Donning a Kimono

Have you ever worn a kimono? I never had before I went to Japan. And guess what? (I bet you can guess!) It's really hard to put one on! But one day in late June, just before my trip to Osaka and Hiroshima, (These posts are getting out of order, I know. I'm sorry!) my host mom got together with Christine's host mom, and decided that they would dress us in kimonos.

Our friend Caitlin was also dressed, along with another girl from the program, Li, who was lovely but didn't speak much English - she was more comfortable speaking in Japanese than in English, even though she was only a second year student. Anyway, those were the people our host moms decided should come, so we were the four who were all dressed in kimonos.

Now, kimonos are many-layered. And each layer is made up of several different pieces of cloth. All of the first layer of things are white. The white layer includes socks (note the separation of the big toe!), a wrap-skirt, a wrap-shirt, and a white collar-thing that will peek out of your outer layer.

The first picture is of Christine, with her host-mom tying on the crossed collar piece, while she wears only the white layers. Looks like she's already totally covered up, right? Well, that's true. But it doesn't mean she's totally ready to go! After the white layer... (A caveat: only I have ever called it the white layer, as far as I know...)

After the white layer, you put on the colorful outer layer, which is always incredibly beautiful. You may be thinking, "I thought you said this was complicated! There's only two layers?!" But it is complicated. And there are more than two layers. Nonetheless, the second layer you put on is the outer layer. Just bear with me here, please.

My outer layer was purple, see? That's my host mom, aligning it for me, and then for Caitlin. If you'll notice, the white collar-thing shows through just the tiniest bit, and she's wrapping the first of many belts around my waist to keep my kimono closed all the way. At this point, my host dad was allowed in, since we were all decent with our top layer.

But now, do you understand? The third, and most complicated layer, is the BELT layer, otherwise known as the obi. I'm sure you've heard the word obi before. Anyway, there are several different belts and cords that keep the kimono from opening on you at the wrong time. Or any time. Any time would be the wrong time, wouldn't it?

Here is my host mom, tying Caitlin's decorative obi. It's really difficult to do, apparently. So difficult that even though my host mom does this frequently (because she has so many host daughters!) she needed to refer to directions she downloaded off the internet to get her through the whole tying process.

You have to wrap another cloth and a cord around the obi in order to get it to look right both from the front and from the back, and if you untie even one thing the whole structure will fall apart. Luckily, everything's tied pretty securely, so that's not much of a worry. In the next picture, Christine's host mom is tying the extra piece of cloth around her obi.

When all of that has been done, it turns out looking like this! Adorable! Right? There are my proud host parents in the background, admiring my host mom's hard work. Putting all of us in these kimonos, after all, took about an hour and a half, I think. (I can't quite remember, but I know it took awhile!) After we put them on, we were supposed to go outside to the Japanese garden.

But it was raining, and you can't really go outside in a kimono in the rain, so we stayed inside, and took pictures there. Here we all are in front of a pair of hung wedding kimonos displayed on the wall. From left to right, it's Christine's host mom Kiyomi, Li, me, Caitlin, Christine, and my host mom Junko. After we took this picture, we all went downstairs to take pictures. There, we stood just inside the building (and out of the rain) but close enough that you could kind of see the garden out the windows.

Here I am with my host dad, Toshihiro, posing together.

And that is the story of how I once wore a kimono. I wish I owned that beautiful purple fabric! But then again, since I could never dress myself in it, it would be kind of a waste. Better to just have my host mom do it, whenever she's willing.

Trip Blog Post/Part III: Miyajima!

And now, the final full day of our trip!

We went to Miyajima, an island famous because it's a World Heritage Site. And it's a World Heritage Site because it has a Buddhist gate built, not on the island, but in the water off the coast of the island. I am pretty sure this gate is the only one like it. In the world, I mean. Because, really, who would build a Buddhist gate in the water? Who?

Well, these people. They did it. And then I went to see it.

