Caw-caw Rawr! :: 親切な人

Alright. So this week, I went to my last two extracurricular activities, koto and oshie. Koto being a wooden stringed instrument born from the Chinese guzheng and oshie being a cloth craft that creates very beautiful not quite 3-dimensional reliefs. So like squashed stuffed animals. Some interesting stuff happened at oshie with a comedy group called テツ＆トモ that came to film a segment for their show at the International Lounge. They mostly goofed around, interviewed us, became enamored with Claire's sass, and taught us their theme song, 「なんでだろう」. It was an interesting experience and I can now say that I have been on Japanese television. Whew time to cross that off the bucket list (and also add it to the bucket list so I can actually cross it off). The same day I went to oshie, I also finally went to this cafe that I've had my eye on for the longest time. It. Was. Magical.

I want my house to look like this.

If you're ever around Musashigatsuji in Kanazawa, stop by this cafe called Book Cafe (or is it Life is Good?) and get a sandwich. Or a kabocha scone. Or soup. Or any of the other delicious things that the owner makes from scratch. Also props to his music taste. And decorating taste. And book taste. And well everything.

And then on Saturday I turned into a Wilderness Explorer

So today, I decided to get well and truly lost in Kanazawa. I don't know why the urge hit me, but I've had a slight feeling of panic slowly growing in my stomach from not actually getting out much and actually exploring this city that I've been living in for two months. Which in reality is a bit silly of me because I've been to all the major touristy places and shopping centers and also go to a bunch of different places through PII and extracurriculars and I also try to go to new places every time I go running...so yeah. 

My first stop was Omicho Market. I'd been there a couple times before but never when all the stores were open and when I had time to go through the whole market. It was quite fun and I left with a very growly stomach. 

Look at how friggin big that octopus is!

Mmmm oyster. (I think it's oyster?) They also had GIGANTIC crab and sea urchin.

Omicho Fish Market also sells veggies! And Tsukemono! And clothes. And souvenirs. And it has delicious smelling food for sale

Fruit that costs more than tuition. Just kidding. Sorta.

After that, I somehow found myself in a part of town I'd never been in.

Very pretty. Also the moat for Kanazawa castle. How I ended up a good 20 minutes away from Omicho I'll never know.

Road lined with naked people statues I wandered onto

And then I was hungry so I got some soft serve. Sakura flavored and matcha flavored soft serve to be exact. I was so excited I started eating it before I remembered to be a good blogger and take pictures.

Went all through the tourist shops lining the way to Kanazawa Castle and one of the entrances to Kenrokuen and found giant golden poop (and smaller golden poop) for sale. The temptation to buy was strong.

Also went to Kenrokuen once again and spent a lot of time sitting around people watching, fish watching, and Japanese plum tree watching. Afterwards, I decided that today was the day that I go and spend money to see the non-free parts of the 21st Century Museum. Definitely, definitely, definitely worth the 800 yen. Especially since I also got access to their new exhibition on transparency and reflection. 

Leonard Elrich's Reflection Pool. It looks like a real pool from the top and from the bottom, but there's really only 10 cm of water in the pool.

Sideways staircase. Just as disorienting and cool as the pool was.

Have I ever told y'all how much I love clouds? I love clouds. And the sky. These made me happy :)  From the front they looked like very realistic clouds...

...but from the side you can see that the affect is achieved through painting layers on glass! I really want to try this now.

Cool hallway thing

Another exhibition to mess with perception. Mirrors split this exhibit up into three different greenery environments, so it looks like the scene is complete changing as you move around the exhibit. From this angle you can see how the left third of the thing is different from the other two thirds.

From there, I wandered over to Higashichaya, but before I got there, I found a set of stairs that looked interesting. So I went up.

Adventure! Wilderness! Exploration!

Shrine and temple at the top of those stairs

And past that temple was another set of stairs.

That led to Hanashoubu-en. It's an iris garden with hydrangeas that bloom in June and early July. So unfortunately, most of the irises had already finished blooming. I can imagine how beautiful it is in full bloom though.

It was pretty large. If y'all wanna know how it looks with flowers..

Sensing a theme?

I accidentally wandered into mosquito territory. They were very unhappy with this encroachment and launched a 4-pronged attack on me. One of them landed a hit on my nose. ON MY NOSE. Yes, the shakiness is due to my haste in trying to leave before angering more mosquitoes with my presence.

