Oyatsu and shougo aren’t the only remnants of the old Japanese way of telling the time to survive to the present day. The following phrase demonstrates one final hangover from this antiquated system.

草木も眠る丑三つ時
kusaki mo nemuru ushimittsudoki
Even the plants are asleep at ushimittsudoki.

Ushimittsudoki, I’m sure you remember, is the 3rd period of the hour of the ox which translates to about 2 o’clock in the morning. This phrase, or just the word ushimittsudoki, is often used to introduce scary children’s stories. As I’m sure you will agree, no one in their right mind should be out and about at this time. This is the time, when everyone (including the plants) are asleep, that Japanese monsters will come out to play. Therefore the best way to translate ushimittsudoki is probably, The Witching Hour.

What monsters come out during the Japanese witching hour? Unlike the monsters of European origin such as vampires, werewolves and the Frankenstein monster, traditional Japanese monsters are fairly unique and more or less unknown in western countries.

Or so you would think…

If you are in the same age group as me you probably would have spent a fair bit of your childhood playing on the game consoles made by Nintendo and Sega. Being Japanese companies, many of the games on these consoles were made in Japan and thus, despite the best efforts of the localisation team, various little titbits of Japanese culture would slip through. As a child I probably spent a few minutes wondering why some of the enemies you were shooting at in Parodius were the same as those in Super Mario Land. I may have thought that these game developers were just copying each other but no, it turns out all those monsters are deeply engrained in Japanese folklore.

Here are a few Japanese monsters that mystified me growing up, perhaps you remember a few from the recesses of your game playing childhood too.

Tsukumogami

Tsukumogami were once mundane objects, the kind used in everyday life. These objects eventually grow old and unused. The story goes that once they have passed their 100th year, these objects obtain a soul and haunt the families that have cast them aside. Apparently just about any inanimate object can do this but the ones I remember are the Karakasa (umbrella monster) and Chochinobake (lantern monster). Perhaps things going animate after their 100th year explains why Japanese homes generally don’t survive 40 years before they are rebuilt. Nobody wants to live in a pissed off house.

Rokuro-kubi

These are monsters that were once normal human beings but as the result of a curse or some sort of wrong doing their head has gained the ability to float away from the body and their necks to extend. Rokuro-kubi are always women and sometimes try to live undetected marrying normal human husbands. Their powers only manifest at night, sometimes unintentionally, as the woman sleeps her head floats off on its own, hoping to scare a few drunkards and village idiots. Some are not even aware of their affliction and will wake up with vague memories of seeing their neighbourhood at strange angles. Others, like tanuki, enjoy playing tricks on people and delight in their night-time excursions.

Kappa

These fellows don’t only come out at night, they live in Japanese lakes and rivers and their pranks range from farting and loosening women’s kimonos to drownings and rape. Kappa have many strange tendencies and are famous for their love of cucumbers and the fact they are extraordinarily polite. If you ever find yourself in trouble with one you can bow and they will always bow back. Hopefully this will make the small dish containing water they like to wear their head, fall off. They will then become much weaker allowing you to easily over power them.

Hitotsume-kozo

Hitotsume-kozo take the form of a 10-year-old boy wearing a Buddhist monk’s clothes. Their face however shows one huge eye and they always seem to be shown with their tongue sticking out. These monsters are relatively harmless, they love silence and often go around telling loud people to be quiet. Meeting one is considered a bad omen though, if you do you may fall ill. To stop them coming people hang up bamboo baskets, hitotsume-kozo think the holes in the basket are eyes and run away, jealous. I think I may have run into a few of these in a more human form on the train, no salaryman likes people talking during their train journeys.

If you want to learn more about Japanese monsters The Obakemono Project is a great place to start.

You’d love it. It’s not quite dinner, it’s not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. You don’t get completely what you would at lunch, but you get a good snack.

The Simpsons taught me the concept of brunch. I had never heard of it before watching and to this day I don’t think I’ve ever partaken in what I would call ‘brunch’. I have never really had the time to fit another meal between my cereal and lunch, being a late riser there just are never enough hours between the two.

It was when I finally bothered to read the box of said cereal that I discovered a Japanese word I hadn’t heard of before. At the bottom of the packed it recommend that you have Kellogg’s for your 3pm oyatsu. It turns out, as Jacques described above (I may have taken liberties), oyatsu is a snack time occurring between lunch and dinner were you have some sort of food. It seems that this snack can be sweet or savoury, anything from a satsuma to a cake to a sandwich. I hear that it is often what Japanese school children will ask for when they arrive home from school. It may or may not include a slice of cantaloupe at the end.

