Hina Matsuri

Girls' Day, or the Doll Festival, is a holiday held on March 3. (Yes, I'm a little late with this post.) It's pretty simple. Girl children will have a set of dolls given to them by their family, and the dolls are put on display for that day.

The doll sets can be very expensive, and many of them are passed on through generations. Here are some my ikebana sensei was setting up at her house during Friday's class.

Here's the whole set:

A close up on the emperor and empress' little house:

The emperor and empress themselves:

And all the other guys:

Sensei's set was really old but in very good condition, and I felt really lucky to get to see it. My only question is why everyone has to go to work and school on Girls' Day. Don't we girls deserve a day off? ;)

Bounenkai

Bounenkai (忘年会) means "year-end party." Last year for my office's bounenkai we ate at a nice Okinawan restaurant in Fukuoka City, spent the night in a business hotel, and then went on our way. This year was different, and I liked it a lot more. (Not that last year's wasn't fun. This year's was just amazing.)

This year we went to Yufuin and stayed in a ryokan, the traditional-style Japanese hotel. This is the building where we ate:

To get from there to the building that held our rooms, we had to cross this:

It went over a small canyon at the bottom of which was a river pretty much covered in snow.

This was my room. I shared it with three other ladies in my section.


Inside, all the standard conveniences were provided:

a TV,

kotatsu,
and bath.

And yes, you're seeing that right; the bath was outside. Well, one of the baths was. There was one inside too. There was also an onsen, the hot springs/public bath.

The men's onsen is behind the blue door, and the women's the red. There were two baths behind the women's door: an indoor one and an outdoor one. The outdoor one was absolutely gorgeous. It was lined with rocks, beyond which was snow, but you didn't need to worry about the cold because the bath was so hot. I went at night, and I could lie in the water and see the full moon over the dark mountains. I wish I could've stayed in it longer, but the water was so hot I had to get out.

Here's the steam rising from behind the onsen. Like I said, it was hot.

It was just a really pretty place.

We had dinner there, a really elaborate meal with multiple courses. Here's just a sample of all the stuff I ate:

I was painfully full by the end of it. And breakfast the next morning was almost as big.

After that we walked around downtown for a while, ate a big lunch at another restaurant, and then finally came home.

It was a really cool experience. We got there at night, and walking between the buildings, with the forest and the snow and the Japanese architecture--I knew right away that it was going to be a good trip, and it didn't disappoint.

I wonder where we're going next year. ;)

Sumo!

A couple weeks ago I went to a sumo tournament--and forgot my camera. I had to make do with my phone camera, so the images aren't of as high a quality as I'd like, but anyway.

When we first got to the stadium where the tournament was being held, we hung out in front of the building for a while with the people waiting for the wrestlers to arrive. The matches actually started at eight in the morning, but the lowest-ranking guys wrestle first. I got there at around 2:00, and the "big-league" guys hadn't started yet. The final match with the yokozuna, the highest-ranking wrestler, ended the tournament at around 6:00.

Anyway, there were sumo wrestlers everywhere--even one on the bus with me. I just found something really funny about watching them get of little taxis and stuff.


Here's a picture of the sumo ring, taken from the ground floor hallway. As we were walking through the hallway, we passed more wrestlers getting ready for their match--there was no special section for them or anything dividing them from us, which was pretty cool.

Before the top division of wrestlers began their matches, they paraded out to the announcer-guy calling their names. There were a whole lot of ceremonial aspects to the tournament, which I thought was really neat.


And of course there were advertisements! What sporting event would be complete without a McDonalds ad? Not sumo! Apparently McDs was sponsoring the whole tournament or something, because when we walked in we were handed free McDonalds fans.

It was a really cool day, overall. The matches weren't like what I expected. There's no set "start" time for the wrestlers to slam into each other. They spend several minutes staring each other down in a sort of psychological warfare type thing, during which they can both start, or one can snub the other and walk off into the corner, for them to try again a minute later.

There's still a lot of rules and stuff I don't understand, but that didn't stop sumo from being really fun to watch.

Ikebana

So our summer break from ikebana class finally ended, and here is the result:


I guess I've gotten rusty, because Sensei had to fix this one up a lot. Still, it's good to be back. :)

Gion Festival: Day 2

On the second day, we didn't get to the festival until evening. (Which was my fault for sleeping too late.) The big floats had already been pulled back from the temple to their starting points, but we ran into a bunch of the medium-sized ones. These were the kind with the dancers in them. Like this:



Every time the float stopped, there would be a new dance, and there were three floats altogether. Here's another from a side view:



And a short one:



I really wanted to get a good video of the men pulling the floats, but unfortunately it was too dark. I still want to show off the sounds of the drums and cheers, though, so I'm posting a very dark video below.



We ended up following one of the floats all the way back to its starting point, which kept us out until midnight. A few of my students were part of the official group, and Jamie and I even got to help pull the float a few times. Fortunately theses had wheels.















