Quake-tastic.

Hi! I hope you all are well. :)

I'm sure a lot of you have heard of the lovely natural disaster that happened yesterday and has been all over the news. Let me start off by saying that the earthquake in Japan may have been huge, but here at Lake Biwa we're pretty well-protected. We're pretty far inland, way south of the epicenter, and surrounded by mountains. We've barely gotten any rain, let alone flooding, and we had a magnitude 4 aftershock in the middle of the afternoon yesterday with no harm done. So, I hope that puts you all at ease. :) My friends here are all safe, in Sapporo and otherwise, so I'm glad it was so far north of us. The greatest inconvenience the quake poses is traveling to Tokyo next weekend, which may not be a good idea considering the damage done. Other parts of Japan are not in the best shape, though. I haven't looked at too many pictures but the ones I have seen are really worrisome. Keep the people of northern Honshu in your thoughts!I do have a funny story about the quake we did feel, though. I was actually at karaoke with a bunch of friends, and at the time of the quake we were rocking out to a K-Pop song (Korean pop). We were all dancing around to the song as we sang, and I started feeling a little dizzy, feeling like the bench underneath me was moving. And then we all stop singing and look up at each other, realizing that the building around us was moving. It's a really weird feeling, having the BUILDING you're in moving. It's like you're on a ride, but a really big one you can't get off of. I thought it was sorta fun, to be honest. :) We didn't really have anywhere to go, so we just rode it out in our room. It was a fairly long quake, though - lasted for about 3 minutes, maybe? But then things got back to normal, just in time for the next song. XD
What else happened on Friday, you ask? Well, after our exam, our "cultural activity" for the week was Naginata. :)Naginata is the name of this weapon. Real Naginatas are long spears with metal tips, but we practiced with these wood-and-bamboo ones instead. There were 2 parts to the lesson - we learned a series of moves to practice, and then we also practiced really simple sparring. Fun, right?There's something very empowering about wielding a spear. Here, my friends Meg and Brad are re-enacting a scene from Summer Wars. In the movie, the grandmother goes after one of her grandsons with one of these. Scary!We also hit Sapna and rocked out at karaoke for 5 hours. I've learned something about karaoke! Picking songs you can sing with multiple people is way more fun than just finding one you personally know. So I fit in my Nightwish and Sonata Arctica fix but also do a lot of songs we all know. This time, we did Bohemian Rhapsody, Potential Breakup Song and Don't Stop Believin', among other things. And, because we were feeling silly, we finished with the Star-Spangled Banner (and yes, they did have that as a karaoke choice). I looked for the Aggie War Hymn, but no such luck. XD It was a fun afternoon, even with the crazy weather. We rode to Bell Road in the rain, experienced an earthquake while there, and rode back in the snow. The night was ended with 42, which is always a pleasure. :)

Today, I went to help another girl here with her internship - she teaches English at the children's English school JCMU hosts on Saturdays. It was the kids' last day for the semester - school ends around this time for all Japanese students and starts up again in April. So, we were giving them an English assessment! We were testing 3-7 year-olds, some of whom have never taken a test before. It was pretty simple - in most cases we would say a phrase in English and they would have to pick the picture corresponding to what they said. Most of the kids knew at least some of the answers, but some struggled a lot. It was good practice for me, though, as I gave instructions for each section in Japanese! It was simple stuff like "I'm going to read 4 sentences. Write down the number of the correct picture for each sentence." but it was still empowering. XD

This afternoon, I got to do some swing-dancing! 2 other students and I are hosting a swing dance lesson on Tuesday night, so we met up to work out details and figure out the steps we're teaching. It was fun! I'm a little rusty and not nearly as good as the other two are, but that's okay because I'm just glad to be dancing again. :) Hopefully the lesson will go well!

Have a great weekend. :D

Best day ever?

Happy Friday! Because we have a test every Friday here, when I finish that I really feel like it's worth celebrating. :)

What made Friday so good, you might ask? Well, it was just one of those days when everything goes well! It's my first weekend since January I get to spend here in Hikone, so we actually made plans and I wasn't busy rushing off anywhere. The test was okay - I won't say it went really well because it didn't, but I think I did plenty well enough. :) After the exam, we had another cultural activity - Wadaiko!
Wadaiko means "Japanese drums". These three awesome ladies came to perform for us, then taught us a short piece to play. There's a story behind these masks. The person in the middle is a random guy heading home on an errand along a mountain path. He hears this weird noise up ahead, and discovers it's a demon and a monkey, playing drums right in the middle of the path. The man wants to go home but he can't pass by so he has to play the drums in front of him. He likes it so much he decides to continue playing!

