Packing up my suitcases the day before I left was a difficult ordeal. My amount of souvenirs and other personal items had greatly accumulated during the past nine months, and one of my suitcases was a kilogram over the weight limit. But I was not forced to pay any overweight luggage fees at the airport. The flights were tedious, and the one from Osaka to San Francisco was a little over ten hours. I was relieved to finally arrive home late at night yesterday evening.

I am already experiencing a lot of culture shock. I miss the polite atmosphere and indirect way of talking that are characteristics of Japan. It's also odd to look around and see that everyone looks similar to me here, as opposed to Japan, were I easily stood out from the crowd when walking down the street.

Thank you for reading my blog and keeping up with my adventures in Japan throughout the past nine months, I appreciate your support and interest!!!

My last few days in Japan were spent in Kobe saying goodbye to my Japanese friends and foreign exchange student friends. I met up with friends for lunch and dinner, and every time I would eat with someone, they'd always ask me what kind of food I wanted to eat in case there were any foods I wanted to taste one last time before I headed back to the U.S. and was no longer able to indulge. But I always answered "washoku," which means Japanese food in general. I will definitely miss eating white rice and raw fish and seaweed on a regular basis once I return home.

Saying goodbye to my friends was difficult. I know I can keep in touch easily with the Internet, but who knows when I'll return to Japan, it may not be for another few years! However, I am determined to return after all the language study and culture study I've put in over the past nine months. It would be a shame to not utilize my knowledge, and there's still much more to learn!

This past weekend in Tokyo, Shoji and I went to the Asakusa district, home of the famous Myoujin Shrine. We had no idea that on the precise weekend we chose to go there would be a famous festival called Kanda Matsuri, so we arrived and the shrine area was extremely crowded with festival goers, stands selling food, and festival participants, including some playing musical instruments. There was also an unending parade of portable shrines winding through the shrine complex. This festival is held to display and carry the portable shrines with the purpose of pacifying the Shintou gods, but it also brings the community (maybe the larger community of Japan) together to celebrate.

In addition, Shoji and I went to Tokyo Tower, a famous Tokyo landmark known for its great views, to check out the Tokyo skyline. We also saw the famous Super Dry Hall (with the unique golden statue sitting atop it) on our way to the festival in the Asakusa area. This building was designed by a French architect and belongs to Japan's popular Asahi Beer Company.

I have added some pictures from my recent travels, so please check out this blog entry and other recent entries to see various photos!

This past Monday and Tuesday I toured many shrines and temples in Kamakura and in Tokyo. I went with a family friend whom I had just met for the first time. He married a Japanese woman and is living in Tokyo doing work as a translator.

In Kamakura I saw a giant Buddha (it was a very tall statue, and I was able to enter the statue and see the inside as well). In Tokyo I went to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine where war criminals and other personages from World War II are enshrined.

After returning from Okinawa, the next day my program held a farewell party for all of us foreign exchange students. There was a nice lunch, speeches by several students and important people from Konan University, and a few musical performances (I performed a piece on the violin). The very same day I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo. I have since spent the past few days meeting up with various friends and sightseeing in the Tokyo area. If you recall my earlier blog entry about maid cafes, well, I wanted to see how things really are, so on Sunday afternoon I headed to a maid cafe in Akihabara. Many people go to maid cafes, but some of the regular customers are unmarried, working men who have a lot of money and no wife and children on which to spend their money. In addition, however, there were many women customers waiting in line at the maid cafe my friends and I picked out. The maids were dressed not in a sexy manner but in a cute manner, with their bodies were well covered. We had some maids welcome us to the cafe, take our order, and bring us drinks, but aside from that, the interaction was limited. As in most cases, the more interaction one wants to receive, the more money one must pay, so my friends and I resigned ourselves to watching the maids interact with other customers who were willing to pay more money for conversation, drinks, and food. One rather alarming part of the visit was the sign posted in Japanese at the entrance of the restaurant. The sign included a list of actions that were prohibited for customers of the maid cafe. Some of the actions included: 1) Asking the maid what her working shift hours are 2) Taking pictures of the maid with your cell phone, camera, etc. 3) Asking the maid for her contact information 4) Waiting outside the cafe for the maid to arrive or leave work 5) Following the maid home from work, or any other stalker-like behavior These prohibitions suggest that this sort of behavior is rampant within this line of work. Although the pay is good, I wonder why the women who work as maids put up with these sorts of work-related risks.

This past week I took my first trip to Okinawa. Naha, the biggest city on Okinawa's main island, is filled with buildings and is very crowded. Even though most of the buildings were constructed after World War II, in general the city's buildings looked rather old and worn. Also, Okinawa seems to be missing some of the wealth that is characteristic of Japan thanks to its strong economy and the economic bubble that occurred in the 1980s.

I went with my host mother from four years ago who lives in Chiba city, and once we drove out of Naha and up north, the scenery turned to subtropical plants, sandy white beaches, and the beautiful aquamarine-colored sea. In addition to doing a lot of sightseeing at historical places such as two castles, I also spent a day doing marine sports on a small island to the northwest of Okinawa's main island. I tried parasailing and went up forty-five meters above the ocean for a stunning view of the surrounding islands and ocean.

On the last day I met my former host mother's friend, who is Okinawan (Okinawans are different from Japanese, as Okinawa was formerly its own country), and we saw a traditional Okinawan dance performance. Many people living in Okinawa can do what's called a finger whistle, where you place your thumb and index finger in your mouth and blow to create a whistling sound. I had some of the dancers teach me the technique after the performance, but I'm still unable to do the finger whistle. My host mom, her friend, and I also discussed the situation of the American military bases in Okinawa, but of course opinions are very divided. It seems that some Japanese still want United States bases in Japan to help protect Japan since it does not have its own military, but right now all of the bases are in Okinawa, so people are suggesting that some of the bases be moved to other areas of Japan. However, no one will volunteer their own area for a military base, so nothing's being done yet.

I recently completed two essays, one for each of my Japanese Culture Studies courses. I'll give a brief summary of each essay in order to provide an example of what I've studied in both courses.

For my Society and Law course, I wrote about the drive for gender equality here in Japan. I looked at it from a legal point of view: what laws have been passed, and how progress toward making the law into reality is measured. As recently as 1999 Japan passed a law laying down its basic standards for a gender equal society and how it wanted to achieve those goals. The law emphasized combined efforts from national, prefectural, and local governments, as well as assistance from foreign countries that already have a established a standard of gender equality. After ten years, a cabinet office dealing with gender equality conducted a survey and other research to see how close the country is to realizing the ideals of the '99 law, but progress is slow. Since this was not a research paper, I did not come up with an actual thesis and prove it, but I'm thinking that Japanese society in general does want gender equality, it will just take time and conscious effort to change social practices and citizens' attitudes.

