Construction Workers

Japanese construction workers wear the funkiest of clothes! When I first saw them I have to say that I was more than a little bemused by their choice of fashion. Apart from the interesting designs that captured my attention and they are very different from anything
you may see in the West, it was more the vivid and often what seemed to me to be ‘feminine’ colors. I had never seen a construction worker in the UK, North America or Australia sporting a bright cerise outfit and to my recollection I haven’t seen many straight man wear an ensemble of lilac, mustard or bright blue-green either. But these colors are quite commonplace on the construction sites of Japan. Imagine a short jacket, a kind of blouson style jean jacket, and high waisted, hip-hugging pants that balloon out at the knees, calves or ankles depending on the type… all in one of those eye-catching colors.Then best of all, Ninja boots which are really called Tabi. Tabi come in many different types and styles depending upon the needs of the wearer: long or short legged tabi, waterproof tabi, steel toe-capped tabi to name a few, and they are even available in gold or silver!
The balloon legs on the pants supposedly act like cats’ whiskers warning the wearer when they brush up against anything without him having to look down. They also allow for free movement when climbing and don’t stick to the body in hot weather. The narrow lower legs not only stop the fabric from catching on anything but are said to aid the blood circulation making it easier to stand up all day.
I love watching Japanese construction workers break down the scaffolding on tall buildings after the work has finished.

Onsens

One of my favorite features of Japanese culture, ancient and modern, is the reverence they give to bathing. To take a bath is an activity to take pleasure in: is often communal, sometimes in public and is almost always in, what feels to me, very hot water. There are public baths, called Sentos, where regular water is heated to about 42 °C, sometimes hotter, and men and women soak separately in huge baths. And then there are Onsens, which are natural hot springs, rich in minerals and salts and rising straight from the depths of the earth. There are many different kinds of Onsens found all over Japan: some are pubic, some private; some are a part of a Ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn or a hotel; some are indoors, but my very favorite are outdoors and are called Rotenburo or Notenburo. Here you get to soak under the stars, if you are bathing at night, or sometimes enjoy a mountain scene or views of a tumbling river or bamboo forest. The form is to bathe naked and to wash before you get in the bath, either using the showers around the bath area or dipping a bowl into the bath water and sluicing it over yourself as you sit on the tiniest stool imaginable. Small towels are often carried in a nod to modesty but basically, people are comfortable being naked. There are some baths I have been to that are mixed men and women, but these are a rarity these days and were in quite remote areas; in those cases people tended to cover themselves with a thin towel even in the water. Apart from the beautiful setting of the Onsen, what is also important is the water itself. Each different source of hot spring may have a different chemical composition and so be recommended for a different ailment. Some of the water is a milky white, some has a reddish tinge depending on the minerals and salts contained. Some resort style Onsens have a variety of tubs each containing different types of water, they may be different temperatures or perhaps have some with herbal infuses and even one I went to had a red wine bath!
My favorite way to bathe is in a ‘family bath’, which means that you have the use of a private bath in a secluded area for one or two hours. Because these baths are usually smaller than the public baths, in some places the water is changed between each family. These are ‘The Ritzes’ of the Onsen world!


Key to pictures:
1 & 2 Mikawa, Kumamoto.
3 Yamaga, Kumamoto.
4 Tonohara, Oita (downstream from the famous Kamakura Onsen).
5 Kokonoe, Oita.
6 Suetate, Oita. (the bath is a hollowed-out tree).

My First Entry

I hope you have found this blog because you are interested in Japan. I decided to start a blog because I love this place: The beauty of the country, the deep and varied cultural traditions, the strange things that I just will never understand (!) and I wanted to share some of these things that charm me.
I have been living in Fukuoka for more than 10 years. Fukuoka is the biggest city on the Island of Kyushu, which is the southernmost of the four main Islands that make up Japan (not counting the Okinawan Islands which are further south still).
If you want to find out more about that go to http://kyushu.com/fukuoka/
I get to go out and about a lot with my Japanese partner and so I see a lot of the smaller places that don't make the guide books but are incredibly beautiful, nonetheless; places that often seem to be frozen in time.
I'll introduce some of these places, as well as other aspects of living and experiencing Japan that interest, intrigue and delight me.
I hope that you can find something that interests you too. Please feel free to make suggestions as to what you'd like to find out more about and if I can, and if you don't mind a non-expert, completely subjective and biased opinion (remember, I'm here because I love it here!) then I will try to address those ideas.

It has recently been Tango-no-sekku, or Boys' Festival. At this time of year families fly huge, carp-shaped streamers hoisted high on a bamboo pole, capped with a pair of gilded pin wheels. A carp is flown for each son in the family, a very large one for the eldest, the others ranging down in size. Here are some in Miyazaki prefecture.
The Japanese consider the carp to be the most spirited of fish; so full of energy and power that it can fight its way upstream even in the strongest flowing river. Because of its strength and determination to overcome all obstacles, it stands for courage and the ability to attain high goals.