A few weeks ago there was a lunar eclipse - it was beautiful! unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it but I do have pictures of us watching it. We could see it very well from our little smoking area/recycle bin area, but a bunch of us decided to wander over to the parking lot next to our dorm and lie down with blankets to watch it. It was a lot of fun! Very pretty.
One of the classes that I am taking this semester is Modern Sumi-e. Sumi is the type of ink, it's the same type of ink used in traditional calligraphy and it is made from charcoal. You can buy 'instant' ink at just about any convenience store now but for our class we have to make our own ink every time. It takes about 5 or 10 minutes to make the proper dark black and then you use that to make softer tones of black. Overall there are three tones of black -dark, middle, and light. The art is black and white traditionally but modern sumi-e occasionally uses a bit of color.
This is my final project - it's an elephant (the eye and part of the nose and tusk) we did this project on washi paper (special Japanese paper made from rice) and it was difficult because the ink tends to bleed A LOT. but it turned out alright so I'm okay with it! We pasted it onto a wooden block/frame and over the next month they will be hung up somewhere in the school.
My friend Emelie and I decided to host a pub quiz/trivia night event in the dorm, so for about 2 weeks we prepared a bunch of 'world friendly' questions and then we also went through the process of translating those questions into Japanese. We had about 25 or so questions and another few picture based questions. Some of the questions we used were incredibly hard for Japanese people (Write the kanji for the word depression - look it up! It's one of the hardest to write.) and some of the questions were incredibly difficult for English speakers (what is natadecoco made from?) but overall the night was a success! The 'quiz masters' Yuko is the Japanese quiz master (she read the Japanese questions aloud) and Emelie and I were the English question readers.
Here's an example of some of our picture questions- name the country's flag, name the company's logo, name the country.
More picture questions! Name the car logo, characters, and movie scenes.
There were about 5 groups of 4 people and everyone paid 100yen to participate in our pub quiz! The winners received the money and second and third place winners just got a bunch of candy. It was a lot of fun though and we will most likely be doing another game night event soon!
My brother is coming for a visit soon! Super exciting. He keeps asking what things are popular in Japan right now... Not entirely sure how to answer that one but I decided to do a post dedicated to random things in Japan. And by that I mean I'm mostly just going to put videos up of my favorite commercials.
This is a Pocky Commercial, featuring a guy from the boyband Arashi. The way boybands work in Japan is pretty intense because once these guys get popular they are literally everywhere. (TV, movies, singing, commercials, advertisements, you name it.) It's constantly being shown on one of the big screens in Shibuya Crossing, very catchy though. The bit at the end that sounds like 'Tabe-time' is actually 'Tabe-tai'. It's a clever play on words! (Tabe-tai means I want to eat.)
This song is always sung at Karaoke (well, at least the two times that I've been.) AKB48 is huge in Japan! They are a girl group, the AKB stands for Akihabara (place in Tokyo) where the group was formed. There are technically 48 members in the group but they get divided into subgroups, and I think fans can vote for the 20 or so girls they want to participate in the next song. I'm actually not really sure how it works, but anywhere you go in Tokyo you will at least hear one of their songs. Apparently there are other groups formed in the same fashion - SKE48 (Sakae area of Nagoya), SDN48 (Saturday Night, they're intended for a more mature audience), and NMB48 (Namba, Osaka).
This is a commercial for instant noodles! Quite possibly my favorite one.
This is another song you hear often in Japan. It's a group called Girls Generation. The best part of this video though is the parody video done by a bunch of old Japanese men.
Some of the buddies organized a special sports event where we all got together and played sports. The sports we chose to play were volleyball, and then we switched to basketball. When you think about it, volleyball isn't exactly a 'pick up' type of game, a lot of planning needs to go into that one.. but it was fun anyways since only a handful of people actually knew the rules of volleyball. After everyone sufficiently bruised their arms and wrists, we switched to playing basketball.
Those of us who were terrible at basketball decided to do cartwheels and gymnastics and leapfrog races.
After awhile we also started spinning around as fast as we could and then tried to walk on a straight line. We all ended up falling over, it was a lot of fun!
We also played airplane..
Here's a shot of us actually participating in some sports.. sort of.
more spinning!
It was a lot of fun, the gym at our school is very big, two basketball courts. There are Kendo rooms near the gym where the kids who do Kendo were starting to warm up... I don't know to much about Kendo but the warm involves a lot of crazy loud shouting. It was very intimidating to hear them!
Went to see a movie today because I didn't have any classes, and also Wednesday is ladies day at the movie theatres! Normal student prices are about 1,500yen but on Wednesdays ladies get in for 1,000yen. Not too bad for a movie. The choices we had were an American film called ピザボーイ( Pizza Boy, but in English it's 30 Minutes or Less), a Japanese film, another Japanese film, and a bunch of other Japanese films. We decided to go for the film about the yakuza.. which turned out pretty much exactly how you expect a gangster film to be. You can kind of get an idea from the trailer... lots of violence. I think the thing that surprised us most is that a lot of it would have been edited out if it was shown in America. There was a lot of rape and a lot of women being beaten, but apart from all that though it was a good movie! It had a sad ending. We went with our Japanese friend who had to help explain some parts of it but for the most part I was able to understand the majority of the movie! Next time we decided a comedy might be better though.
