The first trip I went on with the school was a trip to a Yusentei Koen for a tea ceremony.

Apparently, the Kuroda family—one of the strongest samurai families in Japan—own the house and use it as their summer house. I’ve always wanted to go to a traditional Japanese mansion, and I’m so happy I got to go there.

It was so peaceful and beautiful and there were gorgeous green trees everywhere.

Also, there is a pond with colorful koi fish swimming around. Our class was given a packet with little round greenish brown things inside for us to feed to the koi. Some of the koi fish ate directly out of people’s hands! It was super cool to see. Naturally, I wanted to try it myself but the fish wouldn’t swim near me…

That’s okay though, because before the tea ceremony started, I fed a pigeon out of my hand. I had my hand held out with food in it, and I didn’t think the pigeons would actually land in my hand and peck food out of it. I thought they were shy. I guess I was wrong. It was so much fun though! After that, the pigeons kept hopping after us on the trail hoping for more food, but we had none.

The tea ceremony itself was very refreshing and relaxing.

Sipping tea while overlooking the koi pond was such an amazing experience and I’m very happy I got a chance to visit the Yusentei Koen during my trip to Japan.

Yesterday’s activity making ramen and gyoza was so much fun.

I have eaten ramen and gyoza many times and I have previously only cooked the instant ramen and frozen gyoza. This was the first time making ramen and gyoza from scratch. After this experience, I want to buy a pasta maker. Explanation for cooking the ramen and gyoza was in Japanese and I could understand most of it, so it was a really good listening practice.

Yesterday, there were some middle school students on a field trip at the cooking school and I was able to speak to some of the students and teacher in Japanese. I was glad to get to practice speaking with people outside of my NILS classmates and teachers at the cooking school.

Overall, this was a very memorable experience.

Yesterday, our field trip was to a cooking class. The name of the cooking school was Child’s Kitchen and it definitely was true to the name. Everything was extremely low to the ground. So halfway through cooking, my back started aching badly. I still had a lot of fun though. I enjoyed learned how to cook in Japanese. There was a Japanese elementary school class learning at the same time. They were the most well-behaved gradeschoolers I’ve ever seen.

In America if you’re going somewhere and you see a bunch of gradeschoolers, your whole trip is ruined. I would actually go as far as to say I don’t mind them being there. I only wish that my classmates didn’t only speak in Japanese when it was required. I’m like the only one who wants to speak in only Japanese. Other than barely speaking any Japanese the whole trip, I had a lot of fun. And, of course, the food we made was delicious.

We took another enjoyable and edifying excursion into Hakata culture.

Hirose sensei helped us understand the historical and cultural basis for the upcoming Yamakasa Matsuri (Festival) through her introduction at school and then at the museum and the shrine.

The exhibits at the museum were terrific and the video showed us what to expect on July 15th when the Matsuri concludes with a big bang at 4:58am!!

To see the shrine to which all the floats circle was also an added treated.

Great day!!

This week’s trip was to Furusatokan and the Kushida-Jinja. The museum showcases life and culture of Hakata, mainly of the Meiji and Taisho eras. It was interesting to see how life in hakata used to be. We then watched a fifteen minute video on an upcoming festival that was also going to be one of our field trips. After the museum we went next door where they had multiple looms for making Obi. The climax of the trip was supposed to be us attempting to use the loom. For me, it felt completely lack-luster. The lady taught us how to use the machine, and we each got to use the loom for about 1 minute each. I found it more interesting to watch a professional work on her own complicated loom, than use the simple loom myself.

After browsing the gift shop, we went across the street to Kushida-Jinja. By this point, I’ve been to four shrines in the Fukuoka region; so if the shrine doesn’t have anything to separate it from other shrines. We were at the shrine for probably 10 minutes, and then we left. Overall, the trip was fun.

