With falling temperatures, the red spider lilies (
higan-bana) introduced
last month have completely disappeared to be replaced with another natural seasonal signpost, Japanese pampas grass (
susuki), otherwise called (Chinese) silver grass, zebra
grass, or porcupine grass. In the calendar,
susuki is most commonly associated with
jyūgoya (十五夜) or
the night of the full moon, that is the night of the 15th day of the 8th lunar month in the old calendar (equivalent to October in the modern calendar - October 6th
this year). On this day, some people display
susuki - said to bring a year's good health - together with
dango (rice-dumplings) and engage in "moon watching" (
tsuki-mi
=月見), the celebration and honouring of the autumn full-moon which goes
back centuries. See
here for my previous post on moon-watching!
Autumn is connected with a host of relaxing indoor activities, epitomised by phrases such as dokusho no aki (読書の秋) meaning "Autumn is for reading" and shokuyoku no aki (食欲の秋), literally autumn, the season of good appetite! There is no expression for video games but these are also a popular autumn pastime. Interestingly, to coincide with Halloween, Google recently marked the 45th anniversary of Pac-Man with a playable game on its search engine. Pac-Man was invented by a Japanese, Toru Iwatani, a designer at Namco (now Bandai Namco Entertainment) and originally released in 1980. The story is that he was inspired by a pizza with a slice missing and aimed to create a non-violent video games that would appeal to a wider audience, including women who Iwatani's team apparently thought, in the best tradition of autumn in Japan, "liked to eat!"
The blog is always looking to make connections between Japan and the UK and here I'm going to make a leap and talk about Ed Sheeran, the hugely successful English singer-songwriter whose favourite restaurant is apparently
The Araki, a nine-seater sushi bar
in London which offers an omakase chef's set menu at £310 (¥63,000). Omakase means to leave something up to someone else to decide (a very useful phrase to know!). But the connection doesn't end there: recently the Toei Oedo subway line (大江戸線) in Tokyo held a unique collaboration with Sheeran featuring themed subway cars, a stamp-rally, merchandise, and even a one day travel pass. The logo for the subway line is a magenta circle with an "E" inside which has been neatly transformed into "Ed" for the campaign! Magenta is also the colour of Sheeran's new album "Play."While we're on the subject of subways, November 1st marks the
100th anniversary of Tokyo's fabled Yamanote line (山手線), the almost 35km circular train line that connects most of the key areas such as Ueno, Shinagawa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro (video
here).
To confuse non-Japanese (and Japanese too for that matter) the
direction of travel is not "clockwise" or "anti-clockwise" but outer
circle (
sotomawari =外回り) and inner circle (
uchimawari=内回り) - go figure! Each station has a unique jingle when the train doors are about to
close - if the music is still playing you know you just about have
enough time to leap on or off (listen to them all
here)! Following the opening of a new station - Takanawa Gateway Station (
高輪ゲートウェイ駅) - in March 2020, the one-hour loop now comprises 30 stations, with 50 trains running three or four minutes during rush hour and carrying almost a million people each day. In comparison, the Circle Line in London consists of 36 stations and a "full loop" takes about 49 minutes, though it is no longer a true continuous loop. Figures for Circle Line only are not available,
but the average daily ridership for the whole Tube network was 3.23 million for 2023/2024! See here for some of the anniversary merchandise on sale, including a commemorative bento, a Fukagawa rice ball (onigiri), and a limited-edition craft beer! British Prof doesn't drink, but I'd still like to raise a glass to the Yamanote which makes Tokyo travel so seamless and meeting up with friends so very easy. Kanpai! Anything piqued your interest this month? Do drop us a line in the COMMENTS!
