culture, birthday suits, and childhood fears

6/10/08

Today was a school holiday so I signed up to go on a trip with the Pacific Culture Club. My goal was to get as much Japanese culture in one go with an expert explaining everything so that I'd have more to say about my trip than "I saw some cool things but I don't know what they were". Meeting the group was rather a surprise since only two other people had signed up. So the three of us plus our guide (a Japanese student from the school who could speak english) went to the very cool traditional Japanese style house of these two elderly Japanese ladies. The older was the sensei (teacher) of the younger (she had to be over 60 herself) but they were both still going strong and ready to show the three young foreigners some Japanese culture. Since there were so few of us we got lots of one-on-one attention.

We started with a brief Shinto (the traditional Japanese religion) ceremony and then they performed several pieces on the koto, a stringed instrument. Afterwards they let us play too allowing me to discover that being in Japan had not suddenly given me the musical talent I had always wanted. So even though I kept forgetting whether the higher numbered strings were at the top or the bottom I did eventually manage to play the very simple Sakura song. We also did calligraphy-I got scolded because I kept doing it wrong...still no magical development of artistic talent. Then Liz and I both got to put on yukata (summer kimono) and we all had a tea ceremony together. The tea for the tea ceremony was really bitter and a shade of green I would call "not-quite-radioactive". Sitting in the traditional way made my legs fall asleep but it was hard to sit any other way in the kimono.

After all the artistic type culture we went to an onsen. Andrew, as the only guy in the group, opted out. Myself and the two other girls went to enjoy some quality relaxation time. Onsen, for those of you who don't know, are hot spring baths. The closest we have in America is probably a hot tub at a spa. However, onsen are very different. Most notably, everyone is naked. At first this was embarrassing (especially since Liz and I were the only two white people there-everyone kept looking at us) but it quickly became something that you didn't even notice. It's really hard to recreate the feeling of the place, but if you ever get a chance to go to Japan this absolutely must be on your list of things to do. At this place there was one indoor bath and several different outdoor ones. After undressing and grabbing the tiny towel (if I held it in front of me long ways it more or less covered the essentials) you get to take in with you (but make sure you don't put it in the water!) you first have to rinse yourself off. After getting clean you can then get into the onsen. The water is really hot and you immediately feel yourself relaxing but the really interesting thing about the water at this onsen was that it was brown. It had stuff in it that's good for your skin. One of the baths had rocks at the bottom that felt really good on your feet as you walked over them and another had an electric massager. I'm not quite sure how this worked with the water but if you sat at a certain point you could feel the charge on your back. If you got too close you muscles would start to contract and your hands would twitch. It felt really weird, not bad, just weird. Then when you're all done soaking you can go back inside and bathe. they provided shampoo, conditioner, body soap, etc. We were there for over an hour, just relaxing and talking. I really wish we had something like this in America, it was so indescribably refreshing and really easy way to hang out with friends, the being naked part really does become inconsequential very quickly and even makes it easier to connect...stop being perverted.

Afterwards we ate okonomiyaki. Not as good as the place were we cooked it ourselves (I think I wrote about going to Asakusa to do that) but a lot cheaper.

I'm going to put the pictures at the bottom so hopefully my formatting doesn't get all wonky...and oddly enough there aren't any pictures from the onsen.

6/13-6/14

On Friday YR, Kevin, and I met with some of our Japanese friends from Winston. They made reservations a Japanese style restaurant in Shibuya where each group was given their own little room and you summoned your waiter by phone. The restaurant had a fun, swanky feel with its super low ceiling ( I had to duck at times and poor Kevin he's 6'6", sometimes this country isn't very accommodating to him) and dim lighting. We ate lots of food and drank some. The problem with trying so many new dishes is that I never remember what they're called. I tried Asahi super dry beer which was good and some fruity drink that was better.

Today (Saturday) I was awakened by my first earthquake. There was a 7.0 magnitude quake several hours from where I live so what I felt was about a 3.0. Still, since I'm up on the ninth floor I woke up to the building swaying and everything around me shaking. It wasn't really too scary (though the fact that my hostmom had already left for work was a little off putting because the whole time I kept wondering if it was going to get worse and what the heck I should do if it did) but watching the news this evening and seeing the damage to those who had caught the worst of it was a little nervewracking. I asked my host mom what to do for future reference and we have a meeting place and whatnot setup. She kept reassuring me, probably because I told her natural disasters were one of my biggest childhood fears, and telling me that all the buildings were designed to be earthquake resistant. Bleh, a least the event itself wasn't as traumatizing as I though it would be. Since it woke me up I was a little groggy and not really sure what was going on. I kept thinking "is this it?" Both in the sense of, "it's finally happening" and "this isn't so bad, fun even". Nothing even fell over in our apartment things just shook for a little bit. But still.....
In other news, I had steak for supper! Yay, beef!!!!

Now for some pictures:

Our two teachers playing the koto.

Me, not so skillfully, playing the koto.

Yes, my eyes are closed. No, I wasn't trying to look asian. Cool yukata though.

The back of my cool yukata. This was just the quick way to tie the obi. Our teachers' obi were much more intricate.

Liz and I were the only two girls so we got to wear the two kimonos that they had for people to try. Very lucky.

Thats the whole group, except our Temple student guide (I can't remember her name at all)

I want to have a house where I can legitimately have lawn accessories that look like this.