This past weekend I got to experience a number of different cultural events in Shiga, got to use my Japanese a lot, and had a lot of fun. Heres a rundown.

Friday:

Friday started out like any other Friday here, with the weekly test. After the test, we had about 10 minutes to slack off before we had to go to a festival that the students at the University of Shiga Prefecture were putting on. Note that on test Fridays, I usually wake up at 6am to continue my studying, and generally go to sleep around 12:30 or 1am the night before, so after the tests I usually just want to go back to sleep. But, not this Friday. If you recall, I have a class at USP every Wednesday, so that means a 25 minute bike ride, where I must battle hills and strong winds coming from the lake to make it to my class, which is supposed to be about Buddhism but has instead lately been about electric thermoses and prefab bathrooms. So the fact that I had to ride back to USP for the second time in the week wasn’t something I was looking forward to. Nevertheless, it was the Friday Project, so I had to go. Once I got there however, there wasn’t a whole lot to do besides wander around and look at the food booths that the students had set up, or see what people were trying to sell on some tarps, and watch a couple bands play on different stages set up (if its one thing I’ve discovered of the Japanese, they are good at making food and making music). It was a particularly cold day. so Cassidy and I wandered around until we found a stand selling some toriniku (grilled chicken on a stick), which we bought for the low low price of 120yen. After that, it had already passed noon, so we were free to escape. Stopped by Caines for a bit since it was directly on the way back to JCMU. Then Cassidy showed me how another close-by store was selling good ole plain Pepsi. This is actually the first time I have been regular Pepsi in Japan. Everywhere you can find Pepsi Twist, and maybe even diet Pepsi Twist, but that is all. You can get regular Coke everywhere. You can also find Coke brand green tea and milk tea. So, buying a 2 liter of that, we headed back to JCMU.

All the while at the USP festival, I was asking other students if they had any interest in going to Kyoto for free. I had signed up several weeks prior to go to a women’s college in Kyoto where they were having an ‘international party’. While it would have been free for me, complete with a cab ride to/from Hikone and Kyoto stations. I didn’t feel like going anymore mostly because it was a Friday and I was tired and just wanted to vegetate, and also because I would have to go with a few of my least favorite people at JCMU. Unfortunately, no one else seemed to want to go either. So, resigned to my fate, I came back to JCMU and relaxed for an hour or so before having to leave for Hikone station at 2:30pm. Originally there was supposed to be 5 of us going to the event, 3 women and 2 men. Well, one of the men dropped out at the last minute (sick I guess, not sure if that was true). So, 2:30pm rolls around, and myself always being one for punctuality, was there early. Got the cab tickets for ‘my’ group, and then…waited. And waited. And waited. 15 minutes later, everyone was finally assembled, and we got in the cabs to go to Hikone station. A nice, warm, 10 minute drive later, and we were there. Purchased my ticket (we were to be reimbursed later), and then we waited for the express train to Kyoto. The next 46 minutes were slightly torturous, and I did my best to keep to myself, and finally we arrived at Kyoto station. One member of the group decided to scam the system and play the dumb gaijin act so that they would only have to pay 180yen, as opposed to 1110yen. Apparently they do this everywhere they go. I personally find this to be reprehensible, but what can I do about it.

So, after leaving the station, we walked to an area with a few cabs (it had started raining at this point) and then drove to Kyoto Women’s University. When we got there, we were supposed to find a gatehouse to tell the person that we had arrived, but finding no gatehouse, we kind of stood around for a bit, and I started walking towards some building, but then a student came over and asked us if we were from JCMU, and so she pretty much grabbed my coat and led us there. We walked down into the basement of a building, right into a room where they had set up this huge spread of all kinds of food for us. Sushi and sandwiches and fruit and cakes…we had been told they would be preparing a ‘light’ meal for us, so this was a (pleasant) surprise. We were given some namecards, and at this point I was able to escape from my fellow JCMU members and chat with a bunch of very nice students in Japanese. For the next 15 or 20 minutes I was able to communicate very effectively in Japanese to these other students. It was one of the first times that I’ve felt like I’m really accomplishing a lot in my language study. Everyone was very nice too, coming up and introducing themselves. Soon however one of the party organizers came and took us to another room, where they presented us with a little envelope with our promised refund (which, a little disappointingly, turned out to be 3000yen in gift certificates to some department store in Kyoto, and not a true refund for our train tickets). We talked for a moment with the head of the International Studies department, and we were told that we were to only speak in English at the party. So, going back to the party, they had set up some small tables with plates on them, and they had us sit to one side of the room, where we then introduced ourselves in English, and then all the students there (all women and in total about 20 of them), introduced themselves and told us their major, most of which was English or English literature. They then gave us even more gifts (which I’ll get to later), and we were split up so that each of us was at one table with some of the students. The next hour and a half or so was talking to all the different students about various subjects, anything from questions about what they wanted to do with their major to movies that they liked. I also got to eat a lot of interesting Japanese food that I had never tried before. Nearing the end of the party, a lot of the students gave me their email addresses or business cards and two of them were interested in maybe going somewhere in Kyoto together soon. So, after taking a few more pictures, we were lead back to where we started, and because it was raining the other members of my group were given some beautiful pink umbrellas (I had brought mine, sadly) with Kyoto Women’s University written on them. Turns out we didn’t really need them though, since the cabs were parked all of 2 feet outside the door. Getting in, we waved goodbye to all of our new friends and headed back to Kyoto station.

