New Year

Happy New Year!

Erin and I spent New Year's Eve with two good friends in Kanazawa, enjoying traditional foods like ozouni and zenzai* as well as some non-traditional passtimes, namely playing Minecraft or watching significant others play Minecraft. We went to a Oyama Shrine at midnight to watch the hordes descend on the physical shrine itself to pray. The line was several blocks long, so we moseyed along to the fortunes and charms that all shrines sell around New Year's. We paid 100 yen for a paper fortune, and all of us got the best ranking for fortunes. Hooray! I, however, was cautioned that high places would lead to failure. Good thing I already vowed to everything in earshot that I would never climb Hakusan again.

I think spending New Year's in Japan without a Japanese extended family to take you in would be like spending the latter half of December in the US without an American extended family. There are decorations and you're supposed to feel merry and you have a vacation, but you'll never quite have the same holiday experience. Then again, you probably also won't be drinking champagne and setting things on fire while watching Sherlock, so I'm not terribly broken up about it.

Erin and I will stay in Japan for another year and a half, until July 2013. We both love our students and have so much yet to see here.

Now, time for a Japanese lesson. This time, it's Ishikawa winter precipitation!

弱雨　jakuu/ yowa-ame  weak rain. Covers anything that is not like your shower

みぞれ mizore slush. Literally slush, synonymous with slurpy-esque beverages, but from the sky. It's also a flavor of shaved ice, if you want your shaved ice to taste like frozen coats and suffering.

氷雨　hisame small hail/ frozen rain. We have had an inch of this fall in half an hour. At least it kind of looked like snow.

雹　hyou "hail of a diameter greater than 5mm". Self-explanatory. The character components add up to "parcel of precipitation," which is telling.

湿雪 shissetsu wet and warm snow. Demarcated on tenki.jp by a sad, partially melted snowman.

吹雪 fubuki blowing snow or snow storm. Demarcated by an unmelted but extremely distressed snowman. In this part of Japan, it means a chance of thundersnow. Which is awesome.

Temperatures in Ishikawa change quickly, but you can count on something falling from the sky. I have experienced all of these weather conditions in quick succession within one four-minute walk to work. I keep an extra umbrella in my drawer at work in case something unspeakable happens to the one I take with me in the morning. Since the temperature hovers at about 29 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit, the roads aren't plowed; they are instead cleared with sprinklers. Which malfunction and sometimes gush several feet into the air, the terror of bicyclists everywhere.

There is a reason why people in Japan love spring. Not only is it gorgeous...it's not three categories of winter precipitation that aren't really snow.


*Ozouni is a soup made from traditional Japanese broth, greens, mochi (sticky rice cakes), and chicken...or in my case, tofu. Zenzai is a dessert-ish soup made from red bean paste, water, and mochi. There's a theme here. It's mochi.