Sorry peeps, John has been visiting for the past two weeks. But the stories shall continue...
The week of 11th October:
As you may remember, I began this week with not much of a voice. Undeterred, I ploughed on through lessons and everyday activities, such as a pilgrimage to see the Homo Sausage. Calle had been promising to show me this amazing product at some point (no comments please) and one evening, he knocked on my door to invite me on this holy quest. The Homo Sausage is a processed fish sausage, which Calle assures me has a wonderful floppy texture when removed from the packaging. Here you can see Calle modelling the Homo Sausage for the (homo)market:
The trip to the supermarket proved fruitful beyond laughing at phallic-shaped items. Everything was 20% which led to some Haagen-Dazs Chocolate Fondants becoming resident in my freezer, although not for long :-)
Unfortunately, the excitement of Japanese supermarket shopping got to me and the next day, my cough returned with a vengeance. During a discreet visit to the toilets to cough and blow my noise (NEVER blow your nose in public in Japan - it's very rude, apparently), I was traumatised by an encounter with an overly-friendly toilet cleaning lady. After I emerged from the cubicle, she proceeded to ask me a host of questions in Japanese.
おばあさん (old lady): Are you OK?
Me: Yes, I'm fine.
おばあさん : Do you have a cold?
Me: Yes, I have a bit of a cold. It's OK.
おばあさん : Do you smoke?
Me: No. I don't smoke.
おばあさん : Do you drink?
Me: (thinking she was telling me to drink something for my throat) Yes....(seeing her face) No! I don't drink alcohol. Water. Tea. No alcohol!
In Japan, there are a lot of questions you're not allowed to ask, apparently, due to "privacy", or so our teacher tells us. I'm wondering why the above interaction would not be considered an invasion of privacy. Or maybe they don't apply to a dirty, drinking, smoking gaijin, coughing her lungs out in the loo. I did sound pretty rough.
Friday Field Trip to Kamakura!
Kamakura is a very beautiful town about an hour from Tokyo. It's near the sea, surrounded by beautiful trees, contains many temples and shrines and is a site of historical significance. I would tell you why but I don't actually know. I'm a bad student and didn't exactly absorb my little info pack. All I knew was that Kamakura sounds like a field trip win!
I was a little anxious before we set off on the trip. We were to be partnered with "buddies" - volunteer students from Nihon Unviersity - whom we were to talk in Japanese with for the whole day. Given the early start, the prospect of a bus journey making small talk with VERY limited language ability could be exceedingly awkward. Fortunately, my buddy, Eri, was awesome and as 元気 (genki; energetic, lively) as me, who wasn't at all bothered at my limited Japanese making an occasional appearance in the river of English that inevitably flowed from me. Here we are discovering, shaking hands through a rather fun tree:
The tree had its revenge at being molested in such a way by cursing my face when I posed for an individual shot. It is probably the worst photo of myself ever:
To the actual events of the day, we started the trip with some zazen, a Buddhist meditation practice. This involves sitting in a large room on mats in silence for periods of 30 minutes. The catch: can you sit in lotus or half-lotus position for 30 minutes without moving to relieve the pain? I could sit in neither position properly and the monk, although strict on some of the others, obviously gave me up for a lost cause very early on. Maybe it was the shiny purple leggings that made me look more suited to an eighties disco. They were definitely at odds with the main idea, which is to get away from the busyness of everyday life and everyday thoughts. "We would even stop breathing if we could", so we were told.
The first 20-minute round passed slowly and with considerable discomfort. But on the second 30-minute round, I really felt calm and the time flashed by! You have to keep your eyes open and this leads to the most bizarre day-dreams/semi-hallucinations. Faces and dancing figures appeared on the back of Tom's jumper, and wiggled there way in and out of my vision. Crazy stuff.
At the end of the session, the monk demonstrated with a large flat stick how they hit people who fall asleep during zazen. Tom P volunteered first, then Urvesh, then Peter Sensei. And I was just hoping that it was something girls could do. Then, Eri, my buddy, stuck up her hand and was struck twice on each shoulder blade. So then it had to be my turn. It didn't hurt very much and left a rather pleasant tingly sensation! (OK so maybe I did feel a little stiff the next morning...)
After this cultural practice, we were then treated to a vegetarian lunch eaten by the monks. It was very おいしい (delicious)!
After that, we visited some temples. I paid 100yen for
a fortune (pulling a coded stick out of a box), only to receive the worst fortune you could get,
including some great advice on relationships ("Although the fact is twisted, it will soon become clear." Great, twisted relationships. Thank you, Fate, thanks very much). I later set off on an epic quest for chocolate ice-cream as I'm no fan of the green-tea and sweet potato flavours. I bought a mini-double from Baskins Robbins, got a lucky dip and won a Halloween bookmark. Well, Fate, obviously didn't hate me too much. Or maybe the best things in life are free...
The day in Kamakura ended with a visit to the Daibutsu - Giant Buddha. Here he is in all his glory:
We then returned to Tokyo for some traditional Japanese dance. We arrived late and only saw the final third, which lasted for only half an hour. Tragic? No. No way. I am perhaps the most awfully uncultured person ever but in my shattered state, I failed to find any beauty in this performance. The music was plinky-plonky and jarring, and the heavily made-up man and woman moved in very slow boring steps, like puppets. I wished I was a puppet by the end. Someone could tweak my strings and make my arms and legs move my body towards the door.
Sunday: Veggie Food Festival
Meat is expensive. As it turns out, so are vegetables as well. So if there's a trade-off, I'm definitely going for the fibre, vitamins and nutrients over the protein. The result: I only cook vegetarian food in the evenings and I'm pretty interested in vegetarian cookery.
So on Sunday, Calle, actual vegetarian, and me, nightly vegetarian, set off to a Veggie Food Festival to check out its sumptuous and tantalising offerings. I tend to find with festivals that the food always looks amazing yet whatever I end up choosing is always mildly disappointing. Calle and I set about sharing three different food items to avoid such problems. Sadly I was right in that our food was surprisingly bland and tasteless, aside from the cheap veggie dumplings! Alas! Nevertheless we were amused by the following pictures. Anyone for the loving hut?
We then hit Harajuku and Ometesando for some shopping. Not only did we share a cheesecake, strawberry and chocolate ice-cream crepe which was infinitely more satisfying than the veggie festival food, but we visited the wonderfully futuristic Uniclo T-shirt store. All T-shirts come in plastic tubes stored round the walls, many depicting famous anime series (Calle couldn't resist the Ghost in the Shell T-shirt).
We also found some shop namesakes.
Cannabis:
Freak:
More updates coming soon!