We managed to Kyoto station in time to get on the express train back to Hikone, however this train went out of service in a city called Yasu, so we had to get off and wait for the local train to arrive to go the rest of the way to Hikone. We waited, and waited and waited. Eventually there was a fairly good number of people standing on the platform waiting for the train. Once the train arrived, we were dismayed to find it already pretty full. The doors opened and the flood of people went in, and this was the first time that I have experienced a train during rush hour. Yes, the train packers came out and packed us in. I was squished in-between people with no control of where I was going. It was kind of fun actually. The rest of the members of my group were being pretty loud about the whole thing, even going so far as taking pictures, and so the Japanese people standing around us started to laugh at us. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t with them but….I’m a gaijin so what can I do. Taking a cab back to JCMU from the station, I ran as fast away from my group and plopped myself down on Cassidy’s bed where we went through my bag of loot. Not only did I get 3000yen towards a department store, I also got a jewelry box/music box that played the school song of Kyoto Women’s University, 2 pens and 1 mechanical pencil with KWU on it, an embroidered hand towel with KWU on it, notecards, some Buddhist prayer beads, a hand mirror, and some KWU stickers!!! Add that to the free food, free cab rides, and the new friends that I made, and it was one of the most fun experiences that I’ve had in a while.
Since I had gotten back around 8:30, and since it was Friday night, Cassidy and I were both bored so we tried to think of something to do (since, there is nothing to do at JCMU). So we ended up playing Phase 10, Uno, and some other cards games on her bed until midnight (yes, aren’t we exciting people?), and then I went to sleep.

Pics from Friday:

Check out the swag!!!:

Saturday:

So Saturday started with me getting up early for no particular reason. I had a field trip for my class at USP that I would have to bike to at 1pm, and I really wasn’t looking forward to that at all. We were supposed to go to a craftsman’s workshop to watch the production of Buddhist altars, and while that topic seemed very interesting and certainly was more meaningful than learning about electronic thermoses, the fact that I had to go outside on a cold windy day on my bicycle made me not want to go. So, I tormented myself with a decision of whether to skip or not all morning and decided that I would indeed skip….and instead go mall crawling with Cassidy. (Yeah, so I had to ride my bike to get to the station, but at least we took the train to the mall….).

So getting to Viva City, first thing we do is seek out the ultra nice bakery called Little Mermaid ;). I LOVE Japanese bakeries. They make so many different kinds of interesting bread products that are soooo tasty….I love it. So I picked up a nice sesame roll, an interested braided roll with ham in it, a plain roll, and a very yummy looking croissant with a strawberry and frosting down the center of it….yum. Grabbed some orange juice and then we proceeded to sit and eat out goodies. Unfortunately, I discovered that the orange juice I had bought was some special kind of orange juice that was 80% pulp……that’s what I get for buying a drink based on the fact that it had a cool bottle…

So after eating we were only going to wander around the clothing section to look for clothing with Japanese on it, or silly engrish sayings. Wandering around the mall we found all kinds of engrish, but nothing cheap enough or funny enough to warrant buying. We did, however, find a cool store selling scrapbook-worthy katakana and hiragana stickers, as well as some very cool stationary. We also found THE coolest Christmas cards ever…..so whatever you have heard about cards and stationary in Japan being hideously expensive, its all a LIE….its cheap and cool. (I can’t tell you what the cards are like…you’ll just have to watch your mailboxes to find out.)

