Xmas Starts to Pop Up

In the mid-80s in the U.S., this was how things worked: Stores had their Christmas decorations and merchandise for sale the day after Thanksgiving. In the late 80s, Christmas-related items started to pop up after Halloween, moving one month ahead before Thanksgiving. Shortly thereafter, in the early 90s, Christmas items ridiculously showed up in July in a major department store in San Francisco, which is not too bad compared to the year-round Christmas-stores in some small towns somewhere in the United States.

Here in Tokyo, on my outing tonight, I saw the first hint of Christmas shopping season. With the temperature dropping steadily in Tokyo, with the light of day diminishing ever so quickly in the late afternoon, and with people donning their scarves and overcoats already, the Isetan department store in Shinjuku 3-chome started to put up their dripping lights, metallic red garlands, and glass balls. Just a few weeks ago, the Halloween decoration was up in several shops and cafés. I have yet to see how October 31 will actually be celebrated here: whether the Tokyoites will actually run around the city, go to work in costumes, or whether any locals (expats excluded) will go trick-or-treating.

My feeling was that in the U.S., holidays were mostly created so that retailers can have a reason for putting things on sale. Somewhere in the lobbying world of the Washington, D.C., there must be some reps from the card industry that tried to get new holidays created so as to generate new greetings cards and boost up sales. In Tokyo, there is already a new kind of day called "the White Day" in response to the Valentine's Day. You see, VD (yes, that's Valentine's Day) in Tokyo is for the women to "give things" to the men; therefore, the White Day was created so that the men could return the favor. There is yet any indication about what happens to children who give their parents something on Valentine's Day (why children do this to their parents in the first place really confuse the meaning of that day. Wasn't VD created for lovers or does the term 'lovers' have an expanded postmodernist meaning now?)

The original intent of Mother's Day and Christmas and the likes was to honor the people or the history involved, but really, these days, those holidays concerned more with what to get for whom rather than remembering the spirit of the event. Do I sound like a much repeated broken record out there? Perhaps. I better shut up and do my Xmas shopping now.

Here Quake, There Quake!

I thought I had left the earthquake country behind when I moved out of San Francisco, California, but the quake had found me hiding in Tokyo. Yep, just now, we experienced an earthquake followed by tremors in the longest span of time I had ever known. A year ago, when I was still living in San Francisco and my partner lived in Tokyo, we were talking on the phone. I was at home, and he was at a café with his colleagues. Suddenly, through the phone, he told me that he just experienced his first earthquake ever. Interestingly enough, few seconds later, in San Francisco, the earth moved under my feet. It was as if the ocean between us never existed with us experiencing different earthquakes in two separate countries at the same time.

Tonight's earthquake happened while we were both sitting in the study at home. We were both working on our computers when my partner alerted me of the first mild jolt. Immediately we looked at the Toraja (Indonesian) funerary dolls that I had placed on the top shelf of the bookcase; shortly thereafter came the swaying. My initial reaction was to head under the door frame, but foolish enough, I decided to ask my partner to join me in preventing the bookcases from falling. They were neither bolted down to the floor nor attached to the wall, and we had plenty of books. I thought if I were to die, I would like to be buried under those books.

Unlike any earthquake and aftershakes I have had before, this one had many tremors in the hours to come. Much later on while I was in the kitchen cleaning the counter, my partner rushed in and asked if I had felt another jolt. I said, "Not really," but as I just finished saying that, again I felt the ground shifting a bit. Then I saw the artwork swaying on the wall. We checked with CNN online and found out about the magnitude and center of the quake: "Ojiya, a city in Niigata prefecture (state), about 260 kilometers (160 miles) northwest of Tokyo. The quake was about 20 kilometers (12 miles) beneath the earth's surface, the Meteorological Agency said."

The Autumnal Equinox

The most recent Japanese holiday celebrated the Autumnal Equinox, a time when the sun appeared to cross the celestial equator. In the Northern Hemisphere, this phenomenon ushered in the Fall Season. And so it really began: the unbearable heat and humidity of the summer days slowly gave way to the cooler and dryer fall weather. In the past week, since September 27, it has rained almost everyday. A typhoon was supposed to be working its way to the city, but the only evidence I saw was the gusty wind. If there was a rainstorm, it must have happened during the time when I was fast asleep.

Slowly, the leaves in our trees start to cover the earth in our garden. It is true that only in any place that truly observes the four seasons could one appreciate the change of the season. I have lived in San Francisco for over ten years, but the year-round beautifully mild weather of the Bay Area had always left only a tiny hint for me that we were entering a new season. Here in Tokyo, where for the past three months I have been wearing the heat and humidity of my skin, I am now exchanging it gladly for the cape of cool breeze and occasional sprinkles.