Playing Catch Up :: All the Things

As the title of this blog suggests, I'm very behind on blogging. So sit back, relax, and get ready to read me ramble on about all the things.

How was that midterm?

What midterm? I don't recall any midterm. Certainly not a three-hour long trial filled with things I couldn't read. And confusing, sguiggly pictographs. And very, very, very unrehearsed speeches. But if you must know more, there was a part of this midterm that never happened that wasn't completely painful to do which included us poor test-takers giving advice about an email from an apologetic soon to be ex-boyfriend to his long distance girlfriend where he explains that he was hanging out with a mutual female friend at Tokyo Disney World instead of keeping his promise to visit her in Osaka. 

After the test was over, I went to Kyoto with a friend, and we had an amazing three day weekend that I will blog about later, since I am a bit (a lot) behind on catching y'all up to what happened before the Midterm-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named. 

Tuyu

Tuyu (rainy season) has been a bit shy this summer so far, which my host mother tells me is a bit odd. Some days I've gotten drenched even with an umbrella, and other days go from being completely clear to thundering and back to being clear within a period of 5 minutes continuously throughout the day. Other than that, it's been very hot and very humid, and every day I feel like I'm slowly melting. I'm going through clothing so much here, and I can definitely see why my host mother does laundry so often.

Frozen

I hear my host sister singing early in the morning, little kids singing on the street as they play, and even adults humming along on the street. The Frozen songs are inescapable, even in Japan. 

Sketching

I went sketching on the Asanogawa river with Thaddeus last week as further procrastination. It was a ton of fun and I managed to get two sketches in. It's been a while since I've sketched landscapes from life, so I was a bit rusty (very rusty). It did feel great to get back to sketching, though. 

I got a bit lazy everywhere

I thought that perhaps focusing on smaller things would be easier. I was still wrong.

DT Suzuki Museum

Also went to the DT Suzuki Museum some time in the past two weeks. Thaddeus did a really great post on the museum, so to save myself some time, here's the link to his post. I can imagine the museum being a great contemplative space when there aren't 40 留学生 tramping around having loud conversations and goofing around. I am definitely going back (hopefully sometime this week) to sketch. 

Didn't take any pictures, so here's a great picture that Claire took! PC Claire Williamson (check out her blog!)

Satoyama Experience

One of these past few weekends (I have really lost all sense of time here), I went with 19 other PIIers to Kanazawa University to help with cutting down bamboo to clear a trail for hikers. We split up into two groups, and luckily I got put into the group that did the bamboo cutting since the other group just wandered around looking at plants and helping to make lunch. The chief bamboo cutting person (so technical, I know) had a very tiny, cute chainsaw that he used to cut the base of the bamboo, and then we went at the bamboo with gigantic knives (a bit like machetes) to cut it into segments. 

Cutting down the bamboo. PC IFIE staff

Going at it with Turman-san! PC IFIE staff

Afterwards, we made chopsticks out of the bamboo that we cut down. It was a labor of love (similar to the tyawan) where we just whittled slowly away at sticks of bamboo, trying not to cut our legs or hands. Soon after that, we ate lunch with the chopsticks that we made. 

PC Zhuo Dayou

Butterfly landed on my hand! PC Zhuo Dayou

PC Zhuo Dayou

Cooking rice! PC Zhuo Dayou

Lunch with the chopsticks I made

Stay tuned for Kyoto adventures! Thanks for reading, and DFTBA!

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This Is Not Procrastination :: Food and Other Things

No, I don't have a midterm exam on Thursday. There is absolutely no studying for me to do. At all.  

Except that there is. A huge, monstrous, three hour exam on Thursday that is sure to be very reminiscent of the SAT. And this time I won't be able to read the questions. It's so overwhelming that I'm not even that sure where to start with the studying. Should I start with kanji? Or grammar? Or maybe write this speech on global warming that we're somehow supposed to give as part of the exam? 

Anywho...Here I am procrastinating on this exam (that I am desperately trying to forget about), so let me catch ya'll up on what I've been doing with my life this past week.

