Seasonal Secret: Hacking cherry blossom season: How to beat peak pricing and crowds, while still enjoying maximum pinkness
You go to Japan for cherry blossom season expecting it’ll be all picnics under the spreading boughs of pinkness, but even if you manage to book tickets that catch the blooms at their peak (along with the thirty million others who also also guessed right), you’re likely to pay the kind of peak pricing that makes even the most gorgeous displays seem not quite worth it. But people who live here have ways of getting around all that, and here’s how they do it!…read more
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The Thing I Learned Today: If we’re going to give up cars, we’re going to need more hand towels
Five unexpected things that that explain why 21 million people happily use the train instead of their cars every day in Tokyo…read more
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Beyond Tokyo: Let’s hike through a wild cherry blossom forest!
Let’s escape the elbowing cameramen, blossom-hogging selfie-snappers and crowded parks of Tokyo and head up to Tohoku, where kilometers upon kilometers of wild cherry blossoms line the hiking trails at Hanamiyama. “Cherry Blossom Mountain” is a vast private park planted with so many flowering trees that every vista is painted in a patchwork of…read more
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Japanese Home Cooking recipe: Spring Vegetable Salad with Creamy Sesame Dressing
Dress up a bouquet of colorful spring vegetables in this decadently creamy dressing that’s made without cream! The surprise ingredient is silken tofu, so not only will your loved ones be begging for second helpings of vegetables, they’ll get all the enjoyment of cream without the dairy….read more
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Mar-Apr 2023 Book Review & Giveaway: Dead-end Memories by Banana Yoshimoto
https://japanagram.me/2023/03/01/dead-end-memories-banana-yoshimoto/Banana Yoshimoto puts her characters into scenarios we are all familiar with and lulls us into suspending our disbelief by getting inside the character’s head, so we see it through their Japanese eyes. In this collection of short stories, she gets us past our own cultural assumptions, so we can…read more
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Setting & details: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Authenticity of Japanese characters & dialogue: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Translation quality: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Entertainment value: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ My recommendation: Although Japanese fiction nearly always loses a lot in translation, this collection of short stories still manages to feature characters and situations that are strangely Japanese, yet truly universal at the same time.
If you’ve heard me bemoan the horrors of Japanese fiction translations before, you’ll know that I seldom enjoy Japanese novels in English because so much of the meaning isn’t in the words, but inferred by details that only people raised in Japan can understand. Banana Yoshimoto manages to get around this problem by writing about situations all human beings face—how a single misfortune can change a person’s life, how it feels to face the exhaustion brought on by the demands of modern life—so we sympathize with her characters and find their mystifyingly Japanese reactions to situations thought-provoking instead of annoyingly unbelievable.
She does this by putting her characters into scenarios we are all familiar with and lulls us into suspending our disbelief by narrating from inside the character’s head, so we see their choices and reactions through Japanese eyes. She gets us past our own cultural assumptions, so we can embrace accepting the supernatural as if it were ordinary (in “House of Ghosts”) or ride along for a very un-Western way to recover after being dumped in the worst possible way (“Dead-end Memories”).
This book of short stories is a fine window into the life and thinking of ordinary Japanese characters, and is a surprisingly enjoyable read.
You can get it right now from your favorite bookseller, or check out the May-June Japanagram to see if you won a copy! All subscribers are automatically entered to win—if you’re not among them yet, click this button to subscribe, and be automatically signed up to enter.
How I pick the book giveaway winners: On the last day of each month, I load all the email addresses of Japanagram subscribers into a random name picker on the Web and ask it to choose subscribers to match however many books I’m giving away that month. Then I publish the emails in the next day’s Japanagram (all emails obscured in a way so only the subscriber will be able to recognize it as their own, of course!)
You just won a copy of The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka!
If you think this is you, shoot a message to JapanagramJonelle@gmail.com and tell me if you’d like an ebook or paperback, and where you’d like me to send it. (I’ll need an email address for the ebook or a mailing address for the paperback).
If I didn’t pull your name from the hat this time, you might get lucky next time! In the next issue, I’m giving away Dead-end Memories, a collection of short stories by Banana Yoshimoto.
One lucky subscriber will win a copy, so check the May-Jun Japanagram to see if it’s your lucky day!
And if you’d like to be automatically entered to win each month’s giveaway, subscribe! Click here to get the Japanagram e-magazine delivered to your email every month
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How I pick the winners: On the last day of the month, I load all the email addresses of Japanagram subscribers into a random name picker on the Web and ask it to choose one subscriber’s email as the winner of that issue’s giveaway. Then I publish the email in the next Japanagram (obscured in a way so only the subscriber will be able to recognize it as their own, of course!)
