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Published: September 5th 2008
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calligraphy time!
This was my calligraphy desk, complete with all the tools of the trade. Konnichiwa minna! ("minna" means everyone--I'm taking it upon myself to teach you all a little Japanese. 😉 ) Gomen (sorry!) for taking so long to write a new entry! There's just always too much fun stuff going on here. But I love you guys, so sorry again and here we go with more tales from the shadow of Mt. Fuji...
Monday 8/11/2008
After normal (read--kinda boring) morning class, we were to try our hand at calligraphy. For about the third time during the trip thus far, we went to the wrong building first, but eventually found the right class room. We walked into a room set with places for each of us at long desks. Everything seemed to be set-up specifically for calligraphy, right down to the sinks on the side of the room for washing out brushes, so I'm pretty sure that it is the room the class is usually taught in during the school year, also. We were only to learn how to write 日本(Nihon), that is, "Japan", but it still took a good bit of teaching and practice. Everything is done in a very specific way to make each line look the way it's supposed to,
the calligraphy classroom
Everyone getting ready to begin in our cool calligraphy classroom. which was a lot more difficult than it looked. The teacher came over at one point and guided my hand for one attempt. That one turned out the best, but I felt like it would have been cheating to use it as the one I put my name on to post with the rest of the class's so I used a different one that was almost as good. As interesting as it was for the first few minutes, I definitely would not want to spend my life as a calligrapher. So much patience! Definitely needs a lot of zen that I don't possess. 😊
We didn't do anything that interesting the rest of the afternoon, but that night we went to one of my tutor's (Sayaka) apartments for dinner. She works at a restaurant, so we knew it was gonna be yummy, but wow! It was delicious. First, there was an entire table of stuff for us to roll our own sushi when we got there. Then, she and some of the other tutors made okonomiyaki and yaki-soba for everyone on top of that! It's hard to explain what okonomiyaki is, but it's kind of like a hashbrown with
the calligrapher
That's right. I look like a natural, don't I? lots of stuff in it with yummy sauces and fish flakes on top. It's delicious! After we chowed down, we watched what has to be the most violent form of rock-paper-scissors ever. Basically, the two people playing each get an empty plastic liter-sized bottle and when you lose, you have to block your head with yours while the winner attempts to smack you with it. It was hilarious to watch, especially because one of the tutors (Jas) was definitely out to take people down. Youch!
Around 9 we headed to a local park with fireworks and a watermelon in tow. Why a watermelon? Because it was time to learn how to play one of the funnest games EVER invented. It's very similar to playing with a Pinata. (Sorry, I don't remember how to do the little ~ over the n. ) The way it works is you blindfold someone, spin them around, and give them a bamboo sword (a.k.a. a Kendo sword) and set the watermelon somewhere on the ground, which the blindfolded kendo-sword carrier must then find by the guidance of the group and hit as hard as they can. The person can't feel around on the ground
my handiwork
This was my finished product. Pretty sweet, eh? Mom, can I put it on the fridge when I get home? =) with the sword before they take their swing either, they just have to swing at the ground with all their strength, hoping that they connect with the innocent, unsuspecting fruit. In my attempt, I slightly grazed the poor thing, but it had already been pretty thoroughly split by those before me, and it wasn't long after that we were all munching away on watermelon slices. Did I mention that fruit is really expensive here, so we were beating up a fruit that was probably about $20? 😉
After we enjoyed the watermelon spoils, we moved on to playing with fire. 😊 Fireworks are available at pretty much every store here, from convenience stores to the 100-yen shop, so it was really only a matter of time until we would break down and buy some to play with. We mostly just had sparklers and firecracker type things, but they were pretty cool. And we had enough total to last us about an hour. It was a fun summer night.
Wednesday 8/13/2008
We didn't really do anything out of the ordinary on Tuesday, but moving on to Wednesday, we were off to another festival in the evening! This one
日本
できた!"I did it!" was Tsuru's Obon festival. Obon is a celebration in honor of the deceased and takes place at different times for each city in Japan all throughout the Summer. All of us California kids wanted to wear our Yukatas again, so we went to one of the guy's host family's houses before the festival started and his host-mom helped the girls to get ready. She taught us how to do everything ourselves, which was really neat because now we know how to properly dress ourselves AND (more importantly!) can control how tight they are! YAY! So, this time I didn't feel like I had been squeezed into a corset. After we got dressed, we had some time to kill waiting for the guys to meet us to go to the festival, so the family fed us little snacky things like edamame and takoyaki. (That's right! I tried octopus! Granted, takoyaki only has a little bit of octopus and it's inside a yummy ball of fried stuff, but still!)
At 7:00, we headed over to the festival. It was quite a bit smaller than the festival we had gone to at Lake Kawaguchi, but it had its own appeal. The way
the finished works
Everyone's best! Mine is in the far right, bottom corner. it was set-up was specific for the type of festival it was. There was a platform in the middle with a few taiko drummers set-up on top and lanterns branching out from it, stretching across the whole area and bathing it in a nice, warm glow. There were rings of increasing width, like ripples in water, drawn on the ground, expanding out from the center platform. These were drawn for festival-goers to follow around, doing traditional dances to the songs that would be played. The innermost ring had the experienced "teachers", which those of us that were inexperienced watched to learn the steps. It was really fun! Nothing to complicate in the steps, but definitely beautiful and fun to learn!
Eventually, they had a small fireworks display and shortly after we left to go back to the host-family's home because they had invited us to come back for more food after the festival was over. A feast of food and drink awaited us when we got there and everything was delicious! We enjoyed their company for the rest of the evening and decided to leave a little after 10, not wanting to overstay our welcome. We definitely wanted to
dig-in!
The group tackling the sushi! be invited back! 😉
That's it for now! I'm going to be getting dinner with the group soon, so I've gotta go, but I promise to write again within the next few days if you promise you'll keep reading! Ja ne! ("See you!")
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