Random Stuff

Not much of great interest has happened in the last week, but I'm posting anyway.

On Monday I saw my LAST EVER Noh play. Woooo. From here on out, we see one Bunraku (puppet play) performance and one Kabuki performance, both of which I'm actually quite excited about.

Thursday was (another) national holiday (文化の日!) and there was a stamp-collecting festival in Uji, so Trisha, Gabri and I went to participate in the festival and see Byoudoin, since we missed it the first time around. The idea with the stamp collecting festival is that you get a passbook and go around to all these booths set up around Uji stamping your book. Once you collect them all, you go to an island in the middle of the Uji river and retrieve a final stamp and a prize. We didn't start until late in the afternoon so we didn't have time to collect all the stamps (even though one extremely nice stamp booth volunteer went so far as to chase us down twice to stamp our books even though his booth was already closed) but we went to the island anyway and they gave us a nice commemorative pin. We also managed to see Byoudoin and eat a second round of cha soba, so it was a pretty solid day overall.

Friday my friends and I had a belated Halloween Party with some of the Japanese students in our class. We put on facepaint and ate pizza, gyoza, rice, and cup ramen. College students throw really classy parties, right?

On Saturday I had my first experience with the Hiking Club at Doshisha. Apparently they normally run for training practice, but since it was raining we climbed stairs instead. I was sore on Monday, but there is something about exercising with people that really brings everyone together. I was also long overdue for a good workout, so after I left practice I ran laps in the park close to my new host family's house. In the evening, I had a music-sharing party with my host dad and introduced him to grooveshark. He was honestly interested in all my music so it was actually a really fun evening.

Sunday is my host dad's only day off work so he spent the day with me and my host mom. First we went to Fushimi-Momoyama Castle. Afterwards we went to the old sake district of Kyoto, where there are still a number of sake factories and warehouses, and they sell everything from sake cake to sakeman. We explored the neighborhood, which has a very different feel from any other neighborhood I've seen in Kyoto and then ate really yummy yakitori at a local brewery/restaurant. It was raining on and off all day, but somehow we timed it spectacularly so that is rained only while we driving from place to place. In the afternoon, I watched a really awful American movie with Japanese subtitles with my host dad. I don't know what the movie was called in English but it was almost comically bad.

Other random things I've recently noticed:
If anyone is interested in Japanese fashion, the key is layers and layers and layers. I think a Japanese person will feel under-dressed in anything less than three shirts. I'm not kidding. I changed in the locker room with two girls in my hiking club, and even when were working out they were in a tank top under a t-shirt and under-armor under running shorts under sweat pants. When they changed back into street clothes, they wore a tank top under a button-down under a sweater under a jacket, as well as stocking under shorts. No wonder Japanese are scandalized by Americans wearing only tank tops in the blistering Kyoto summer. To them, it's just about like walking around wearing only lingerie.

I've been hearing this weird siren-like noise every Wednesday afternoon in my new host family's house. I finally asked about it today, and the answer was definitely blog-worthy. It's the sound of the tofu-truck, driving through the neighborhood. The driver plays this annoying sound and shouts "TOFU!" and people come out of their houses to buy it. さすが、日本。America has ice-cream trucks. Japan has tofu trucks. my life is japan.

Dinner time!
More soon,

Michaela