Ok, I need to catch up on some photos before I plunge into the shrine-carrying weekend.

For one, I bought this awesome scroll for Halloween in Osaka and forgot to post a pic of it before.

Keiko told us that the picture refers to a folktale about a man who tried to poison his wife and that she didn’t die, but her body began to decay while she was alive! Nice and creepy for Halloween, but now it probably looks a bit ominous on the wall!

Steve has already covered some of these things, but here’s a few of my own pics from the ESS cooking lesson, but no other pics of teaching like Steve’s. Why? Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I don’t *like* teaching??



Anyway! Here’s one of my pics of the ESS girls during the cooking lesson (which turned out to basically be a bunch of people cooking and eating and very, very little English and absolutely no lesson!)
The girl on the far right is the one who poked my boobs on this day.






Kati, giggling over her Estonian apple cake. Man, I’m going to miss her when she leaves in January! You can bet Steve and I will try to visit her in her home country as soon as we get the chance!






I forgot to post some pics I took with my keitai (cell phone) last month when I went to a performance of traditional Japanese instruments from groups all over the Prefecture with Lizzie, a JET from England. One of her teachers was giving a performance. I adored the koto performances.



A koto is a 6-foot-long zither with 13 strings and was imported from China around the 7-8 Century. (Here’s a great website: http://www.kotonokoto.org/about.html)




The sound of the koto and shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute, takes quite some effort to work one) together was gorgeous, but I wasn’t too hot on the shamisen- which is funny because that was Lizzie’s favorite!



Here’s a pic of the shakuhachi.



Lizzie ended up leaving after the first hour. Her teacher had already played by then, so we got lunch and then she went to Nara and I returned to watch two more hours of performances! They even brought in a taiko drum at one point, Awesome!

It was odd to see all the performers without shoes on, though! Made me chuckle.

Most of the women (and all the men) were older, but some groups here and there had younger members. This one small group of shamisen players had two young women who were totally stylin in their colorful kimonos (all the older women wear more sober colors, but the kimono were all beautiful).



On a totally different note, I’m really missing a lot of food from home right now and I there’s a lot I dislike about modern Japanese food (mayonnaise on pizza anyone?), but the sweets are awesome!




I love the traditional mochi (glutenous rice flour boiled and usually stuffed with sweet bean paste) and the numerous pastry shops put bakeries in the States to shame. Also, they have Pocky of every flavor imaginable! (Pocky are a little cracker sticks dipped in chocolate and various other flavors.) My favorite is Kurogoma Pocky- or 'black sesame' Pocky.



I love kurogoma everything! It's a rich, roasted sweetness, in the same family as sweet coffee flavors. Its usually grey or black-colored- gotta love it!

if you're all good boys and girls, maybe you'll get some in the mail for Christmas! Speaking of which, they've had x-mas decorations (including x-mas trees in every mall) since Oct. But Christmas is a date night, its New Years that's the family holiday!

Later! Need to made the oral communication test this week before exams begin at school in Dec!

Erin

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Well, its the start of the holiday season in the US, but here in Japan its just a regular day off called 'Labor Thanksgiving Day'. You really can't get turkey here, so Steve's going to substitute with ham or fish. Some of the (American) JETs were talking about getting together for the holiday, but I'm tired as hell today, so I'm just going to rest up before Steve and I head out tomorrow for Koya-san (the mountain center of Shingon Buddhism in Japan).

Wish I could say I've had a good week,no such luck. Tuesday my bike was stolen. I blame myself, I cursed it out because the kick-stand is always screwed up and I guess it had enough of my abuse. I wouldn't have minded so much, but my new, pricey gloves were in the front basket and Steve had outfitted it with the latest in umbrella technology: a little place to store it when closed and a handle on top to hold it when it was open to protect me from the rain. (Actually, I had an umbrella stolen at school as well. Petty theft runs rife in the Land of the Rising Sun!)


All my emotions are running on high while I adjust to the culture shock. Most people go through it about 4 months into living in a foreign country, so I'm right on schedule. Its tough being stressed and not knowing anywhere you can go to relax (Door County anyone?). I heard of an onsen within biking distance, so maybe I'll have to try and get there soon.

At least I have a nice, long weekend and the trip to Koya-san to look forward to. I'll be missing everyone during the holiday! Take care and have good eating and napping on Turkey Day!