Everyone seemed really happy to see us, and it was a really fun night. I had no idea my little town could party so hard ;)

Gion Festival: Day 1

Friday was my town's local Gion Festival. It was amazing, and my pictures don't do it justice--doubly so because I forgot my camera and had to use my cell phone to take pictures instead. So I apologize for the poor quality of the photographs in this post.

The main part of the festival was the parade. A bunch of guys carried/pushed/pulled these gigantic wooden floats that weigh 2 tons. A bunch of kids rode the floats, waving and playing taiko drums. These things were enormous, which I hope you can tell even from my bad photos. And they didn't have wheels. The men dragged them down the road, and it literally left skid marks behind on the pavement.

They had this whole chanting cheer going on, too. It would build up, and then they'd propel the float forward in a short burst (or turn it, or rock it back and forth), and get as far as they could before stopping for a rest. You could tell they were tired when they were done.

It was fun when they crossed the main road, because they had to stop and wait for the light to turn green.

Since Jamie and I were the only foreigners there, a lot of people came up to talk to us and show us around. In fact, for the six or so hours we were there, we were only alone for about 20 minutes. We even ended up eating dinner with a bunch of the float-pulling guys.

My students were everywhere. There were a lot of shouts of "Kristen!" and then some impromptu English practice. (Hello. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. And you?) All the random people we met were very impressed with the number the kids who knew me. But then again, some of the kids who shouted hello weren't even my students.

The bigger floats were packed with kids and taiko drummers, but the smaller ones had dancers, like the one below. When the float would stop, the dancers would come out and do a number, and then they'd go back inside for the next round of float-pulling. I can only imagine what it was like to be inside the float as they were spinning and shaking it around.


The floats were pulled to the grounds of a temple, where there were lots of stalls set up with festival food. There was also a traditional dance, which you can sort of see in the picture below. A bunch of guys with drums and giant fans danced around a big fire. It was really neat to watch.

Overall, it was an amazing day, and I swear we must have met half the town, so it was a good day for international relations, too. ;)

More Cherry Blossoms

So this post is really late, sorry. Last Saturday I went to another cherry blossom viewing party. Here are the pictures:




The weather was gorgeous, and I had a really great time. You can see in that last picture that the cherry blossom trees ran all along the river, and people had parties set up all along it. I think our group was the noisiest, though. I wasn't sure where we were set up, but when I was looking I could hear us from all the way on the other side of the river ;)

This will be my last viewing party (;_;). But there are lots of cherry blossom trees planted around my schools, so I can still see some more before the season ends. Classes have finally started again after spring break, and I'm looking forward to meeting my new students.

I'm glad spring is finally here.

Cherry Blossom Viewing

This is my 50th post on the blog, and there could not be a better entry for it than this. On Saturday I went to my very first hanami (花見), or cherry blossom viewing. I took a ton of pictures, and I'm having the hardest time deciding which to post and which to cut, so I'm going to post a lot. Here we go!

The basic set-up for cherry blossom viewing is like this:


You set up a tarp on the ground by the cherry blossom trees, set out the food on a table, break out the drinks, and you're good to go.

There's stalls selling food just like at summer fireworks festivals.


And because I was with a big group of foreigners, we got interviewed by an apparently fairly-famous TV guy.

And that's pretty much all I have to say. Here's a bunch of pictures of cherry blossoms:







The day was a lot of fun. We must have had nearly fifty people on our giant tarp, and there was a lot of good food. As the pictures show, the cherry blossoms were gorgeous and definitely deserve their own special day for everyone to appreciate them.

Plus, I'm going to another one this weekend. So expect more pictures to come!

Cherry blossoms: to see, eat, and drink

Cherry blossom season is a big thing in Japan, as you may already know. To celebrate, there's all sorts of cherry blossom flavored foods: cakes, cookies...and coffee.

What you see on the left is a Sakura Frappuccino (not my picture, obviously). I had one this weekend at the Starbucks in the mall--and it was delicious. Seriously. I heard it's only a seasonal thing, though, which is a shame because this is my new favorite drink.

There's also cherry blossom gelatin. Someone in my office brought a box of it in as an omiyage today, and I tried it at lunch. Not only is it cherry blossom flavored, but there's an actual cherry blossom suspended in the gelatin.

So far I've eaten and drank cherry blossoms. The only thing I haven't done yet is actually see one. But not to worry. I'm going to at least two cherry blossom viewing parties next month. And I'll be sure to post lots of pictures!

This week's flowers

This week in ikebana we used tulips and peach blossoms in another use of Shoka style. Here's how Sensei arranged mine:

And here's my attempt to recreate it in the apartment:

It's so easy to see where I went wrong when I have the pictures sitting next to one another. That back left branch (the soe) is sticking out to far, and my tulips (the tai) aren't quite right either. Oh, well.

On the bright side, the peach blossoms are blooming. Here's what they look like now.

Close up:


And speaking of blossoms, it's only a couple more months until Cherry Blossom Season. I can't wait!