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Dress up a bouquet of colorful spring vegetables in this decadently creamy dressing that’s made without cream! The surprise ingredient is silken tofu, so not only will your loved ones be begging for second helpings of vegetables, they’ll get all the enjoyment of cream without the dairy.
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Spring Vegetable Salad with Creamy Sesame Dressing
Serves 4
The combination I used:
Creamy Sesame Dressing (recipe below)
Snow peas, trimmed
Carrots, sliced thin and cut into shapes or matchsticks
Lotus root, peeled and sliced
1 t. salt
But you can also use whatever combination of veggies you like best: asparagus, green beans, snap peas, garden peas, etc. Adjust the cooking time upward to about 4 minutes for green beans and shelled peas.
First, wash, peel, and cut vegetables into bite-sized bits.
You can just slice the carrots into thin rounds, but it looks nicer if you cut the rounds into matchsticks or (if you want to get really fancy and Japanese!) use a cookie cutter to make them into plum blossoms
Add salt to a saucepan of water and bring to a boil. Fill a big bowl with cold water. Toss the prepared vegetables into the boiling water and count to fifteen. Pour off water and plunge veggies into the cold water to stop them cooking.
Cooking the veggies very slightly makes the colors brighter and softens them just a little. They should still be crunchy.
Dry vegetables with a towel and put them in a bowl, then add spoonfuls of dressing, tossing until coated.
Creamy Sesame Dressing
4 oz. silken tofu (230g)
3 T. rice vinegar (45ml)
3 T. white miso (45g)
1 T. sesame paste (tahini or Japanese nerigoma) (15ml)
1 t. sugar (5g)
2 t. salad oil (10ml)
2 T. water (30ml)
1 T. fresh ginger, grated (15g)
Salt, to taste
Whip tofu with a whisk (or beat with a mixer) until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat until smooth and creamy.
You don’t have to get every tiny little lump out of the whipped tofu—it’s fine if it looks like this!
Let’s escape the elbowing cameramen, blossom-hogging selfie-snappers and crowded parks of Tokyo and head up to Tohoku, where kilometers upon kilometers of wild cherry blossoms line the hiking trails at Hanamiyama. “Cherry Blossom Mountain” is a vast private park planted with so many flowering trees that every vista is painted in a patchwork of pink.
Even though it feels like you’re far out in the countryside while you’re hiking, Hanamiyama Park is actually just a short bus ride from Fukushima Station (about an hour and half from Tokyo via bullet train).
Because it’s farther north and further inland than Tokyo, spring comes later and is compressed into a shorter time period. These photos were taken in mid-April, long after the Tokyo cherry blossoms were finished.
The plum trees, cherry blossoms, peach trees, forsythia and fields of yellow nanohana all bloom all at once, creating an overlapping extravaganza of color you won’t see in coastal cities like Tokyo and Kyoto, where the seasons stretch out longer.
Every bend in the trail delivers new delights, and the park is so big, you can hike there for hours.
From the entrance, a nicely accessible walking path meanders along a watercourse, but as you climb into the hillier parts of the park, the paths become more like hiking trails.
Here’s where Hanamiyama Park is:
And here’s a closer look to show where it is, right outside Fukushima city:
How to get to Hanamiyama Park from Tokyo:
Once you get off the bullet train at Fukushima Station, find the bus lot outside the station and catch the bus that goes directly to Hanamiyama Park. It takes about 15 minutes.
I used the Japan Navigation phone app to figure out this route, and you can easily use it too, with your actual date and preferred arrival time. It’s also good for finding the easiest way to get to Tokyo Station from where you’re staying. Here’s where to get the app and how to use it.
How to beat peak pricing and crowds, while still enjoying maximum pinkness!
You go to Japan for cherry blossom season expecting it’ll be like this:
But if you come during peak season, you’re more likely to get this:
And trip dates are becoming harder to guess. Thanks to global warming, the sure bet of “last-few-days-of-March-through-the-first-few-days-of-April” is shifting—sometimes by as much as ten days—and while the Japanese powers-that-be can still predict peak bloom, the map isn’t published until it’s too late for overseas visitors to buy plane tickets and get hotel reservations.
So, what can you do, besides invest in a rabbit’s foot?
1 Expand your cherry blossom wish list—come to see the spectacular early or late-blooming varieties instead of the classic Yoshino cherries
The classic cherry blossoms that are mooned over by the haiku poets are the single, barely pink, Yoshino variety that bloom in giant clouds like the ones below at Shinjuku Gyouen.
These are the ones predicted by the cherry blossom forecasts and that feature in all the hanami party plans. The ten days when the yoshino-zakura are in bloom are the most crowded and expensive travel days all year.
But cherry blossoms come in all shapes and sizes, and lots of them bloom outside that narrow “cherry blossom season” window. The ones that bloom as early as mid-February (even in Tokyo) look like this:
This photo was shot on February 25, but other kawaru-zakura trees in Shinjuku Gyouen began blooming as early as February 15.
