in the last decade.

The Japan Meteorological Agency says Yellow Sand was observed in wide areas across Japan last weekend. In several places in the Chugoku, Shikoku and Kyushu regions, visibility fell to around five kilometers due to the phenomenon, according to the agency.

It said more yellow sand was on the way for areas from Okinawa Prefecture to Tohoku region, northeastern Japan, and that it may affect traffic.

Yellow Sand? I had never heard of this and can’t see why it would be affecting visibility or traffic. In Canada we have Yellow Snow but it isn’t dangerous at all unless you eat it.

Fortunately, Wikipedia explained that Yellow Sand is just another name for Asian Dust–which appears to be more than a mere annoyance:

Asian Dust (also yellow dust, yellow sand, yellow wind, or China dust storms) is a seasonal meteorological phenomenon which affects much of East Asia sporadically during the springtime months. The dust originates in the deserts of Mongolia and northern China and Kazakhstan where high-speed surface winds and intense dust storms kick up dense clouds of fine, dry soil particles. These clouds are then carried eastward by prevailing winds and pass over China, North and South Korea, and Japan, as well as parts of the Russian Far East.

According to the encyclopedia, in the last decade or so, it has become a serious problem due to industrial pollutants and intensified desertification in China. The dust storms, with specific reference to China, have been called “yellow dust terrorism” by some Korean groups. I doubt China is doing it on purpose, though, and they’re probably getting the worst of it there.

But the dust is known to cause a variety of health problems, not limited to sore throat and asthma in otherwise healthy people. For those already with asthma or respiratory infections, it can be fatal. The dust has been shown to increase the daily mortality rate in one affected region by 1.7%.

Conversations about the ‘the four seasons’ by foreigners in Japan often focus on that cliched and dreaded icebreaker question (”Does your country has four seasons?”).

But recent posts on Japundit by Marie Mockett got me thinking about how much more effort goes into marking the arrival and passing of the seasons in Japan than in, say, England, where it seems that only gardeners really notice what’s going on. You don’t see shops there decorated for the beginning of spring, for example.

Among family and friends, the seasons and all that they bring come up frequently in conversation, and seasonal gestures are common. I’ve never been sansai picking (I’d need an expert along to save from possibly poisoning myself), but twice family members have presented us with bags of the spring goodies. When my father-in-law thrust a bag of taranome into my hand, telling me they were good eating, I really thought he was having a laugh until I tasted them. Sublime.

And so I vowed to pay closer attention to the seasons. And we did all the usual stuff this spring, like getting blotto under cherry trees, and wading through fields of nanohana.

And around the middle of April, I noticed some action around the swallow nest outside my place of work. The more I paid attention, and the more time I spent watching the attentive parents, I noticed that most of the buildings along the road had at least one nest (the Post Office had two).

And so I’ve been watching ‘our’ swallows, seeing them grow up really fast. So when the 3 young ‘uns finally took their first flight about a week ago, it was a moment of almost surrogate parental joy! They haven’t left home yet. They’re still hanging around for the free grub and lodging, but as the sun begins to go down, and it gets a little cooler, all the swallow kids come out to play, and for about an hour, the sky’s full of gliding, swooping, noisy birds.

They’ll be gone soon, of course. And then the stultifying heat and humidity of summer will settle in and we won’t want to be hanging out outside too much. But until then, I’m going to make the most of it.

Photos after the jump!

“Been a very mild winter in Tokyo,” its residents will tell you. “First winter on record with no snow!” This will prompt some folks into Global Warming talk, but it should in fact raise far more immediate concerns.

In the event of a nuclear war, so the myth goes, only the cockroaches would survive. What do you think they’ll make of a mild Tokyo winter?

Some ten years ago, I was walking down a street in suburban south London when something large and black whizzed past my ear. I wasn’t aware of it until it was long gone, but then I spied a very large stag beetle on the pavement. And then another. And then dozens. They were everywhere. They were even on the evening news. According to an alleged expert, not many stag beetles in Britain see a second spring. And on that warm spring day, they all came out to play.

And I wonder if Tokyoites might see the same result of the warm winter, in the shape of a bumper generation of ‘mature’ gokiburi…

I hope not, for your sake, because if you’re anything like me, the very sight of one of these bustling little critters turns your stomach. I’d never seen ‘large’ cockroaches until I came to Japan. I certainly had no idea they could fly. (Feeling sick yet? I am.)

