Tea Ceremony

A Monday Morning Bonus Blog!

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As a reward for my shameless plugging, the school let me join one of their traditional culture classes for free last week.

Short explanation: GenkiJACS offers a variety of course things, of which I'm taking the simplest (and cheapest!) one; just four hours of straight up language class per day. If you want to, you can supplement by having additional conversation classes or some level of culture class (traditional or pop (yes, pop culture does indeed mean what you think it means. Otakus of the world rejoice!)).

So I went to a "n00bs introduction to tea ceremony" last Thursday. This involved borrowing a yukata (simple summer Kimono thing),

The pretty colours are pretty! <3

taking a shoji screen selfie (of course),

Votes are up: Do I love selfies too much?

making tea,

I am apparently something of a tea-whisker natural talent. Who knew!

and then drinking it.

Very carefully crafted yum!

And yes, this did involve me sitting like that (in traditional "seiza" position) for 45 minutes. No I did not give up. After the first 20 it didn't hurt anymore anyway, because I completely lost contact with every sensory organ below my waist. Although admittedly, when the ceremony was done, my process of standing up was not the most graceful moment of my life so far, nor was it a particularly expeditious affair.

But in all seriousness, this was a very cool experience. This tradition is (I think) uniquely Japanese, and very fascinating. As this class was a primarily explanatory thing, I would love to do it again in a more organic fashion to really get into the spirit of the thing.

There is still so much I don't understand about Japan, but I really enjoy learning a little bit more every day. And on that sappy note, I wish you a very happy Monday.

I've moved (again)

Goodbye, dorm!

Goodbye tiny bathroom.

Moved in with a nice older lady living very close to central Tenjin, within walking distance of GenkiJACS. Got myself a Japanese style room and everything!

Hello tatami!

This time, my host mother speaks very little english, so I'll be forced to practise more Japanese. I suppose it is really a good thing, but it's also kind of scary since I still in no uncertain terms absolutely suck in this language! 

The lady used to run a coffe shop,
and guests used to leace umbreallas.
Mi かさes su かさ, if you get what I mean.

A room with a view and a staircase, but no pond.

Gotta keep it short today, going out for okonomiyaki yummyness in about two minutes.

But yeah, things change. Maybe I'm changing with it. At the very least, I'm getting better at sitting on the floor!

Sake festival!

So, I apologize for there being no posts on Sunday, on account of me being too drunk to type. Then again nothing on Monday, on account of me being too hung over. Why? Friggin' sake festival!

Nagasaki Lantern Festival

So yesterday's post was pretty dark. I felt like the subject matter deserved some space, so I chose not to clutter with other stuff. Today, however, I want to emphasize that we also had a lot of fun in Nagasaki. I know many people back home only think of tragedy in connection to this city, but it's actually a beautiful and lively place that I would love to visit again.

The riverside view was like, nice and stuff. Also, look at my legs here and think of a fat-tailed mermaid. Just try!

Being a one-day field trip arranged by the school, we didn't really have time for much other than the main attraction of the season: The Nagasaki Lantern Festival in Chinatown. According to my host mother this is a relatively recent cultural import (should probably research this thing for y'all but I am a lazy bum so I say you do it if you want to know so bad).

Here is a picture of Chinese lanterns:

Here is a picture of me immitating a Chinese lantern:

And here is my face, still immitating a Chinese lantern:

Lantern Festival!



But all jokes aside, this festival was really all about the food (for me anyway). So much street food! Ehrmagehrd!

Fresh meronpan: Sweet bun wrapped in cookie dough, soft inside crispy outside and yummy all over!

And then: 100yen oysters. One oyster; One. Hundred. Yen. For you un-currency-savvy out there, that's juuuust about 6 NOK. Yeah. Six. Back home, I've never really seen them sold for less than 80.

Q: How many oysters could an oyster-shuck shuck if an oyster-shuck could shuck oysters?
A: He can, and a lot.

I've never actually had an oyster before, because of the afforementioned high norwegian price on their not-heads. Here, I had several. Spoiler alert: turns out I like oysters.

Also beer.

Yakitori (skewerd grilled chicken) is (are? dunno. Grammar. 0.o ) for me one of the highligts of Japanese cuisine. Probably because I've almost always been drunk-hungry when eating it and thus hold my memories of this food in the highest of esteems (and I appologize for my English today, I'm very highly not not tired).

<3

YAKITORI SELFIE!

YUM!

I actually had even more food, but I was too busy eating it to document.

Then I stumbeled upon some stairs (figuratively and literally). And I love me some stairs.

Snapped some more photos here and there, and they randomly turned out to be eriely like a pokemon evolution series!

Magi-karp-karp

Dragon!

Dragons!

Dracarys, m*thrf*kr

I managed to turn it to stone after our final battle though, so we all survived.

Victory is sweet.

However it wasn't until the light faded that you could see what this festival was really all about. Which was lanterns (as you really should have guessed). But you know, giving off actual light.

And I even managed to snap a photo that isn't complete rubbish:

It looks nice, but it was actually cold as shit.

I suck at Japanese

Turns out, I suck at Japanese. Big shock.