Mochitsuki at the temple!

Sorry, guys I didn't get to get on my computer last night, so yesterday's blog entry was published today, so go read it first!! :D


It was so nice and sunny today, so in Japan that means you clean the house. I know, weird right? Because in America it's the opposite. You go out when it sunny and stay in and clean when it rains.

Well since we don't have a dryer here, we do laundry on sunny days and hang it outside and then clean the house and open all the windows to air it out.

So afte breakfast today, Yuko told me I had to tidy up my room and do my wash. Which was perfect because I'd wanted to finally do my wash today! 

I was a bit put off at first when I realized I had to hang my underwear outside for everyone to see haha and so tried to hang it behind all my socks and stuff, but after a while, I just didn't care anymore.

Then I cleaned and vacuumed my room! I felt so accomplished because I never do that in America unless people are coming over or it's the end of the year and I'm moving out haha.

Since today was warm again (getting up to 54), I wore my new kitty tights yaaaay!

(Such a cute bag!)

(My legs are so cute ahhh)

And I didn't know until I opened them that the backs of them had tails!!

I'm dying guys. This is so, so cute. I'm obsessed with these. My sister wants me to buy her a pair too haha.

The only problem is these tights are super cheap so they tear really easily. I already have a bunch of runs in the ones I wore yesterday as well as these. :( I got an actual mini hole in my star ones from my bike pedal which made me so mad!

(See it, under the kitty's mouth? Sadness D: )

Anyway, then I played more Crazy 8s with Miyabi (she loves that game now!) and she won one and I won one.

For lunch we had really yummy yakisoba! :P

Oh and at breakfast Yuko served us furikake she'd bought (I think she might have bought it because I was saying how much I liked it the other night)!

We also had this mikan jello stuff Yuko made, which was really good!

So something I keep doing that's bad that I really need to work on, is...

I talk with my hands a lot, so when I'm eating, I'm waving my chopsticks all over the place. Yuko told me a couple of days ago that that's bad to do because it not polite, but I keep forgetting and doing it again! Ahhh someone help me.

After lunch, Miyabi wrote me notes and then used these awesome pens on them. Let me tell you guys about these pens.

They're like white-out pens, but instead of white-out tape, they have tape with cute little pictures on it!! And you buy one pen and then different tapes you can pop in and out of it.

So kawaii, Japan!

(Miyabi's tape collection)

I really like the cupcake one, it had all these cute pictures of sweets on it!

I need to find out where to buy these!

Miyabi and I also like playing this game where whenever we're talking and she says a word I don't know, we both go over to my phone and google translate it lol. I've learned so many new words this way!

Like on Friday in project work class, I was telling the sensei I wanted to do maple festivals for my the matsuri in the fall that I'm going to research and she told me "maple" in Japanese was "momiji" so I was like okay, cool.

But Miyabi taught me "kaede" was in fact maple. And she was right! So I looked up what momiji was and google translate says it means "chicken foot!" Lol wtf?

Miyabi also taught me how to put the little quotation marks on Japanese characters using my phone! I'd never known how to do that.

Like は -> ば

So awesome!!

At 1, I had to leave to take the JR, the subway, and another then another train. Because I was meeting a high school friend of one of my friends from Tech! Her name is Una and she invited me to come to a temple with her to make mochitsuki (rice cakes).

On my bike I almost had a crash. This junior high kid cut right in front of me because he didn't realize I was coming up behind him. But he said sumimasen! A lot of people were staring at me biking in my super short skirt... I mean I only wore it because you couldn't see the cats as well in my othe skirt because it covered them a little. Ah I don't like biking in clothes like these! I'm pretty sure if you'd looked at me head on you would have seen up my skirt haha. That's why I rode really fast.

The trains weren't crowded at all which was nice! Although on the JR this fat American dude was taking up 1.5 seats, so he just put his backpack on the .5 of a seat left next to him. This is a huge nono in Japan, and I guess his Japanese friend (who sat across the aisle from him) was too nice to tell him so. 

I got off the Meijo line at Sakae Eki and then got to take the Meitetsu Seto line for the first time! This train was so much nicer than the subway! 

It was pink and purple instead of puke green and it was really empty!

Guess which section I sat in?

Yup, ピンク! ;P

Yay I got to see outside again! 

On the subway, it's underground (duh) so I never get to see outside and have to resort to people watching (but that's ok because it's usually people my age who are interesting to watch haha).

But I got to admire the view on this train!

When I got to the station, Una was waiting for me at the ticket area. 

And guys I made a decision that yesterday would be the last day that I rode the trains for free. Well, actually I was forced to make that decision because there wasn't a dude to take my money at this station (it was like the Long Island railroad stations, small with one exit/entrance) and I didn't want to sneak through with Una there, so I went ahead and charged my card so it won't beep red again for a long time. Aka it has $10 on it now.

Una took me to a nearby temple. It didn't really look like a temple and she told me that was because it was new, but they worshipped Buddha there and everything so it was still a legit temple.

We watched a guy pounding mochi with what was called a kune (basically a giant wooden hammer). 

 

 

 

Then he let me have a turn! I sucked because the kune was super heavy so I couldn't hit it had enough haha. Everyone shouted "yorishou" or something like that to cheer people on. This one old dude was really good. He hit it so effing hard!

Everyone's smiling at my struggles...

 

 

  

 

 

Then they gave me special Texas mochi! Lol it was mochi covered in powdered soy bean and then they'd Texanized it by adding chocolate syrup and sprinkles!

Una had told everyone my name was Keito and I was from Texas, so everyone was using my name and asking me about Texas. I really felt included despite being the only foreigner there.

After that, Una took me upstairs. First we went in to greet Buddha. We went into this beautiful room with lots of gold and she showed me how to kneel on the mat and put my hands together and bow super deeply. 

