A Good Saturday: Walking, Arita-yaki, Tea Ceremony, and Study

I had a good day today. In the morning I went on a walk with Jono around Arita. It was refreshing to get out early in the morning and walk. My weekend mornings tend to slip buy trudgingly, with me situated in front of my computer calling all the people I don't usually call during the week (like my folks), and it was surprisingly exhausting getting out and walking. I kept yawning, despite having slept for nearly 11 hours (10:00 p.m. to 9:00 a.m.). Yet more proof that I should get out and walk more regularly.

Anyway, the reason I went to Arita with Jono was to see his student's ceramic exhibition, so we went to the 文化館 (culture hall). There was all sorts of ceramics, and, golly, I love looking at ceramics. I kept pausing to admire amazing craftsmanship or to wonder how they had done something. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures, so I can't show you anything, but there was one bowl that looked like the design was made by mashing together different colors of clay, and I have no idea how they did that and then shaped it into a bowl and then fired it without the many different pieces expanding and shrinking and different rates and then cracking and falling apart... it was gorgeous, and I was captivated, and I really want to get back into ceramics.

I came home and went to Tea Ceremony, as usual for a Saturday. Apparently I have good poise and remembered a lot of the steps, because they kept talking about how elegant I was after the lesson, even though I had forgotten so much. It was slightly embarassing, because I had to have my teacher demonstrate how to handle the whisk and hot water scoop for me, and I felt like I had forgotten so much. Oh well, it was very nice to sit with calm, kind ladies, listening to their soft Japanese, and handle their gorgeous tools elegantly. It's meditative and calming, and I find myself wishing I could go more often than once a week.

Then I came home and studied kanji, read ONEPIECE (a children's manga in Japanese), cleaned my apartment, finished all the dishes that have been sitting around in my sink, and video chatted with my boyfriend and my cousin. Then, I decided to take myself out to a celebratory dinner tonight-- yesterday I got my reviews from all my schools during my interview with my JET supervisors, and I received all positive feedback! Basically, they told me I was doing great, and the only thing I need to work on is not worrying (or 頑張る過ぎるing), especially when I'm sick. It was awesome to receive positive feedback, because sometimes it's hard to receive any feedback while on the job. So I bought myself a curry dinner (yummm, spinach curry), and I'm excited to finish the rest of this semester and go into the new school year in April.




*All images taken liberally from Google.

poem

We are singing to the Earth
the hands of the Rain

What Miss Mary Did for New Years

Okay, so the rest of my winter vacation:

After Dana left, I spent a few days hanging around in Saga. I reigned in the new year with oysters on the half shell and beer (and delicious meal and an excellent combination to get nauseous on), watching music shows on TV, and talking with a bunch of young Japanese folks. It was pretty excellent.

After midnight hit, we hopped in the car with the intent to go to Yuutoku Shrine. When we hit mostly stop and no go traffic 10 kilometers out from the Shrine, we decided no way, and then proceeded to wait 20 minutes before traffic moved enough for us to turn around. We went around Saga dropping people off, and I got home at around 2 and passed out.

Then, on New Years Day, I went to a Shrine. I turned in my old omamori (Literally, "honorable protection", usually they're in the shape of little square silk pouches with a piece of holy writing inside of it, but they can come in all sorts of shapes and sizes) and bought new omamori for the new year. Then I had a delicious meal with Emiko and Okamura-san and Tai-kun, and went home and slept soundly.

On January 2nd, I went across Kyushu to Oita. On the way there, I SAW SNOW!!! 8D I was on the train passing through Tosu, and the other commuters must've thought I was crazy because I kept snapping pictures and pressing my nose to the window and grinning like an idiot. But I don't care. I SAW SNOW. So there.
(Most of the pictures are blurry because the train was moving so fast, but I got to see it, and I got one picture that came out decently to prove I saw it, and I'm still super happy when I think about it, so all's good.)

I spent two days doing ne-shogatsu (Literally: "sleeping New Year." It works something like this: Sitting at what looks like a coffee table with about 12 other people, you eat traditional new years food (called osechi) and then watched TV, and if you feel like it you can lay down and nap (hey, you're sitting on the floor anyway, it's not that far), and then you wake up and watch more TV, then you go take a long hot bath in the family bath, and then you lay down some more and watch some more TV, and eventually the night passes an the host brings out a traiditonal Japanese breakfast, and you crawl over in your pj's and eat some more and then watch some more TV and talk, and then take a midday nap, and then lunch is brought out... Yep. I love ne-shogatsu!)

