watermelon

Today I got to eat watermelon with lunch! (I wrote this about 3 weeks ago and forgot to add he picture and put it onto the website... nooooo.) It was graduation day at school, and the kids went home early after they finished cleaning up from the ceremony. The teachers got a special bento lunch that cost about 15 bucks. I've learned that whenever we have bentos though, the food is really good quality and beautiful. Here's a picture of my lunch.

Because there was a snow storm two days ago I didn't really expect to find one of the most delicious foods of summer in my lunch. Ahh as a side note: one thing about Japan that sometimes is strange to me is how much food is eaten with chopsticks. Take for instance watermelon. At home, I would never dream of doing anything but picking up a chunk of the pink juicy fruit and spitting seeds onto the ground or my plate. Here however it is a real delicacy. Regular ones cost about $15 but they can get really expensive. I've heard like $50, and they aren't that big. This is unbelievable to me. All of that to say, I ate it with chopsticks just like everyone else. It seemed to be the thing to do. I kind of had to cut it/break it apart into bite-size pieces with my chopsticks which is something I have become somewhat skilled in. Before coming here I would have never guessed I would be eating things like spaghetti, soup, stew, salad, whole fish, cherry tomatos, hamburger patties, weiners (no one calls them hot dogs here) fruit salad, potato salad and so many other thigns it doesn't even phase me to eat them with chopsticks anymore. We are off to Osaka tomorrow to watch sumo and see some stuff. It should be a fun weekend.

Hina Matsuri

Friday was Hina Matsuri, or Girl's Day Festival. (Boy's Day is coming up in May. Boys day is a national holiday here, but girls day seems to be nothing but eating and making dolls. I can't help but see the inequalities in this right off the bat.)
Here you can see Rob right before our giant feast provided by Ms. Dokuni. The special food for girl's day is sushi, mochi that is flavored like cherry blossom flowers, and a sweet rice wine (amezake). We had a great time eating, talking, and learning about cool Japanese stuff.

So the big thing for this holiday is to make dolls or buy dolls and set them up in your house. If you're making the dolls you have to be finished before the holiday becuase the longer you display them after the holiday is over the longer it will be until you are married. Thus making it probable you will be an old maid if you are slow at the crafts. ahh well. Here are two dolls made for us. This one was made by the Special Education class at Rob's school. He teaches them English at least once a month so they are pretty good friends by now.

One of the people at Kono named Ms. Kamo made these origami dolls for me. She is a really nice lady who is always doing nice things for me or making origami in her free time. I thought this set was suprisingly detailed, beautiful, and tiny. I have chosen to leave it on display in our apartment well after girl's day because I'm already married so the supersition won't hold true for me.

Tea

Rob and I went to a Tea Ceremony last weekend with his Secretary from school. She studies the tea ceremony and invited us to her class to be served and to watch what goes on in a tea ceremony. As it turned out, we saw 4 tea ceremonies two done by her and two done by another student in the class.

The room where we did the tea ceremony was a traditional style tea room. It had a hole in the tatami mat where there was a charcoal fire. You can see the container used to heat the water is hanging from the ceiling down into the hole. (all of these things have very specific names, and how you put the "utencils" has different names and styles. It's crazy how specified the tea ceremony is.

Here are the tea utencils. These were used in a special ceremony that is difficult to do. I was told it is a "challenge" Challenge translates into Japanese as Cha-le-n-gu so its pretty easy to pick that up in a conversation. So the brown pot holds the tea powder. The pot is put into this little bag before the ceremony starts. I think, part of the ceremony's difficulty is taking the pot out of the bag gracefully. Then they use the bamboo spoon/scoop to put the tea into a cup that looks like a bowl. You add hot water and wisk it up. After drinking the tea, the host cleans the utencils and then shows them to you. We admired the glaze on the pot, the shape of the bamboo scoop, and the fabric and leather tie of the bag. It was a very contenplative moment. Then I took a picture!
This particular tea was very strong and thick. I think it is very unusual because when I told my Japanese teachers they were impressed I'd tried it. I must say that I like the regular tea best.

Taiko

The other day we went to a drumming festival up in Katsuyama. Japanese drums are called Taiko. They can be huge or just normal size. The huge drums sound amazing and will blow you away with their sound. Unfortunantely they didn't have any huge drums at this festival. I guess because it was mostly kids playing. Actually it was all kids. This is the reason I HAD to go to Taiko festival in Katsuyama. I think most everyone I know knows that I love Japanese kids. They are all cute to me. Now imagine them all wearing lil kimonos or traditional drumming wear (a pull over happi jacket) and you have about a million great photo opportunities. As well as kids I would like to have as my own. So here's the pictures.



p.s. While driving around Katsuyama, I couldn't help but wonder, where are all the katsu resturants? Shouldn't there be more katsu? Shouldn't there be people passing it out in the streets - they should get a clue that mizuna isn't as good as Katsu and give katsu away for free instead.

A-re-ru-gii (Japanese for allergy)

i now have allergies. no joking. I endured 3 or 4 days of nonstop sneezing and nose gushing out mucus to realize this fact. So I went to the doctor and got some real great medicine. It's called Allergra, maybe you've heard of it? ahh when I saw him write the prescription in katakana and sounded out the name of the drug I was like a-re-gu-ra, hmm that sounds familiar. Then it dawned on me that the drug prescribed by my Japanese ear, nose, and throat doctor was some american medicine. go figure. It seems to help me, I can breath much better and only have to blow my nose a few times a day so that is a great improvement.

In other news the word for runny nose in Japanese is hana mizu which means water nose. I think it's funny.