I'm afraid I don't have any photos of me showing off my mad drumming skills, but getting to play on that kind of instrument was pretty cool. We also sounded really good!After wadaiko we went out for Indian food out on Bell Road, one of the main thoroughfares in Hikone that's full of shops and restaurants. The restaurant, Sapna, is pretty new but has such tasty food. Look at the naan! It's amazingly delicious...my trial when I get home will be to find an Indian place that's up to snuff.Then, we did karaoke for 4 hours! Japanese karaoke is pretty awesome. You can queue up songs on this little display so there's no time wasted on choosing songs after you finish one. And they have SO MANY SONGS! Of course, their Japanese selection is pretty prodigious - basically every song in Japanese I knew was in that database. But they have a lot of other stuff too! We sang 2 K-Pop songs and I found Nightwish AND Sonata Arctica AND Kamelot! None of my favorites of theirs were there, but the fact that they were there at all was pretty fun. I ended up singing a combination of symphonic metal, random Japanese songs, K-pop and anime intros. I love karaoke, and I can't wait to go back. :)

Tonight we spent teaching more people to play 42! Its popularity is constantly spreading, which is awesome. We played for about 3 hours, and definitely recruited more to the cause. The current count of people here who know how to play is 8, and we have 2 more wanting to learn. I'm so glad I can continue one of my favorite pastimes here. :)

ALSO, I found white button mushrooms at Beisia! I didn't think they were here in Japan at all until I saw them in Kusatsu while shopping with my homestay family last weekend. And they magically appeared at the grocery store. Guess who's making pasta with sauteed mushrooms? :D

Have a fantabulous weekend!

Weekend Recap

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. :3We 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. XDWith 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!

Music and Dancing

Hello! We have embarked on our first short week of the semester - we get Thursday and Friday off as our spring break. I'm going up to Sapporo, but I'll wait on all of that info until later.

We went to Nagoya on Saturday! The Matenrou Opera concert was on Saturday, so we got all dressed up and headed to Nagoya. I felt much less like a foreigner because I was dressed like the typical Japanese girl dresses (and rode my bike to the station in said outfit as well).Note the short dress(shorts can be substituted), boots, and tights even in cold weather. I still don't know how they do it.Our main sightseeing stop was here, at Nagoya Castle. It's huge! It's famous for its "dolphins", big gold fish at the top of the castle.Lunch was a Nagoya special known as kishimen, a noodle soup bowl with really wide noodles. Mmm.

After lunch we headed over to Electric Lady Land, the site of the concert. But first, we managed to find a cool shopping area to wander around in. Hooray for following random alleyways!

I wish I had pictures from the concert, but all cameras were practically confiscated so I kept mine hidden. Japanese concerts are so different from American ones! For one thing, everyone stays in their own bubble - no one tries to get in your way. And the fans are so polite! Yelling is kept to a minimum, and after ballads you clap. CLAP. My favorite part, however, is the hand movements. Depending on what's happening in the song, you perform certain dance moves. You might move your hands or pump your fist or headbang sideways - it's all choreographed by some obsessed fans and you just follow along with them. So much fun! The best part was that it was at a tiny venue so the band actually lined the exit so you could shake hands with all of them. Really awesome.Dinner afterwards was equally delicious - Katsu Curry. It's a pork cutlet covered in curry - 2 of my favorite things means you can't go wrong. :D

The Nagoya trip was almost completely successful, but with one exception. We had to change trains 3 times on the way home, because trains run less after 9 pm. The plan was to go from Nagoya to Gifu, Gifu to Maibara, and Maibara to Hikone. We got to Maibara at 11:20, but the last train for Hikone left at 11:05. We ended up just taking a cab back - luckily Maibara station isn't far from JCMU. Lesson learned, though! :)Yesterday was pretty uneventful, with the exception of samurai kenbu. It's a ceremonial dance performed with swords. We actually got to dress up in costume and everything. It was sort of luck of the draw, but mine thankfully matched. XD Wearing the costumes really made it awesome.We did a dance, which was fun(though I was no good at it). And then we took lots of pictures!

