Near my house, there’s a funeral parlour, and they were advertising the fact that you could get an estimate in advance as to how much your funeral, would cost.
On one hand, that’s a great idea.
But on the other hand, it seems rather gruesome, really, to be talking about how much your funeral would cost. And I’m assuming that either the person whose funeral is being discussed goes and takes part in the discussion, or that at least they are aware that the discussion is being had.
Either way, it doesn’t seem like a very pleasant thing to be talking about, does it?
I wrote earlier about a dentist called ‘Baumkuchen‘. So here’s a little more about baumkuchen in Hiroshima.
Baumkuchen is a traditional German cake made by layering thin coats of batter onto a rotating spit. When sliced, it resembles the rings of a tree—hence the name ‘tree cake’ (Baum=tree, Kuchen=cake).
Baumkuchen arrived in Japan- specifically, Hiroshima- thanks to Karl Juchheim, a German pastry chef.
During World War I, Juchheim was captured and held in Japan at the Bando POW Camp. After the war, in 1919, he showcased Baumkuchen at the Hiroshima Prefectural Products Exhibition. This was the first time Baumkuchen was introduced to Japan, and Hiroshima prides itself on being where it all started.
Back in 2019 in Hiroshima, quite a bit was made of the 100th anniversary of Japanese baumkuchen. One of the trams in Hiroshima even bore a special logo to commemorate the anniversary!
After the exhibition, Karl Juchheim stayed in Japan and founded the confectionery company Juchheim, and baumkuchen began to spread through department stores and Western-style confectionery shops. Its original- and continued- popularity may well come from the fact that the tree rings in the cake represent longevity, prosperity, and continuity, which makes baumkuchen an excellent fit with Japanese culture.
I came across an interestingly-named dental clinic the other day. It was called Baumkuchen Dentist, or Baumkuchen Dental Clinic.
Now, baumkuchen are very popular in Japan, but I’m not sure how big they are elsewhere, so let me explain. They’re a type of German cake (actually, in Japan, they originated in Hiroshima, but that’s another story- or another blog post).
A kind of cake. Do you see the problem here?
Yes, it’s a dental clinic named after cake!
Mind you, I suppose as far as dentists are concerned, advertising cake is probably good for business! And before anyone asks, I would absolutely go to this dentist if I lived closer! I think it’s a superb name!
Whenever I see traditional wooden houses in Japan, I always feel that I would really like a house with an engawa.
If you don’t know what an engawa is, it’s sort of an outside corridor around a house. It’s still inside the house, and it’s still enclosed. Normally, it’s framed or glazed with glass panels or sliding doors.
Did you know that in Japan, cameras on phones have to have an audible shutter? In other words, when you take a photo in Japan with a smartphone, it goes click, and it’s impossible to mute it, at least not without hacking the phone in some way. In fact, the sound plays even if the phone is in silent or vibration mode.
At the supermarket today, I saw a junior high school boy in school uniform, but wearing an apron. He waved to me, so somewhat puzzled, I went over to see who it was. It turned out to be someone I knew and, somewhat incongruously, he was stacking shelves.
Now, you may well ask why a junior high school boy would be stacking shelves in a supermarket.
The saddest thing about Valentine’s Day having passed for another year isn’t the fact that I no longer have females thrusting chocolate at me.
No, it’s that the big chocolate heart display in the local supermarket has disappeared for another eleven months. Every year it’s a wonder to behold- a huge wall of chocolate, built out of bars of chocolate, with red bars forming a heart. Every day I enjoy seeing it. Or enjoyed seeing it, I should say.
Maybe they could do a blue heart for White Day, and extend my pleasure for a month or so more?
Today is National Foundation Day (Kenkoku Kinen no Hi), a national holiday in Japan. It marks the founding of Japan and encourages people to reflect on the nation’s history and identity. The date of February 11 is traditionally linked to the legendary ascension of Emperor Jimmu, which is said to have occurred in 660 BC.
Anyway, for most people in Japan, the day is just a day off. And as such, outside the supermarket today, there was a blood collection drive.
Once or twice a week, I have to walk past quite a large rice field. As the year progresses, it’s always fascinating to see how the seasons change, as reflected in the rice field.
Right now, the field is bare. It’s just brown earth with a few dead stalks, presumably from last year’s rice plants, mixed into the soil. Now we’re in February, though, it won’t be too long before the farmers start to flood their fields and then plant their rice seedlings.
I used to love Tonomi Station because it was old, a little bit ramshackle, but it was how it had always been, and it was wonderful. But a few years ago, the station building was completely rebuilt. It’s very bright and airy, and really it is a much nicer building, but it’s much simpler and it lacks the rundown, old-fashioned charm of the original station building.
And then on platform three (which is actually the only other platform) there used to be a big wooden shelter, almost as big as a barn in a way, with seats inside it, but now that’s gone completely, and all that’s left is just three rows of seats out in the open on the platform, which is fair enough, but if it’s raining, you can’t use them at all. At least on platform one, there is the station building which provides shelter. It’s progress in one way, I suppose, but, in another way, very much not so. Sometimes with the JR Sanyo Line west of Iwakuni, I get the feeling that for the lesser stations, it really is a case of managed decline. I very much hope that I’m wrong.
Koborebanashi 