UPDATE: Koya-san trip cancelled due to the fact I've come down with a bad flu. :(

Well, the shrine carrying festival is over, I’ve had my first trip to onsen (hot springs), but since Steve still has to size those pics, I’ll save my explanation of that weekend for later. For now, I’ll tell you about our first Bunraku play or Japanese Puppet play, that we saw on Sunday. For starters, it was 4 hrs long! Our friend Keiko got the tickets, so her and a friend joined us. Keiko’s not very into traditional Japanese culture, so I hope she wasn’t too bored!


The theater was beautiful and lined with red and white lanterns even though it’s indoors.



The atmosphere is very regal and traditional. Every play has a shamisen player and narrator sitting at the right of the stage. (See pic of the narrator, with a book of the play's story and an pic of a shamisen.)



A new narrator and player appear for every scene. (The way they switch is great. The pair is sitting with their backs to a wall and the wall actually turns around, like a secret chamber of an old library and poof! There’s the new pair suddenly sitting there.)

The plays are very slow and when they dim the lights and the narrator starts chanting in his drony voice and the shamisen player starts playing… well, let’s just say if you have insomnia, go to bunraku and you’ll have no trouble falling asleep. I was the only one in our group that didn’t nod off! I actually liked the play, but the atmosphere really makes you sleepy. If I had opera glasses or we were up closer it would have been much more interesting because the puppet’s mouth, eyes, and eyebrows all move! Even the fingers on the hands move! It takes 3 people to handle one puppet and an apprentice must practice for 10 years before he can perform with a puppet onstage.

The main puppeteer (operating the right arm and head) wears a kimono and the other 2 (operating the left arm and feet) are dressed completely in black, with pointy black hoods.



This is a scene from the play we saw where you can see them.
Yeah, kinda creepy! It was like watching a bunch of executioners wander around behind the puppets.


The main puppeteer didn’t help lighten the mood either- these men (they were all men) had the most deadpan faces I have ever seen.



The head puppeteer also wears these great wooden geta to make them taller and make it easier to manipulate the puppet.

Anyway, we saw one master puppeteer that has been doing this for decades and we also saw a narrator that was 81 years old and considered a ‘Living National Treasure’!
The story was about a double suicide between a geisha and a paper merchant. It was a true story taken from an incident in Osaka in the 1700’s and it was turned into a puppet play the very same year it happened! The Japanese was so old and convoluted that even Keiko couldn’t understand much of it. The writer was consider “Osaka’ Shakespeare”. The rest of us had headphone with an English translations. They were helpful, but very abbreviated.

After the performance we went to eat and wandered a little about the stores in Namba in Osaka. It really blows your mind how many shops there are. They really go for specialty stores so every tiny space is crammed with tiny shops. Anyway, it’s Thursday now, but I’m still tired from the long weekend (we had friends over on Sat and then out for another friend’s b-day that night, then up early for the play). I’ve got a bit of a cold, so I’m gonna rest!

If anyone’s interested to read more on bunraku, here’s a good website:
http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/bunraku/en/

Ja!
Erin

I’m beginning to realize that being an American is like being part of a dysfunctional family: half the time you can’t stand what them, you’re embarrassed to say that’s where you were raised, and all you want to do is get away- but even when you do you realize that no matter how far you go, you’ll never outrun the fact that that’s where you’re roots are and it’s almost impossible to ever truly divorce yourself from them, because they’re part of you whether you like it or not!

That’s kinda how I feel right now! There’s so much I can’t stand about America (like having to explain why evolution isn’t taught in some schools or why our education system sucks even though our class sizes are half the size of those in Japan, etc. etc.), but its still the culture I grew up in. I’m going through a bit of culture shock right now, which really just means that the honeymoon period has worn off and things are beginning to annoy me. It’ll pass, but for now I’m burned out on all the overly-polite, overly-apologetic, ‘Japan-ness’ of it all. I’m used to the directness of Americans and I sometimes miss it when people are always, always skirting the issue or taking ten minutes to go over and over one simple idea. It doesn’t matter how many times I say ‘I got it’ or if I use English or Japanese, some things just take forever.
*sigh*

I had this dream (or nightmare) the other night that I was meeting a family from some obscure part of the world and they looked more alien than human. Their bodies were small and thin and their skin was brown and sticky liked barbecued chicken. Their fingers tapered and twisted into black curly points that looked charred and broke off against my skin as the tried to touch my shoulders. It was pretty disturbing, and they wouldn’t give me any personal space, but I kept thinking, “Its just the way they are, its just their culture. I have to be tolerant…”

Yeah, my subconscious is working overtime! It doesn’t help that Steve has yet to feel any culture shock at all. Damn his even temperament...

More soon about the shrine carrying the other weekend and the bunraku play last weekend...

I'll leave you for now with another random sunset from just before it got cold a couple weeks ago: