Japanese Saki-Ori (Sakiori) Weaving: an illoominating experience

By blind chance yesterday I stumbled across the ACROS cultural events website. ACROS is a multifarious venue, home to everything from a convention center to shopping floors to fast-food burgers to the Fukuoka Symphony. They feature cultural events in the second floor Takumi Gallery, and the event that's on right now (through tomorrow) is about Sakiori. I knew nothing about Sakiori (in fact, until I got to the exhibit, I mistakenly thought it was Hakata-ori, or Hakata fabric) but I knew it was textile-related, so I wanted to go, because hey, that's what my master's degree is in.

Sakiori, it turns out, is old-tyme Japanese recycling. Weaving means taking threads that go up and down (warp) and filling them in with threads going left and right (weft). In Sakiori, the weft threads are shreds of rags salvaged from other garments: in fact, saki means rag and ori means weaving (as in Hakata-ori, above, or weaving from the city of Hakata). Sakiori was a way for peasants to repurpose old fabric into something useful and warm. The end result is rather tweedy in texture. Most authentic old sakiori (see here and here) are plain because they were meant to be durable work garments, but just like crazy quilts, they could be made fancier if the artist had the time and resources. Modern sakiori is quite organized and beautiful because it commands a nice price as a traditional handicraft.

The ACROS exhibition was part art display, part sale gallery, and part demonstration. Here's the lady demonstrating the sakiori loom:

The sling on her lower back is made from sakiori and holds the end of the fabric you're working on in your lap. I say "your," but really, I eventually mean "my." We learned long ago that Rule #1 of Asian public events is Call On The Foreigner, so it should come as no surprise that shortly thereafter, I found myself being cinched into the loom and put to work. Being the goofy foreigner is like an automatic "Pass go, collect $200" ticket. Not that I object: after all, it got me on the loom and weaving, right?

(To be perfectly fair - we were the only people under the age of 50 at this exhibition. American handicrafts ladies probably would have pulled me out, too.)

My fumbly attempts to weave and understand Japanese directions were evidently a highlight of the morning for the septuagenarian Japanese set. The lady next to Justin had her mobile phone whipped out and filming within about five seconds of me sitting in the chair. I wonder if I'll end up on Youtube.

Here are Justin's videos of the same:

What do you think? More or less awkward than Justin putting on a kilt?

And some still shots, for posterity:

All in all, I'm completely pumped by our ACROS experience. I learned something new and had a great time. I've looked over the calendar of events and the next one I think I want to try is the decorative embroidered ball exhibition the week of Feb 14. Any coworkers, holler if you want to go along!

Hong Kong

I went to Hong Kong last weekend for an International Baccalaureate workshop (more on that later, perhaps)--here are some photos from the trip.

The workshop venue:

 The mountain behind the workshop venue:

 The other end of the mall by my hotel, where I ate most of my meals:

Which concludes our grand tour of everything Justin saw in Hong Kong. Yeah, you can bet the romance of "going to Hong Kong . . . ON BUSINESS(!)" wore off pretty fast. The workshop itself was pretty demanding, and both the venue and my hotel were on the outskirts of the city. Add to that the fact that I still had a full week's worth of lesson planning to do in the evenings, and there just wasn't time to get out.

Oh, well! They certainly aren't paying me to go sightseeing, are they?

The awesomely creative and yet utterly terrifying world of middle school poetry

Student has selected "danger" as a poem topic and is working on symbolism, i.e. "dangerous like a sharp knife." Justin goes over to check on list of "dangerous" analogies.

Student's List:
1. Hockey
2. Poisonous bees
3. Viking robots.

Justin: "Viking robots?"
Student: "Yes, they're like regular robots, but they come and sack your city, like Vikings."
Justin: "I see."
Student (earnestly): "They're very dangerous."

Now I'm going to have nightmares about a giant mechanical version of Stinger from the Columbus Blue Jackets laying waste to swathes of Fukuoka while wearing a double-horned helmet. Thanks a lot, student.

Blast from the Past

A student comes up to me in the hallway today.

"Ms. Massie, I was looking at my University of Edinburgh prospectus last weekend, and I think I saw Mr. Goff..."

Remember this? Well, here it is, back to haunt us!

An intelligent and sociable young man:

They knew better than to put a guy who looks like Justin on the cover of the engineering section.

A vigorous walk up one of Edinburgh's scenic hills:

And wait! Who's that loitering in the background at the law school?


I'd know that backpack anywhere, I would.

My favorite part is imagining that student over the weekend. Here he is, minding his own business, just trying to get into college, and suddenly HUH? there's the Middle School English teacher, right there in the middle of the Edinburgh undergraduate prospectus. It's enough to make a kid paranoid.