Large statue to some important person

I guess getting a mosquito bite on my nose was worth this view

Park on the top of the mountain (whose name is Utatsuyama...I think)

Once I got to the top, I realized just how ridiculously lost I had gotten myself. I couldn't find the stairs I had come up the mountain on, and found way too many different roads and crossroads leading...who knows where. So I asked a car parked nearby for directions, and after a while, they lady got out and offered to give me a ride to Kanazawa station. In the US, I would probably turn down this offer because, well...stranger danger. But at this point it was nearing 7pm and I had honestly no idea where I was and I was desperate to get home and to food, so I took her up on her offer. And holy amazeballs, she was so fabulous. Interestingly enough, she had no idea that I was a foreigner until about 15 minutes in when I told her that I was an exchange student here, and she almost didn't believe me! Gave myself a little pat on the back for being able to pass as a Japanese person...at least for a little while :) This 親切な人 went far beyond simply giving me a ride to the station, and actually drove me all the way out of her way to where my host home is. This was a good 40 minutes out of her way, but she did it with a smile on her face and even gave me some candy to take with me (yes, yes, I know...never take candy from a stranger...or get into a stranger's car...). I was so surprised at how amazingly nice and helpful she was to a complete stranger, and if it wasn't so impolite in Japanese culture, I would've hugged her. I'm definitely looking forward to paying this forward. 

Thanks for reading, and DFTBA!

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Pieces of My Heart :: Art

Warning: If you have no interest at all in art, stop reading

As some of y'all know, I've got a thing for art. と言うより、it's actually a bit of an obsession. I love to make things with my hands - painting (watercolor, oil), crochet, sketching, robots, anything really - so when I have the opportunity to do anything art related, I am a happy camper. This week was すごくいっぱい with various types of art, so I was a very, very happy camper. 

Origami

On Sunday, I finally spent some time with one of my host sisters, Juri-chan! We made origami for a couple hours together and afterwards we drew pictures! It was the perfect chillax Sunday (and also a great excuse for my procrastination on homework and studying).

Juri-chan very skillfully making origami boxes Matryoshka doll style

We had a table-full of origami books (all in Japanese ^^;) and lots of cute origami paper! It was my first time making origami from actual origami paper, so I felt very official. Even though I only made ones that had the simplest instructions. It was definitely a struggle to puzzle out the instructions and the pictures with my very limited Japanese, but Juri-chan was a great origami-partner!

All the origami we made! My favorites are the bowtie and the panda (that Juri-chan made!)

Japan Fine Arts Exhibition

On Wednesday, I went with some friends to the Japan Fine Arts Exhibition at the Ishikawa Prefectural Art Museum. My host dad gave us some free tickets so it was free!! We had quite the adventure finding the art museum, with Tommy getting on a bus without the rest of us, then us pondering what to do, getting on a bus thinking that Tommy had gone ahead of us, seeing Tommy walking back to meet us, then me getting off at the next stop and running back to get Tommy, us barely catching the next bus, meeting up with everyone else, then walking in the wrong direction, asking for directions, not following the directions, climbing up a set of stairs next to a waterfall, and finally finding the back of the art museum. 

The poster for the exhibition! PC to Claire Williamson (check out her blog!)

The exhibition was beautiful. There were two large rooms filled with, as best as I can describe, contemporary Japanese style mixed media paintings that were enormous. I've never seen paintings like those, and I couldn't even tell what medium the artists used. Every single painting was so detailed, skillful, and evocative that I had a hard time tearing my eyes from one to go to the next one. There were also statues, calligraphy, pottery, and Western style paintings, but my heart was truly in those first two rooms with the contemporary Japanese paintings. I usually never buy prints or souvenirs at art exhibits or art museums, but I bought 5 different prints (and wanted to buy more) of some of the paintings that I had truly fell in love with. 

The style of the art was distinctly different from much of what you would find in the Met or MoMa. A lot of the paintings had some manga-like elements, and a couple seemed inspired by Monet while still maintaining a very different, ethereal feel. There were also some paintings that looked like windows into a Miyazaki film - almost as if I could reach out and brush my hands against the leaves or turn the corner and see a small Totoro trotting away with a bag of acorns. Truly beautiful and awe inspiring. 

業 by 林 真

ONE BIG FAMILY by 大西健太

 新しい世界へ by 石田育代

I found these on this website, which has some of the paintings that have been or are currently in the exhibition. It's worth a look if you've got the time!

Pottery

On Thursday, I started the process of making a tyawan (tea bowl) at the Hokutoh pottery workshop. It was my first time making pottery on a pottery wheel, and it was such a learning experience. The instructor was very skillful and demonstrated what took us an hour to make in barely 5 minutes. Apparently, a tyawan is meant to be around 350 grams, which is the mass that we first encountered in our lives (during nursing), making it a soothing and comforting weight. Before we began, the sensee told us to pour our heart and feelings of love into making the tyawan as if it were our own babies in order to make a good tyawan that is completely our own. 