In my Literature course, we spent a lot of time discussing how women were portrayed in Japanese literature. They are often sacrificial characters that die to save a male character, or they are portrayed as helpless and at the mercy of an overbearing, power-hungry male character. However, the two women in the stories I chose to compare and contrast in my essay were both temptresses and full of evil passions, endangering the piety of the monks whom they encountered in the stories. In one of the stories, the monk is seduced by the woman, but when he breaks his promise to marry her, she turns into an poisonous snake and kills him. In the other story, the monk is just about to return to the woman's cottage and renounce his religious vows in order to be with the woman when he meets an old man who talks him out of his rash decision. At any rate, women are not often portrayed with much power in old Japanese literature, but if they do have power, they seem to often use it in a terrible way.

My year in Japan is winding down, and it's impossible to not be reminded of it every day. There are many tasks for me to take care of before I return home, but in doing many of them, I am reminded of how much I have improved my language skills and cultural knowledge this past year.

I went to the city ward a few weeks ago to file a cancellation form for my health insurance. I was able to negotiate the entire affair using only in Japanese. When I think back to the beginning of the year, I went to the city ward with Okaasan, and she filled out all the necessary forms and negotiated everything for me when setting up my health insurance, so being able to do this on my own is a huge accomplishment.

On Friday morning I took my final two Japanese language class examinations. After those examinations were completed, I had finished my final Japanese language class! It was so easy to improve my Japanese here because I was able to study the language intensively for two hours every day in a classroom setting. I have realized after being here that it bothers me when people try to speak to me in English just because I look like it is my native language. But in the United States, I constantly approached people who spoke Spanish or Japanese and tried to converse with them. I wonder if that bothered those people. As much as I like to speak foreign languages, maybe I should save my conversation attempts for language classes and language group meetings, as opposed to speaking it with any person I meet on campus or around town.

At my school's international student office, I saw for the first time yet another difference in United States and Japanese culture. I told the administrator that I would be traveling to Okinawa next week, and she wanted me to keep my student ID card to use for discount purposes. But then when deciding when I should hand it into the office to be voided, she had to confer with another office personnel, who then got another two staff members involved in the conversation. It turned into a giant affair with many of the office staff conferring together in order to decide when I should turn in my student ID card. If this had take place in the United States, one person would have decided and informed the others later of her decision. But in Japan, everyone decides and approves of a plan together.

Yakushima and Tanegashima

I just returned to Kobe after a wonderful trip to Yaku Island and Tanega Island, two islands which are part of Kyushuu and located an hour south of Kyushu's southern-most tip. Today is the last day of Golden Week, an annual five-day long holiday which occurs every year at the beginning of May. Roads, buses, and hotels were crowded because everyone has time off during Golden Week, and most people decided to travel. Some people, my host family for example, decided to avoid the crowds and stay in their hometowns during Golden Week, but my host family also said they noticed an increase in traffic and people in Kobe due to everyone taking vacations.

Yakushima and Tanegashima are very different from Kobe in terms of climate, especially because they are further south. Yakushima has a lot of very tall, forested mountains, and it receives a lot of rain. Yakushima is famous for its giant cedar trees, some of which are thousands of years old. I went hiking in the mountains and saw a good number of them. I also saw wild deer and monkeys during my stay on the island.

Since Yakushima was very crowded and it was hard to find a place to stay, I cut my visit there short and made my way over to Tanegashima, which is one hour away by hydrofoil boat. Tanegashima was much less crowded, and it was very beautiful as well. It has a lot of tropical-looking plants, and it has two claims to fame. It has Japan's space center from which Japan launches rockets and space crafts, and Tanegashima was the place where weapons were introduced to Japan when the Portuguese arrived at the southern tip of the island in 1543. I went down to the southern tip of the island to see the point where the Portuguese landed, and I also went swimming at a beautiful beach near the space center. The following day, I went up to the northern part of Tanegashima to Urata beach, and I went on my first scuba dive!!! It was challenging, but I had so much fun, and I saw some incredible fish. The instructor stayed by me the entire time, guiding me, telling me when to remove the air from my ears, and changing the air pressure in my vest. I received the entire explanation of how to scuba dive in Japanese, so I'm really proud of my progress in being able to understand the explanation, follow the rules, and have a successful dive.

This morning I arrived in Kobe, and since I have Japanese language final exams during the next two days, it's back to work!

Today I saw a performance of The Scarlet Pimpernel. This, however, was a performance done by a very famous, all women's theater group in Japan. I'm lucky enough to live less than an hour away from Takarazuka, the town in which the theater is located.

The cast is composed only of women. I think there are men in the pit orchestra, and the conductor is a man, but other than that... Women play all the men's roles, so they sing like men, dress like men, and put on makeup to make them look manly. The women playing men's roles sang with very deep voices, and they carried themselves in a rather manly fashion to help create a convincing performance. But almost all of the men's roles included, in the costume, two-inch tall high heeled boots, so the women must be able to dance and move comfortably in high heels.

The entire performance was in Japanese, but if one read the story ahead of time, I'm sure the action would be fairly easy to follow. Also, it was a musical, so with a lot of singing and dancing, it was visually entertaining, even if I didn't catch every word that was sung or spoken. Maybe this was due to the setting of the specific story being performed today and the overall character of Takarazuka theater, but the costumes were elaborate and delightful to view.

The actresses in the Takarazuka theater group are extremely popular. Some of them have their own fan clubs, and the members of these clubs are always buying the front row seat tickets, which are thus impossible to obtain if you are not in a fan club, and the fans are always mobbing the actresses after the shows. But these women work hard, training from the time they are in high school, and instead of going to a regular high school, they go to a school especially for Takarazuka theater training. All of their training really pays off, as one can easily see when one watches a performance.

The United States may have Pi Day, but Japan has Ear Day, Eye Day, Teeth Day, and even Good Couple's Day. These are all recent phenomena, of course, and while Good Couple's Day actually is used as a marketing ploy, the other days' nicknames are used as educational tools.

First of all, how are the actual dates for these days decided? Well, Japan uses kanji, which originated in China. Since, however, Japan took kanji from China, Japanese language has applied several different readings to a single kanji. The kanji for numbers are no exceptions. The kanji for "3" can be read as "san," "mi," and maybe other ways that I may not even know of. But if "mi" is one of the readings, then March 3rd can be read as "mimi," which is the Japanese word for ear. Thus March 3rd is Ear Day. Teeth Day is June 4th, because one of the readings for the number "6" is "mu" and one of the readings for the number "4" is "shi," and mushiba means cavity. Okay, so maybe instead of Teeth Day it's Cavity Prevention Day, but I'm sure the general idea is clear enough. Also, I think October 10 is Eye Day because the "1s" and "0s" look like a pair of eyebrows and eyes. On these days, schools do things such as encourage the students to bring toothbrushes to school and everyone brushes their teeth together after lunch (which usually does not happen). Also, doctors will issue notices such as "get your eyes checked."

Good couples day is April 22nd because another reading for the number "4" is "yo," and a reading for the number "2" is "fu." The Japanese word yoi means good, and fufu is man and woman together as a couple. On this day movie theaters make ticket prices very cheap, but only for couples fifty and older, which I think gets a lot of people to the movies. But having April 22nd as Earth Day isn't a bad idea, either.