I decided in the middle of this that I had to get outside and walk and get some fresh air or my body and joints would murder me, so I did.

And then this cat decided it'd climb on me.

She was adorable and small and super affectionate. She also had fleas, so I kept the snuggling and rubbing to a minimum.

But, man, I miss cats.


Thank you, Saori and Saori's family, for your generosity! I really enjoyed all of the food (it was super delicious), the funny TV shows, the conversation, and the relaxing.

Winter in Saga

明けましておめでとうございます！

I saw these pretty frost-rimmed leaves on the walk to school earlier this week, and thought I'd take a few pictures to share with you. <3

I've been sick this past week, so not much energy to go around. Hopefully a restful weekend will get me prepared for next week, which is full of lessons, conferences, job interviews, and other exciting things!

So, Dana did a final blog of her last day out here in Saga, which you can see here. You can see our cups! :D

That's a picture of Mnt. Mifune and Takeo's river, on my morning walk to school. Mornings the river always has such smooth water-- almost glass-like. I love it. :)


Anyway, now school is out for the winter. I went in the last two days in the morning to clean out my desk, review the past semester, and plan the next semester, and I must say, it's been pretty grand. The last semester was really amazing, with awesome Halloween card games, poetry, fill-in-the-black stories, laughter, poofy hair, and English. It was rather exhausting, but other than always being a little nervous my lessons would flop or I wouldn't be prepared (that only happened 3 times in four months, thank god), there weren't any major catasrophes! And I'm alive! :D That's definitely a plus.

Now I'm planning things for next year, so if you know any awesome songs that middle schoolers might want to sing, want to contribute an article or comic or picture to a newsletter I'm composing for the students and the school, or just feel like giving me a call, I'm going to be chilling for the rest of this winter break.

Love you all!

Boxing Day

Yesterday! Yesterday was Christmas. It was fun. :3

 

For the white elephant gift exchange I got chapstick and hand lotion. Nothing terribly exciting, but very useful during winter, especially for a teacher (chalk dries your hands out like whoa).

Then Today!
Today is Boxing Day! For the Americans who don't know Boxing Day, it's a UK holiday on December 26th where... apparently everybody relaxes and goes shopping. Anyway, I took the day off to hang out with Dana, and this is what we did:

1.) Woke up laaaaaate. So late. It was beautiful.

2.) Home-made cinnamon rolls, oh my gosh. 

3.) I called Tatara-san to give her some homemade cinnamon rolls as repayment, and got some salmon in return. Deliciousness abounds.

4.) Dana and I went on a walk to the pretty little mountain behind Takeo Onsen, and getting rather lost on forest trails that were rather sketchy forest trails.

 So, we were like, "Oh, hey! Torii! I guess it's a forest trail and a shrine?"

 "And oh my gosh jizo!"

"Hey, Dana? Do you see a trail anywhere? I don't."

 "Yeah, sure it's a trail, if you tilt your head and squint your eyes a little. But it super duper cold."

 I mean, maybe you can call it a trail.

Oh, cute! Okay, maybe there was a reason to climb that maybe-trail-thing.

 Okay, nice. That definitely looks like a trail. :)

4.) Then we got home, grabbed some grocery bags, and went to the local mall for shopping.
And then we made a delicious meal.

Salmon kabocha with spinach, some brown rice, and a cucumber tomato salad. おいしい！

Finally, we watched some more Misfits-- oh so excellent.

Sometimes I guess people are just really bad at making stairs

HI EVERYBODY I AM MARY AND I AM UPDATING THIS BLOG LIKE WHOA.

That was a lie.

I'm actually Dana, who is staying with Mary for Christmas.  I normally blog over here, but Mary and I decided to switch blogs for an evening.  You can head over to my normal blog to see Mary's post!

Anyway, I am supposed to blog about WHAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING, so I will DO THAT.*

Yesterday (Friday), we headed over to Takeo Shrine, because I am a huge Shrine Nerd (it's my research project) and also because it is close enough to walk to.  Yay!

In other news, my camera is not the greatest, sometimes.

Here's the front of the shrine and the back of a Mary.

Apparently in Saga prefecture, they are Super Into Enshrining the Glorious War Dead.**  This is a "remembering stone" for them.

Here are some omamori*** which were being sold at the shrine office.  Who says you can't mix the sacred with Hello Kitty?

We're enshrining the glorious war dead...AGAIN.  Just over here instead.