They’re a little pinker and grow in bunches like the late-blooming yae-zakura, I think you’ll agree they are just as beautiful!
The next to bloom are the kan-zakura and shidare-zakura, which pop in mid-March, a week or two before the official cherry blossom season begins. They look like this:
This photo was shot on March 19, at Shinjuku Gyouen in Tokyo
This shidare-zakura weeping cherry photo was also taken at Shinjuku Gyouen on March 19. It was in full bloom a week before the Yoshino cherries.
And in mid-April, about a week after the Yoshino cherries become sad shreds of wilted petals on the ground, the fluffy, double yae-zakura begin to bloom
This photo was shot on April 11, at Shinjuku Gyouen in Tokyo
As an extra bonus, yae-zakura come in many colors!
Also…Tokyo is an urban heat island, so if you get to town late and miss The Season, you can still catch peak bloom of the yoshino-zakura an hour inland.
These beauties at Showa Kinen Park in Tachikawa were in full bloom a good week after peak bloom in Tokyo. The ones at Mt. Takao bloom even later.
2 Expand your horizons: Explore famous cherry blossom spots outside the big cities
If you travel to places outside Tokyo and Kyoto, peak bloom happens as much as a month earlier or later.
The map published every year by Japan Rail to help Japanese people plan their cherry blossom trips is the best one to consult when deciding when/where to go.
Official yoshino-zakura cherry blossom season only lasts about ten days from the first buds opening to the last petal dropping, but those ten days happen at different times over a two month span, depending on altitude and north/south location. (They bloom later at higher elevations and to the north; earlier at sea level and to the south.)
Not surprisingly, the places and bloom times outside the well-beaten paths around Tokyo and Kyoto not only have fewer crowds, they have more affordable travel prices.
But are they just as beautiful? You be the judge!
If you go early:
Mid-February Kawazu City kawazu-zakura
Kawazu-zakura bloom in mid-February in Tokyo too, but places like Kawazu City plant them all together like this, so you can have the full under-the-cherry-blossoms experience a whopping six weeks before the spectacle begins in Tokyo (thanks to the Kawazu Tourist Association for the photo)
If you go late:
Mid- to late-April Photo taken April 18, Miyagi prefecture, shidare-zakura
Photo taken April 24: Hirosaki, Aomori prefecture yoshino-zakura
This photo was taken at Hirosaki Castle, a full month after the cherry blossoms were history in Tokyo
If you do hit the sweet spot and manage to be in Tokyo or Kyoto for The Classic Pinkness, here’s how to enjoy the fluffiness despite the kerbillion other lucky souls enjoying them with you…
3 Choose what time of day you enjoy them
Go in the early morning…
This photo was taken at peak season at Shinjuku Gyouen in Tokyo, but I was standing outside the gate when it opened at 9:00 and I dashed to the pond before other other visitors made it that far into the park
…or at night. Plenty of places hold “light-up” events now, and the crowds of people become mere silhouettes instead of distracting annoyances.
Record hordes of people turn up every night to see the Chidori-ga-fuchi moat all lit up during the cherry madness, but you don’t notice the other people when they’re just black silhouettes instead of orange jacket-wearing photo spoilers
Five unexpected things that explain why 21 million Tokyo dwellers choose the train every day, instead of their cars
If you want to convince everyone to use public transportation—rich, poor, young, old—it goes without saying that it needs to be faster, cheaper, more convenient and more reliable than using a car. And it’s not wrong for any government focus first on obvious design decisions like (for example) trains not getting stuck in traffic, so people can count on them getting where they need to be on time.
But how does Tokyo get 57% of residents to use trains instead of cars every day?
That’s over 21 million people every day, if you’re the kind of person who likes numbers.
#1
All restaurants give you a little wet hand towel to clean your hands before eating
Nobody wants to dive right into their food with dirty hands after riding public transport, so even the cheapest restaurants provide little warm hand towels to wipe off the grime before digging in.
#2
There are coin lockers at every train station, so you don’t have to lug your shopping around with you
If you’re out checking off your to-do list, you can stow anything from a new pair of shoes to a suitcase in a train station locker for a few hundred yen.
There are even refrigerated lockers for groceries!
#3
If you buy something too big or heavy to carry around, you can have it messengered for cheap
Whether you just bought a new rug or a weeks worth of groceries, Japan’s takyubin services got you covered. You can get stuff delivered from any store—not just supermarkets—for a few hundred yen (less than ten US dollars) and you can even ship your luggage to the airport instead of schlepping it yourself.
#4
Cheap umbrellas on every corner
If it starts to rain, you can save your expensive blowout and dry-clean-only suit for five bucks at any convenience store.
#5
Nobody eats or drinks on the train.