Heading to Hong Kong

I'm going to Hong Kong for an IB workshop today--I'll be there through Monday morning. On the one hand, I'm looking forward to the trip (eat some good food, hopefully learn something), but on the other hand, I'm not thrilled about leaving Nana behind.

Anyway, I promise as many pictures as I can manage to take around workshop sessions, and anyone who needs to should be able to reach me by e-mail while I'm gone.

Yes, They Make Wasabi Kit-Kats

A couple years ago, while making our way back to the US from Korea, Nana and I stumbled upon a pack of green tea Kit-Kats during a layover in Tokyo. We promptly bought a few, and while we meant to blog about the experience, it seems we never got around to it. Just another one of those weird little things that, despite all our best efforts, didn't make it into the blog.

Little did we know, however, that we were just scratching the surface of Japan's strange Kit-Kat obsession. (Our friend Rosa over at ZOMG Candy has links to some relevant information, including reviews, here.) It turns out that "Kit-kat" sounds a lot like the Japanese for "good luck," so it's become a thing to give people Kit-Kats before important events, such as (especially) college entrance exams. From there, the Kit-Kat has blossomed into a national obsession, with hundreds of strange flavors available, including regional and limited-edition varieties, some of which are considered collector's items. Yes, you heard me: collector Kit-Kats. There's even a Kit-Kat blog devoted to the phenomenon.

Thus for Christmas, in addition* to bringing home a stash of dark chocolate Kit-Kats (delicious, especially when frozen), Nana and I decided to torture--I mean, treat her family to some of the stranger flavors we could find.

The top is wasabi, the bottom sweet potato.

Each one seemed to be made from a white-chocolate base, with the flavor and color added.

We decided to taste the sweet potato first, on the theory that it was less likely to nuke our tastebuds and/or make us swear off Kit-Kats for the remainder of our natural lives.

Verdict? It actually tasted like Japanese sweet potato (which is a little less sweet and a little less orange than the sweet potatoes you find in the US). Fairly edible, but it had a sickly, buttery kind of taste that means we probably won't be buying any more.

Next: wasabi.

 At first, it didn't taste much like anything--but then it hit.

As you can see from the photo above, the wasabi Kit-Kat actually tastes like wasabi. White chocolate and wasabi. Hm.

*Somehow, I managed to spell this as "edition" in the first draft. Whoops!

Checking In at a Japanese Airport

I had another food post in the pipeline for today (weird flavors of Japanese Kit-Kats--don't worry, you'll get your fix of watching us suffer). But while trying to figure out my travel schedule for an upcoming workshop in Hong Kong, I got to pondering the check-in system Nana and I have seen here in Japan.

We've checked-in for probably a half-dozen flights so far (including a few while we lived in Korea) and never have we needed more than 15-20 minutes to get from the door of the airport to the other side of security. In fact, as described in an earlier post, we've even had a check-in agent book us on an earlier flight with less than fifteen minutes to get to our gate. The agent assured us that we had plenty of time . . . and in fact we made it with five minutes to spare.

So how does that work?

I think there are three main factors:

1. Personnel. Compared to American airports, Japanese airports are simply teeming with employees. Not only is every check-in desk fully staffed (I say "staffed" and not "manned" because there seems to be an unwritten rule that any airline employee who interacts with the public must be a twenty-something female), there are also check-in agents roaming the lines, giving assistance as needed. The security line, too, has its team of rovers.
2. Triage. Both at the check-in desks and the security checkpoints, "rovers" start pulling out people according to departure time and shuffling them off to priority lines.
3. Traffic Management. In Fukuoka and at both Narita and Haneda in Tokyo, the majority of the shops and restaurants are located outside the security checkpoint. Passengers can wait in this area until the "big boards" tell them to go to the gate. This allows the airport to stagger the "rushes" to the security checkpoint by fudging the call time a few minutes either way.
4. Layout. The airports we've been to have had many small security checkpoints, each serving a handful of gates that are right on the other side of the checkpoint. Coupled with a boarding pass that tells you which checkpoint to use, this minimizes the lines at any one checkpoint.

Now, this system seems to be working brilliantly here in Japan, but I can think of at least two reasons it would never work in the US. First, and most obviously, there is no way an airline is going to pay for extra people to help you check in faster.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, the Japanese system works best if most passengers show up an hour or two before their flights. In a pinch, it can rush a handful of latecomers through without causing any major disruptions, but if everyone showed up 30 minutes before the flight, all heck would break loose.

You see where I'm going. I consider myself a responsible person who is more than willing to weigh personal convenience against the well-being of the whole. (I am a teacher, after all.) But I can't help looking at this Hong Kong flight next week and thinking . . . do I really need to get there an hour early? When I'm reasonably sure they can hustle me through if I show up with twenty minutes to spare?

(And thus concludes this evening's lesson in game theory and airport design.)