On this island, as well as that amazing gate, there were a lot of deer. A lot of deer. Who were extremely willing to eat our food. As in, they would nose up to people who were sitting down, and literally try to pluck the food from their hands. Anything was good enough. As in, newspaper was good enough. See the picture. That deer was eating a newspaper. But only, I think, because she couldn't get anything better. Which is surprising - most people think deer are pretty darn adorable! There were people feeding them right and left! People with strollers would be feeding deer and letting their toddlers practically climb on top of the things. Very surprising. Those deer were dirty!


On Miyajima, we took a beautiful gondola ride up the mountain, looked out over the ocean at a lot of tiny islands, and took a picture of ourselves jumping in front of the gate in the ocean. It was a fun and interesting day. Quite relaxing, and warm and beautiful.

(This was a shockingly short post! I guess you should just look at the pictures.)

Trip Blog Post/Part II

Dear neglected blog readers,

Are you still there? I would understand if you were not. Because, let's face it - I'm not in Japan anymore. I am back home. In Seattle. Doing much less than I would be doing if I were still at the forefront of time. However, as far as you readers know, I am still in Hiroshima, learning about World War II. So I've decided to fill you all in on the rest of my trip. Even though I'm no longer there. So... this blog post may be dated August 3rd, but please, let's pretend that it is not. Let's pretend that it's sometime before July 25th, and that I am still in Japan.

So, now I shall tell you all about the wonderful aspects of my trip to Osaka, Hiroshima, and Miyajima with Christine, Wendy, and Caitlin. First of all, there was a lot of wonderful food. In Osaka, there was takoyaki, which is amazing, even though you probably wouldn't expect me to like it. I told you about it in my last post, remember? Octopus balls? Yeah, that doesn't make it sound too great, does it? But look at the picture! That is pure delicious. They only have one bit of octopus in the middle, and and then they have all these little green spices and pink pickled somethings thrown in with the dough. (Can you tell I'm an expert on takoyaki? Once I made them with my family! That was certainly not on my trip to Osaka and Hiroshima, but here is a picture anyway, look just below these lines, because I made them and I feel proud... That is me and my host dad, with our chopsticks and the little takoyaki-making device set up over our hot plate.) In Osaka, we went to what we are pretty sure is a super famous takoyaki shop. We can tell because of the outside of the shop, and how elaborate it is, and because we are pretty sure we were in the place where our teacher told us to go. But then, since there are almost no street names in Japan, it was hard to be sure. Anyway, look at that awesome display hanging above the tiny little place where a single man made takoyaki all night long! Isn't it awesome? Those giant takoyaki? they spin. And the restaurant is so small there's barely room for a staircase leading up to the second floor, where you can sit and eat your takoyaki, if you want to. And we wanted to. Why? Well, because there are absolutely no public spaces in Japan. So if you want to sit down somewhere to eat food, you had better sit down at a restaurant. Because, chances are, you will not find a park. Not even one.

Please don't feel discouraged that there aren't many parks in Japan. Because they make up for it by having a lot of great restaurants. For instance here is an adorable little place we found with the help of the woman at our hostel. We came to this tiny, adorable place, instead of to a place called the "Okonomiyaki Village," which is famous, because we had already seen the village. And it was kind of weird and intimidating. It was four floors full of okonomiyaki restaurants, each floor packed with six or seven different establishments. So you would walk in and everyone would be shouting at you to pick them! Pick them! But how were we supposed to know which okonomiyaki restaurant to choose, when we barely even knew what okonomiyaki is anyway? So we left. (I'm getting to an explanation of okonomiyaki, don't worry!) So we told the woman we wanted to get okonomiyaki, and, after we explained we weren't excited by the prospect of the village (which was also overpriced, as far as I can tell, because it is clearly for tourists...) she sent us to this tiny little shop. It was dramatic at first, because, as you can see, it isn't very big, and they were full. So we just decided to walk over there and see whether we could wait at the restaurant. But when we arrived, everyone was just leaving (or leaving for us? Unclear!) so it all turned out very well. The man on the left, wearing a Hiroshima baseball team t-shirt, made us our okonomiyaki.