Today there was a speech contest held amongst all of the foreign exchange students in my program. Based on the speech test that we all had last week, representatives from each of the five Japanese classes were selected to compete in today's speech contest. There were ten contestants, but one passed at the last minute. I was one of three students from my class to be asked to participate.

I gave a speech about learning keigo, or honorific speech, and my emotional triumphs and struggles associated with the learning process (the learning process is ever-continuing, by the way). I mentioned that keigo is difficult to learn because there are many types of keigo and few chances for me to use it on a daily basis. I talked about a time with one of my Japanese language teachers when I slipped and forgot to use keigo but wasn't scolded, and then a time with my host father during which I didn't use keigo and was reprimanded. I concluded by talking about how happy I am to have learned keigo and how one may use honorific speech to really shape and nuance relationships with others. I didn't win a prize for excellence, but I received a sort of honorable mention. Most importantly, however, I was proud of myself for what I accomplished. I am completely satisfied with how I performed in the contest, and I think that's just as good as winning.

Geisha (whom I will hereafter refer to as geiko) and maiko (apprentice geiko) are a symbol of Japan that appeal to and trigger curiosity from most foreigners. Myself being one of these foreigners, I had to make it to Kyoto this month to see the famed Miyako Odori, Dances of the Old Capital, an annual phenomenon that takes place each year during the month of April in Gion Corner, an area of Kyoto known for its population of geiko. Kyoto is an ancient town full of tradition, and in fact it was one of the ancient capitals of Japan, hence the name of this dance that the geiko perform. The dance is composed of eight scenes that illustrate the passing of the seasons in Japan. Kyoto in particular has distinct spring, summer, fall, and winter seasons, with cherry blossoms in spring, summer greenery, fiery autumn maple leaves, and winter snow, wind, and chill.

It was a little difficult to tell who were geiko and who were maiko as I watched the hour-long dance performance. All the girls had white paint on their faces, necks, hands, and forearms (probably up to their elbows). But I learned later that the maiko all wore the same blue kimono with red and pink flowers on it, but the geiko wore various kimono of different colors and patterns. All the women's hair was up in artful hairdos, with flowers and showy combs inserted for extra attraction. The nape of the neck is said to be a very beautiful place, so all the maiko and geiko had the top of their kimono lowered a few inches below the nape of the neck so as to expose it. That area of each person's skin was also colored white, but I believe the maiko had three upside-down triangle shaped patches of skin that were not painted so as to differentiate them from geiko. The maiko have very long sleeves on their kimono called furisoude, and their obi, or kimono belts, are very long and hang down the backside of the kimono. Geiko, on the other hand, have short kimono sleeves, and their obi are tied so that the belts do not hang down the backside of the kimono but appear short and only cover the mid and lower back.

The dances themselves were very elegant. Movements are subtle, including a lot of tilting and turning of the head and delicate hand movements. About fifteen maiko danced, and another fifteen or so played traditional musical instruments such as the shamisen, a special Japanese flute, and various drums. All the geiko danced, and a few sang some narrations during one of the dance scenes.

Japanese college students are persistent in their recruitment for clubs and "circles" (extra curricular activities groups). The school year in Japan starts at the beginning of April. Compared with the University of Illinois, which has Quad Day once a year (an event at which students can walk around the quad and talk to members of registered student organizations who have set up booths to advocate for their group), Konan University students recruit much more often. For the first two weeks in April, student groups set up tables every day along the walkway and in the commons area on campus, with group members at the ready to explain information to interested first year students. Students will call out to people walking by to come over to their table and check out their club information. Other students stand in the pathway and force flyers into the hands of students walking past. One day all the students in clubs even lined up on the two sides of the entry walkway and formed a sort of tunnel. New students entering the school grounds would have to walk through the two rows of people and probably have dozens of flyers forced upon them before entering into the building where their morning class is held. Wiser students who wanted to avoid that sort of attention would have to walk outside the tunnel of people on the edge of the walkway and almost be in danger of falling into the rain gutter. There are over 2,000 new students entering Konan University every year, but despite this number, I wonder how successful club recruitment is with such aggressive recruiting tactics.

I realized I have never devoted a blog entry to the famous Japanese toilets. I don't want to bore anyone by discussing the phenomena you may have already heard about (seat warming button, spray to clean you off, etc.), so I'll focus on two new discoveries of mine from the past eight months.

At one friend's host family's house, the toilet lid automatically rises when you open the bathroom door. I don't know if there's a motion sensor or if the door and the toilet are wired to each other, but it's interesting. I think the control panel next to the toilet also plays electronic versions of famous music, such as "Spring" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" as background music for one's enjoyment while using the toilet.

Also on control panels next to many public toilets is the 音姫, or "sound princess." You put your hand in front of the sensor or press a button on the control panel, and a flushing noise comes out of the speaker. This is to hide any sounds you make while using the toilet. However, it's only in women's restrooms. I've asked many men and they all say they've seen no such thing in any restroom they've been in.

Today I had my final oral examination for Japanese language class. This test happened prior to the kanji, reading, listening, and grammar finals, but this is due to the oral examination being in a different format than the previous three times it was held. Before, we always had interview examinations, with just one teacher in a room and we'd be asked questions. This time, however, we all had to write a five minute speech discussing the theme of an emotional experience we've had during our lives. I wanted mine to relate to something I've done here in Japan, so I wrote about the struggles of learning polite speech, which I believe is a challenge for many students of Japanese language. I had my speech edited quite a few times, and then I practiced reading it over and over again to become comfortable with presenting the content. Some students had their speeches memorized, though, and everyone had very thoughtful, interesting experiences to talk about. Some topics that I remember that specifically related to this past year in Japan were visiting Japanese relatives even though it was only the student's second time meeting them, joining a club and being welcomed into the club and learning about Japanese culture through the club, and figuring out how to not be treated as a foreigner in a setting with only Japanese acquaintances.

Today I saw an interesting movie called "My Darling is a Foreigner" about the relationship between a Japanese woman and an American man who is living in Japan. The couple speaks in Japanese, and it is about their getting through the cultural differences that pop up during the course of their relationship. However, in my opinion, there weren't too many cultural differences that created hardships in their relationship. As one of the characters in the movie expressed, a person's nationality won't make or break a relationship, it's all about the two people's personalities and whether or not the personalities mesh.

Yesterday I went to a barbecue and was able to speak to Dunia, the mother of Julia (the girl to whom I'm teaching violin). I was worried that my descriptions of how to hold the violin and bow and how to move the bow across the violin strings were insufficient, but Dunia informed me that based on my serious attitude and persistence during the lesson, Julia has been practicing very diligently. She has even started to work on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" all by herself, although we didn't go over it in the first lesson! She seems to be progressing rapidly and self-motivated, so I'm pleased to hear that. Tomorrow I'm going to teach her how to read treble clef.