Here's a little shrine on the grounds.  It has a mirror inside it, because mirrors are generally seen as sacred objects.  That's mostly because of a very long story involving the sun goddess hiding in a cave and another goddess performing a strip tease...but, yes, mirrors.  They are important.  And you will see them around shrines a lot.

So then we walked away from the main shrine and through this bizarre wood, where one side is pine trees and the other side is bamboo????

This is what the shrine is famous for--a giant, 3,000-year-old tree.  WOW.  Pictures cannot capture how amazingly cool this thing is.

Apparently Hayao Miyazaki was influenced by trees in Saga Prefecture while making Princess Mononoke, and I can see why.  SO COOL.

And then we took a detour and wound up next to a sketchy pond-moat thing with some Jizo**** on the other side.

So then we walked a whole bunch to the Mt. Mifune Gardens.

Unfortunately, what with it being winter and all, the gardens were kind of dead and sad looking.

BUT THE MOUNTAIN WAS COOL.

But we couldn't climb the mountain.

And we were sad.

There were still some nice momiji, though.

So after that we left and Mary somehow managed to get us onto a mountain road with NO SIDEWALK and a PRECIPICE on one side and a FOREST on the other and it was very, very 危ない.

But we were not hit by cars and did not fall off any precipices, so it was all good.

So then we climbed a big hill...

...and got a view of Mary's town!

She lives in the super inaka (countryside), if this wasn't already clear.

OH HEY LOOK IT'S ANOTHER STONE FOR THE GLORIOUS WAR DEAD.  Although this one enshrines soldiers from Saga Prefecture specifically.

Takeo is apparently really into their glorious war dead?

This was our dinner that night, made by ME because I told Mary I would be her 主婦 (housewife) and I wasn't kidding.

OH MY GOSH IT'S A MARY.

Also, she totally ate seconds, so I win at the world.

And then I made Mary watch Misfits and menaced her with fetuses***** and passed out.

Today!

Mary's friend Tatara-san, who she knows from tea ceremony, offered to show us random awesome things around, so we got up bright and early (okay, not that early) to meet up with her.  She, by the way, is an awesome lady and was really fun to talk to and hang out with.

So!  The first stop of the day was Yutoku Inari Shrine.

It is HUGE.  And also on stilts.

And also HUGE.

Did I mention that it is huge and built on a mountain?

So Mary and I, being the intrepid relatively young people we are, decided to climb to the top of the mountain.  And thus began Our Adventure with Stair-Like Topography.

Oh, hey, this kind of looks like Fushimi Inari!  (If, for some reason, you want to read a really long and kind of spastic explanation of why there are so many Inari shrines, you can click over here.)

Hmm, we're pretty high up.

LET'S GO HIGHER.

Toriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

There were lots of little wayside shrines (owned by specific families/organizations) along the way, just like at Fushimi Inari.

MUST CLIMB HIGHER.

And thus began our adventure with stairs.  Notice how gingerly these people are climbing down.

This is what a section of reasonably stair-like stairs looked like.

STAIRS.

Random Buddha statue at a Shinto shrine!  Yay, syncretism!

We made it to the top!

And here's the tiny shrine at the top.

If you want to go up there
you have to climb the stairs
oh no

I'm sorry, but they're not even trying at this point.  WHAT ARE THESE SUPPOSED TO BE.

Mary demonstrates expert stair climbing technique.

Technique #1: If I crawl, maybe the stairs won't notice me.

Technique #2: If I cling to random objects on the wayside, maybe the stairs can't buck me off.

Technique #3: AHHHH THIS IS LIKE IF SOMEONE DESCRIBED STAIRS TO A BLIND GUY WHO HAD NEVER BEEN NEAR STAIRS BEFORE AND THEN HE RELAYED THE MESSAGE TO HIS PARTIALLY DEAF SON WHO TRANSLATED IT INTO A FOREIGN LANGUAGE BY USING A DICTIONARY WHICH AN ARCHITECT TURNED INTO BLUE PRINTS

This is the only explanation.

But we made it safely to the bottom!
Also, the snazzy scarf I am wearing is not mine; I totally stole it from Mary.

All that climbing and fearing for our lives had made us hungry, so then we headed out for lunch.

OM NOM NOM NOM.  The two brown things on the right are called Inari sushi; they're fried bean curd wrapped around rice soaked in a kind of sweet vinegar.  DELICIOUS.

Then, Tatara-san got a glint in her eye and insisted on paying for lunch for us, because each day only exists once and we would only have this one lunch together.  So we got free lunch.