Now, these things have been compared to pancakes. And they have been compared to pizza. But in Hiroshima, I don't think either of those descriptions was very accurate. It was just okonomiyaki. Which means, "what you like, grilled." It has lots of cabbage in it (that's what you see grilling there.) and also an egg, usually, and then either udon or yakisoba noodles, depending on what you prefer. There's also okonomiyaki sauce, which is salty and brown and pretty thick. It's hidden in this picture, under a huge pile of green onions, because this is green onion okonomiyaki. But it's delicious, I'm telling you. We ate it our first night in Hiroshima. And then, because it was so delicious, we went back our second night in Hiroshima to have it again. The man in the Carp t-shirt (who was wearing another one the following day, just a different color) laughed at us. But we felt no shame! We were happy!

We found weirder foods in Osaka, when we detoured about an hour out of our way, got pretty lost, and then got back on track again, all to make it to Carrefour, which is basically the French Costco. Which they have in Japan. We went there to find granola, which we were all missing, and we sort of found some. But what we found in addition to that was much better, and pure Japanese. What takes the cake? Probably the Kit Kat bars. Not just any ordinary Kit Kat bar, mind you, but a special flavor. Vinegar. First, I found lemon vinegar. Of course we wanted to buy it. But so many? And if they were disgusting, what would we do with all that? (We were pretty sure they would be disgusting.) But lemon vinegar Kit Kat bars! How could we pass up the opportunity to buy that?! Well, there was only one way. And it was called Apple Vinegar Kit Kat bars. Not in a bag, just in a little box. Because in Japan, almost nothing comes in just one layer of packaging. So what would just be in a little plastic wrapper in the US was in a plastic wrapper and a box in Japan. Anyway, what's important is that we bought it. And on the train from Osaka to Kanazawa, about to be back in school mode, we tried it. And apple vinegar Kit Kat bars were kind of good! Who knew?! Certainly not us. We never saw them again in Japan. Or anyway, I didn't. I can't say for sure that no one else did either. But I never saw them again in Japan. But just that one time, they were pretty delicious. Other things we found at Carrefour are pictured at right. Secret Hi Chew, which didn't have a label on the packaging, so you had to guess what you were eating from a list on the back of the packaging, and star-shaped rice crackers, which had faces on the tiny individual plastic packaging, but not on the cracker itself, and Choco Pie, which are delicious and made in Korea, and bananas which you may have heard of before.

And that is the story of food on our trip around Japan. Stay tuned for tales of the Miyajima gate, spoiled deer, and other adventures outside of Kanazawa in Trip Blog Post/Part III, coming soon.

Trip Blog Post/Serious

My faithful blog readers,

It's finally time to tell you about my trip away from Kanazawa! When was this trip, you ask? Last weekend? Two weeks ago? Well, really... it was in June... I'm sorry! This has been a long time coming! But here we go.

Now, June 25th, a Thursday, was our first of two three-hour final exams. It was very long. But don't worry, because just an hour or so after it was over, I had boarded a bus to Osaka, and I was very happy. Wendy, Caitlin and I rode a double-decker bus for five hours to get there. What is convenient about Japanese buses (although I've never really ridden any in other countries to compare... not for 5 hours anyway) is that they stop every few hours to let you stretch and go to the bathroom. So we were really fine.

And then we were in Osaka! The second biggest city in Japan! And... there was very little to do! We met up with Christine at our hostel, and set out for the "hip" area of Osaka, which we knew how to get to thanks to one of our teachers. There, at about 8:ooPM, we ate takoyaki for dinner. Takoyaki, as you may or may not know, are made of octopus and a flour-y dough. They are about the size of golfballs, and they are delicious! I will take you to eat them in New York, New York friends. Seattle friends, please come visit me!

So we ate takoyaki, and we set out to search for dessert. We searched. And we searched. But everything was CLOSED. At about 9PM on a Thursday night! Why?!? Some big city... We left Osaka, sort of disappointed, Friday morning, and rode the train to Hiroshima.