The word oyatsu actually originates from the old way that they used to tell the time in Japan, a way that to me seems rather flawed. Instead of having 24 hours in a day, the old Japanese system had 12. Each one is about 2 hours long but as usual things aren’t really that easy. The first 6 hours were for daylight and the last for night-time. Thus the actual length of the hours changed depending on the time of year. In winter the daylight hours got shorter, while in the summer they became longer.

The 12 hours were each named after the animals in the Chinese zodiac and are below. Interestingly many of the kanji used for the animals here is different from standard Japanese. I guess these are the kanji used in China for these animals. Either that or everyone just felt like a change.

Rat Hour – Ne no koku – 子の刻  (11pm to 1am)
Ox Hour – Ushi no koku – 丑の刻  (1am to 3am)
Tiger Hour – Tora no koku – 寅の刻 (3am to 5am)
Rabbit Hour – U no koku – 卯の刻 (5am to 7am)
Dragon Hour – Tatsu no koku – 辰の刻 (7am to 9am)
Snake Hour – Mi no koku – 巳の刻 (9am to 11am)
Horse Hour – Uma no koku – 午の刻 (11am to 1pm)
Sheep Hour – Hitsuji no koku – 未の刻 (1pm to 3pm)
Monkey Hour – Saru no koku – 申の刻 (3pm to 5pm)
Rooster Hour – Tori no koku – 酉の刻 (5pm to 7pm)
Dog Hour – Inu no koku – 戌の刻 (7pm to 9pm)
Boar Hour – I no koku – 亥の刻 (9pm to 11pm)

Each of these times is then split into 4 intervals, each one about 30 minutes each. Again, this would have been changeable depending on the season. Each of these periods were called hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu and yottsu. In English that simply means one, two, three and four. The time was described by saying the hour, followed by the numbered period and rounded off with doki (which means time).

For example, I’m writing this at about 5:47 pm so in old Japanese that would be tori (hour) futatsu (period) doki (time).

As I write this it is torifutatsudoki (酉二つ時). I mentioned before that oyatsu traditionally occurs at 3 pm. I guess then that in old Japan you would have said either hitsujiyottsudoki (未四つ時) or saruhitotsudoki (申一つ時) at this time. I’m not sure how this happen but as this time measuring system fell into disuse the ‘yottsu’ of hitsujiyottsudoki slowly mutated to become ‘yatsu’ and the honourific ‘o’ was added to the front because the Japanese like to honour things. I could be very wrong about this though. I should also say that although 3 o’clock is the traditional time for oyatsu, it is often used to refer to a snack partaken at any time.

This system of telling the time is no longer used in Japan. In fact, the average Joe on the street doesn’t really know how it works any more. This is fair enough because it was hardly the most accurate of measures. Other than oyatsu though a few remnants have survived in modern Japanese. Shougo (正午) is used to refer to midday and literally ‘means upper hour of the horse’. Another term still in use is slightly spooky so I guess it would be best to talk about that next week…..

As a British person and an ambassador for those isles, I feel that we have been keeping a secret from you for far too long. What I am about to let out of the bag is something that the hospitality industry wants you to think is done up and down the land but the truth is your average Brit has never really taken part in it.

There is simply no such thing as Afternoon Tea.

People do drink tea all the time though. Any excuse and the tea comes out;
You have some good news to share. Tea.
You have an important deadline to meet. Tea.
Breakfast. Tea.
Lunch is finished. Tea.
Tea. More Tea.
Builders are working on your house. Offer some tea.
There has been a death in the family. Tea.
Want to unwind in front of the TV after a stressful day. Tea.
Someone bought some biscuits. Pop the kettle on.

In fact, I remember as a child the national electricity grid always getting very nervous at half times of important football matches because as soon as that whistle goes, just about everyone watching on TV puts the kettle on. I guess at some point during the seventies such a power serge brought the country to its knees and people feared a repeat.

Tea is drunk quite a lot in the UK, for almost any reason. The Afternoon Tea that exists only in the dreams of Anglophiles, tourists and hotel managers doesn’t really happen outside posh hotels and cafes though. Sure, people have been known to have cake with their tea on occasion but it is just as likely to be drunk with a plate of beans on toast at some grimy lunch stall. We certainly don’t wait until about 3pm, get out all the best china and sit around the front room in our glad rags discussing what a dish Mr D’Arcy is. There is a meal time that we call ‘Tea’ but that just is a light dinner as far as I’m concerned, tea drinking isn’t even necessary during it (although encouraged).

Although afternoon tea is something that doesn’t really happen outside the confines of a Jane Austin novel, many people from other countries have an obsession with it. Japan is no exception.