And then we got cream puffs.  Because, you know, each day only exists once, and sometimes you just really want cream puffs.
(Also, Tatara-san got us Christmas cakes, because she is a sweetheart.  And also because she and Mary are in the midst of a gift-giving war, and I was collateral damage.  But Mary and I are planning a counterattack; yes, we are.  IT SHALL BE SUCH A COUNTERATTACK.)

So then we went to Arita, which is a pottery town in Saga Prefecture.  And by pottery town, I mean, SUPER FAMOUS FOR POTTERY.  As it turned out, Tatara-san used to work at Koransha, which is a SUPER FAMOUS POTTERY MANUFACTURER, and so we stopped by and got tea and looked at super gorgeous pottery.  Also, Tatara-san got us cups because "it is Christmas AND EVERY DAY ONLY COMES ONCE."  Pictures shall come when pictures come, but I got a LITTLE PRINCE CUP BECAUSE I LOVE THE LITTLE PRINCE OH MY GOODNESS.  (Mary got a cup that actually made her look like an adult with sophisticated tastes, but LITTLE PRINCE.)

So then we went over to Imari, which is another pottery town.  It was a Tokugawa-era pottery enclave, which meant that the Tokugawa shogunate said, "HEY, YOU GUYS, you are good at making pottery.  You should make pottery for your whole lives.  And your children should make pottery.  And you should never leave.  And when we say 'should' we mean 'it is mandatory or we will stab you lots and lots.'"
But it's still a pottery town now!

It is also in the super inaka.

And there are MOUNTAINS.

And there were these frog statues with a Magikarp on top.  Because why not?

So then we started heading home, but on the way back we stopped by Kurokami Shrine.

I will transform Mary's blog into a blog ALL ABOUT SHRINES.

Also, because it was freezing cold (there was snow at one point), Tatara-san lent Mary her ruff-stole-thing (I don't know the correct terminology).  So Mary looked like a sophisticated adult while I ran around the shrine like a maniac.

Shrine, shrine, shrine, shrine!

We've been seeing these prepared bonfires at a bunch of different shrines, because one part of the New Year's celebration in Japan is burning all the omamori from the previous year in a big ceremony called Ooharai.  There are other things burned during that ceremony as well (like little paper figures which people write their names on to attach their bad luck and pollution and then burn to get rid of it), so they need many, many bonfires.

So then we headed back for reals.
All in all, a pretty awesome day!
Thank you, Tatara-san!

And then I made Mary dinner because I am her 主婦.  Yup.
And now we are writing BLOGS.  And Mary is waving pie pans at me.  Because she is making pie.  Now she's invading her neighbor's house.******  Her life is so exciting compared to mine.  I just have people throw mochi at my head.

Tomorrow we will be celebrating Christmas, which means that we will open SIX MILLION PRESENTS and then we are going to meet up with some of Mary's other ALT friends for Christmas luncheon.
I hope everyone celebrating has a merry Christmas!  And everyone not celebrating has a good 25th of December.
The next post on here will be from Mary, and hopefully it will be soon.  Not that I'm hinting anything.  Oh no, not me.
Maryifyoudon'tupdatesoonIwillmenaceyouwithfetuses.

*If you don't already know me, I am a little bit spastic.  I also write the same way I speak, which means I WILL EMPHASIZE THINGS WITH CAPITALS LETTERS.  Also, I love footnotes.

**That is, the souls of all the soldiers who have died in every war (or every not-war in some cases) since 1868-ish.  There's a huge controversy surrounding their enshrinement, so if you are interested, I recommend To Dream of Dreams or Shinto and the State, 1868-1988.

***Omamori, most commonly translated as "amulets," are little objects believed to contain the essence of the deity of a specific shrine.  They most commonly come in the form of little brocaded bags (with a scrap of sacred text inside) and are believed to grant a certain wish, like "safety from traffic accidents" or "success in examinations."

****Jizo is a Buddhist bodhisattva.  Most Japanese statues portray him like the image above...kind of like a short, squat baby?

*****Okay, so, the context here is that I'm currently reading Marketing the Menacing Fetus in Japan.  So I have been learning how to menace.  With fetuses.

******Okay, so she had his permission, but that makes the story significantly more boring.  IT WAS AN INVASION.  MARY WAS RIDING ON A HORSE WITH AN ARMY OF TINY MARYS BEHIND HER.  THERE WERE DRUMS AND TRUMPETS AND ALSO PIE PANS.