Star Wars is officially finished. I have viewed half of the completed version but haven't had time to see the whole production. But there are supposedly some very funny bloopers at the end that I can't wait to see. I think that this production tells a lot about my Japanese class's closeness and our ability to work through such a tough project. I am pleased that I was a part of such a fun, close-knit group this past year, it made my experience in Japan all the more worthwhile.

I am still enjoying viewing the cherry blossoms as they are in bloom for two weeks. This past weekend I went to Himeji Castle to see the blossoms there. It's a popular place when it comes to cherry blossom viewing, so it felt like half the country had turned up that day to see the blossoms and celebrate spring. But the crowds made it more fun and lively. Today I walked up and down this street called "Cherry Blossom Tunnel" which is about five minutes from my host family's house. There are seventy cherry trees that line the sides of this long street, and when the blossoms are in full bloom the trees create a sort of tunnel of cherry blossoms all along the street.

This past Monday I conducted my first in a series of four violin lessons that I will be giving to another host family's daughter. I have never taught violin before, and I am teaching Julia in Japanese, which makes it even more challenging. Particularly difficult aspects of teaching are how to convey proper holding and usage of the bow, holding of the violin, and placing the fingers at the correct places on the strings. I don't want to be too picky in my assessment of my student's playing, but I want to make sure I teach her correctly from the outset so that she may properly develop her skills. At any rate, I am happy that they thought of me when considering violin lessons for their daughter, and it is another new experience that I will have at the end of this year.

Star Wars Pictures

I have received requests for updates on the Star Wars production, so I'll write an entry now with a few pictures included. There is one picture of our Master Yoda receiving his green makeup, another of me as Leia (I know I'm not wearing white, but this was the most Leia-like dress I own, and I know the buns are not covering my ears, but this is not an A-budget film!), and there's a picture of my class filming the Mos Eisley scene in the bar from Episode IV.

We filmed this past Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today. People would rush to memorize their lines minutes before filming began, and it was sometimes hard to portray emotions when we didn't know what our scene partner's lines meant (because they're all in Japanese and none of us are fluent YET), but we put as much emotion as possible into our own lines. We used my classmate Sophie's video camera, and she films most of the scenes, except for the ones she's in. We have a lot of capes for people like Darth Vader, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Master Yoda, and we also have two lightsabers and some really neat fight scenes.

The filming is being finished up today, and presentation date is set for Monday. Our production will be complete with a "trailor" (a spoof of the "This is Sparta!" scene from 300 and bloopers, of course. There are a lot of neat sound effects and musical accompaniment, too, thanks to Sophie's editing efforts. I'll let everyone know how the production turns out!

My Passover Seder

The Jewish congregation in Kobe is quite religious, so I was not allowed to take pictures to accompany this entry. However, I attended the first half of the seder at the synagogue near my host family's home to commemorate Passover, which began this Monday evening at sundown. I say the first half of the seder because although it started at 7:30 P.M., due to the number of people present and the rather religious manner of observation of the service, I had to leave around 11:00 P.M. even though the service was only half-finished.

I learned it is a mitzvah (good deed) to drink four cups of wine (although I was served grape juice) during the seder, but I only finished two cups before I left at 11:00 P.M. I also learned something new, that when we eat the matza, or unleavened bread, we must recline back in our chairs and lean to the left. I was told that kings in ancient Israel ate in a reclining position and leaned to the left while eating, which is why we do so during the Passover seder.

The bitter herbs were not spicy at all like the horseradish I usually eat in the U.S.; in fact, I did not eat horseradish but I ate chopped up vegetables. The flavor was definitely different, but maybe they were slightly pickled as opposed to bitter. Also, instead of dipping parsley into salt water, I dipped raw onion into the salt water and ate it. That's what was provided on the seder plate, so I made sure to not lean in too close to anyone when conversing with them after I ate the onion!

There were probably fifty to seventy-five people at the seder, and two orthodox Jews from New York were leading the seder. One of them spoke fairly good Hebrew, but he still had a strong American accent. The other did not speak very much Hebrew, so the Israelis that were there seemed to be carrying on their own conversations a lot of the time during the service. There were only two things that made the event seem even remotely Japan-related. One, there were some Japanese people there. Two, I used Japanese sometimes when conversing with people. Otherwise, the seder may as well have taken place anywhere. This year I'm following the Sephardi Passover tradition so as not to cause my family problems by severely limiting the foods I can eat. Therefore I am eating white rice for breakfast every day this week instead of bread. Also, there are not normally foods with leavening agents in my host family's diet which makes it rather easy to observe Passover.

More Tennis Practice

I couldn't get enough soft tennis after only one lesson, so this past Monday I went to Shoji's last practice with his college team. It was cold and rainy at the start of the practice, so only four other team members were there. I brought along my friend Nan, another student from U of I. Nan plays hard tennis, which uses the yellow ball and which is what most people from the U.S. think of when they think of tennis. Nan and Shoji borrowed each other's rackets and tried out both types of tennis during the practice time, but of course, each man excelled at his original type of tennis. I had fun watching, and they brought out an extra racket for me too and both took turns hitting the ball with me on the court.

桜 Cherry Blossoms

I know if I write about cherry blossoms a picture absolutely must accompany the entry. However, as of yet, I have been selfish and have been purely enjoying the cherry blossoms for myself without taking a single picture. I try to make sure that I look at them every time I pass even a single tree. However, I also look at their beauty and I feel sad, because the season in which the cherry blossoms bloom truly emphasizes life`s impermanence. The blossoms are so splendid, yet they are also so fragile and short-lived, just like our time with the people we care about most. I want the blossoms to last forever, just as I never want to say goodbye to those I really care about, yet the time inevitably comes when the blossoms must fall and I must be separated from my family and friends. Cherry blossom season comes at the end of March and the beginning of April, a time of goodbyes and new beginnings in Japan. At the end of March, many students have graduation ceremonies and must say goodbye to their friends with whom they spent so many years attending classes and obtaining an education. April, which brings the start of a new school year in a different school, or the start of work for university graduates, is a time of meeting new people but also of being separated from those of whom you have grown so fond. Then again, if I am patient and simply wait, I know I can count on the cherry blossoms to return next year.

Graduation Ceremonies and Spring Vacations

This past Thursday was the graduation ceremony at Konan University for seniors graduating in 2010. The past two months have been spring break for Konan students, so the campus has been very empty, but on Thursday, it suddenly became very lively as 2,000 graduating seniors and all their friends came to the campus to celebrate. The graduation ceremony took place in the gymnasium, but I heard the ceremony was full of speeches and was not terribly interesting. But afterward, I heard so much noise coming from the main campus area. I don't know how university graduation ceremonies and the celebrations afterward work in the U.S. (never having attended one myself), but at Konan University, it seemed as though everyone was meeting up with schoolmates and friends from their extracurricular activities. The younger students in the sports and culture clubs made sure that the graduating seniors received presents, bouquets, and cards from all the other club members, and everyone takes pictures together and makes a big deal out of presenting the seniors with their gifts. Then every single club seems to have its own drinking party planned, and on Thursday night downtown Sannomiya, the center of Kobe City, was filled with drunk graduates and their younger club member counterparts.