Ninja Temple and Nagamachi (Samurai District)

Last weekend, my host family took me and Ko-san (from the same neighborhood) out to the Ninja temple and the samurai district. The ninja temple wasn't actually used by ninjas, but was named for all the traps and general badassery that made this temple the headquarters for soldiers guarding the area back in the good ole days. There are more than 20 staircases and 29 rooms in the temple (which looks like a normal 2 story temple from the outside), and there are actually 7 levels in the temple with different booby traps and clever devices to make the temple easy to defend and hell for any invaders. 

I stole this picture from www.japan-guide.com since I forgot to take pictures

Afterwards, we went to Nagamachi to look at the old samurai houses and to walk around. The entire area has been preserved very well, and walking down the streets felt like we were transported back in time. Very cool. 

The walls of the houses are made out of mud, and according to my host father, the actual houses were much further back than the walls that we can see to make it harder for intruders to attack

My one and only love - Food

Japanese food is delicious. The meat here is extremely tender and a lot more fatty than American meat, and the fish is oh so cheap. I haven't been taking as many pictures as I would like of all the food I've been eating here (because I've been to busy stuffing it into my face with utmost decorum), but here are some of my meals that I actually remembered to take pictures of. 

We made makizushi in class after our first exam! It doesn't look very pretty but it was very delicious :)

 We went over to Nicole's (check out her blog!) house for a sleepover and some of the best food I've had in my life. This was sukiyaki that we had (mixed with raw egg) which I think has ruined meat for me forever. It was...incredible. There was also sushi that we made ourselves and various other yummy things

Melon pan with ice cream! It's advertised as the 2nd best in the world since 2013, which is a bit weird. Nonetheless, it was delicious. For those of you who doubt the perfection of メロンパンアイス, here is a second opinion. 

I helped my host mom make this! It's enoki (a type of thin mushroom) wrapped in strips of pork belly, and then pan fried with butter. Afterwards we grilled it some more on the yakiniku grill. 

Lucy invited us over to her house to learn how to make soba from buckwheat flour. It was very fun, and very difficult. Lucy's host dad was incredibly skilled, and cut the soba dough so uniformly and thinly that our poorly cut, different sized soba looked like udon compared to his. 

Tommy and his host family were kind enough to allow me to stay over since my buses didn't run early enough for me to get into the city for something I had to do. Tommy's host mom made kaisen don with tempura for us and if was amazing. 

I LOVE YAKINIKU. We've had it twice at my host family so far, and it exceeded my expectations both times. So yummy. 

Other foods that I will miss dearly back in America: good noodles (udon, somen, ramen, etc), cheap and delicious sushi/sashimi, roe on top on rice, takoyaki, curry rice, curry donuts, omurice, bento, cheap and delicious bread, Japanese ice cream, Japanese snacks/sweets, matcha everything....the list goes on. 

Agh. Now I'm hungry again, and I just finished dinner. 

Thanks for reading, and DFTBA!

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A Brief(ish) Note on Class

I am in no way writing this blog post to procrastinate on homework or studying for my quiz tomorrow. 

I just thought I'd update y'all on how classes are going. Yeah...classes. The thing that I actually came to Japan for. 

Here's an overview of how my school day goes:

6:30 (or 6:45...or 7:00) - Wake up. Do morning things. Eat breakfast. 

7:34 - Board my bus. Ride the bus. Sleep on the bus. Become one with the bus.

8:15 - Get to Rifare and either sleep more or start studying for the daily quiz.

9:00 - Classes start. One of the sensees from Princeton or another American university (we change sensees each week) reviews grammar from the day before and starts to teach new grammar. Struggle to not fall asleep.

10:00 - Break from class. Attempt to memorize vocabulary or kanji by any means possible. 

10:10 - Second period starts. Usually learn new grammar and practice talking or reading. 

11:00 - Second break from class. Panic about being woefully unprepared for upcoming quiz. Give up on studying and accept my fate. 

11:10 - Third period starts, and we change sensees to a sensee from Ishikawa. Immediately take quiz (5 min), then somebody presents a new word to everybody. This is followed by dialogue practice and listening practice. Invariably fall asleep. 