If you want people to ride the train to fancy parties and weddings, you’d better make sure there’s no chance they’ll end up with someone’s spilled latte all over their formalwear.
This used cup was such an anomaly that station after station went by with nobody sitting in that prime corner seat. Nobody on the train dared pick it up and take it away, for fear that oncoming passengers would think they were the barbarian who brought it on board…
…and because there are next to zero public trash cans in Tokyo, no one wanted to get stuck carting it all the way home.
Seasonal Secret: Feast your eyes on these Japanese New Year’s decorations
From December 28 to January 7, Japanese new year decorations hang on every door, beckoning in good luck and prosperity for the coming year…read more
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The Thing I Learned Today: Why do Japanese people refuse to buy used cars, beautiful old houses and vintage kimonos?
The longer you’re in Japan—a place known for its meticulously curated ancient sites and intricate recycling rules—the weirder it seems that people insist on buying only new houses, new cars, new clothing, new everything. Saddest of all…read more
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Beyond Tokyo: The weird Japanese theme park that’s amazing in the most unexpected way
What if I told you that I’d visited a place in Japan that surprised me in a way that I never expected to be surprised? When I finally made it to this place in October, I expected the space-time continuum to be so warped that in a single day you can look in on morning meditation at the Byōdo-in Temple near Kyoto, get in your 10,000 steps at the Great Wall of China, drop by Bangkok’s…read more
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Jan-Feb 2023 Book Review & Giveaway: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
I expected this to be a book of short stories, but it’s an almost stream-of-consciousness flow of gorgeous details, pulled from the real experiences of countless immigrants and woven into a complex portrait of how and why they left their families in Japan and built new…read more
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Get the Japanagram e-magazine’s recipes, books, travel and more delivered right to your email. And of course, it’s FREE!
You just won a realer-than-real sushi fridge magnet!
If you think this is you, shoot a message to JapanagramJonelle@gmail.com and tell me where you’d like me to send it! (I’ll need a mailing address for this one,)
If I didn’t pull your name from the hat this time, you might get lucky next time! In the next issue, I’m giving away The Buddha in the Attic, a book I thought that every Japan-lover would find fascinating.
THe other refrigerators on your street will be green with envy
One lucky subscriber will win a copy, so check the Mer-Apr Japanagram to see if it’s your lucky day!
And if you’d like to be automatically entered to win each month’s giveaway, subscribe! Click here to get the Japanagram e-magazine delivered to your email every month
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How I pick the winners: On the last day of the month, I load all the email addresses of Japanagram subscribers into a random name picker on the Web and ask it to choose one subscriber’s email as the winner of that issue’s giveaway. Then I publish the email in the next Japanagram (obscured in a way so only the subscriber will be able to recognize it as their own, of course!)
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Setting & details: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Authenticity of Japanese characters & dialogue: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Translation quality: N/A Entertainment value: ⭐⭐⭐ My recommendation: This book is less like a novel than an epic poem, its layer upon layer of luscious details shining light on every facet of the immigrant experience, mostly through the eyes of the Japanese women who came as “picture brides” to carve out a new life in America.
I expected this to be a book of short stories, but instead it’s an almost stream-of-consciousness flow of gorgeous details, pulled from the real experiences of countless immigrants and woven into a complex tale of how and why they left their families in Japan and built new lives in America. Presented without judgment or commentary, these details explore every aspect of immigrant life: servitude and freedom, undeserved cruelty and unexpected kindness, the prejudice they suffered and the ones they held themselves. How they feared, hoped, loved, hated, worked, bore children, raised them, lost them, made it through each day, and eventually died.
Without a single character or hint of a plot, The Buddha in the Attic still manages to tell a detailed and compelling story of an entire immigrant wave, portraying the inner Japanese attitudes and reactions to the situations they were thrust into with a clarity found in few other pieces of literature. Through the eyes of many, we get a picture of the world they found themselves in, and how they adapted to survive and eventually thrive.
Because this book didn’t have the intriguing plot and sympathetic characters that usually hook me into a story, I didn’t think I’d finish it, much less like it. But oddly, it kind of grew on me, and the skill with which the author builds each layer upon the last builds a deep undertanding of the Japanese in America. Their intertwined experiences reveal triumphs and disappointments that are both uniquely Japanese and universally human.
You can get it right now from your favorite bookseller, or check out the Mar-Apr Japanagram to see if you won a copy! All subscribers are automatically entered to win—if you’re not among them yet, click this button to subscribe, and be automatically signed up to enter.
How I pick the book giveaway winners: On the last day of each month, I load all the email addresses of Japanagram subscribers into a random name picker on the Web and ask it to choose subscribers to match however many books I’m giving away that month. Then I publish the emails in the next day’s Japanagram (all emails obscured in a way so only the subscriber will be able to recognize it as their own, of course!)
Japanagram 