Hiroshima is, of course, famous for having been destroyed. So this is where my normally light and cheery blog has no choice but to get a bit darker for a post or so.

Hiroshima was beautiful while I was there - no sign, of course, of the 60-year-old history. But of course we went first to the Peace Park, so the invisible damage was on all of our minds. It was sad, to look at the one ruined building preserved in the park, but mostly it was inspiring to finally see the statue of Sadako Sasaki, with her thousands of paper cranes folded all over the world, and the eternal flame dedicated to the dead. You don't turn a nuclear bombing into something positive, but the park calls for peace, adn I didn't feel guilt, but hope, at the determination to look to the future following the travesty of the bomb.

But then we went to the museum.

We went to the free exhibit in the basement first, sort of arbitrarily. It was a single bright, museum-style room, with a large free-standing sign in its center, announcing that the exhibit was a collection of pictures drawn by people who had experienced the bomb, but made many decades later. The museum, this plaque told me, has hundreds of these pictures, voluntarily sent by survivors. Every month, the museum chooses a new theme, and displays 30 or so pictures that fit that theme.

In June, the theme was labor groups - during World War II, labor was at such a premium that middle- and high-schoolers were removed from school to do manual labor. The artists whose drawings were shown in June were all working in Hiroshima when the bomb fell.

Every picture was worse than the last. I passed around the room, feeling like I might faint. I have read about Hiroshima - facts, dates. Pictures of that famous mushroom cloud are barely meaningful anymore. But these were not pictures of the nuclear bomb. These were drawings - memories of the bomb hitting people.

I am having trouble allowing myself to remember the pictures, and their two-to-three sentence descriptions. These people, who drew and described melting skin, naked, charred, bloated children drowning in rivers in which they sought relief, and the bright rain of radiation falling down on their heads, these people were the survivors. These were the ones who had experienced such a small percentage of the damage that they lived to 60 and 70 years old. These were the experiences of the lucky. And all of their pictures were of students, still wearing school uniforms, 12 and 13 and living through a nuclear bomb with not an adult in sight. Not the typical coming of age.

How does one know something like this? How do you remember this and act normally? How do you forget it? I can't figure it out. It is too late for blame - the people who made the decision are long out of power, and I do not expect that it can ever be made again. The survivors are dwindling - this is truly fading into the past.

But I am learning its true horror for the first time - what am I to do with my new information?

I don't really know. But I guess it's always better to know than not to know. Right? Maybe? I don't know! So there we are. I know some things. I don't know other things. I guess I'll just keep thinking.

Host Family!

Dear blog readers,

Today I am tired. I spent 5.5-6 hours listening to speeches today. That is too long. Luckily, tonight I am headed to Disneyland, so I'm feeling hopeful.

But you know what is starting to feel close? My homecoming! It's a little strange. Before coming to Japan, I could think of nothing else. And now I've started to think about after Japan, and it's weird - because it's always a little weird, isn't it, when the future all of a sudden really feels like it's going to happen.

But none of you want to hear about that now, do you? Much better to hear about Japan while I'm here, right? Right. So today? My host family!

Remember? Those guys I live with? Yeah! Today, finally a picture of them!! Yay! Okay, there they are... Cutie, right? They are the ones in the front. The ones giving the thumbs up signals. His name is Toshihiro, but I call him Otousan. Her name is Junko, but I call her Okaasan. Because they are my parents!

I like my host parents a lot. Yay! They love children - they used to run a toy shop, and then at the same time they started a cram school/after-school program. Why don't they have kids, though?! That is the biggest mystery of my life with them. But it's not a big dealk, because they have me, and Air Force brothers, and Laura (who arrived last week). Last night thye told us that they ALWAYS have students, except sometimes in the winter when no one wants to come.

They are so fascinating! But mostly they are just the nicest ever. And really I just wanted to post a picture for you all to see. So, there they are! My parents... (The ones in the back of the picture are Caitlin's parents! Or, her dad and grandma. They're nice too! And they grow fruit - I'm so jealous...)