Also, I feel as though despite Japanese college students being on break for the past two months, they still come to school a lot during their spring vacations. If the students are second year or third year students, they are starting job hunting, but other students still come to school to study, which seems very different from what myself and other U.S. college students do during summer vacations. High school students are also on spring vacation right now, but I see so many high school students that attend the school across the street from my host family's house dressed up in uniform and walking to school every morning. I guess they are doing sports and music practices every day, but it still seems like a greater percentage of students come to school every day here in Japan than high school students in the U.S. do during summer vacations.

相撲 - Sumo Tournament

On Tuesday afternoon I went to Osaka to see the annual Osaka Sumo Tournament which is held there every March! The tournament lasts about two weeks, and I believe that each sumo wrestler has one bout each day. Tuesday was the tenth day of the tournament, so my friends and I had fun guessing which wrestler would win each bout based on their records from the previous nine days.

I felt like there were almost as many foreigners watching the tournament as there were Japanese people. Then again, about a fourth of the sumo wrestlers themselves are foreigners! Before each bout, a man would step into the middle of the dohyou (sumo ring) and chant the names of the next two wrestlers. Wrestlers were divided into the "east" side and the "west" side (the wrestlers came into the arena a bout or two before their own bout and would sit waiting on either the east or west side of the dohyou). Then the wrestlers would come up into the ring area. They would ready themselves in the corners of the raised platform area, outside of the ring, and wipe their faces with towels and drink water out of bamboo pails. They loudly slapped their stomachs, buttocks, and thighs as they prepared themselves for the bouts. Then they would grab a handful of salt and toss the salt into the ring as they stepped into it to purify the ring. They lined up on the white lines inside the ring, and if the atmosphere was right, they would wrestle. Sometimes this entire ritual was repeated three or four times before the atmosphere was right. I don't know what qualifications are needed for the "correct" atmosphere.

The bouts are usually pretty short, maybe fifteen or twenty seconds, but a few times they went on for half a minute or a minute, which was really exciting. One time the bout was so long that the priest who was acting as a referee stopped the wrestlers, and the two wrestlers had to start the bout over again. People sometimes shout at the wrestlers as they fight, and the word "nokotta" can be heard especially often. It means that there is still space remaining between where the wrestlers' feet are and the edge of the ring, so keep going, keep fighting.

My friends and I arrived at about 2:00 p.m., but the match had been going on since 8:00 a.m., and we stayed until it ended at 6:00 p.m. Four hours of nothing but sumo matches? Not nearly enough for me!

歌舞伎 (Kabuki) Theater

Do you recall the play I wrote about a few entries back, the play in which two lovers end up committing suicide in order to be together in the next world because they can't be together in this world? Well, yesterday I went to a theater in Kyoto City and saw that play, "Love Suicides at Sonezaki," performed live by kabuki actors. Kabuki is a form of Japanese theater that was created a few centuries ago and is still highly popular due to its being made for common people and its use of techniques that makes it engaging and appealing to watch. While other forms of traditional Japanese theater consist of subtle movements, simple costumes, and masks, kabuki relies on fast-paced dance and acrobatics, vivid costumes, and elaborate makeup to help appeal to audience members.

The four hour long performance I saw yesterday consisted of one famous act from one play, the entire production of "Love Suicides at Sonezaki," and finally a dance from an interlude of a noh play (noh is a different type of traditional Japanese theater). The plays were difficult to understand because they were all in Japanese, and unlike the puppet theater performance I saw earlier this year, there were no supertitles from which I could try to read and decipher meaning. But the dialogues were interesting and fast-paced, which kept my attention, and of course the costumes and makeup were also quite appealing to the eye. As for the performance of the entire play "Love Suicides at Sonezaki," I was glad I had read the script before because it helped me understand what I couldn't pick up from the characters' dialogues. Also, since the story is a tragedy, not a comedy, it seemed that, contrary to my expectations, there were less dance and acrobatic movements than I expected.

One unique part of kabuki theater is the audience participation. In other forms of Japanese theater, such as noh or puppet theater, the audience sits quietly and listens. But during kabuki performances, the audience is expected to remark upon the performance by yelling loudly during certain parts if the audience likes what the actors do or if the audience reacts strongly to certain parts of the performance. I wish I could have understood what the audience members were yelling, but there was a particularly vocal man about two rows behind me, and whenever an actor did a particularly great job portraying a difficult scene, the man shouted what I believe was his approval. I was also impressed with the actors' abilities to concentrate despite the audience members yelling at unexpected times.

Saturday, March 20 - Miyajima and Iwakuni

I visited both Miyajima Island and Iwakuni City with my parents this past February, but as expected, upon going with a different group of people I had completely different yet still very fun adventures.

At Miyajima the tide was low, so the water was not lapping against the shrine pillars like it was the last time I went. Since there was no festival on Saturday (there was a festival going on last time I went), there were no special prayer ceremonies in Itsukushima Shrine (the shrine on Miyajima Island) conducted by the priests working there. I also visited this temple called Daishoin (I visited this temple with my parents as well). Due to the festival going on the last time I was there, the temple was incredibly crowded and noisy. But on Saturday it was serene save for the occasional pounding of drums heard from within a pagoda situated on the temple grounds.

After lighting a candle at Daishoin Temple, I decided to try hiking up Mount Misen, the main mountain on Miyajima Island. I had long since lost sight of my foreign exchange student friends, so I went climbing alone, but engaged in several all-Japanese conversations with fellow hikers, including a conversation with a foreign exchange student from Western Michigan University. I ran out of water and time halfway up the mountain, so I turned around and came down, but the view was beautiful despite the haze, and I certainly got my heart rate up by climbing all those stairs.

In the afternoon everyone was exhausted from walking all over Miyajima Island, but we were scheduled to visit Iwakuni City, so we all did a bit of walking there, as well. In addition to seeing the famous Kintaikyou bridge, the former samurai residences, the water fountain, and riding up the cable car like I did last time, my friends and I found some hedges that were in a kind of maze formation. Of course we wanted to play in the hedge maze, and we got in a few lively rounds of Pacman before heading on to Tokuyama City to spend the night.

Friday, March 19 - Hiroshima

I know I've been out of the picture this past week, but spring is a very happening time, so expect to see more entries this week.

On Friday I left for Hiroshima with the other students in my foreign exchange program. We rode the "Nozomi," the fastest Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima City. Our first stop was "Okonomimura," (okonomiyaki village), at which we all split up into groups and were able to cook and eat our own okonomiyaki, which is a grilled food that looks like a pancake and has egg, meat, cabbage, and noodles mixed in. Hiroshima is famous for this food, so although I've eaten it in Kobe, it's different eating it in Hiroshima.

Next we went as a group to the Peace Park and Memorial Museum. The museum was intense, and it described Hiroshima's pre-World War II history, how Hiroshima was chosen as the site on which to drop the first atomic bomb, and the effects the bomb had on Hiroshima's citizens and urban area. It went into great detail, and there were many models and photographs within the museum.

I walked through the Peace Park briefly, and I also met for the first time a friend who is studying abroad at Hiroshima University, so we compared notes on our exchange programs, and he and his friend walked me to Hiroshima Castle, which increased my Japanese castle count up to six castles visited during the past seven months.

Star Wars Play Update

My Japanese class is going ahead with the plan to create our own Star Wars parody. We found a complete script online with each line translated into Japanese, which is perfect for our project. We are choosing the important lines from our favorite scenes, memorizing them, and then taping them with a classmate's video camera recorder. We've also already started working on props, such as buying a mask that one usually wears on a train to prevent the spread of illness, and we colored it black with a permanent marker (that goes to the person playing Darth Vader). We have to finish our video and have it ready to present to the teachers on April 2nd, which doesn't give us a lot of time to memorize everything. But this way, we'll just pick the most important lines from our favorite scenes, and we wont' shoot a bunch of unnecessary footage.

This weekend I'm returning to Hiroshima City and Iwakuni City, two places I visited with my parents in February. I'll update you all upon return from my weekend trip!

お水取り (Omizu-tori)

This past Saturday I ventured to Nara to see Omizu-tori, a special festival that has been celebrated at Todai-ji Temple for over 1200 years. You may recall from an earlier blog entry of mine that Todai-ji is the place that houses one of the biggest sitting buddha statues in the world. This festival is celebrated so that water drawn from a huge well can be purified using fire torches.

It takes over two hours to travel from my home in Kobe to Todai-ji in Nara, and to be on the safe side, I arrived a little early. It took about twenty minutes to walk from the train station to Todai-ji, but the temperature was above average, and the walk was pleasant. I entered the temple grounds forty-five minutes before the ceremony was to begin, and it was already packed! I was standing pretty far back from the temple itself, which was not anywhere near the sanctuary in which the buddha statue is situated. People kept arriving behind where I was standing, and soon the entire area was filled up. I'm sure there were people lining the pathway through the woods up to the temple area, but I doubt they were able to see any of the ceremony because of all the trees.

The ceremony consisted of men holding extremely long (maybe three meters?) poles with bundles of flaming sticks tied to the far ends. The poles were held up high in the air and waved around, all the while pieces of burning sticks and sparks were flying off the ends. The men would wave the poles on the left side of the temple, then run along the edge of the temple platform while twirling the poles and finally stop at the right end of the temple, wave the pole some more until all the sticks had burned and fallen off, and then the next man and pole would arrive. My host mom had warned me to not sit too close to the front lest I sit underneath the falling sparks, but there was no way that would have happened given the size of the crowd. The ceremony itself lasted for a mere twenty minutes, but I'm glad I was able to experience yet another Japanese tradition.

Japanese Class as a Star Wars Parody?

Last Tuesday during lunch, my foreign exchange student friends and I started comparing ourselves to Star Wars characters (I ended up as Princess Leia). The following day in Japanese class, as a joke I wrote on the white board "E Class Star Wars Saga," and listed all of my fellow E class classmates, foreign exchange students from other Japanese classes, and one Japanese friend plus their corresponding Star Wars characters. You see, E class is supposed to be creating a newspaper as a writing assignment, but I jokingly said that writing and performing a Star Wars parody script would be more fun. I actually told the teacher my thoughts, and she apparently told the teacher who is in charge of my Japanese class (we have three separate teachers, depending on the day of the week). Then on Thursday, the head E class teacher informed my class that we would actually be writing a Star Wars parody script instead of a newspaper...! Writing a play is very difficult, much less finding costumes and props and getting everyone to perform it, especially if some of the foreign exchange students are in different classes. I don't know how realistic this is... At least if we can't actually perform it, we can try to write it. I think it's funny that what started out as a joke turned into an actual assignment...

Thanks to midterm examinations I haven't added any new entries lately. I had my oral examination on Wednesday. I prepared and memorized a summary I had written based on the Disney movie version of Aladdin, because one of the two assignments for examination was to present a summary of your favorite childhood story. Of course I wasn't able to pick a favorite story, but sure, Aladdin's up there. I also had to speak to my examiner using keigo, or respectful speech. I never find myself presented with opportunities to use exclusively keigo in conversation here in Japan because it's used mostly at work, and I do not currently have a job here. Business men and women use it at their offices, and keigo is also famous for being used, among other places, by elevator operators in fancy department stores. Within keigo I can think of two main categories. One is sonkeigo, which is speech used to respect your listener because they are in a higher position than you are (for example, one uses this when referring to a boss's actions if one is a business man or woman at a company). Another is kenjougo, or humble speech, which is used to describe the speaker's actions and place the speaker in a lower social position than the listener because the listener is a boss or a customer. There is, however, another respectful form of speech that isn't as fancy as keigo but I use quite often, called teinego, or polite speech. It does not require knowledge of special verbs that change depending on whether one is referring to the speaker or the listener's actions, and I use this form of respectful speech when speaking with my teachers at school.

I found out this past Monday that I won an honorable mention in the foreign exchange student program's Japanese language essay contest. I wrote an essay about a rough day at school and a stranger who came and talked to me and helped me feel better and forget, for a few minutes, that I'd had a difficult class that day. I never found out his name or contact information, and I don't think I'll ever see him again, but I'll always remember his kind gesture. I received a certificate from the Japanese language teachers, and they also awarded me with a prize (a bag of sweets), which I decided to share with "anyone to whom I've ever asked, 'How do you read this kanji ?'" which is most of the people I know here in Japan.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon

For those of you who are wondering what that long bunch of Japanese in the title line means, it's actually a person's name. Chikamatsu (surname) is one of the most well-known Japanese playwrights of the Edo period (he wrote from the 1670s through the 1720s). I volunteered to do a short, in-class presentation summarizing a reading assignment about him which we were given, and it turned out to be one of the most interesting assignments that we have read this semester in Japanese literature class.

The introduction described Chikamatsu as being raised in a well-off family but going on to work with actors, people who were, at the time, considered social outcasts. I wonder why actors were considered social outcasts during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. I'm thinking that it may have something to do with society associating the theater world with risqu é or even base values and/or activities. But then again, Chikamatsu's plays often include characters who display samurai values such as loyalty, devotion, and honor, values that would probably be respected by society at large.

The play that I read was a sewamono, a genre in which three-scene, one act plays that deal with sensational current events are written. Indeed, The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, the play that was included in the packet I read, was based on a true incident and was first performed only a month after the incident occurred. The play takes place in what is modern-day Osaka, the huge city next to where I live. Tokubei, the protagonist, falls in love with Ohatsu, a prostitute. Tokubei spends all of his money on Ohatsu and falls on hard times, so Tokubei's boss from the soy sauce factory, who also happens to be Tokubei's uncle, decides to try to help Tokubei by allowing Tokubei to marry the boss's wife's niece. Tokubei, however, does not want to marry her, which causes him to fall into his boss's disfavor. Furthermore, when Tokubei tries to return the dowry money to his boss, he realizes that his friend Kuheiji, who borrowed Tokubei's dowry money and was supposed to return it the next day, is pretending to have never borrowed any money from Tokubei, and refuses to pay Tokubei back. Tokubei has no way to redeem his honor by staying alive, and Ohatsu is so devoted to him that she refuses to be left alone in the world without him, so the two lovers head to the Sonezaki forest and commit a double suicide.

If you could follow all that, you'd surely agree with me how sad the story is. The protagonist is whole-heartedly a good person, but various events prevent him from living with honor, leaving him no choice but to kill himself. The concept of honor is one of the several samurai values that Chikamatsu incorporated into this play. Other important aspects of Chikamatsu's writing that make his works interesting to read are his emphasis on passion and emotion and his inclusion of the struggle between reason and desire. These focal points make Chikamatsu's works easy to relate to, because the audience can empathize with the characters' emotions and struggles between reason and desire.

ひな祭り - Doll Festival

March 3rd is the modern-day date picked to celebrate ひな祭り, or the Doll Festival, which is celebrated specifically by families with daughters, usually young daughters. Yesterday I celebrated at my friend Yuya's house. Yuya is eighteen; however, she is the only daughter out of four children in the Nishiguchi household. Therefore, her family probably loves to honor her each year by celebrating the ひな祭り.

Decorations for the festival can get pretty elaborate. There will typically be a shelf set up in one corner of a room in the house (big shelves, like the one at the Nishiguchi household, can be up to five tiers high, like a staircase). The shelf is covered in red cloth, and usually anywhere from ten to twenty dolls, both boy dolls and girl dolls, are placed upon the shelf. The dolls are all adorned in traditional kimono and clothing and hats, but when people celebrate this festival, they themselves usually wear western style clothing as opposed to traditional Japanese clothing. The dolls are supposed to be put away soon after the holiday ends; it is said that if you delay in cleaning up and storing the dolls away, your daughter's marriage will be delayed. I had two little dolls hanging in my room as decorations, and I made sure to put them away this morning before I went to school!

I learned of two foods that are normally eaten during this holiday. One is a special type of sushi that involves a huge container filled with sushi rice and then different types of raw fish, vegetables, egg, and other toppings piled on top of the rice in a colorful, artful design. Raw fish is still expensive and I'd say somewhat of a delicacy in Japan, so it makes sense to eat this sort of dish when celebrating a festival. The other food I learned of is a snack called hina-arare. These are cruchy little balls made of rice flour. They are colored green, pink, white, and brown, and they normally have a salty flavor. Lately, however, Japan has started making these snacks with both sweet and salty flavors mixed into the package, and some of the balls are even covered in chocolate.

In ancient times, this holiday was celebrated on April 3rd, when the weather is warm. Okaasan said it's difficult to unpack the dolls at the beginning of March when the closet and room they're stored in are cold, so in keeping with the ancient tradition, my host family celebrates this holiday on April 3rd instead of March 3rd. This means that I am lucky enough to get to celebrate this holiday twice this year!!!

More Adventures with Mom and Dad

This entry is getting back to my sight-seeing trip with my parents. After spending a day in Shikoku, we headed back to Honshu and got off the train in a city called Okayama. This city is famous for the origin of the legend of Momotaro, the baby who was born in a peach and grew up to be a great fighter who conquered demons and monsters. Even though it was raining the entire day we spent in Okayama, after walking through a beautiful park and getting completely soaked because amongst the three of us there was not a single umbrella, I made Mom and Dad walk down to the edge of this peninsula just to see a small statue of Momotaro. But before we walked to the statue's location we did buy some umbrellas at a small roadside stand. That's a good thing about Japan, they sell umbrellas almost anywhere, including in convenience stores.

After two days of straight rain, it finally became dry and sunny after our tour of Okayama, and we headed far west to a small town called Iwakuni outside the suburban area of Hiroshima. Iwakuni is famous for a five-part bridge called the Kintaikyou. After walking across the bridge, you enter an area full of former samurai residences and art museums. We took a cable car up the side of the surrounding mountain in order to see Iwakuni Castle at the mountain summit. This castle was reconstructed, the original having been built in the 1600s. We learned that it was reconstructed because a past shogun of Japan, in order to keep his subjects from becoming too powerful, did not let more than one castle be built within a single prefecture, and I guess Iwakuni Castle was the second castle built in its prefecture at the time, so it was destroyed soon after it was erected, despite taking all those years to build it in the first place.

Learning Japanese

Sometimes it's so difficult to accept it when I make a mistake while using Japanese. I try very hard to use everything that I know and that I've learned in order to produce correct Japanese. But despite all my effort, sometimes I'm just not correct. I've been told a billion times that failure and mistakes are good for me - that I should be grateful for the opportunities to make mistakes and to learn. But sometimes the way the criticism is delivered just gets to me. I just want to be correct, but when I find out I'm not, I become frustrated, and that frustration is quite visible to those who correct me. The people who are kind and patient enough to correct me tend to be the people that are closest to me here, or people with whom I interact on a regular basis - people from whom I can learn a lot, if I wouldn't let my frustration push them away, which it unfortunately can and does. I just have to remember what Okaasan always tells me - after learning English for twenty years in the U.S., I should not expect to become fluent in Japanese after only such a short time in Japan.

Vacation with my Parents

I'd like to backtrack a little, because there was an important happening about which I have not written too much (if anything) about on my blog yet. At the tail end of January and for the first few weeks in February, my parents were here in Japan for the first time! As a result, I was able to do a lot of sight-seeing with them!

I went to Shikoku for the first time in my life with my parents on January 30th. Shikoku is a small island to the southeast of Honshu, the biggest island of Japan. It is close enough to Honshu, however, that there are several bridges connecting the two islands, and we rode across a bridge in a bus and were able to see the famous Naruto Whirlpools in the inland sea area below the bridge.

After arriving in Shikoku, we went to a beautiful sculpture garden full of stone works by a Japanese sculptor named Noguchi (surname) Isamu, who spent time in both Shikoku and in New York. The garden was fairly separated from the town in which we were staying, so we only had time for the one sightseeing location that day.

It was really interesting to translate for my parents while they were here with me. I have always felt comfortable speaking Japanese as opposed to reading it, so just translating menu items and information about tourist sight locations was not a huge ordeal. However, it's more confusing than I would have guessed. My mind was running a million miles an hour, easily processing everything that I heard in Japanese. But when it came time to say what I heard in English, that was more difficult. I found myself searching for the right words and sometimes saying things backwards or in an odd grammatical order due to the grammar discrepancies between English and Japanese and my desire to quickly repeat what I had heard word for word. It was a fun challenge, though, and I felt like a guide, explaining what I had been studying for the past few years to my parents, who were experiencing it for the first time.