She told me that sometimes weddings an funerals were held in this room. I could read the kanji in the middle of the paper hangings - it said "heaven"!

After saying hi to Buddha, we walked into this room that where there was a wall of those rice paper sliding doors like in traditional Japanese houses in front of us. We took off our shoes. Then Una asked me what level of Japanese I was in and told me in this room, no English would be spoken.

I was thinking shiiitt! But it turned out fine! Una introduced me to everyone and told me this was where they had ocha jikan (tea time). It was a little cafe that Una told me she and some friends started. She and all her friends were wearing cute waiter and waitress uniforms with matching red bows. I knelt with some guys around a table and we drank tea and ate okashi. The okashi was really good!

The guy next to me was pretty cute and he talked to me in Japanese. Then this girl who was good friends with Una joined us (everyone told me their names but I forgot because I'm so bad at names! I only remember one girl's nickname was Ashi because Una told me when she was little she always said "ashi" instead of watashi (I)). Anyway, this girl had graduated from Nanzan three years ago, so her English was pretty good. She told me how the English textbook Japanese people use is called New Horizons, so I told everyone ours is called Genki and they all thought that was an awesome name for a textbook!

So I talked to her and the guy for a while until Una invited me back downstairs to watch them making the mochitsuki again. It was sooo hard to stand up! My legs hurt so badly from sitting on them. I had to grab the top of the doorway to keep from falling over! Fuck, I'm scared for tea ceremony.

When we got downstairs the guy was just finishing up the last of the mochitsuki. Oh well! So we went inside and I got I help everyone make the mochi dish! I pulled apart the mochi (it was soo hard because it was so sticky!) and then put it in the soy bean powder or anko. Then the girls next to me rolled it around in there and put it on plates. My hands got so messy!

Then we ate mochi! Everyone was trying the Texas style mochi haha. It was a big hit!! I tried the anko mochi too and it was good. :)

After that, Una had disappeared so her friend from Nanzan took me back upstairs. There, Una gave me sake (rice wine). My first time having real sake in Japan! It was good! I liked it a lot better than the sake imitations in Japanese restaurants in America. 

(Ginormous sake bottle)

The guy next to me (who worked at the cafe too) struck up a conversation with me completely in Japanese because he didn't know English. We talked for a really long time. He was nice and talked slowly and clearly so I could understand. We talked a lot about various festivals an he showed me pictures of festivals he'd been to. Then I taught him about the penis festival haha. He looked it up on his phone (I'd used the Japanese name when I told him about it - honen matsuri) and clicked on this page where this huge picture of the giant penis they carry at the festival popped up and he was like "ohh" hahahahaha. I died.

After us had my first two tiny cups of sake, Una asked "yoparatta?" 

And I was like ohh that means was it good? (idiot Cate, that's yokatta?)

So I nodded and said hai!

Yeah... I remembered a second later after she commented how red my cheeks were that she was asking if I was drunk. Lawlz. 

I only ended up have three of those tiny cups of sake so I was good. I mean, I drink way more than that at home and I'm fine.

Then this older guy who was like 30 came over to chat and poured me my third cup. He was a bit tipsy. He asked if I had a boyfriend back home haha.

Then he talked to me about my dreams for the future and the work I do back home and stuff. He was pretty cool. He had a samurai bun lol.

Here's the awesome tatami tea room (it had a kitchen too!):

(These were the people behind me. I didn't sit with them)

(Bows the staff wore. The girl is Ashi)

(The kitchen was behind the screen thing)

(Tatami hangings)

At 5:30 I decided I'd better leave to get back to my host family in time for dinner, so I said goodbye to everyone and arigatou gozaimashita and Una walked me back to the station.

There I waited a bit for the train to come.

When it came, I got on and sat across from this old dude who kept glaring at me.

Then I accidentally got off a stop too early because the stop was called Sakaemachi, which means Sakae City, so I was like, oh another name for Sakae! Yeah, no. I asked the ticket guy if this station was Sakae and he was like, nope, one more stop.

F that.

Luckily the next train came like 2 seconds later.

(Me mad in Sakaemachi. Note my bright yellow nametag. Also note my red cheeks from the sake lol.)

When I got home, Yuko and Ken laughed their asses off at my nametag and the fact that I'd worn it on the train haha.

Miyabi was sleeping, so it was just the three of us who had dinner.

We had cabbage, chicken, tofu, and mushrooms boiled in a hotpot (the pot sits on a burner on the table and you grab your food out of it). They had the meat raw on the side and just plopped it in the pot to cook it.

They did that with raw eggs another night, which kinda freaked me out, but I guess the eggs got cooked thoroughly and everything.

When we were done with the vegetables, we put rice in the hot pot and had that with nori on top. It was good!

Also, during dinner I asked Yuko and Ken what "chigau" meant because I've been hearing it a lot. They told me it was another way to say no, so I asked if it was more polite than "iie", and then they launched into this whole discussion about how "iie" is never really used and pondering what people say instead. It was awesome listening to them haha. But yeah, apparently no one ever says "iie", that's only for textbooks haha. Now I know!

After dinner, I got my wash from outside but didn't get to fold it because I got really, really sick. Like, the kind of sick I get when I eat too much ice cream or pizza. But I haven't had any milk products and Yuko and Ken have been super careful not to serve me any, so the only thing I can think that it might have been was the mochi. Idk. I felt terrible though, ugh.
Anyway I managed to take a shower and finish up this entry, but I'm ready for bed because tomorrow's another super packed day.
I'm busy from 8am to after 8pm. Whoo!
BUT I GET TO SEE AYUKO!!!!! AHHHHHHHHH!
I haven't seen her in a almost a year, so I'm super excited! :)