Goodness, there's a lot of ground to cover today! :) I'll start with this cool picture - it's a building near Hikone Station, and is neither a Disney castle nor a church - it's a hotel! And by hotel I mean normal hotel, not the love hotels that are also pretty common here (I think you can figure out what those are!).
On Thursday night we made tacos! One of my friends is good friends with a professor, who picked up some tortillas for us at Costco (which is in Japan, just not anywhere near here). Add that to taco seasoning mix from a friend's care package and we have taco night. It was fantastically delicious, and reminded me a little of home. All I need to figure out how to make now is queso, and then we'll really be in business!
Friday we did not have class! Instead we visited an elementary school and played with kids. It was a lot of fun, because they were all so excited to see us! We got little name tags and everything. And they performed for us! This is a pic of them playing "Puff the Magic Dragon", complete with Japanese lyrics. :3
We did calligraphy and played card games with this class. All the kids were amazed that I could do calligraphy properly - thank you, Sanada Sensei! Mine is "tori"(bird) - the complicated one. XD
With the second class, we played a bunch of random games (and they performed for us as well!). There were 4 different stations, at which we did juggling, kendama (a cup and ball game - more on that later), played with tops and also played a game that's a cross between marbles, checkers and pool.Once I got back to school, it was time to leave for my homestay. My family is the Ishisaka family (which means "stone slope"), and they lived in Kusatsu, a town about 35 minutes away from Hikone by train. It's a pretty big place, as Panasonic is headquartered in Kusatsu. I liked Kusatsu a lot! It's a nice place, from what I've seen of it.
Like most traditional Japanese homes, the Ishisakas had a tatami room(named for the flooring) that is used as a guest room. That's where I stayed. The house had no heating, but the 50 layers of blankets I had on my futon made up for it. :) The big display in the background is for a festival known as Hina Matsuri, on March 3rd. Every family that has a daughter has one of these displays and they display them every year to celebrate their daughters' life. There are a lot of different styles to the dolls, but the same structure is present in every Hina Matsuri display: the royal couple, other members of the royal court, and some props (like lanterns).
Another traditional aspect of Japanese homes (one that I hadn't experienced before) was the low table. Most Japanese households have Western-style kitchen tables, but a lot of older families use a low coffee table to eat at. It's not as comfortable to sit at, but you do have the advantage of getting to use a kotatsu. Basically, the underside of the table has a heater on it, and you place a thick comforter between the tabletop and the heater to keep all the heat in. So, even if the room is cold you can keep your legs nice and toasty.Back to my homestay. The Ishisakas were really nice! Eicchi, my homestay father, was about 70 and spoke some English due to his former job as a patent clerk for a pharmaceutical company, though he encouraged that I speak only Japanese. He also has about 50 hobbies: ballroom dance, piano, watercolor painting, gardening, karaoke, ikebana (remember flower arranging?), and even go. Etsuko, my homestay mother, was also about 70 and spoke no English, but spoke slowly and clearly enough that I could understand her pretty well for the most part. They were really really welcoming, and I liked spending time with them.
We did the bulk of our sightseeing on Saturday. The family's daughter, Naoko, came with her husband Naoto and they took us to Ishiyama Temple (literally, "rock mountain"), the site where Murasaki Shikibu wrote her great Japanese epic (and one of the first novels ever, and the first written by a woman), The Tale of Genji. I was expecting just a dinky little temple, but it was huge AND gorgeous. Probably one of my favorite temples!
For lunch we had a Lake Biwa special, really tiny clams(in EVERYTHING!). I was not too big of a fan of the meal, but I managed okay - I'm not a big fan of super-traditional Japanese meals, I've decided. It looked pretty, certainly!
After that, we went to the Lake Biwa Museum. It had a freshwater aquarium as well as a geologic history of the area and all sorts of conservation stuff. It wasn't the most interesting museum I've been to but I still enjoyed it. There were plenty of fossils to keep me a happy camper. :)
After several grocery store runs, Ishisaka's son Tsuichi and his wife Shoko came for dinner, along with their kids Koichi and Fumika. We had sukiyaki, absolutely my favorite Japanese meal! It was a lot of fun spending time with the whole family. I love their family dynamic - it's not like so many families I know in which the parents just let their kids run wild when they visit other people. The kids were well-behaved and their parents interacted with them a lot. Cute. :)
Sunday I was really expecting to just head back to Hikone, but no such thing! We traveled to the city of Nagahama, which is actually on the other side of Hikone from Kusatsu. Currently the plum blossoms are in bloom so they have a big potted plum tree exhibition. The exhibition was in a building, but the grounds were gorgeous too.
There were tons of pink and white blooms everywhere! I thought it was really pretty. Some of the tree cuttings are hundreds of years old, and they varied in size from little baby trees to ones taller than me (even without the pot).
Nagahama is definitely a city I will be coming back to visit! It's full of pretty glass trinket shops, so I browsed there for quite a while. I mostly looked, because everything was so expensive. But glass jewelry is a weakness of mine, so of course I had to get a piece. These figurines can be made a part of a hina matsuri display! They're a little more stylized than the traditional setups, but I like them!After Nagahama, I headed back to good old Hikone to catch up on homework and hang out with people. It's so good to be back! As fun as traveling is, it's tiring and I'm glad I just get to chill out here this weekend.
Today I haven't really done much...I've been feeling a little under the weather all day, so hopefully it won't become anything too bad. Have a wonderful week!
Love hotel? No, Kelsey, I cannot figure this out. What could it possibly mean? :/
ReplyDeleteOh THAT'S the kanji for flower! (Right? that one in the middleish?) I had forgotten and I was so disappointment in myself. Those kids are adorable, and so rightly be impressed with your caligraphy skillz.
I guess I didn't realize you were going to stay at a homestay? Also, I am so impressed with the idea of you only speaking Japanese, like, all the time. THAT IS COOL. Last Friday I as cleaning the lockers and these four Japanese girls came in and were talking. I thought, 'man, if only I was Kelsey I would totally be able to understand them!' I did catch "wakaranai" or something, which is like 'I don't understand'??? A moment later they came up and asked how to use the lockers, so I'm also working from context clues here.
Hey, I actually know who Murasaki Shikibu is! I read this excellent book called My Year of Meats (you should read it, I will lend it to you) which revolved around the experiences of a Japanese woman and a Japanese-American woman. They both liked Shōnagon and her pillow book(s?), and there work excerpts of her writing at the beginning of each chapter. I think Shikibu was mentioned once - I looked her up later on wikipedia at least. Apparently they were court rivals. Anyway, I think it's awesome that Japanese women were writing at that time. I would like to read their work.
I'm glad the kids were well-behaved. My cousins are not well-behaved. :*( Anyway, hope you feel better soon! ;D
Lol, I'll explain it to you when you're older. :P
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, that is hana. :)
I want to read Tale of Genji also, but it's apparently really long.