January 17: Saori-ori

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Japanese Vocabulary
chi-chai: slang for little or tiny
yaki-niku: literally grilled beef, but it’s a dinner where everyone sits around a grill and grills their own meat and veggies and dips them in a sauce. It usually includes onions, cabbage, rice and beef.
nama biiru: literally raw beer, but refers to any draft beer on tap usually (like asahi, Sapporo, and kirin)
dai saizu: large size

For our most recent family dinner we made scarves with Tanabe Sensei! She lives at the top of a hill in Momoyama and has a little cabin for scarf making classes. I guess it’s a special technique called saori-ori using a Japanese loom. It’s really really easy to do though and Tanabe Sensei had a TON of different yarns to choose from. It took about 2 hours and you pay by the hour and then for the weight of the yarn that you used. Mine was the shortest…which meant it was the cheapest- wuh-wuuuuuuuuuh!

Afterwards we went to a yaki-niku restaurant where we ate lots of my favorite animal, beef, and Zach and Josh had a couple of nama biiru, dai saizu. In the cab ride home we all smelled like grilled beef…luckily we had a really nice cab driver! He actually thanked us for filled the car with grilled beef smell…

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Photos

yarn!
There were so many colors it was really hard to choose!

zach at the loom
Here is Zach working the saori loom- it's a really convenient and easy way to make things!

the beginning of a scarf...
Here is a shot of my loom and how the loom is sort of set up...

Josh
haha....Josh was a little too tall for the loom, but still managed to work it! It's make for Japanese people probably well below Josh's 6 feet!

Lara
the veteran of the group!

the results...
Zach and his scarf

Josh
a whole wall of the house is dedicated just to different yarns of all colors, textures and thickness.

Me...
and my chichai (but colorful!) scarf

DAI- SAIZU!
Zach, Josh and their two friends...biiru, dai-saizu!