12:00 - Run to the convenience store or the station or the department store to buy lunch and shovel food into my mouth. Some days I play some frisbee with Tommy at the nearby park. Other days we have extracurricular activities to go to. 

A couple hours later - Go back home and not do homework. Although I really should because homework only takes about 30 minutes to do...

Level 2 classes move a lot quicker than I anticipated. Memorizing the vocabulary and 20ish kanji for each chapter is a bit difficult, and I find it quite frustrating that I forget the vocab and kanji almost immediately after we finish a chapter (probably due to my terrible study habits). Other than that, class has been a bit boring so far since we've been learning grammar that has already been covered at Yale, but we finally started learning new grammar this week and things have definitely gotten more interesting. The teachers from the States are superb, as to be expected, but the teachers from Ishikawa are a bit lacking, and I find the third period (which the Ishikawa teachers teach) is extremely repetitive, tiring, and a bit unnecessary. Of course, practice is very important for helping to remember new grammar and vocabulary, but by the third period my ability to pay attention is completely gone and I just stare at the clock waiting for the hour to be over. 

On kanji: the Princeton kids learned very different kanji (although around the same amount as Yale did), so it's been interesting trying to catch up on all the kanji that we didn't learn.

That's all for today! Here is a picture to prove that I have actually made new friends.

Her name is Jenny :)

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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River of Lights and Dancing 'Til Sundown :: Hyakumangoku Matsuri

Hyakumangoku matsuri is a summer festival held in Kanazawa every year, and it's apparently the biggest annual festival of the year. It goes from Friday night to Sunday, with a bunch of different events throughout the three days. This was my first experience with a Japanese summer festival, and it was the stuff of dreams. And also nightmares (more on that later).

Kaga Yuzen Tohro-Nagashi

Friday night was magical. Kaga Yuzen Tohro-Nagashi is one of the biggest events of Hyakumangoku Matsuri where over 1000 lanterns float down the Asanogawa river accompanied by different types of traditional Japanese music, such as Taiko and Enka. It was beautiful, and peaceful, and looked like it was a scene straight out of a Disney movie. Also a bit like the River of Life from Mushi-shi (a really great bittersweet manga/anime about spirits, definitely watch if you like anime!). 

There was a double rainbow right next to the river before sunset

Asanogawa river

Right before sunset, Tommy (check out his blog!) and I climbed down into the river and went up to where they were releasing the lanterns so that we could get a better view. There were a ton of very excited and adorable elementary school kids there releasing the lanterns into the river, where they joined eventually with a other lanterns released upstream. It's hard to describe how beautiful the river looked with all the uniquely painted lanterns meandering through all the rocks, so here are some really crappy phone camera pictures to give you an idea of what it looked like.

Hyakumangoku Gyoretsu

On Saturday, there was a parade that went through Kanazawa, starting from Kanazawa eki. It started around 12 with a huge taiko performance followed by people in samurai armor, traditional firefighters, lion dancers, baton twirlers, several bands, and acrobats. The streets were completely packed full of people watching the parade, so it was really hard to get around. Nearly impossible, actually. Zoey (check out her blog!) and I made the mistake of trying to walk through the crowd of people gathered to watch the opening taiko drums, and it was...an experience to say the least. I ended up getting pushed into other people by old Japanese ladies constantly, insistently, and urgently for what felt like an eternity. There was nothing I could do to get out or keep from being pressed against everybody in front and behind me, and at one point I even got completely pushed over. Not something I would want to ever go through again.

Hyakumangoku Odori-Nagashi

Saturday was also the day of a gigantic dance contest between more than 80 groups of people (company employees, schools, cultural clubs, etc) where we all lined up on a street and danced to three traditional Hyakumangoku songs for two hours. These dances were more like slow marches with different moves thrown in like sash waving and skipping while holding hands and various types of hand waving, and while I felt really silly marching in a happi coat and headband, it was very fun and lighthearted. All the other groups wore different outfits and had different moves, so it was especially interesting to watch the other groups dancing alongside us. 

PC Thaddeus Lee (check out his blog!)

PC Thaddeus Lee

PC Thaddeus Lee

PC Zhuo Dayou

That's all for now! 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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