February 3rd is the holiday of Setsubon, a celebration of the changing of the seasons from winter to spring. The big Setsubon ritual is the throwing of beans and the shouting of “Oni wa soto. Fuku wa uchi!” (Demons out! Luck in!) The date of this festival somewhat coincides with the Chinese New Year and folks actually bring their good luck charms from the past year to the temples in order to throw them into the fire- again, symbolic of the “out with the old, in with the new”. Along with the bean throwing, there are also numerous “purification” rituals performed at local temples.
The temple pictured in the slideshow (on the right sidebar), is a 20 minute walk from school. We had a beautiful, sunny, crisp day for our field trip, which was a real treat. When we got to the temple, the fire had already been lit. It was pretty amazing. The most interesting part of the whole thing was watching the head priest and his preparation to walk across the fire. Our students are actually going back to the temple later this month to meet with him to talk about the ceremony and how he prepared, but I found it funny that he spent the past two weeks in pretty serious preparation to do what one guy did first and then a ton of people did after him. I guess his was more of a spiritual preparation, but….? not really sure?!
A few other notes about the photos:

*the priests were throwing water on the fire to aid in creating all the smoke. Apparently, it’s good luck to have the smoke blow your way!
*what looked like a pile of trash.. those were the symbols from last year that people brought to be burned. They also brought new items for this year (the year of the ox) to be blessed by the priests.
* the ‘head’ priest is the one in purple and the one that i have a bunch of pictures of ‘preparing’. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was going to do, so i kept taking pictures!
* not sure why the guys had animal skins covering their bottoms? I asked my students to ask the priest when they meet with him later this month! That’s the first time i have ever seen guys wearing fur!
* the group pic is my fourth grade class with our two Japanese teachers!
* the picture of the blue tarp on the ground was a ‘washing area’ for folks after they had walked across the fire- they were ushered to the tarp to wash/cool their feet before putting their shoes back on. I was amazed how many older (senior) folks did this.
* the whole ceremony lasted for almost two hours!
Enjoy the video and some of the sounds of the celebration! (any English you might hear is coming from my students! We were the only gaijin/foreigners present).

I don’t think Americans realize how important, exciting and hopeful the inauguration was for people around the world. The inauguration took place at 2:00 AM here in Japan, yet there were viewing parties – (not among the Americans, most of the Americans I know went to sleep) to see the speech. People were talking about the speech and Obama’s intentions for the rest of the week. Many Japanese friends were asking questions about the speech and wondering what it would mean. This scene was repeated all over the world. At our school the ones who were most involved were Kiwis and Brits. It really was amazing how the world is pinning its hopes on Obama. I worry that the world is setting Obama up to be their savior. On one television interview a man was saying that only Obama can bring peace to the Middle East. These are enormous expectations and a role in which he cannot possibly succeed. I think there is a Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times” – we certainly do live in interesting times.

I have also been asked how the economic crisis has affected life in Japan? Is my job in danger? Is the school downsizing? etc. Japan has been hit as hard as any nation with the crisis. The auto industry is laying off and closing doors. Banks are getting propped up by the government, businesses are closing and jobs are ending. To make matters worse the Japanese yen has become very, very strong reaching 40 year highs. Maybe this is because the USDollar is so weak. But this also means that the exports they have aren’t making as much profit and this scares people more. However, all that being said, Japan is much less affected because the people have such vast savings. Most Japanese save about 50% of their income providing them with a huge reserve during the down times. Even if they do lose their job, they do not worry about losing their house or even drastically changing their lifestyle. For the school this means enrollment is steady, in fact, we continue to have a waiting list of students trying to get in. If worse did come to worse, math would be the last department to feel layoffs, partly because of the value Japanese place on math and partly because the math department is already a little understaffed. So, in spite of the layoffs, closings, stock market meltdowns and foreboding news things continue much as they have been. On a personal note, the strong yen has meant traveling abroad is very easy right now. From the time I arrived in August until now the yen has increased in value by 20%. So imagine getting a 20% salary increase over 5 months. Of course that could (and probably will) change but right now it’s pretty good!

Anyway, all is great in Osaka. Come and see us!

For Christmas this year our family had become a little disillusioned with the typical American Christmas extravagance. We had found a web site – http://www.adventconspiracy.org/ that gave us some ideas. What we did was this… First we decided we would only do one present each – so we drew secret names and searched for a special gift. Secondly, for each of the 25 days of advent we decided to donate some money. (The family all together!)The amount wasn’t important, just the conscious act of giving was the important thing. The third and final piece of our Christmas was the “12 days of Christmas.” We started on December 23rd and each of the five of us took 2 days to plan a family activity. Of the remaining 2 days one was spent going out to our favorite restaurant – Sushi Tsune and the other was deciding what to do with the money we saved. We chose two things one was Blood: Water – an organization committed to providing clean blood and clean water to Africa. (Enjoying a Carolina day, wearing our Japan national team soccer jerseys) You can check it out at http://www.bloodwatermission.com/. The second was the church that Kristin has found in Pittsburgh, Hot Metal Bridge Church. They currently are meeting in a bar and looking at refurbishing/expanding. We are thrilled to be able to help in a small way with that. You can see it at http://www.hotmetalbridge.com/v2/. Our events the other 10 days included arts and crafts, a hike, board games, going to a movie and frisbee golf. Then the departures started. Ema headed back to Fort Wayne – although grandma Rose (Karen’s mom) came to visit from New York. (Grandma Rose with our nephew Matthew and his wife Leah). Amby had to get back to work in Boston. After a week, Grandma Rose left, then Jeff headed back to Japan. A few days later Kristin was back in Pittsburgh followed by Andrew back to Boston. Finally, more than five weeks after she arrived Karen headed out to Japan and life returned to normal – at least as normal as it gets.

a beautiful sunset from our balcony. All this and no school on Monday or Tuesday. Can it get any better?