Japan-tastic!

Sunday, November 26, 2006

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

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