Soft Tennis Lesson

Yesterday Shoji gave me my first lesson in soft tennis. According to Shoji, soft tennis is a minor sport, and not very widely known outside of Asia. The ball used in soft tennis is, well, a lot softer than the yellow ball used in hard tennis. The ball is also white, and the players use air pumps before each practice to make sure the balls are filled with air to the point at which they are firm enough to use for playing. The racket used for soft tennis is smaller and lighter than the racket used for hard tennis, and the court net is taller. Soft tennis is played exclusively on clay courts, and players play in pairs, not singles. One of the teammates will play up closer to the net, and the other teammate will play closer to the serving line at the back of the court.

I observed the last twenty minutes or so of Shoji's practice, and then he gathered up a few teammates to play one game as a short demonstration for me. The scoring works almost the same way as hard tennis, with 0, 15, 30 (maybe 45, not 40), and then game. There are also deuces and advantages as well. After Shoji's group finished practicing, he invited me onto the court and taught me a few of the basic techniques. First I just worked on hitting the ball against the wall to get the feel of how to swing the racket and hit the ball with the correct amount of power. Then, he taught me how to serve (it was very difficult to coordinate the ball toss and hitting the ball at the right time). He also taught me two different strokes, one of which I don't really know how to say in English, but it's either "bare-" or "bore-" with the Japanese pronunciation. This stroke was easier to learn than the serve, and it involves stepping slightly forward with your right foot while slightly moving your racket hand forward with the racket facing directly at your opponent's side of the court to stop the ball from moving deeper onto your side of the court and to send it back to the opposite half of the court. Finally, I learned how to do a smash, which is like a serve, and it sends the ball crashing quickly downward onto the opponent's side of the court. This move, like the serve, was really difficult, and finding the right position in relation to the ball in order to hit it was tricky. But Shoji is a very patient teacher, and he answered all my questions about how to swing the racket or position and move my body. He was also very encouraging, both when I made good shots and when I made mistakes, leaving me very pleased with my first soft tennis lesson when I walked off the court.

Human Rights Museum and ”クシカツ立て飲み”

First, I would like to thank Koyomi Sensei for her eloquent and thorough explanation of giri chocolate that now accompanies my blog entry previous to this one.

Now, today was a day full of adventures in the east, and by the east, I mean east of Kobe, which becomes Osaka.

During the afternoon I went to the Osaka Human Rights Museum with my teacher and classmates from my Japanese Society and Law course. Lately in class we've been discussing minorities and groups in Japan that have faced discrimination. Various groups we have discussed include Koreans living in Japan, the buraku people, the Ainu, and people with disabilities, to name a few. The museum displays and explanations were mostly in Japanese, so it was somewhat difficult to understand the details being presented. In an article we were assigned to read for class about Koreans in Japan, some of the main points included past discomforts Koreans felt due to having a different language and cultural background as well as an inability to integrate into Japanese society (segregated schools, being forced into menial or subservient jobs, etc.) In the buraku exhibit area, it seemed as though the museum was trying to educate the public about the history of the buraku people, which includes leather tanning and working with dead animals, a job thought "unclean" by many Japanese in the past, leading to prejudice. I suppose the museum's aim was to promote awareness, which would then lead to acceptance. When I was reading the article about Koreans living in Japan for class, the article mentioned specific surnames that are associated with Koreans. I asked the professor if there was such a concept for buraku, but she said no. The professor went on to elaborate that no Japanese nationals were required to have surnames until the Meiji era (which started in 1868), so at that time, people tended to choose whatever surnames they could find.

After I left the museum, I was scheduled to meet up with Otousan for another restaurant outing. This time, our destination was a kushikatsu restaurant. Kushi means "skewer" and katsu means fried (as in fried meat), so this restaurant specialized in fried, breaded meat and fish on skewers. This restaurant was also special because it was standing only. Therefore, the entire restaurant comprised of a stainless steel counter with small curtains hanging behind it to separate the customers from the people passing by outside. Indeed, the restaurant was situated right at the entrance to an underground walkway, so there was a lot of traffic passing by. This type of restaurant is not for those who wish to have a long, hearty relaxing affair. It's more of an eat, drink, and go type of place, and the food is inexpensive but filling.

Of course, a trip to one of these places with Otousan guarantees interesting discussion on various aspects of Japanese culture. Indeed, tonight Otousan even gave me his definition of what may be considered true Japanese culture. He says an object or activity that has survived and been passed down for generations is true culture and will survive as culture. However, he claimed that something such as maid cafes or these kushikatsu restaurants, which have only come into being recently, are just trends that will gradually fade away, and thus may not be considered true Japanese culture.

Valentine's Day, Japanese Style

Valentine's Day is celebrated in Japan too! However, it is celebrated in a slightly different, much more one-sided way. In Japan, Valentine's Day is a holiday during which women give men chocolate. Men do not do any of the giving, it all comes from the women.

If you have a boyfriend, you usually give him chocolate. You could buy an expensive box of chocolate, such as Godiva, or you could do it the way I think most men prefer: tezukuri (handmade) chocolate. I didn't actually make it myself, but if you do, I heard it's really easy. You just melt some chocolate bars, add cream, stir it up, let it harden somewhat, cut out hearts and other shapes using cookie cutters, and let it fully harden.

Women also give out giri chocolate, or "safety" chocolate. I think you can give it to your friends who don't have girlfriends, and I think that coworkers also give it to each other. That area is a little fuzzy to me, but I keep hearing about all these salary men who come home from work with their briefcases stuffed full of chocolate. If the salary men are giving each other chocolate, then it's not an exclusive from women to men exchange, so I'm not quite sure how that works. But a briefcase full of chocolates sounds like a deal to me!

Back to Kyoto Again!

I returned to Kyoto this past Saturday to see Kiyomizu-dera, or the "Pure Water Temple." It's one of the most famous temples in all of Kyoto, and many Japanese and tourists alike venture there to drink the purifying water that comes from the mountainside on which the temple is located. There are even "holy silver water cups" for purchase for use when drinking the water. However, most temple goers opt for the long-handled silver ladles provided by the temple. With this many people using the same water ladles to drink the water, there is a special ultra-violet radiation cleaning system set up to ensure that germs are not passed from one person to the next.

Walking to the temple is difficult. I had to walk through an area called Gion, which is a rather exclusive area of southeastern Kyoto. Of course anyone may enter, because it's simply a district, not an enclosed area, and Gion attracts many tourists. However, the real estate is very traditional and expensive looking, and the area is said to be home to the geiko, or geisha, of Kyoto. It is said that if you walk through the streets of Gion at dusk, you may see geiko flitting from tea house to tea house, but I have yet to see any of them.

Kiyomizu-dera is located on a hill, so after walking through Gion, I climbed a lot of steps and wound my way through the curvy, hilly streets in search of the temple. When I finally found it, I was greeted by a bright orange, ornately decorated gateway leading to the temple complex, as well as a three story pagoda. From the temple I was also provided with a beautiful view of Kyoto City and the surrounding mountains. The temple does not really have walls, so the areas where people pray are outside (albeit under a roof) and thus chilly in the winter. Kiyomizu-dera was teeming with visitors, and many women were wearing kimono as they walked across the wooden floors and soaked in the gorgeous mountain scenery.