I also had my first internship today and met my conversation partner, but I'll save those for later. I'm tired. XD Apparently I'm still not used to being busy all the time. Have a good week, and I'll talk to you all on Wednesday. :D

Setsubun and Kyoto (again!)

I skipped a day! D: Probably you all don't read this that often anyway, but I was doing so well with my every-other-day streak. Last night I got back too late and was too tired to feel like posting, so I'll make up for it by posting this morning. :)

Starting with Thursday. It was mainly uneventful, though we had Setsubun! Setsubun is a tradition performed to scare demons away from your house. It's sort of a new-year cleansing ceremony. You have people dress up as onis, and then toss soybeans at them to drive them out of your house.

Intimidating, no? I think the boxers are a nice touch. Once the demons have been successfully removed, you eat 1 soybean for each year of your life. They're pretty tasty, though lacking in a little salt. Think of really crispy peanuts.
And yesterday we went back to Kyoto! My friend had her passport stolen last semester, and needed to get a police report in order to apply for a new visa. But, of course life is never that simple. We went to one station (where we were told we could just pick up the report and move on), but were instead told to walk 20 minutes to another station. There, we waited an hour and a half for a little sheet of paper with a handwritten note and stamp on it. We hightailed it back to Kyoto Station to get to Otsu, a large town 2 stops away from Kyoto that also has the immigration office. We made it to the immigration office with just 10 minutes to spare (before it closed), and we successfully got her new visa. It was sort of a frustrating afternoon and we didn't manage to do any sightseeing or get the crepes/Arabic food we planned to scout out. However, it's now taken care of, and I actually enjoyed just walking around the city a bit. Here are some of the things we saw. :)A random building I thought was neat. Each of the white emblems is an insignia of one of the daimyos (the ruling families during the Warring States Era).
Traffic closings are so much cuter when they're supported by red pandas! :D
Toji Temple. We didn't go in, but we walked all the way around it to get to police station #2.

Because we were on such a tight schedule, we didn't end up getting lunch until we reached Otsu at 4. (I had tendon, short for tempura donburi. It's basically a tempura rice bowl)
So, before that, we snacked. And Japan has really weird foods. We collectively decided just to get random things and try all of them. So, I had green tea oreos (which taste surprisingly good), black tea Kitkats (which are growing on me), and salad-flavored pretzel sticks (which taste nothing like salad but are delicious). My favorites, though, were the canned drinks we got out of vending machines. You can actually get corn soup out of vending machines - I was a little skeptical but it's delicious. My favorite, though? This!Yes, it is a pancake-flavored hot drink. It's sort of like a maple syrup explosion. I'm a huge fan! It's a shame we don't have stuff like this in America.

Today is the Matenrou Opera concert in Nagoya - we're going to go do some sightseeing in Nagoya first. :) It should be crazy - I've heard visual kei concerts are an experience. So, I'll have lots to tell next time. Enjoy your weekend!

A Tale of Eggplants, Kimonos, and Crepe Uncles

Kyoto story time! :D But first, our cultural activity from Friday. We played the koto! It's a traditional Japanese instrument. The instructor played a complex piece for us, then let us play a little song. :)

It's actually easier than it looks! You play with something like a guitar pick, and you can modify the notes by holding down different strings. The "bridges" on the instrument set the pitch for each string, and if you hold down the string on the other side of the bridge you can modulate the pitch. Pretty cool, huh?

Now, to Kyoto. I went with my friends Addie and Jess - we left JCMU at around 9:15(AM) and got home around 9:30(PM). The train ride took about 45 minutes, and once we got there it was a little overwhelming. Kyoto Station is huge! It has a long-distance subway hub, a shinkansen hub, AND a local hub, not to mention the shopping mall inside. XD However, we managed to get a bus pass for the day (by far the best deal for Kyoto transportation...pay 500 yen to ride all over the city, and within 2 rides it pays for itself!) and find out how to get to Inari station (home of Fushimi Inari).

