Pasmo is Here!!!

Once upon a time, yours truly arrived in Tokyo to find his wallet filled with not only hundreds of stores point cards but also a multitudes of transportation cards: one for Japan Rail (mostly train over the ground), one for Tokyo Metro (underground), and one for the Tokyo Bus. Many a time Bloompy wondered to himself why the three different proprietors had not developed one electronic card that could be read by the three different modes of transportations.

Well, either Bloompy's suggestion and perhaps hundreds of other people's complaints were heard OR the three institutions finally decided to create a pass that could be read by all, but at any rate, PASMO finally made its debut in March 2007.

Suica, the Japan Rail's Integrated Circuit Card (IC-card), had been in circulation for some years, but now it too can be used interchangeably with the Tokyo Metro and the Bus systems. Just as Suica is accepted by vendors within the JR-system, Pasmo can be used to make purchases at any locations that display the Pasmo Logo, as well as at all Suica-accepting shops.

For more information, click HERE.

Panda Sneeze

This is unrelated to anything about Japan or travels, but did I have a lot of fun watching the surprised Mama Panda!

Now You See It, Now You See It Less

Kimonos are not cheap things to acquire in Japan. Even a good summer kimono (yukata) can fetch for a few hundred dollars. A good silk kimono can cost somewhere from a thousand dollars to, say, $15,000, which gets the average Japanese girl (or her parents) thinking about how much she wants to spend on something that she may not wear too often, given that people would have seen the design once worn. It is perhaps the equivalent of wearing a Gucci or a Dolce & Gabbana: once you wear it, people will remember it. How often will you then don the same thing for the next function?

Now enter the Tokyo-based Kyoto Kimono Yuzen Co. (京都きもの友禅) with a seamless solution of the Dress-Furisode: a kimono that converts into a party dress or an evening gown, where the wearer puts the full-length dress first, then an undervest, a jacket, and finally the obi (the sash or the belt). A young lady or perhaps her parents may buy one for her Seejin no hi (Coming of Age Day), and the lady could wear the evening gown for another occasion.

Furisode is formal kimono for single women. Click HERE to learn more about Furisode or kimono in general.

Ready Your Chopstick, Get Set, Grab!!!

Concerned that Japanese youth are forsaking their ancestors culinary culture and table manners, Hisatagakuen, an all-girl high school in south Japan, reportedly employed a chopstick-using ability as one of the entrance requirements. Perspective students were asked to demonstrate their dexterity in using the chopstick to pick up objects such as marbles, beads, and beans from one spot to another, according to the school's principal, Hisata Junko (Japanese names start with the family name/surname and then the given name).

With Western and western-inspired fast food inundating this nation, young people now prefers burgers and fries to traditional Japanese food such as fish, rice, and miso soup; and with the shift in eating habits, the table manners went away too. The school, founded in 1902, also aimed to preserve other cultural activities such as flower arrangement and the traditional tea ceremony.

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.