October is already halfway over??

Hm, since last time I wrote I have

1. Seen the Phantom of the Opera in Japanese

2. Experienced true izakaya-style yakitori dining (this included chicken heart, which is tastier than it sounds)

3. Attempted to understand my host-grandmother's Nagoya-ben (Nagoya dialect)

4. Made homemade pizza for a friend's host family (and getting to play a legit shakuhachi flute!)

5. Made Nicaraguan food for my okaasan

6. Traveled to Ise--location of the Ise-jingu, one of Japan's most prominent Shinto shrines (http://www.google.com/images?num=10&hl=en&q=ise+jingu&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1280&bih=649)

7. Crossed the entire city of Nagoya on bicycle with my okaasan to see the Nagoya matsuri (Nagoya's 400-year anniversary festival), in which we saw Nagoya castle, a parade with traditional Japanese dances and puppets, the geisha look-alikes parading Oosukannon Buddhist temple, weaving in and out of kimono shops, getting interviewed for an English online news-blog, eating delicious festival food...

8. Saw a Noh play called Hagoromo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagoromo_(play)) with okaasan at the local Buddhist temple. The beginning was Buddhist chants followed by setting fire to a huge stack of wood while the taiko drums and shinobue flutes were played. The sticks people wrote their hopes on were thrown into the fire (in hopes that they'll be answered!), then the play began. I didn't understand it, and nothing much happens on stage but the actors singing to each other to the beat of 2 types of ceremonial drums (not quite sure of the significance of the drums) . Then at the end more hope-sticks are thrown in the fire to taiko and shinobue music. Then we ate delicious octopus, yakisoba, and some sort of shrimp-cracker-egg-mayonnaise thing.

The days are always packed. Japanese classes still continue to provide me with constant homework, and I've been part of the first round of presentations in my other classes, so the load is bigger than usual. But it's all truly interesting, I love all my classes!

Here are some favorite pictures:

Exploring a little

This weekend was time for Katie to play tourist! I am so lucky to have the host-family situation that I do, I was only able to do all of this with the help of my okaasan's family!

Last week, my host sister Hiromi and her husband Tadasuke was visiting from the Numadu area near Shizuoka. That's the area where Mt. Fuji (Fujisan) is. So after we spent the week hanging out together (I made homemade tortillas and huevos rancheros for everybody!), okaasan and I hitched a ride back with them to Shizuoka and we did some sight-seeing on the way there. We first stopped at a huge shrine in Fujioka where I saw the biggest tori (holy gates) and clearest spring waters in my life. Then we went to see a basin where waterfalls gushed from all sides, where we sat at the top of the falls to eat the specialty of the area, yakisoba. In the afternoon, we drove halfway up Mt. Fuji, where we climbed a little bit (not far :P), and marveled at the view of the cloud-tops--so high up that it was almost like looking out from an airplane! Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries for all of this, so you will just have to use your imagination to see this all...



The next day okaasan's sister, sister's daughter, mother, and father all came to visit! Then Tadasuke's mom, dad, grandpa, and younger brother showed up, and they all sat on the living room floor meeting and greeting for a couple of hours...it was rather taxing on my energy, especially since I didn't understand the dialects of the more elderly participants. We all watched Hiromi and Tadasuke's wedding video (they were married in the Great Barrier Reef Chapel in Austrailia!), and headed off to lunch at the harbor. I got to try sea urchin for the first time, which has a flavor that is a cross between plastic and Expo Markers. Needless to say, my okaasan got to finish the rest of my urchin. Afterward, we all went to an outdoor statue museum/garden hybrid and wandered around (goro-goro shita, in Japanese...I love Japanese onomatopoeia words!) for an hour or so before getting ice cream and heading back home. The trip there and back was about 3.5 hours each way, but okaasan and I were so lucky to have rides both way! I only spent $8 the whole time on my museum pass, the rest was a treat from okaasan's family. They are all such sweet people, I'm so lucky to hang out with them!

Monday and Tuesday were just classes, impromptu yoga class with friends, random adventures to Vietnamese food and a (cheap!) izakaya. Today after classes ended I went to ramen with a group of friends from my America as a Foreign Country class--my first time getting ramen in Japan, whodathunkit--then took off on my bike to run around Nagoya. I wound my way to Higashi-Betsuin, a huge Buddhist temple that was built in the 1690. It was rather empty, and the doors to the temple were closed so I couldn't see much of the gold ornaments and tatami mats that are usually inside temples, so I just wandered around the grounds for a while, donating a few yen and paying respects by clapping and bowing. The outside was absolutely gorgeous, I plan on returning on the weekend when it will be open for ceremonies. Next I found a random temple in the area. The temple was of a Southeast Asian style, and its tall towers made it incredibly easy to spot it from the main road. It was really special to be the only visitor walking its grounds, I love the ornate decorations and the scent of tatami in the main rooms. All the pictures of the temples in the blog are of the temple.







Otherwise, I've just been having better conversations with my okaasan now that my Japanese is improving everyday. I love living here. Nagoya is a fantastic city to explore, the more and more I delve into Japanese culture the more I fall in love with it.

Until next time, jaa mata!