Tanabata is the Star Festival held on July 7. It is based on the legend in which two stars in love, Altair and Vega, who are split apart on opposite sides of the Milky Way, are allowed to meet once a year on this night by the Emperor of the universe.

Sasa kazari 

In old days, people prayed to become clever with their hands on this day. This custom remains today. People write down their wishes on strips of poetry paper in five different colors and hang them on branches of bamboo trees.

We introduce this culture to the short program students and teach them how to write their wishes in Japanese.

Before I came to Japan, I think this was the activity I was looking forward to the most. I have always been fascinated by dolls in general from all over Asia.

The shop we went to was small, but carries countless dolls. Most are traditional, but there are some more modern, cute ones as well. Besides the traditional looking Hakata dolls, there were also Hello Kitty ones, and one or two Western looking ones.

We each chose a doll to paint, and were given about 2 hours to paint them. I chose to paint a “Maiko”, or apprentice Geisha. I chose that doll because it really looked Japanese.  However, I made the mistake of choosing a fairly big doll, and I’m also a perfectionist. I was rushing at the end to finish painting it. Turns out I forgot to paint the shoes to! Either way, it was fun painting these blank dolls.

You will feel like you’re in 17th century Japan painting a doll for yourself or someone else. This activity also gives you a chance to be creative, which is always a good thing. 

When I come back to Japan again with my friends, I will DEFINITELY bring them here! 

This week we went into Hakata to check out a store that sells ningyou, or Japanese dolls.

Before that we got short history lesson about the tax system in Fukuoka and learned that if you couldn’t pay money you could pay with rice or other goods that you made such as ningyou. Due to this Hakata ningyou came to be known far and wide for their quality.

I like it when we tie the activity into the culture. It really helps to cement the information.

Once we got to the store I was blown away by the quality of the dolls. I knew they would be good but they were fantastic. I couldn’t even tell they had been painted. The range was impressive as well. From delicate ladies, masculine samurai, all the way down to cute children dancing.

After getting the chance to look around and put the fire to our inspiration we were given the choice of dolls to paint. It was a good cross section so that there would definitely be something that would interest everyone. I chose a cute dancing child as my doll and then sat down to paint.

There was a good selection of paints. Enough to be able to mix any color I could want. We were provided with only two brushes though. I kind of wish we could have gotten one more super fine brush but the two we received managed to get the job done. I have always liked art and painting so this is by far the activity I have enjoyed the most.

Painting calms me and I really lost track of time and before I knew it was almost up. I managed to create something I was happy with but I easily could have spent all day painting it. I most definitely want to come back and paint another one.

On Friday 6/12 we were treated to something I have wanted to do for quite a while.

We got to practice the art of Shodou or Japanese calligraphy. It is a beautiful art that uses solely ink to create stunning paintings or works only using words as art.

Shodou has even transcended to the level of performance art as some people perform it writ large in front a huge audience. I have watched some videos of the performances and they are truly breathtaking.  So I was not unduly excited to try my hand at it.

To start the teacher gave us some background and showed us some examples of what could be done. It was a good way to get our imaginations really cranking so that we could put our souls onto the canvas with a brush. We then went over the brushes and readied our ink stone with black ink. At this point we were given practice sheets and shown the basics for creating lines both horizontal and vertical as well as circles. What I thought wouldn’t be too difficult turned out to be much harder than I expected. It definitely increased my respect for the people who create such stunning works as I imagine it would take many hours to master this. After burning through a ton of practice sheets to get a feel for how the brush creates lines and testing different amounts of ink on the brush I felt I was ready to step up the actual plate and use the special board for the final product. It was definitely more nerve wracking than I was expecting. I really didn’t want to mess it up. Despite my nerves I managed to create something I was happy with.

Due to this experience I would definitely look into continuing to practice shodou. The fact that we were able to keep our brushes and ink stone after the event only helps with that desire.

Overall this was an extremely fun activity in both being able to learn about an important part of the culture as well as being able to actual participate in creating something of my own.