The other night a few of us were invited to a 'Nabe party'! Nabe is basically Japanese Stew. It's a big pot that you put just about everything you think you might want into and everyone shares. It's really fun! The pot is stuffed full of veggies and fish or meat, then once it gets cold or the food starts to run out, it gets filled up again and again until finally you put ramen noodles in the leftover soup. It's amazing how tiny Japanese people are considering how much food they can pack away.
This is the apartment of Shotaro (the one in the black shirt making a weird face) He lives in this massive (for Japan at least) apartment with his brother in Oimachi. They live on the top floor of a 14 story building, it was cloudy but they have an amazing view!
Guess the veggies! I'm not really sure what they are exactly but since being here some of the things I'm starting to love are - ちくわ(chikuwa), こんやく(conyaku), もやし(bean sprouts), もめんとふ(momenn tofu), いなり(inari), and a bunch of other vegetables that I don't know the names of.
Since it's winter, nabe pots are everywhere! I'm on the search for a single sized one that I can take home with me... The whole point of nabe though is sharing with family so single sized pots are hard to come by.
My friend Emelie (apparently my only friend) is on a mission to find all the different flavors of Kit Kats that Japan has to offer. These are the flavors that have been found so far... Chinese Dessert flavor (Almond Pudding/Jelly?)
Black Sugar Flavor
Strawberry Cheesecake, a special Yokohama sweet
Mont-Blanc flavor
Wasabi Flavor
Blueberry Cheesecake
The one on the left is Apple flavored and the one on the right is pepper flavor
Today was the first big adventuring around a new part of Tokyo day I've had in a long while! The past few weeks have been eventful but since the weather is getting colder it just seems like we stay indoors and watch disney movies, and I've since learned how to knit. Not very exciting blog posts. Today Emelie and I went to Koenji, which is another part of Tokyo, near Shinjuku. Koenji is similar to Shimokitazawa, just not as big. We first read the sign as 'Party shop' so we were confused when we saw all this organic and healthy looking food. It actually says 'Herb Tea shop'..
They were a little small...
Grocery store with the Engrish - 'It is a report to you. The fresh present from U-Takaraya'
These stairs felt like they were about to collapse...
I was invited to go on a leaf viewing and onsen (hot springs) trip with Suda Sensei (my first grade teacher!), her mother, her sister, and her sister's three year old boy. The last time I saw them was roughly 10 years ago when I stayed with them for a summer. They couldn't believe how 'grown up' I've become but at the same time I couldn't really grasp the idea that Aki (the sister) is now a mother and pregnant! I met with Suda Sensei at Shibuya station on Thursday afternoon around 3:30, I went directly after school. From Shibuya we went to Shinjuku station where we caught a Limited Express Romance Car. It's technically a normal train, but it's so fancy! All the seats are reserved and there is a woman who comes down the aisle and offers water and snacks for sale. We definitely didn't travel this nicely when I first went to Hakone on my school trip. We arrived at the hotel around 6:00pm, got settled in and hung out until dinner at 7:30. (I think I wrote the name of the hotel down somewhere so I will look it up later - it was one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in)
This is the view from one of the balconies from our room. yep, we had two balconies.
This is an awkward solo shot of me and the pretty foliage. My hair is wet because we went to the onsen right before. Most westerners seem to be uncomfortable with the concept of the onsen, but I think I was more afraid of doing something wrong that I didn't have time to think about the fact that I was stark naked in front of strangers. There is certain process that you have to go through before you even enter the hot springs. First you have to rinse yourself, then wash with soap, then once you're clean you can enter the bath, then after the bath you have to rinse and wash again. The next day we took our time in the morning and went to a glass museum in Hakone before making our way to Suda sensei's parents house.
This is Suda sensei's sister Aki, nephew Keitaro, and mom.
A glass sculpture hidden in the trees!
Another awkward solo shot of me and the changing leaves. and the glass sculpture in the background.
It was really fun to be able to visit Suda sensei and her family again. I admit going to her house was a little bit weird since the last time I was there was in 2001 (I was only 10..) The Japanese word 夏貸し （なつかし) it's hard to translate, it basically means nostalgic but the way it is used in Japanese is not exactly the same. It can mean to miss something, to yearn for, etc. When we went to Suda Sensei's parents house I received help with my Japanese homework, which definitely took me back, with me and my teacher sitting down at the kitchen table going over my kanji and grammar. After dinner her brother Daisuke and her grandmother stopped by to say hello so it was nice to be able to see them as well. It was a full family reunion!
We had a culture day yesterday! It was just like every other culture event we've been to before, you have a tea ceremony, put on a kimono, saunter around a garden, make some origami and do some calligraphy. It was still really neat though. It was at a garden/cultural center in Mejiro, which is a station on the Yamanote Line. Traditional Tea Ceremony lady. Sitting in that position for longer than 2 minutes really kills your legs. We had to sit properly for almost the entire ceremony and afterwards everyone struggled to stand up.
Traditional Japanese Okashi (Snacks) The change depending on the season, for example in Summer the okashi might be blue or aqua (represents the sea). This one had fall colors on it. It's made of Anco (red bean paste) and Mochi (rice cake) everyone in Japan loves anco. It's definitely an acquired taste, that I have yet to acquire..
This lady had beautiful calligraphy. The kanji that is pictured was drawn by the students though, so it's not as pretty. She made it look so easy!
We all had a go at making traditional Matcha (green tea). It's all in the wrist.