This was only the first day in the process, so we only made the basic shape of the bowl. It was certainly a labor of love, slowly shaping the bowl out with our hands, a curved wooden shaping tool (to make the inside smooth), a sponge (also to make the inside smooth), and sheepskin. We used the sheepskin to smooth the rim of the bowl to make it comfortable to hold and drink from, since sheepskin is the most similar in feel to human skin than any other leather. 

My quite lopsided tyawan on the pottery wheel.

Everybody's tyawan is unique!

Calligraphy

On Saturday, I went to the International Lounge to take a calligraphy class. We had real calligraphy brushes and ink to write from, and spent an hour trying to duplicate the teacher's examples. It was definitely hard controlling the amount of ink on the brush to get the desired effect, and getting the proportions and thickness of the lines right was far more difficult than I imagined. Most of mine ended up looking like random squiggles than an actual word.

Yume, which means dream

Syo, which means calligraphy

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Crap. This post is really long. I think I'll try to keep my blog posts a lot shorter from now on...but for now, sorry for the long post!! Thanks for reading, and DFTBA.

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いっぱい :: Where I Have Much to Say About Everything

 Where to begin?

This first week has been a hectic whirlwind of activity. Classes started in full force, and it's been a bit tough catching up on all of the kanji and vocabulary that Yale didn't teach us while trying to keep up with learning all of the kanji for the vocabulary in the new chapters too. Luckily, us Yalies have already learned the new grammar structures that they've been teaching us, so we're not completely lost during class. 

Class goes from 9-12 in the morning, with a teacher from Princeton teaching for the first two hours and a teacher from Ishikawa teaching for the last hour. The first two hours are all new grammar and vocabulary, while the last hour is review and practice. Personally, I feel like the first two hours go by so quickly, but once the third hour starts, everything slows down suddenly and the last hour is filled with confused looks and lots of umms. 

After class we all go to invade the Family Mart to get lunch. I was amazed my first time in a convenience store here in Japan because of all the stuff they had. There's an entire aisle dedicated to snack food, and another to make-up and everyday items. And the food. The lunch food!! There's such a huge variety to choose from, from various types of bread to bento to the most delicious looking custard, pudding, and ice cream. Every day I try something new, and I've never been disappointed.

Bento and addictive matcha chocolate biscuit things

But wait! There's more

This week, almost every day after school we've had extracurricular activities. Extracurricular activities much in the style of middle school field trips. Not that I'm complaining, because they were definitely the highlight of my week.

Ishikawa Prefectural Government Building

On Monday, we paid a visit to the Ishikawa Prefectural Government Building where everybody had to dress up and we met very important people. It was a bit hard to understand everything that was said but we felt very welcomed. After the meeting, we got some souvenirs and went to the top of the building where we could see the entire city. 

View from the top! 

Our scholarship envelope and a adorable traditional doll representing perseverance and hard work that gets back up whenever you knock it down

Kenrokuen Garden

On Tuesday, we went to Kenrokuen Garden, a huge park known as one of the 3 most beautiful gardens in Japan. I'll just let my pictures do the talking here. 

Inside Kenrokuen there was a tea house that had the most beautiful garden out in the back where we sat and watched for a while

The garden in the back of the tea house 

Main room of the tea house

Tea and wagashi (traditional sweet meant to pair with the tea)

 Making wagashi

On Thursday, we made some traditional Japanese sweets called wagashi. It's eaten usually with matchya, a very bitter green tea served during the tea ceremony. 

The tools

It was quite difficult to follow the sensee's Japanese, but we made do with copying his movements. It was fun to form everything with our hands and smush, hit, shape, and squeeze with all of the various tools they gave us. Most of the time we first smushed the various colored balls into flat circles with our hands and used the tools (cloth, chopsticks, and weird triangular stick) to make the shape of the wagashi. 

The colorful balls made out the outside of the wagashi, and the brown ball was the inside. Everything was very sweet!

The top wagashi was definitely the hardest! We had to press the green and yellow stuff through a sieve and then attach the strings to the middle of the wagashi with chopsticks. The second one was a rose with a yellow, egg flavored inside. This one was really pretty and it was fun to press the lines of the rose with a triangular stick. The last one was made with a cloth that created all the lines on the top. 

All of the wagashi and the omiyage they included about to eaten!

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Sorry for the stupidly long post today y'all. Stay tuned for a hopefully shorter and less ippai (full) post about the Hyakumangoku festival! Thanks for reading, and DFTBA.

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