Suitengu

On the to-do list of most pregnant women in Japan is a visit to a shrine, to pray for a safe and easy delivery and pick up an iwata-obi (a stomach wrap to protect the baby). This is best done on certain dates and at certain shrines, and although I got the day wrong I did get the place right.

The proper date would have been the first inu no hi (dog day) of my fifth month of pregnancy, which is not quite as easy to determine as it would seem. First of all, pregnancy is counted differently here, and Japanese women are said to be pregnant for ten months. This is not quite as wacky as it sounds as the months are lunar months lasting exactly four weeks long, and ten lunar months is exactly forty weeks. Which is indeed how long a pregnancy lasts, no matter which way you count. But it can get a bit confusing as I am keeping track of my pregnancy both the Canadian way and the Japanese way and I always get them mixed up and have trouble answering people who ask me how far along I am (luckily health professionals here count pregnancies in weeks, just like they do everywhere else).

The other thing is that nobody around me knows when exactly these dog days are. My husband, who can always be relied on to know absolutely nothing about traditional Japanese culture, certainly doesn't know. Nor do his parents, who are not at all traditional (a blessing really), or my friends or students, who all know what inu no hi is but have no idea when it falls. The problem is that inu no hi doesn't fall on a fixed date but every twelve days, based on the old Chinese calendar, and the days are seldom mentioned on calendars. After a bit of web sleuthing it turns out that my date would have been April 6th, which had long passed by the time I figured it out.

A final problem is that the place to go for inu no hi in Tokyo is Suitengu, a shrine in Ningyocho, just down the street from where Hideaki works, and he doesn't relish the idea of hanging around his office neighborhood on the weekend. But last week we finally got around to it.

I'd never been to Suitengu before, and if Hideaki hadn't been there I might have missed it. It's actually a very small shrine and is completely dwarfed by buildings crowded around it.

The visit was also a bit anticlimactic as all we did was the typical shrine stuff: ritualized washing followed by tossing a few coins, ringing the bell and praying. There are special ceremonies you can apply for, which involve paying a shinto priest in a comical hat lots of money to shake a paper-festooned wand at you, and you can also buy special amulets and charms to protect the baby and ensure a safe birth. We passed on that though, because, well, it's all very silly.

We could also have bought the traditional iwata-obi, but with a Japanese summer upon us I have no wish to have my stomach wrapped in layers and layers of constricting fabric. Actually, few women wear the traditional wrap-style iwata-obi these days, but most still do wear some kind of wrap or belt, believing that it will protect the baby from getting cold as well as from bumps and falls. These modern wraps are not so different from the pregnancy belts that some western women wear, but unlike in the west the reasons for wearing them are more for protection to the baby than for back support. I do have a belt that my mother-in-law bought for me and will wear it if my back starts to hurt, but I believe that a woman's natural defenses of skin, fat, uterus and amniotic fluid do a fine job of protecting the baby. So no iwata-obi for me.

Dog days are associated with pregnancy because dogs are thought to enjoy an especially easy labour (the lucky bitches). So the shrine features a little statue of a mother dog and her puppy surrounded by the twelve Chinese zodiac signs. Apparently you are supposed to find your sign and rub it, then rub the head of the dog and her pup to bring good luck to mother and child. We weren't sure if we were supposed to be rubbing our own zodiac signs or the baby's, so just in case we did all three (rooster for Hideaki, ox for me and tiger for the babe). It was the first time we'd thought about what our baby's zodiac will be, and Hideaki took it as a very auspicious sign that our spawn will be born in the year of the tiger, because like all good Osakans Hideaki is a devoted fan of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team.

Suitengu is also visited after a baby is born, and since this wasn't a dog day we saw far more families with newborns than pregnant ladies, and there were plenty of shops set up both inside and outside the shrine selling candy, toys and baby clothing. I'm sure there are a whole host of special baby praying days that I'll find out about months after the fact, and hope our kid doesn't grow up feeling deprived.

After we left Suitengu we walked around the neighborhood, and it was neat to see where Hideaki works. Ningyocho is an old area and has lots of little traditional shops, like stores selling nothing but hand crafted folding fans or scissors or sweets. Lots and lots of Japanese style sweets. Unfortunately the shops are all the kind of tiny place that once you step inside you feel obliged to buy something and since everything is hand-made it all costs a fortune, so we mostly just looked in from the outside.