To start with there is even a shop named after this non-existent practice. Afternoon Tea is a shop that sells what I prefer to call, quaint goods. Their stores are littered with various tea related paraphernalia such as tea pots and cosies but also cheese boards, calenders, notepads, clocks, lunch boxes and soft toys. Obviously though, their centrepieces are the cake stands they sell. Perfect for your ‘authentic’ afternoon tea needs.

Next up is a range of drinks from the Kirin beer company which go by the name of Gogo no Koucha which means (you guessed it) Afternoon Tea. This range of drinks is not like the tea you would usually be served in England though, it is a selection of bottled ice teas that come in various flavours.

First is the no frills Straight Tea. As the name implies it is plain tea with a wee bit of sweetener in the mix. It’s quite a mellow taste and I like it. However, I suppose saying straight tea is ok English but if someone can go to a restaurant and order ‘a straight tea’ it’s just a matter of time before someone goes to a cafe and asks for their tea ‘shaken, not stirred’. Next to the Straight Tea is the yellow labelled Lemon Tea, this is your usual tasty iced tea with a hint of lemon and probably my favourite of the bunch.

A change in packaging is up next and with it a slightly more serious ‘Darjeeling blend’ named Oishii Mutou (Delicious Sugarless). Holding back on the sweetener is a good thing, but I’ve never been that fond of Darjeeling so I don’t think it is particularly oishii, despite their claims. Finally there is the controversial Milk Tea. Japanese people seem to think there is nothing wrong with it but imagine if you made a cup of tea, filled it with a sickly syrupy sweetener and then left it for about 2 hours. You would spit it straight out after drinking it, wouldn’t you? Well that’s exactly what I did after drinking this. I’ve yet to meet a fellow Englishman who can stand it. It is simply a corruption of what tea should be, it is just wrong.

This isn’t their entire range, a quick look of their website tells me that they do canned Espresso Tea, although I’m not really sure what that is. Also, in addition to the bottles they do a carton named Break on the Desk. Which I think is a wonderful way to address tea. Talking of wonderful names they have just released a tea called Pungency, which I guess is really smelly.

I dunno about you but give me a steamy hot cup of PG Tips and some rich tea bickies over this stuff any day.

Here is an 11+ style verbal reasoning problem:

If Variety is to Spa & Treatment
as Sports is to Ultra C
then Discovery is to ?????????

Before I let you know the answer please let me get something off my chest that I have been meaning to say for a long time.

Shiina Ringo isn’t the greatest pop musician on the planet.

A conclusion that I have been putting off reaching for a while and maybe I can avoid coughing up too much blood by qualifying the statement with the words ‘any more’.

Tokyo Jihen’s last three albums have simply been disappointments. These albums, named Variety, Sports and Discovery respectively, have all had their stand out tracks on them. On each there have perhaps been 2 or 3 songs I really liked but for an album by a woman who consistently knocked my socks off with almost everything she did as a solo artist, it just isn’t good enough.

Maybe there are many reasons for this, Tokyo Jihen are not the same ‘dream ensemble band’ she created in 2004 as two of this members have moved on since it’s inception. Also she is not the sole creative force in the band any more, since those two original members left after only one album, she writes much less of the songs present on their CDs than she used to. It may also be that she simply isn’t the hungry, rebellious yet ultimately shy girl that she was 10 years ago.

Whatever the reason, it is the live performances this band pulls out of the hat that allow me to keep the faith. The amount of energy present in these shows is nothing short of revelatory. This is strange because the 2 newer musicians in the band don’t have half the stage presence as the people they replaced. Despite this though, the versions of the songs present in their concerts are more immediate to me. It’s strange but once I hear their songs performed live, I acquire a greater appreciation for the studio versions and start enjoying them immensely.

Spa & Treatment, the tour that accompanied Variety, gave me so much love for their most maligned (a least by their international fan base) album. I actually attended Ultra C, the tour which supported with the release of Sports, and despite having crappy seats (which no one used by the way, we all stood up) I enjoyed so much. That feeling was only magnified upon watching the DVD. It was truly a great performance that night, perhaps their best since those other 2 members (beginning to sound like a broken record now) left.

This brings me to the answer to my little quiz at the top of this post and Jihen’s latest album, Discovery. As I said before I was disappointed with this release, I felt it was largely spoilt by the order the songs on the disc if anything. The tone of the album is all over the place and I actually realised (discovered if you will) that it is better to play this album in shuffle mode. And what of the associated tour? Well, I shall be in attendance on 2nd December, then I will find out if they can knock this songs out of the park again or if Discovery is the first Shiina Ringo CD I consign to the dustbin.

And the name of this new tour? It is known as LIVE TOUR 2011 DISCOVERY.

Bit of a disappointment really…..

I saw something on youtube that inspired me to make this.

For some reason the audio went out of sync, not sure why and it’s a bugger to fix so I’m leaving as is for now.