The Mating Rituals of Flies

At school yesterday, while working on lesson planning, two flies really loved hanging out  on Heather's desk.





How bizarre.

My Palace!

Hello all! I have finally vacuumed and cleaned my apartment enough that I made a beautiful video of it, which you can view below. Sorry for the shakiness and such. If you want more info on something or better pictures, let me know!



My "palace" (because the building is a leopalace) is one room, on the second floor. Leopalaces are all over Japan, and are pretty much similar to each other, with small differences. For example, everyone else's leopalaces have much bigger refrigerators than mine. :( Jake's leopalace apartment is also on the second floor, and his door is on the ground floor with his own individual set of stairs, where as my door is on a balcony, with only 1 set of stairs leading to it that everyone uses. I think my closet is bigger than some other peoples, but they have more storage for food and kitchen stuff. The layout of the toilet/washer/bathroom varies as well.

The stairs to the bed open up for more storage. I have my games and art markers and such stored in there right now.

It's pretty small but that makes it much easier to clean. Although, it gets messier faster too.

Making Mochi

Saturday morning, the drum group got together to make an excessive amount of mochi to throw to the crowds on Sunday. Mochi is make of rice soaked in water, which is steamed, then pounded into a dough. You can make mochi the traditional way with a hammer, but since we had so much to make, we used a machine to make the dough. Ah, technology. Once made, mochi looks a lot like cookies, but you don't want to bite into one, as it gets pretty hard when cooled. Instead you grill it or put it in soup, something warm that makes it melty and squishy again. Also, it's basically eating rice, so you probably want something with it for taste.

 The rice is starting to form a dough.

 Yay mochi making machine!

 Even more dough like!

 Once ready, the dough was removed and split into pieces so each table could work with some. The dough is pretty hot and would burn your fingers, but you have to work fast, as once it cools, it hardens.

 You take the dough and stretch it out. The white powder is flour so it doesn't stick to the table.

Next, you chop it up with a flat plastic tool to form small chunks, much like cookie dough.

 Kayla's completed mochi

 The mochi are sat on tables to cool. They are fanned and flipped regularly.

 We also made pink mochi!

An excessive amount of mochi. Messy work, flour was everywhere.

it's time for tea!

At Matsue castle last weekend there a was a tea ceremony exhibit. Saki, Jake, Kayla, and I biked on over to the castle grounds to partake. There were many tents selling tea ceremony wares and tea, as well as covered platforms with tatami mats on them, where different kinds of tea ceremonies were taking place. There are many different kinds of tea ceremony. There are different schools of tea ceremony, as well as difference according to where it's being held, who is in attendance, the time of year, the time of day, etc. The tools can be made of different materials, and the food served with the tea varies. It's very in depth and intricate and I don't understand most of it, so I can't really explain it to you here. Sorry!

Walking around the grounds.

Saki studied tea ceremony, so when we picked which school of sado (the way of tea!) to see, we went to see hers, which is Omote Senke.

 The waiting area for the tea ceremony.

Tools of the trade. Saki told me what each was, and it's purpose, but I don't think I can accurately pass on that information. I'll do my best.

 Bowls, called chawan. (the cha part means tea) This is what the tea is served in.

 Tea container, called Chaki. This is what the tea is in before it's made into a drink. Depending on the type of tea in it and what the container is made of, the name changes. Chaki is a loose, general, overall name. I do believe the little ball on the white handkerchief next to it is a type of incense. Could be wrong though. I'm about 85% sure that it is.

The box for the tea scoop, which is called a chashaku, while the storage tube above (the round thing) is called a tsutsu. The chashaku is not in the picture. Each is carved of bamboo, and given a name, which is what's written on the tube.

While waiting in the little waiting area tent, the man in charge of the tent approached us, and told Saki he wanted us to sit in the front row, since we were foreigners, and he wanted us to fully experience the tea ceremony. I felt a little bad for all the short Japanese people who had to sit behind us. They also sat a teacher of tea ceremony next to us so she could explain it to us. She only spoke Japanese, and was sitting next to me, which made it interesting for both of us. She was very cute trying to explain things in very strange English. It's probably what I sounded like when speaking Japanese back.

 The girl doing the ceremony was so graceful. Each movement is precise, even ladling the water and how she set the tea scoop down. She made the bowl of tea for the teacher sitting next to me. All the other cups were brought in from behind the tent. They must have had an army of women in kimono making tea back there, as there were about 30 people in the tent.

A sweet. It customary to eat a confectionery before drinking the tea, since matcha (the green powdered tea) is rather bitter. This is mochi (pounded rice dough) with azuki (red bean) filling.

The bowl I drank out of. When you get your bowl, they do something or other that I can no longer remember as I was super flustered at the time. After you pick up the bowl, you turn it twice, so you can see and admire it, then drink the tea. After drinking it, you rub the place you drank from with your thumb, and the turn the bowl 2 times the opposite direction, so that the bowl is in the same position it started it. I'm sure there is great meaning behind this, but I don't know it.

After the ceremony. These women came up to talk to us. The girl was so cute! She was in junior high (I think....) and wanted to practice her English.

Ah, tea ceremony. It was lovely. I want a kimono....

Festival of Lanterns

A couple weekends ago, Saki, Jake, and I went to walk around Matsue Castle, just to relax for a bit. When we got there, we saw they were setting paper lanterns on the ground, and there was a guy dressed like a samurai!

 We thought it was cool, and continued to wander around the grounds of the castle, checking out the temples and such. Matsue castle is one of the few remaining medieval castles in Japan, as in it still has it's original wooden structure. It was built in the early 1600s. We didn't go inside, which we'll do some other day. The city of Matsue is trying to become a major tourist attraction, which means as a foreigner, I get a discount to go into the castle and other touristy places. Yay!

You can see the people up in the castle!

The castle and surrounding area was really beautiful. We passed a couple small shrines, and went to a big shinto shrine that had many fox statues. It was really quiet and peaceful. Also, it was getting dark so the picture quality is not great. sorry.

 The entrance to the shrine.

 Before going into the shrine, you must wash your hands. You're also supposed to purify your mouth by drinking the water, but we passed on that.

The stairs up to the shrine. Japan is not particularly handicap friendly.

 A place to pray at, I think... This shrine has thousands of fox statues all over it. Some of them are really really tiny, like all the little white ones in this picture.

It was getting pretty dark, so we started to walk back to the car. When we got to the castle, we saw that all the lanterns had been lit and a lantern festival was going on. They had traditional japanese music and dance, and many of the building that usually cost money to go into were free. Score!

 We each found a lantern we liked. Saki liked this one.

 Jake liked this painting style.

 There are tons of canals in Matsue. This is one of the bridges we walked across to get to another museum building.

 The canal had tons of floating candles on it.

 You can take a boat tour and see famous sights and hear histories. They have giant spotlights so you can see things at night. I feel like I'd miss a lot on this tour. When I learn more Japanese, perhaps.

 One of the outbuilding of the castle, showing castle life, I believe.

 Bamboo forest.

 Tradtitional music. The person sitting is playing a koto, which is a rather large stringed instrument.

It's a kitchen!