The one place we did go into was a small restaurant called Tree's which specializes in something called soup curry, a variation of Japanese curry rice. Unlike regular Japanese curry, which is thickened to a glue-like consistency, soup curry is left liquidy and soup-like, and is thus much lighter. Hideaki has been eating at Tree's since he started at this job in January and raves about it enough that, although it didn't sound particularly appealing, I had to try it.

I had the tomato bacon curry, and it came in a bowl with a separate plate of rice (unlike regular curry rice in which the curry is served together with the rice). It was indeed soupy, much like a Thai style curry, but the flavour was closer to a Japanese curry. It is meant to be spooned over the rice little by little (or you can just dump the whole bowl of curry onto your rice like Hideaki did above) with pickled rakyo (shallot) and fukujinzuke (mixed sweet pickles) added as desired. It was very tasty and without being thickened by a roux it was quite light and I didn't feel nearly as full and greasy as I do after eating regular curry rice, which was nice.

Of course my midwives have warned me against eating spicy food as hot flavours are harmful to the baby (I wonder what they think women eat in Thailand or India?), so this was an illicit meal. May they never discover this blog!

Suitengu Shrine
2-4-1 Nihonbashi-kakigaracho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
03-3666-7195
Open daily 8:00 am to 7:00 pm

Tree's
3-6-8 Nihonbashi-ningyocho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
03-3639-2525
Open Monday to Friday for lunch 11:00 am to 2:30 pm and dinner 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm; Saturday for lunch 11:00 am to 3:00 pm

Comments

[lil]

hehe interesting how midwives say no spicy food! I'm eating spicy food right and left (7 months now) and like you said, what do they do in other countries? It's interesting this whole dog day business, and the 40 week/10 month thing makes perfect sense to me. the 9 month thing really does your head in when you're trying to correlate the weeks/months.

thanks for a humorous and always interesting update

[Claire]

Just want to pipe in and say that the Indian curry place near my workplace was one of my favorite places to eat during my pregnancy. They say the baby can taste the foods you are eating via the amniotic fluid so their culinary education is already starting in the womb. My theory is that a varied diet while pregnant will help you have a kid who will be interested in lots of different foods!

[kat]

this shrine was recently on "shinzanmono" the sunday drama on tbs.

interesting bit on the spicy food, one of my friends ate jalapenos for most of her pregnancy, her child is fine.

[Sara A]

I went to this very same shrine when I was pregnant with my son. I did wrap my stomach. I had a student who was a midwife and she showed me how... it felt very good when done right! I have a photo of myself and good friend at the shrine (was a very rainy day). Seems like yesterday but those babies (both born easily) both just graduated from college last month! Good luck with everything. I love your blog since it is pretty darn natsukashii for me!

[Donna]

I was wondering if this was the same shrine as the one on Shinzanmono and the other commenter already confirmed it 8-)

Are you warned against eating sushi? Most warnings in the US are with regards to lysteria, so you aren't supposed to eat certain cheeses such as brie, or even lunchmeat, or sushi (I did anyway)

[misao]

uoo that's a nice place to visit! hope to be there sometime :D

[idlehouse]

I ate spicy food (read: raw chili peppers) like a fiend when I was pregnant and had super easy labor, gave birth naturally, and my baby is the healthiest child I know so it's OK :)

[Amy]

Lil, Claire and Idlehouse, sounds like lots of women like spicy food when they're pregnant! I agree that variety is a great thing, both for mom and baby. I'm completely ignoring all the nutrition advice my midwives give me and will happily continue enjoying the hot stuff, and hope the babe has tastes as varied as mine.

Kat and Donna, I don't follow that show but Hideaki says he's seen them filming it a few times. Looks like they show lots of local scenery.

Congratulations on the graduations, Sara A! I'm trying to keep an open mind about these traditions, but I just can't stand being constricted.

Donna, a few doctors warn against raw fish but it's not widely known. Haven't heard a single warning about cheese, lunchmeat and other listeria hazards.

Misao, hope so too!

[Aspasia]

I can confirm that year of the tiger people are truly awesome ;) Good choice on timing!

Oh, and I just remembered an old Greek wives' tale that claims eating fish while pregnant will make your baby smart. And I'll bet it's even midwife approved!