Tondo-san

A couple of weeks ago our neighbourhood celebrated Tondo-san, marking the end of the New Year period. The day before, K and H took a walk to our local shrine to add our New Year decorations and good luck charms from last year to the growing bonfire...


Lately, especially with the building of a new house just beside the bonfire site, there has been concern about the risk of the fire spreading. This year then, instead of one mega-bonfire, three separate piles of things to burn were made. Only one was lit, and things from the others were gradually added to the bonfire as it burnt down. More sensible I suppose, but not anywhere near as much fun...

On the morning of Tondo-san, H and K got up before dawn to go and see the fire being lit at 7am.

T and I stayed in bed.

Once the fire was lit, a procession set off to take a portable shrine (o-mikoshi) around the parish boundary, stopping at various places along the way for blessings - and refreshments. The shrine looks like it should be carried on the shoulders of strapping young men, but is now pulled on wheels instead :-)

We caught up with the procession mid-morning at our local community centre. The shrine, and the drums accompanying it, was carried inside. Singing (mainly by H's dad), flute playing and drumming continued while the bearers ate and drank. Anyone who turned up was served with pork and vegetable soup and sake.

As well as the portable shrine and it's musical accompaniments, a shishimai (Chinese lion?) was also part of the parade. Being 'bitten' by the shishimai is supposed to bring good luck, especially for children. K was a bit wary of it, but T didn't seem bothered...

I realise now that this year's Tondo-san was the first one in several years where there was no snow on the ground. Although we've had a few snowy days this winter it has generally been very mild so far; keep your fingers crossed that it stays that way...

Victims of the snow

Our house is about a kilometre from the sea and, until 30-odd years ago, most of the land between here and the coast was filled with pine trees. Nowadays all that remains is a narrow strip, between a major road and the sea, which stretches about 10 kilometres along the coast.

When we drove along there the other day, to go to the Sea and Life Museum, it was quite shocking to see the damage that all the snow we've had recently caused to these trees.


The weight of the snow ripped branches off a lot of the trees, but what really surprised me was how many trees had simply been snapped in half, with the entire top part of the tree missing.

I suppose the weight of the snow bowed the smaller trees right over (as in the far right of the photo below) and a lot of them never recovered.

Severely damaged trees along that roadside have been marked with pink tape, so I suppose they will be chopped down before long. It's very sad...

Still snowy

We haven't had any more snow since the 1st, but it's still causing problems. Snow ploughs have been out clearing the roads; the fact that H had never seen one before shows you how unusual that is! Ploughed roads are now clear enough to drive on easily, but there's one slight snag; the snow ploughs create big banks of snow at the sides of the roads, making already narrow roads even narrower. The road in front of our house now poses no problems at all for a single car, but when 2 meet someone has to reverse a long way or everyone leaps out with their shovels and starts digging out a passing place...


Yesterday I ventured out on foot to our second-nearest supermarket. We weren't in desperate need of supplies but it was H's last day off work and I realised that if I didn't go then I would have to go today or tomorrow - with K...

It was a good chance to see what was going on too. Next to the supermarket is one of the biggest roads around here, with 2 lanes each way. Traffic was moving easily, but again the road was significantly narrowed:

Smaller roads were clear just in the tyre tracks - 4 tracks if you were lucky, 3 tracks on narrower roads and here, where a car had been abandoned, it went down to just 2:

The very smallest roads though were still pretty much impassable. Believe it or not, this next one is actually usually used by cars; look very closely and you'll see a car parked at the end of it:

Today was the first working day of the year for a lot of people, including H. He usually goes to work by bus but the buses still weren't running today, due I suppose to the narrowed roads. So poor old H set off on foot, a distance of 5 or 6 kilometres. He returned home tonight with stories of downed electric cables and a collapsed car port, a blister or two and, of course, photographic evidence of his adventure. Here's the route he would normally take if walking into town...

... and here's the less snowy option he chose today. This is the road his bus would have taken too, if it had been running...

Even in the centre of the city, where the traffic was moving steadily, it was still tough for pedestrians. The pavements were pretty deep in snow and crossing the road meant navigating your way over huge mounds of snow at the edges of the road:

Apparently the buses still won't be running tomorrow, although rubbish collection will be. H's planning to try the train tomorrow; by the time he walks to the station, waits for the train and then walks from the station to his office, it won't really save him any time, but hopefully it'll give his feet a bit of a rest...

Happy New Year!

No sign of the garden wall, the compost bin or the patio

It may only be January 2nd, but already it's a year that people around here will remember - the year of the snow. It started to snow on the night of the 30th and continued throughout New Year's Eve Day, with biting winds sending the snow in horizontal sheets. By the morning of New Year's Day the wind had dropped and the snow lay deep and crisp and even.

Our bedroom window faces the direction the wind was blowing from, so the balcony was filled with snow up to the height of my waist.


K and the car demonstrating the depth of the snow

The previous night the electricity had gone off for a minute or so, and when I got up briefly with K at 5.30 I noticed that it was off again. We all slept in until about 9 o'clock, and we were still without power. Like a lot of the newer houses around here, our house relies entirely on electricity for heating, hot water and cooking as well as lighting and appliances. Luckily we do have a single table-top gas ring so I was able to make hot drinks for our breakfast.

An important part of New Year's Day morning is reading your New Year cards. The post office holds them all back until the big day and then delivers them all early in the morning on New Year's Day, hiring extra part-time workers to help deal with it all. This year though - nothing. I'm hoping they might come tomorrow...

H dug out a little path, just wide enough for us to walk out to the road. He didn't dig right down to ground level and even then the snow was deeper than K's waist. I guessed the total amount of snow to be close to K's height and the news today reports that there was indeed about 90cm.

In front of our house on New Year's Day

The plan was to spend New Year's Day at H's parents' house. They had a power cut too, but they also have one old-style kerosene heater so we headed over there once H had dug us out, leaving candles and torches on stand-by for our return. Their house is only a few minutes walk away, but we visited the local shrine on the way too.

Japanese people traditionally visit a shrine at the New Year, either just after midnight on New Year's Eve or in the first day or two of the year. The priest, a relative of H's, told us that he had only had about 20 people show up the previous night, while a man with a digger (also a relative) dug out the road for everyone.


At the shrine H and I each bought a fortune for the year and both got 'small luck' - better than plain old 'luck' and 'bottom-of-the-barrel luck', but still lagging behind 'medium' and 'big'. Oh well. There are also 'bad luck' fortunes but our local shrine, not wishing to disappoint, buys the boxes of fortunes which don't contain bad luck at all. We tied the slips of paper to trees around the shrine and went on our way again.

A stone lantern at the shrine

Announcements on the public address system told us that 28,000 homes in the city were without power, due to a fallen pylon. Today H found a picture of it on the news - eek!


At H's parents' we all stayed in the living room with the one heater, and for once I was glad of the traditional New Year's food, o-sechi. Made (or bought..) ahead of time so that no-one needs to cook over New Year, it isn't really my favourite but at least it was all ready to eat without the aid of any electricity...


After lunch the power came back on and H's mum rang round to see how everyone was doing. H's younger brother was planning to come over on his way back from a trip to Kyushu, but on hearing what it was like here he wisely decided to go straight home. We were all relieved when we heard that he'd got home safely, especially as the news was reporting a thousand cars stuck on the main road from Yonago to Tottori. A thousand!

A not-very-tropical palm tree

By late afternoon the falling snow was turning to light rain, which continued overnight. By morning a lot of snow had melted, but there's still a lot out there too. All the snow has gone from the car, but the roof is slightly dented from the weight. Overhead cables are hanging dangerously low, again due to the weight of the snow, and lots of trees have lost branches.

In front of our house this morning

The airport is closed, buses and branch-line trains are not running yet and H's cousin reports a queue for taxis at the main station 60 people long. H goes back to work on the 4th (Tuesday), so we're hoping the buses will be running again by then. Like most people we stocked up on food before the holidays, since a lot of supermarkets are closed until tomorrow or Tuesday, so I suppose we'll just carry on our hermit lifestyle for a few more days...

Broken branches at the shrine

Demolition, done.

Actually the demolition work next door was all finished a few weeks ago, but I'm only now getting round to showing you. The house itself was knocked down and cleared away in just a couple of days...

Adding extra earth and levelling the site took longer. K loved watching it all, every step of the way...

We can now see straight out to the road from our kitchen and dining area and K still enjoys standing by the window and watching the traffic. Last week they came and moved an electric pole in the middle of the site's road-side, which entertained K for another hour or so.

Notice anything strange about the digger driver in this next photo?

Have a closer look...

When the men were packing up on the last day, they asked if K would like to ride on the digger. I imagined just sitting in the driver's seat, but the guy had him pushing and pulling the levers to go forwards and backwards, spinning around, tilting the bucket, blowing the horn... K looked very serious at the time but was grinning for the rest of the day and spent several days telling anyone who would listen 'K drive digger!'

The house next door

Next door to our house is a house that's been derelict for years. It's owned by an elderly man who lives far away and refuses to sell the land to anyone. His slightly younger brother lives nearby and grows vegetables in the garden. Judging by the current state of it though, I think it's been getting a bit much for him lately...


Recently I've seen surveyor-type people measuring the plot, and workmen assessing the house. It certainly looked like the land was being sold, and we wondered who our new neighbours would be and how it would affect us if a new house was built there. It turns out that the local Buddhist temple has bought it, to use as car parking! That's fantastic news as far as I'm concerned - we won't have to worry about a new house blocking our windows or overlooking us, the people at the temple are lovely and we may even be able to use the space too when we have a party...

Demolition work started yesterday, with a mini-digger knocking down a bit of garden wall and clearing enough space for a small lorry to get in. The workmen have been gutting the house and seem to be salvaging a lot of the reusable materials, including the roof tiles.

I took this sneaky shot from our bedroom window to show you all those stacked tiles, but I think that guy in purple standing on the roof there saw me...

K is entranced by it all and has realised that he can get a pretty good view of what's going on from our dining room window:

Sports Day

Our neighbourhood Sports Day was held on Sunday. Last year the weather was bad and it was held in the primary school gym, but this time it was warm and sunny and everyone gathered at the local playing field (or 'area of sand and gravel' to give it a more accurate name).

As always with these neighbourhood events, the whole day was more about turning up and showing your face than anything else, and the races were as light-hearted as ever. The local area covered by this Sports Day is divided up into 6 smaller areas, and each one competed against the others (we are in area 1). There were tents around the edge of the playing field, 2 for each group, where you could sit and watch the events out of the sun.


H took part in a relay race where each person had to run and then perform some amusing feat. Here he is, rushing to beat the others in downing a bottle of lemonade...




K took part in 'Snacks please!' again this year, this time able to complete the arduous task of walking from A to B and receiving a box of biscuits All By Himself. We were amused to see that he got exactly the same biscuits as last year! Can you spot him in this picture?

Later there was the Centipede Race...

... and then it was my turn. This relay race involved dribbling a rugby ball down the line, round a chair and back to the next person. Look at me go!

After all that hard work, it was time for a free lunch. Each area group provided food for its members. We had boxed lunches ordered from a nearby store, but 2 of the other groups did barbecues, and one even had a candy-floss making machine!

H's parents live in the same area as us, so we were all able to have a little picnic together:

The afternoon events kicked off with a dance! 'Dancers' walked slowly round in a big circle, doing the appropriate arm movements as they went. Variations on this type of traditional dance are found across Japan and can often be seen at festivals, especially in the summer. K loves to move to music and is quite good at copying actions, so we joined in. Most of the other people didn't really know the moves either and were just copying the person in front of them, so that the dance became more and more out of time as you got further away from the people leading it! K seemed to enjoy it, but didn't quite get the idea of staying in line...

This next picture was intended to show H taking part in the Throwing Little Beanbags Into A Basket On A Stick event, but it also demonstrates my main activity of the day, Chasing After Escaping Toddlers...

Everyone who took part got a small participation prize for each event, regardless of who won. I was rather embarrassed that K and I were both given something for joining in the dance! In the end we came home with 2 boxes of biscuits for little children, some custard-filled buns, a ball of string, 3 bars of soap, some clothes pegs and a bottle of bath cleaner. Is it strange that this all seems perfectly normal to me now?