Happy Halloween

Here are a few "true" (?) Japanese ghost stories just for fun.

Freaky Fish Shop
As told to me by Mr. Kameoka about his childhood friend

I once knew a boy who visited his friend’s house every day after school. The friend's family owned a fish shop that was attached to the front of their house. Everyone who entered the house always went in and out through the fish shop entrance, so no one ever walked down the dark lane that ran along the side of the building where the front entrance to the house was. The boy never thought much about it until one day when he went to visit his friend and the fish shop entrance was locked. He wandered down the dark lane to the side entrance and approached the front gate. As he paused for a minute in front of the gate, a very strange feeling came over him; he found that he couldn’t take another step forward. All of a sudden, he panicked and ran as fast as he could back down the lane to a nearby telephone booth to call his friend. He explained that he was trying to get into the house, but the fish shop entrance was locked. Once his friend had opened the door and he was safely inside the house, the boy forgot all about the feeling at the front gate.

A few weeks later the boy asked his friend why no one in the house ever set foot in the genkan (entry way) or walked down the lane where he had experienced the strange feeling a few weeks earlier. His friend explained that for years no one in his family felt like they could walk down the lane, because if they did, they would start to feel very sick. Soon after, the family decided to ask a yuta (a kind of Japanese witch doctor/fortune teller woman) to come to the house and get rid of the bad spirits. That day, the little old lady hobbled down the shady lane to the front entrance of the house. She walked right up to the gate, stuck her hand out as if to open it, retracted her hand, and turned around and walked right back down the lane and went home, saying that there was an extremely strong spirit force at the entrance to the house that was blocking her from entering. After the yuta left, the boy went inside the house and stood in front of the genkan. His friend’s grandparents were sitting in the room across from it, so he asked them why everyone avoided it. They said that many many years ago the family had discovered an older male relative after he had committed suicide there. He had hung himself from a beam directly over the genkan.


Kanashibari

The Japanese have a word, kanashibari, which refers to the condition of your body becoming so stiff that you can’t move. It almost feels like your body is sleeping but your mind is awake, and no matter how much your mind tells your body to move, it can't. According to the teachers I work with, only certain people get kanashibari, and it can happen for two reasons. Risa- sensei believes that it happens when your body senses a ghost or spirit around. Another one of my other teachers, who thinks that ghost stories are silly, believes that it happens when you’ve been exercising a lot and your muscles are tired and freeze up. Risa-sensei says that she gets it quite often because there are a lot of ghosts in her house. She told me several stories about it.

One time she dreamt that she was sitting in a room on a chair. Looking up, she saw a woman walking slowly towards her. She freaked out and tried to move or wake herself up, but she couldn't. All of a sudden, she snapped out of sleep, opened her eyes, and saw a woman’s face staring into hers. There was a ghost woman standing right in front of her. Her body froze up and she couldn’t move until the spirit disappeared. She also told me a story about her older brother. She had never met him because he died before she was born. One day, when she was standing in the genkan, her body froze up. In the mirror she could see a boy the same age that her brother would have been today. Her eyes locked with his, and she knew that even though she had never met her him when he was alive, the boy staring back at her was her brother's ghost. Finally she blinked, and he disappeared.

Freaky!

Kristy

Japanese Gyoza

INGREDIENTS:
1/3 cup chopped cabbage (boiled)
2 tbsps chopped green onion
1/2 pound ground pork
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
2 tsps soysauce
1/2 tsp chopped fresh garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger
20 gyoza wrappers
1 tbsp vegetable oil

PREPARATION:
Combine all ingredients other than oil in a bowl and mix well by hands. Place a teaspoonful of filling in a wrapper and put water along the edge of the wrapper. Make a semicircle, gathering the front side of the wrapper and sealing the top.
Heat oil in a frying pan. Put gyoza in the pan and fry on high heat for a few minutes until the bottoms become brown. *Makes 4 servings

I See London, I See France...

Hey everybody. Sorry about the long hiatus for all of you loyal readers out there (Mom, Dad...). We had a little mishap where our computer bit the dust and rendered us technology-less for a month or so. But now, thanks to some creative thinking by everyone's favorite Ian, we have a spanking new laptop complements of our home insurance! He's great isn't he, that Ian? :)

Quick recap. It's been a busy month for us. I'm back to teaching at college and am doing a grad course part-time. Ian is as busy as ever with training new employees at work, volunteering with refugees, and even getting to set up and deliver computers to refugees in need. We also moved in with our friend, Helen. She has a really nice house that has a spare room with your name on it! And it is away from the murder flat in an actual neighborhood. It's been awhile since either of us have had that, so it is a big deal for us.

I never did finish up telling about our summer vacation with Micah and Ryan. After visiting the headless angels and Alexander the Great in York, we headed down to London for a few days. We saw everything: Big Ben ("I thought it would be bigger." – Ryan), Westminster Abby, Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, London Tower (and all the Medieval torture devices), and oh, I can't even remember what else. We even took a day trip out to see Stonehenge. Ryan had his first meal of roast lamb at a pub along the River Thames, and Micah picked up some quality literature from a guy at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park who was waving a sign that read, "Don't believe anything I say".

We also got to take the Eurostar through the "chunnel" to Paris for a few days. We loooved Paris. We've always heard that Parisians don't like tourists and are usually stuck up, won't speak French with you, give you the rolling eye, etc. We experienced the exact opposite. We adopted a local bakery as our favorite lunch stop and the shopkeeper lady there was just so cute you wanted to hug her. She didn't understand any English, but was really patient and friendly to us. The last day she laid out all our utensils for us and delivered our food with a cute smile and a "Voila! Bon appetite!"

Paris was the ultimate way to finish up a fantastic vacation. We saw Mona Lisa at the Louvre, kissed at the top of the Eiffel Tower at sunset, wandered through famous squares, ate a hot dog wrapped in cheese and bread, tourist-watched, got ice cream from a French girl who thought we were German (?), sauntered down the Champ d'Elysee, saw real dead people's bones in the Catacombs, inspected Notre Dame to see if it was the same as on a video game Ryan played, paid respects at the graves of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Chopin, got hassled by vendors in front of Sacre Coeur, and dodged traffic around the Arc D'Triumph. And of course, we ate lots of amazing food, including escargots! I don't know why I had the impression that they would be raw and slimy and gross. French food is amazing: they can even make your mouth water for snails.

Our last night we dropped into a jazz bar/restaurant for dinner and got a real taste of the local life. During our dinner, the waiter joked with us about all sorts of things. A jazz pianist accompanied by two singers set up in a tiny space in the front. The singers were both quite hilariously mediocre, but full of the heart and the energy of someone who loves what they do. The guy even tap-danced…in a very interesting and sometimes racy way! (He was kind of middle-aged, too.) It is hard to explain how funny this all was, but we and the other customers spent the entire night laughing and clapping; completely enraptured by them and loving every minute of their little show. We will definitely have to go back to France.

Viva la France,
Kristy

Murder

I've kept this a little quiet until now because I was waiting for the trial to finish. I witnessed a murder in March - it happened a couple of doors down in our apartment block (from where we have now moved). The trial was on Monday this past week and, fortunately, I didn't have to attend because the accused plead guilty. I was one of the first people on the scene and met him in the hallway. I didn't realise what had happened until he pulled me inside the flat where the murder had taken place. I ran downstairs to call the police and then went back up to take care of the guy because he was absolutely distraught - I didn't realise he had done anything until a couple of weeks later when the police told me he was the suspect. He had been running around the halls calling for help so it came across like he had just been a bystander. Click here to read the article.

Ian