Food Foible #3 (?)

Yesterday, I ate raw egg for dinner. Well, all right, that’s an exaggeration. I ate other things, too. But everything I ate was coated in raw egg. So, Mom, if I get salmonella, it is partially your fault – you always told me life wasn’t worth living if we couldn’t eat cookie dough, and I figured, if I eat cookie dough, I might as well eat other forms of raw egg. If the Romans are doing it, anyway…

And the Romans (aka my host parents…) were doing it. It was my host father’s birthday! (I didn’t ask how old he was turning.) So we ate sukiyaki. Which is, apparently, a very famous Japanese food. You’ve heard of it, right? Or anyway the song with that name? They asked me about it, which made me feel silly, because I’ve heard that they named a Japanese song after food to make it easier for English-speaking audiences to pronounce. But I’ve never actually heard the song. So that was an interesting dinner conversation.

Anyway, sukiyaki – in the states, we don’t usually do it with the raw egg, now, do we? I’m sure, if you’ve had sukiyaki, you’re familiar with the fashionable tendency to call the cast iron pot you cook it in a “nabe,” which just means pot in Japanese, and with the variety of ingredients bubbling away in the pot – beef, lots of mushrooms, cabbage, etc. My favorite part were these 1-inch diameter brown smushy rounds called “fuu” (and aspirate the f, now please – no real ‘f’s in Japanese, that’s why when my host family first told me about my Air Force brothers, I heard Air Horse, remember?). Yes. “Fuu.” Delicious! Mostly because, as I discovered, they are made of flour – my host mother had to look on the packaging to see what they were made of – no one could remember. So these little dense but fluffy flour-rounds soak up all that delicious soy sauce and salt and vegetable juice that’s hanging out in the nabe, and then they get great-tasting. So I ate a lot of those. And the other things. (Yes, even mushrooms. Yes, even beef…)

BUT, you haven’t forgotten the reason this was weird, have you? Of course not. But even if you have, don’t worry - I’ll give you a little review. It was weird because we had a little extra dish at each of our places, and in it was a raw egg – we whisked it ourselves, with our chopsticks, and then dipped everything we ate into it before we put it in our mouths.

So let’s call this Food Foible #3. It may be #4. It may only be #2 (Food Foible #1 I remember clearly – sashimi + Callie = just a little bit of gagging. But could there have been others? Probably! ) Not because it was gross but because I thought it would be – it was really pretty fine – you barely tasted it. BUT I still felt very aware of the fact that I was eating raw egg.

So, it was weird. Not something I’m bringing back home with me, that’s for sure.

New Month, New Post (About Old Topics...)

Today, July began. (For me, anyway. I love the forefront of time!) This means that summer is really getting going. And that I have only about 4 weeks left in Japan! This, clearly, is pretty scary - I guess I feel like I've been here for awhile, but not really. According to my blog posts, though, I've barely gotten here! I have a lot to catch you guys up on, starting with a miraculous place called "Kagaya."

You guys would ALL love Kagaya. I promise you. I don't know how you would go there, though, because it costs $500 per night. I mean, you could do it. It's actually pretty worth it, if you ever want to splurge. A lot. I don't know how they got us all in!! All of our host families were jealous.

So, now that I've gotten you all excited, let me actually tell you about it... We arrived at Kagaya, which is north of Ishikawa, after a long busride, with many stops at famous sights along the way - we visited a beach, for instance, and stopped at several temples and shrines. (One girl fell into the water - she arrived at Kagaya wet...) (The picture is an illustration of what I do at shrines. No! Not really! I am mostly very respectful! I also like to pretend to be awesome demon/protector/I-don't-know-whats...)

So we were all kind of already tired, it being the afternoon, and we were delighted to have arrived at our hotel. What we were not expecting, though, was the line of over ten kimono-wearing women waiting to bow us into the hotel. They took our bags, which had been tagged with our names so they knew where to took them, and a few of them peeled away to lead us inside. We entered through glass doors, and everyone around us - both the women wearing kimonos, and other hotel personnell - bowed and smiled, repeating "Irasshaimase" over and over again. (This means welcome, or come in, or something like that.)

