Happy Channukah to ALL from Kyoto, Japan.

Well I've done it. I successfully brought the traditional Ramras Latke recipe to a Japanese kitchen. The taste and presentation of my latkes were no where close to the caliber that my Grampa Gerogie or my Dad produce, but the atmosphere was certainly familiar. It is amazing what a little oil and potatoes can do to a quite dormitory in the hills of Ukyoku (my hood). I had to improvise with regard to the apple sauce and sour cream by buying a mixture of the two. However unorthodox the apple yogurt I used was, the sweet and savory tastes had me overwhelmed with nostalgia and by the looks of it had my friends taken aback in gastronomic euphoria, to say the absolute least. It didn't occur to me until the night was over, but I had assumed a different role in the big scheme of things. As Junko Uchidida cut the onions and prepared other secret ingredients to make the holy latke mixture, my good friend Dan from Ottowa was scubbed, peeled, shredded, and dried the potatoes. All the while I had assumed the role of latke-flipper. At the end of the night as I was pouring out the excess oil into a small tin can as my Dad and Grampa did before me, the thought that I had completed my ascension in ancient, hierarchical system of Ramras Family Latke making finally came to fruition.


Junko and Me


The Family

Finishing last week took alot of weight off of my shoulders, something that was in dior need of remedying. My ultimate obligation was to deliver a ten minute speech, in Japanese, on a topic of my choice. I settled on the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japanese, who currently, yet sparsely, reside in Japan's northern most island of Hokkaido. With my limited Japanese I was able to sum up roughly 800 years of the horrifically depressing history of the Ainu in just under ten minutes. Suffering from what I referred to as さまざまな人種の融合, or the fusion of races/people's, the Ainu's once plentiful and vibrant population has dwindled to a mere 150,000 in Japan, most of whom are of mixed blood. Moreover, there are few, if not no, surviving native speakers of the Ainu language. This fact could be a result of two circumstances. One being that the Ainu language and history were, for the most part, orally disseminated. The other being Japan's harsh repression of the Ainu-beginning in the Meiji period (1868-1912) and extending through the Taisho period (1912-1926)-to the extent that the entire minority was restricted from participating in traditional, religious ceremonies, using their language in public and, as children, prohibited to speak Ainu while in school. Despite these somber facts and statistics, current Ainu activism has provoked the founding of nearly 12 schools in which the Ainu language and other traditional customs, once outlawed, are being taught to the Ainu of the 21st century.

On yet another historical note, I visited the Kyoto Municipal Art Museum yesterday. I was given a free ticket to the current exhbition, featuring paintings from the early Meiji period (who can tell me when that was) through to the laste Showa period (1926-1989). I was privileged to the see the "Masterpieces from a Century of Bunten, Teiten and Shinbunten Exhibitions" that featured artists such as Shoen Uemura, Kikuchi Keigetsu and Heihachiro Fukuda. Please Google these guys to get a glimpse of some of Japan's national treasury. Aside from this main exhibition I stumbled across a huge showcase of what looked like thousands of framed shodo (calligraphy) pieces. As a current student of Japanese calligraphy, I couldn't help my self from walking through the exhibit multiple times. What seemed like a complete departure from original form and procedure, was actually a personal a pure projection along with the keenest sense of control, knowledge of the potential of traditional, and pure self-expression.


Vigor

Shout-out to my family in L.A., Sam, Simone and Mavis. Love you guys and love that you love my blog . . . love.
Happy Channukah to all, I really miss seeing your faces, that's right, yours.