Fushimi Inari was our first stop, because it was where we all REALLY wanted to go. And it was awesome! It's like most Shinto shrines, except that it is dedicated to kitsune, the fox gods. Normal Shinto shrines have lions flanking the entrance, but this shrine has foxes everywhere. There are about a million paths you can take once you're inside. There are the main paths flanked with the giant red gates (or torii), and there are also a lot of side paths that lead to little shrines. You could probably spend all day there if you wanted. We didn't get very far up the main path because we took all the side-routes, too. I'm definitely going back to do more exploring. :)

One path in particular was really really long - we walked it for a good 10 minutes. It was a beautiful little mountain path! There was an old woman walking along it who passed us when we stopped to look at a small shrine. Oddly enough, we never saw her again though she was definitely a slow walker and there were no other paths to take. It was like she had disappeared! She was a really friendly old lady...we've decided she's a spirit. :)

After leaving Fushimi Inari, we did some shopping at the next street over (which is conveniently FULL of goodies), and I got suckered into buying a kimono!
Isn't it pretty? It was really inexpensive, too. I was sort of eying it and the shop owner waved me over to a mirror to see how it looked. I was expecting her to just slip it on so I could see it briefly. Instead, she whipped out an obi (the traditional sash), and cinched me into the kimono within an inch of my life, obi and all. And it was so pretty I caved. XD I don't have any pictures of how she tied it because my camera was kind of trapped in my jacket (which I was still wearing), but this will have to do for now. :)
We also had lunch nearby - I wanted to try some of the cuisine the area is famous for. Apparently people in the Inari area eat sparrow, and this restaurant served it. I wasn't quite brave enough to go that route, so instead I had kitsune udon, a noodle soup with strips of fried sweet tofu. It was delicious!
After lunch we went back to Kyoto Station (and saw some crazy characters), then got on a bus to go to Ginkakuji, the silver pavilion that is not actually covered in silver. I really liked walking around the garden - the golden pavilion (Kinkakuji) has a garden as well, just not as pretty. I didn't realize how high we were until we got to the top of a hill and got to see the entire city of Kyoto! What a beautiful view.

On the way to Ginkakuji is a little strip of shops that have lots of souvenirs and things. My personal favorite shop? The bunny store. :3 I'm not sure if this is always here or if it's just because it's the Year of the Rabbit, zodiac-wise. But they're all adorable so it's sort of irrelevant.

After Ginkakuji, we headed to Gion, a famous shopping district in Kyoto. Geishas also work here, and you can sometimes see maiko (geishas in training) walking the streets. We saw no maiko, but quite a few people in kimonos! More than normal, actually...I don't really know why.

And I found this! There is a story about this eggplant coin purse. When I first visited Japan 4 years ago, we went to Gion and saw a little shop with a lot of cute little stuffed animals and things. And they had this coin purse. I really liked it at the time (especially the little eggplant charm!), but decided not to get it. I later wanted to go back and get it, but we never did. My dad came to Kyoto on a business trip and I sent him on a quest to find it, but he was unsuccessful. And then, walking through Gion, we happened to stumble across the shop. And, lo and behold, right where it was 4 years ago, I found the coin purse. :D It's sort of a silly story, but I was so excited to find it.

We headed back to Kyoto station after that, in search of dinner. We were all craving American-ish food, so we found a little pasta place.

This was so delicious. I can't decide whether I really liked it or if I just missed pasta so it tasted amazing.

We spent our last few hours in Kyoto at a big mall across the street from the station. I didn't do any shopping there, but I was introduced to the wonders of Japanese crepes.

It's Crepe Ojisan! Which literally translates to "Crepe Uncle". As you can see, they have about every type of crepe imaginable. Most of them are sweet (chocolate, fruit, gelato, etc.) but they have a few savory ones as well. Their current special was Chicken Pot Pie. o.0 I ended up getting a hot apple pie crepe. Best crepe I've ever tasted.

After munching on crepes for a while, we finally boarded the train. It was a very successful day! I look forward to traveling again. We're planning trips for Osaka and Nara next month (and of course I have Nagoya this weekend and Sapporo next weekend).

As far as life here goes, we're back to normal. :) We had lots of snow last night so the roads are treacherous once more. Classes are going well - finally got an A on a Japanese exam here. Hooray for study parties. :) Japanese is getting less intimidating now, thankfully! Class is done for the day, but there's a lot still going on. I had an internship orientation, and now I think we're baking. :D Hooray for ovens, even small ones.

Sorry, I know this is a super-long post. But I hope you enjoy it. :)