Should the super-insect invasion come to be, you’ll need weapons. Fortunately, Mari (of Watashi to Tokyo fame) has good news for you, and has assembled quite an arsenal. (My personal favourite is the freeze spray. Although my preferred method of attack is to lob a terracotta flowerpot over the offending roach and spray my aerosol of mass destruction into the handy hole - leave for 10 mins and remove. You barely even have to look at it.)

We’ve been watching the extra-cold winter dumping lots of snow on the U.S. this year and feeling more than a little guilty, what with Japan experiencing the warmest winter its had in decades and all.

The previous 1960 record for the latest snowfall in the Tokyo area has already been smashed, and with the bizarre T-shirt weather continuing, there’s talk that this might be the first snowless winter since they started keeping records back in 1876.

One of the most enjoyable times to be in Japan is sakura season, when the cherry blossoms bloom with exploding fireworks of beauty, but it’s been so warm this year that everyone is sure the sakura will bloom at least a full month earlier.

There’s also a lot of concern that with such mild weather this year, there’ll be less snow in snowpacks in the mountains, leading to water shortages in the summer.

As I have mentioned on the Japan Talk podcast a number of times, it is unseasonably warm in the Tokyo area this year.

Now we get a report that the cherry trees in Tokyo’s Ueno Part have already started to bloom – about a month earlier than normal.

[O]fficials said five trees had already blossomed and that four more trees were expected to blossom by next weekend.

More fuel to add heat to the global warming debate here.

Heaviest snowfall in five years

Tokyo received its heaviest snowfall in five years as nine centimeters of snow fell on the capital on Saturday, Jan. 21.

Cancelled flights in Narita and Haneda left thousands stranded at the airports. Over a hundred Tokyo residents have been injured from slips and falls. Although the snow began melting by Sunday morning, dangerous patches of ice on roads and sidewalks remained.

Effects range from strandings to loss of life

Along the northwest coast of Japan record snowfall has caused severe damage to property and transportation facilities. Houses and buildings have collapsed from the excess weight of snow that accumulated to such a dangerous extent. Over 80 people have died in snow-related incidents, ranging from avalanches, collapsed roofs, car accidents, to train derailments. Nearly 2,000 people have been injured so far this winter.

A “supertyphoon” is heading for Okinawa, Kyushu and the Korean Peninsula:

Typhoon Nabi, which is more powerful than Typhoon Rusa in 2002, which caused the worst damage to Korea, is likely to hit the Korean peninsula around September 6 or 7.

The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMT) announced yesterday, “As of noon on September 2, the 14th typhoon of the season which emerged around 1,210km away near the northeastern sea of Guam around at 9:00 p.m. on August 29 is slowly moving northwestward at 17km speed per hour along the 1,600 km southeastern sea of Okinawa in Japan.”

In August, 2002, Typhoon Rusa killed about a 113 people in South Korea.

I remember that summer for being rainy and cool, with temperatures spiking up dramatically overnight at the end of August, as Rusa slammed into Korea. One day it was 20 degrees or so. The next day it was 35, and it stayed hot for the entire month of September.

Thanks to the cool, rainy summer and then a month of baking autumn heat, there was just a ton of goldenrod (seitaka-awadachi-sou, in Japanese) that Fall.

Towards the end of September I would start waking up at night, unable to breath, and I would start getting similar attacks throughout the day.

I went to the doctor, who diagnosed me with adult-onset asthma. Asthma can be triggered by sudden extreme changes in temperature, and all that goldenrod probably didn’t help, either.

Thanks, Typhoon Rusa.

Update:
Looks as though Typhoon Nabi (or Typhoon No. 14, as the imagination-impaired Japanese weather people are calling it) is going to hold off on visiting Korea, and will probably pummel Japan instead. Perhaps it has something to do with those textbooks…

A quick check of the Japanese-language news sites indicates that this storm isn’t receiving nearly as much attention from the media as the typhoon that was predicted to hit Tokyo last week, which probably just proves Ampontan’s point:

The Japanese news media and the people who live in the Kanto area think they are “all of Japan”, and behave that way. When a typhoon hits Kyushu, it’s reported as if it were a typhoon in the Philippines. Oh, yeah, a typhoon, next story…

When a typhoon hits Tokyo, the media gets in a tizzy three days in advance and it’s the lead story on the national news.

The typhoon that’s hitting Japan is pretty big, and thanks to the Japan Weathernews Network’s Typoon Report, visitors can keep track of its progress.

The WNN also posts regularly updated feed from Japan’s Himawari weather satellite, so if you want to get a good idea of just how big this typhoon is, check it out.