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
That ninja place looks so cool!!! You'll have to tell me where it was so I can check it out sometime!! :)
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear things are going well and can't wait to catch up on Saturday!! <3