Koto and Home Stay and 5th B-day Partys

Wow it has been a super long time since I wrote! I am so sorry everything got away from me in these past weeks. So I will fill you all in on the most recent stuff and you can ask me questions about the pictures that I post up if you have them.
The weekend of the 15th had a field trip which was fantastic we meditated for 30 minutes and were given compassion if we were falling asleep or just wanted some. (And what I mean by compassion is that they hit you with a stick to wake you up!) It doesn’t hurt that much but it certainly will wake you up. Haha! That Sunday I then went with Sasha and Bethany to Kyoto again (seriously I love this city, it is like Boston only bigger and has Japanese history instead!) to go see a koto performance done by the school that Sasha takes Koto Lessons with. It was amazing and I have videos of it on face book so go check them out. There was a guy in front of me so sometimes his head gets in the way but it is still pretty cool. After the performance we wondered around the park that the shrine the performance to place in was in. which happened to be where the Kyoto Imperial Palace is but alas it was not open. 
We then got lunch and ended up discovering a bus that would take us to Ginkokuji or the Silver Pavilion! It was gorgeous and I want to go back! I have a lot of pictures from there and even go a page of my temple book filled out! As we were leaving though clumsy me twisted her ankle. Pooh! But it is okay just got to stay off it for a bit. I was then able to meet with Andrew Nahmias, one of Dad’s Former students. I swear I am shocked by the connection my parents have sometimes. Haha! We had dinner and then I went home but it was a blast!
This Past weekend was my Weekend Home stay which by the way was a blast! My Family consisted of a Mother, Father, a 5 year old daughter and a 2 year old daughter. The mother is also pregnant with a boy so it will soon be a family of five! When the mother picked me up we went to go pick up the girls from preschool and the five year old ran past her mother and literally jumped into my arms! Talk about a warm welcome! She was sooooooo cute! We then went home and I was able to use a Japanese bath again which if I had the time I would go into a rant of how much I love Japanese baths and houses in general. They have a video intercom that shows them who is at the door! It is amazing! On Saturday I was able to meet the farther and have a traditional Japanese breakfast. The family asked me a lot of questions about Boston and how it differed from Japan and about my family.
After breakfast they took me to Ryouanji in Kyoto, which was again amazing! I have loads of pictures. After that we had lunch in the university that my host parents graduated from. It was really good and cafeteria food here is so much better and cheaper in Japan than in America. Then we went to a craft story and I bought a knitting kit. I cannot read the directions but I don’t care. After that we had dinner at home and went to bed.
The next day was Haruna-chan’s (the 5 year old) 5th Birthday! I made Apple sauce for them since Haruna love apples and we had a big lunch and I gave my family their host present and the coloring book I made for Haruna. They loved all the gifts especially the smelly colored pencils and the book of Photos of Boston from now and from history. After the party we went to a temple that was Otsu’s, the town I was staying, kami shrine. Then the entire family took me home and walked me to my door! It was really sweet and I plan to try and stay in touch with them!

Well that’s all the big things that have happened I have to go back to studying now but I thought I would get this out! There are some samples pictures below but please check out my face book page for all of them!

Calligraphy Parto 2

So today was pretty uneventful, except for my calligraphy class which was awesome. He gave us so sheets to help practice our writing at home and we talked about our families and how we celebrate Christmas. (In very limited Japanese and English mind you) but it was still fun. Yesterday morning’s Japanese Class was interesting because we were talking about post Cards and Melville Sensei pull out a post card and asks were it is from. She starts to give this knowing smile to Sasha and me and Low and behold it is a post card of Smith Hall at William Smith! It was hilarious we couldn’t believe it. Talk about a small world.
Any way no pictures today will put some up for tomorrow because I have my field trip for Buddhism so those should be interesting. Going to go to sleep early because I have been feeling off since this morning and I don’t want to get sick!
Talk to y’all soon

I am a Ninja!

Man it has been a super long time since I have written, sorry guys! Well to catch y'all up on what has been going on, I started my Buddhism class this past Wednesday and the teacher is fantastic! He sings the Beatles and Bob Dylan while explaining Buddhist Theory to us. It is win! I have been doing well in my Japanese class and that has been fun. Not much else happened these past couple of weeks went to Kyoto again and saw a famous bridge in Ukiyo-e art.

So now on the more recent stuff. Thursday I started my Calligraphy class, which by the way was fantastic. I am taking it with my friend Roz and the man teaching us wants to practice his English so he is being very generous and only charging us 1,000 yen for one month (13.00 USD). He is really nice and has two adorable daughters that are a sweet as can be.
Friday after our exam we (Roz, Katlan and I) went to the Sagawa Art Museum to see the Utagawa Kuniyoshi anniversary exhibit, which featured a lot of his ukiyo-e prints, books, and blocks. The museum itself was amazing! It was an island building surrounded by water. So pretty! It was raining too so that added another wonderful effect to the place.
On Saturday, we had our JCMU fieldtrip to do ceramic and then go to ninja town. For those of you who have not already seen the pictures of it on facebook, I will be posting my own and there is a video of me walking on water that you should check out it is hilarious. Any way back to what we did. When we went to the ceramic place we got to paint either a mug or a plate and as you will see in the photos I painted a mug with bunnies and owls on it. We did a little shopping and looking around the area which has all sort of ceramic stores and workshops, so there was a lot to see. This is a note to my parents: I have made an executive decision to take you both there because it reminds me so much of the town outside of Oaxaca, Mexico that I think you both would enjoy it. This area that we went to is also famous for the tanuki (raccoon) figures that many families have in front of there houses for good luck.
After we ate lunch we then proceeded onwards towards ninja town. At ninja town was fun and we got to do a lot of “tests” though the water test was cut short when the rope broke. Though all and all it was fun there were a lot of people there that dressed up as ninja’s though none of us JCMU students did. Too many people in our group for that to really work. I bought a few gifts there as well. Got myself a beautiful fan for a good price and a shuriken with a green dragon on it.
On Sunday I went with a group of friends to an Art Festival in Nagahama. It was fantastic! Lots of shops and vender showing their art work and selling lots of interesting things. There was a calligraphy show that we watched some of and a store that you could buy chopsticks and have them engraved. I didn’t do it but it seemed pretty cool.
After we left the festival we stumbled on a temple where they were tossing mochi into the crowd for people to catch. If you go lucky, like Roz and Christine, and caught a mochi with a lucky sticker then you could collect an extra prize. Which turn out to be a bag of sugar! Hey its expensive here! After that we went home and I and Roz wrote our Japanese essays together.
Finally we are almost caught up! On Monday I went to a Samurai Kempo class, which is a class that teaches you how to dance with a sword like samurai used to. We got to where traditional costumes and learn the choreography for one of the dances. I of course being the silly person that I am forgot my camera, but my friend Bethany had hers so I will eventually have pictures posted for that as well.

Now I am just going to note here that from now on I will only post samples of my photos on to here because it takes forever to post them all so if you want to see more photos I will have a link at the end of each entry for the album on facebook that corresponds with the entry.
For this go to:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1558322037973.2038133.1232910916&type=1
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1558328878144.2038134.1232910916&type=1
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1558360158926.2038135.1232910916&type=1

Here: Samples

Satuday and Sunday Pictures

Sorry it took me so long to post these but here are satuday's pictures

There are more pics on my face book page so if you want to see all of them go there!