I felt a bit intimidated - we were all getting the $500 treatment, despite having paid nothing. I felt like a fake! I cannot give a big tip! I thought. What should I do?! Will they hate me after we leave?! This was just panic, though. I know they weren't expecting a tip. They were very kind as they led us into a huge ballroom full of neatly arranged tables, at which we sat, and watched a demonstration of the tea ceremony. This was cool, but we'd already participated, which was cooler, so I wasn't exactly riveted. (Factoid for those of you who are interested, though: Japanese green tea, "matcha" is SO bitter that you have to eat something sweet before you drink it! That's literally what you do at the tea ceremony - eat something as close to pure sugar as you can stomach, and then swallow the tea fast so that it's bearable. Hmmm...)

What was SHOCKING was what happened when we were preparing to leave. Before we had time to walk through the doors, one entire WALL of the room we were in lifted up to allow us to leave! Unnecessary? Yes. But awesome? Also yes. Next, the ceiling parted in the middle to reveal a huge skylight! This is in a two-story tall, room, let me remind you, that could fit 100s of people easily - this was a seriously large vaulted skylight. I'm telling you. It was really cool!

After this, our constant companions - the kimono clad women, slash employees of Kagaya - led us to our rooms. We had to take off our shoes to enter, and when we came back, they had dissappeared, replaced by flip-flops! I was nervous, until someone found the cupboard where they had placed our shoes. That was the last I saw of them until we left the following morning... We wandered through our suite of rooms, this being me and my new acquaintances my three roommates Lindsay, Li, and Ana. We had a beautiful view of the sea, and two low tables in the main room. There was no sign of any beds.

Before we had time to comment on this, our personal kimono-wearing guide returned with another round of tea and sweets. I tried to keep my grimace to myself, and I enjoyed the sweets - a strange purple jelly-thing (Japanese people love jelly, which they call "zerii") with red-bean inside. No sooner had our guide taken away the empty tea things than she returned with another woman, both of whom informed us that they were going to dress us in yukata (light summer kimonos). We, embarrassed, allowed ourselves to be dressed, and smiled awkwardly at each other.

Fully dressed, legs tight together because our yukata didn't let us move them very much, we were led down to an outdoor porch-like area, where they had set up a festival for us! We made cotton candy, received fans and candy, and fished for rubber bouncy balls in a fast-moving stream of water. (This last activity was poorly explained, I apologize. I don't know how to do it better concisely, though. Just invent your own idea of what it was like!)

Next we went into dinner in a huge tatami-mat lined room, where we were served, again, by our good friends the kimono-wearers. We had sashimi. We had yakisoba. We had tempura. We drank tea and juice and water. It was the biggest meal I've ever experienced, and everything was delicious. Partway through, we paused to watch a drum performance. Later, we all got up to MAKE mochi! We used the traditional, incredibly heavy hammer and everything. (There's me! I'm not exactly going to open my own shop, but I succeeded in pounding that rice!)

It was a long meal. We finished at 9 or 10 pm, and after taking a few pictures, (at left, one example of many. New friends, and me, from left to right: Julie, DongHwa, me!, Wendy, and Christine. After leaving dinner, we set out to make use of Kagaya's most famous, and important, amenity - baths! Yes, as Americans, we were not used to sharing a bath with many many other people. I was also really not used to getting into 40C water at all. So it was a steep learning curve. But when we discovered an outdoor, but secluded, bath, we were very happy and comfortable. So I will return to the U.S. able to say that I have been to an "onsen" (Japanese for "hot spring") and that I liked it. Wow.

Next we slept on futons (exciting!) and awoke early for a very large breakfast. A very satisfying one-night stay at the best hotel/resort I will probably ever experience.

And that, my friends, was the story of one beautiful night at Kagaya.

(Today's photos provided by Christine K., because I forgot my flash drive... Thank you Christine!)