After spending several hours at Viva City, we got back on the train and headed back to JCMU around 5pm, because we were going to be going over to one of Cassidy’s conversation partners’ house to make tempura. We were going to be picked up at 6pm by Hiromi, a dental hygienist who’s husband was a dentist, and whose house was above their dental clinic. Instead, we were greeted by her other conversation partner, Kimi, and her husband and daughter. We made a quick stop at a grocery store to pick up a few necessary items, and then they drove us over to Hiromi’s house to make tempura. Getting there around 7pm, we figured that we would be prepping in the kitchen to make tempura. Instead, Hiromi’s daughter and her friend brought us upstairs (the 3rd floor), to the toy/game/tv room where we proceeded to try to play some video games with them. We first started out by playing Donkey Konga, a drumming game, which I was pretty good at thanks to my home version of Taiko Drum Master ;). Then we moved onto Mario Party, where the girls tried to explain to us in Japanese how to play the different mini games. That and they wanted us to use a microphone to play some of the games. It was somewhat difficult but it was fun. The only thing not fun about it was that we were sitting on the floor the whole time, and that it was FREEZING COLD inside of their house. Japanese people do not use central heat because its very expensive (or inefficient, I’m not sure what the true reason is), so usually they just use little space heaters. Apparently though, they only break out the space heaters when it really gets cold, and really cold is apparently not 40F, which is around what it was like that night. Cassidy and I seemed to be the only ones affected by it, so I guess Japanese people have some secret to not getting cold that I just don’t know about….because my space heater has been out and on almost constantly for the past 3 weeks. Even extra clothing layers doesn’t seem to help….I dunno.

So for the next hour or so we froze to death and were starving, wondering if we were going to have a chance to learn how to make tempura. Luckily, we were soon called down to the kitchen where everything was being set up to make tempura. Kimi’s husband (who I had recently learned had come to the Halloween party as Darth Vader (I had always wondered who it was…)) was mixing up the tempura batter. It was as easy as emptying it out of the bag and adding water….that was it. Included in the food that was about to be fried was shrimp, broccoli, Japanese pumpkin, a kind of potato (I’m not sure of the name), as well as a salad with onions and carrots in it. Once we checked to make sure the oil was hot enough (which you could check my putting a little bit of batter in and making sure it wouldn’t touch the bottom), we started to put some of the battered food into the oil. From then on it was pretty simple…wait a few minutes and take it out. It was a lot simpler than I thought that it was. The ’salad’ was fried a little differently from the individual pieces, in that the batter was mixed all into it, and then it was put in clumps into the oil, in order to make almost onion ring-tasting patties. It had a specific name but alas I have forgotten it.

To go along with the tempura, we had a kind of salad made with seaweed, soy sauce, and crushed sesame seeds, clear soup, rice, and a piece of black (!) and white sesame tofu. Now normally I find cold tofu to be disgusting, but this was actually fairly good. I’m not really sure what was in the black tofu that made it black though…. Along with the food we had some tea and I tried several varieties of cocktail like drinks that came in cute little cans…again I’m sure it had a name, but I only know it was sake since that is the general equivalent to alcohol in Japanese. We must have spent a good 2 hours making the food and then just sitting around and chatting in a mix of English and Japanese. It was the second time in 2 days that I was able to feel accomplished in my language learning. One of the best parts of the dinner, however, was the fact that the floor under their kitchen table was heated!! Yes, I was able to finally take off my coat and be nice and warm in their house.

After dinner, we were whisked back upstairs again by the girls, this time to watch the Ghibli film The Cat Returns (luckily the Japanese DVD of all the Ghibli films comes with English subtitles), while we waited for a ‘tea ceremony’. We were slightly dreading the formalities of a real tea ceremony, but towards the end of the film the girls disappeared downstairs and came back up with some tea bowls for us. (Traditional tea ceremony uses a kind of tea called macha, which is powdered and generally more bitter than regular green tea, I love it.) Soon, we were also given some very beautiful sweets to go along with our tea. I’m not really sure what they are made of, however I have read that most sweets made for tea ceremony are made using a white bean that is sweetened and then colored and made into many many shapes.

After the ‘tea ceremony’ was over, we finished watching the movie, and since it was around midnight by this time, we all said our goodbyes, and Kimi and her husband drove us back to JCMU. Surprisingly both Kimi and Hiromi lived very close to JCMU, and Hiromi’s husbands’ dentist office is actually on a corner of a street that I have ridden my bike on several times. When we got back to JCMU, all I knew is that I wanted to make more tempura!! It was so good, and now that I know how easy it is, I can’t wait until I get an opportunity to make it myself.

Pics from Saturday:
Being shown how to play video games in Japanese, and cooking!:

The finished products:

Sunday:

Sunday was a fairly uneventful day, and went as most Sundays do for me these days. My roommate leaves for church in Nagoya early in the morning, so I usually get the place to myself all day. I use this time to get my room picked up, sweep/mop the floors, and do other general cleaning things. I also did some laundry. After that I usually watch some anime or procrastinate some other way, and then I will usually start my homework sometime in the mid-afternoon. I have been getting some new things lately, and because of that the appearance of my room is starting to change somewhat. So, here are some updated pictures of what my 8ftx12ft personal space looks like:

And here are some random pics from the Friday Project from two weeks ago, where we did caligraphy. The first picture is the teacher showing us the original versions of the modern kanji for father, bird, and car (yes, I don’t understand how there is an original kanji for car either), and the second picture is of one of my creations, the kanji for diary which is read as nikki (click to enlarge for a better view):