Coming of Age Day ( 成人の日 : seijin no hi)

The United States of America has their Debutante Balls, Mexico has their Quinceañera, the Indonesians have their Sweet Sixteen/Seventeen, and Japan has their Seejin no Hi or the Coming of Age Day (literally, seijin means "to become a person"; "seijin no hi" therefore means "to-become-a-person's day"). This national holiday celebrates those who turned 20 during the preceding year (during the current school year, which in Japan began in April). According to the Daily Mainichi, this year's number of debutante is the lowest ever in 20 years, prompting concern about the declining birth rate in Japan. Last year, 1.39 Million Japanese reached adulthood.

In Japan this used to be celebrated on January 15 until 1999 when it started being fêted on the second Monday of January. Twenty is the legal age for voting, drinking, and smoking (and I shall see which of these three new rights is celebrated the most by these youth!). In the two times that I had attended the festivities (the first in Asakusa Temple back in 2005) I noticed that the majority of youth who donned their kimonos were mostly the young women. This year I only spotted a few, but was not sure if they were the girls' dates or fellow debutants.

(I caught sight of a couple of kimono-clad middle aged women who were too coquettish for local standard, prompting me to believe that they must have missed their own Coming of Age day a few decades ago; or perhaps they are now celebrating the Coming of Old Age day. Rejoice!)

There were a few three-generation groups of women: a set that included the grandmother, the mother, and the debutante. You can almost trace the genetic line on most of them. The elder ones were beaming with pride as spectators snapped pictures of their progeny (not to discount a number of fathers who proudly escorted their daughters to the shrine). As soon as I load the pictures to my Flickr account, I will create a link here.

New Year in Full Force

Tokyo awoke from her New Year's Holiday. While Christmas in this predominantly Shinto/Buddhist nation is not a big deal, New Year is. Christmas 2006, which fell on a Monday, was not a holiday, but from December 29 until January 4, most offices and businesses closed down. People fled the city or stayed at home to relax.

While major department stores already opened on January 2 with gradually longer hours, only today (Friday, January 5) did most of Tokyoites return to work in full force, and the effect could not be felt more than in one of her busiest spots: Shibuya. Just witness the major intersection with hundreds of people crossing tonight: in the past few days, this spot was almost like a ghost town.

Like major European cities, January in Tokyo means Major Sale Month. Businesses want to dump their inventory by slashing the price up to 70%, but with this city being one of the most expensive places in the world, a sale price here means just a regular price elsewhere...

On the first day of reopening, many stores features "Fuku-Bukuro," which is basically a "Mystery Grab Bag:" you pay for the said price and take a risk in getting a bag with mystery contents. This is a real bargain because the actual price of the content s is much higher than what is charged to the customers, but the risk is there: you can end up with either "treasure" or "trash," which sounds very much like a commercial "trick or treat." The Nike Fuku-Bukuro at Takashimaya, for example, included a jogging suit, a sports bag, and a pair of shoes. I am not entirely sure what happens if one does get what he wants but in the wrong size. These bags sell like hot-cakes, according to one staff member; within less than two hours, they were out of Fuku-Bukuros.

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.

The Disappearing Acts

Finally the humidity in Tokyo subsided, giving way to the Fall weather. Since my return from Indonesia, I have not been savagely attacked by the darned mosquitoes, although I had stocked up on the repellants. It is quite pleasant to ride the bike in the evening.

Another thing that has been missing from my neighborhood here is the sound of the cicadas. In the summer, like clockwork, the cicadas will make their noise from dawn until dusk, but these days, I have yet to hear a single cicada sing.

Today is the National Holiday for the Aged. Ironically, some young people rushed to an elevator that was reserved for the handicapped and parents with strollers, and the meek elevator operator turned away my father (who was on a wheelchair) and me (the wheelchair pusher). I hope that the holiday still means something, not just another reason for a sale, the way it has seemed to be in the United States.