Week 13 in Japan: Raw Horse, Mochitsuki, Girls High School, Church

       Hello, sorry I'm a little late with this post but with it being the Christmas time of year (I'm actually writing this on Chrismtas morning) you are probably too busy to read it now anyways. Anytime is alright :). Now after reading the title I'm sure your excited about this blog. Who wouldn't be, I think there is something for everybody.
      First off on Tuesday I went to the same restraunt I went to last week called Oden with some of the same friends and some new ones. My two Korean friends know the owner some how (maybe just frequent there) and it seems we get things for a discount but I'm not sure. Anyways we ate a variety of things including raw ocotopus, whale, and horse. I was surprised when they said it was horse and I had to confirm a few times, partially because the word horse I don't use often and thought I must be mistaken with its meaning. I didn't hesitate to eat it and it turns out raw horse is delicious. I told a vegetarian girl from Israel and some others about it the next day in class and joked that next I need to eat a dog and cat next.
      Friday my class got done an hour early because there was an event called Mochitsuki going on in the cafeteria on campus and international students in particular were encouraged to go. Mochitsuki is a traditional Japanese event where you make a food called Mochi. Mochi is basically rice that is pounded into a paste. It takes on a different taste than regular rice and it's more of a treat than just rice. People who came got to help with making the mochi which included smashing rice with a big wooden hammer. I got to eat mochi with bean paste in it, some mochi with some seasonings, and then some mochi that was put in soup. It was a fun event that was completely free too.
      On Saturday I went to a Girls High School here in Akita for my Japanese Culture class. At the school there were 6 girls who were part of a traditional Japanese dance and singing club and they performed for our class. After they were finished we were able to try the instruments and some people learned a dance too. Then they had a time where we all sat and we could ask them questions and they also asked us some questions so it was fun to hear things from Japanese students.
      Sunday I went to church for the first time here in Japan. There was a candlelight Christmas service that somebody invited me to go to so I did. The church is about a 10 or 15 minute train ride away but still in Akita City. The church was actually much bigger than I had expected and I would guess there were about 300 people at the service. Since it was a Christmas service there were a lot of various performances mainly all being singing, dancing, or playing an instrument. One thing I liked was that they had people of all ages perform so from around 4 years old to senior citizens everybody in the church seems like they have a chance to do a performance if they want to. The service was as expected all in Japanese so most of it I did not understand. It was hard to understand because the type of Japanese the pastor was using more polite and I haven't studied that too much yet. Also because he was talking about Bible stuff which can be hard to understand even in English.
      Like you guys I got busy during this Christmas season so I'm posting this blog late, maybe I'll be on track next week. Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures!

 Here is a picture from the Oden restraunt. In the picture is a friend of mine Linda from Cambodia adding the finishing touches on some of the food. She has a super happy and kind personality.

 After the mochi is nice and pasty you can eat it. But usually you add something to it so the taste isn't quite so bland. 

 A friend sent me this picture of the Mochi creating event that they saw in newspaper because I'm in the background. This picture is the stage of smashing it with a wooden hammer.

 I took a picture with a few of the girls who performed at the High School. The girls in blue were dancing and did a little singing. The girl in pink mainly just sang I think.

 Here's a picture during one of the songs. The singing is a lot of times really high picthed and really pretty. The guitar is called a Shamisen and is a traditional Japanese instruement. In the last decade or so the Shamisen has been used in contemporary music too. If you want to hear the Shamisen in action I recommend the Yoshida Brothers. Really cool music.

 There was a Hawaiin style dance that was performed too. The final queen of Hawaii was a Christian and I think they were dancing to a song she wrote before she died. Lots of the songs sang were in English because there were a lot of Christmas songs sang. Also there was the Disney song "When You Wish Upon a Star" played by a group playing the bells. I don't think it is really a Christmas song but I enjoyed it.

Week 12 in Japan: Snow, Sitting on the floor, Work dinner

Week 12 finally brought real winter to Akita but I don't mind :). It snows everyday but the weather is still hovering around 0 degrees so lots of it melts too. This makes it really icy and slushy but there it snows so much that even though some melts it won't be going away now. On Tuesday I went to an Oden restraunt with some friends for a birthday party, lots of fun. Oden is a Japanese dish that is known best to be eaten in the winter but I think is eaten all year round. There is basically a big warm plate/stew and you pick different things from it and make your own dish. Things like eggs, tofu, eggs, radishes, fish cakes and much more to choose from. One thing I've learned since I've been in Japan is that if Tofu is made right it is actually not so bad. Besides the Oden we had kimuchi and sashimi. Some Korean foods because it was a birthday party for two Korean friends who have a birthday on the same day. After a couple hours eating and chatting there we went to the International dormitory where some of my friends live and hung out. The style of the lounge rooms in Japan are maybe different from what you would expect. It is a tatami mat style floor. Tatami is like a soft wood flooring kind of hard to explain but you can google it. So you have to take your shoes off and you sit of the floor and there is a table that is low to the ground. If you come to Japan it is best to be good at sitting on the ground for long periods of time. My back gets sore or my feet but the asian people I know can sit cross-legged with a straight back for looong periods of time. Really good posture. Because I was out so late I skipped class Wednesday morning :/. My Wednesday morning class is at 8:50 so it was just too early for me to want to go. Plus it was a Kanji class so it can be really boring. Thursday I went to a place called Murasaki as a work party. In Japan employees are usually good friends with their bosses and often see eachother outside of or after work. My boss is really young and cool and speaks the best English of any Japanese person I know. He's an Englsih professor at the University and is in charge of the English learning center where I work. Again Thursday night the dinner was from 8pm to almost midnight and we sat on the floor the whole time. When I say dinner I mean Nomihodai which as I said previously is a drink buffet. We ate some food but because of the time it was at you were not supposed to come super hungry. Sunday there was an event at the University where international students made posters and Japanese could come and learn about differnent countries and talk to people from those countries. So some people came and checked it out and I talked to them about the USA (in Japanese). I've been really busy so I've been falling behind on my homework and studying a lot less. The flip side to this is that I'm not studying because I'm going out with friends and during that time I'm speaking Japanese so it is kind like studying. The problem is that even if my conversation and listening gets better, I still need to sit down and learn certain grammar and study vocab. I find it hard to believe that people can learn gramatically complex language by simply being "immersed in the language" unfortunately I think you still need to study. Now for the pictures. Thanks for reading!

 Here is a picture I found on Facebook from the museum we went to in class last week. I'm actually in the picture too. The thing with the samurais is a float for a massive parade. Pretty awesome.

 This is a picture from Thursday night when we went to Murasaki. person in the middle is Alina from Romania. She said she wanted a picture of the food we were cooking so I said I'd take a picture, guess she didn't want to be in it. The one on the left is Hikaru (Japanese) who is kind of like my tutor and helps me out (especially when I first got to Japan when I was getting my bank account etc setup). On the right is Kana (Japanese) who I work with on Tuesday night for the English conversation night.

 Several different students from different countries made posters with things about their country on them. We then introduced our county to people who visited. Here Hakusetuhi from China and I.

 We went out to lunch on Sunday during the international event I mentioned. We did a "selfie" style picture that the guy in the back left took. His name is Ginwook and he is from Korea. We had him take it because apparently Koreans are masters at selfies. There was a ledge on the wall so I said we should do a timed-capture picture too. It's pretty good but I don't think 10 seconds was quite enough. Also I'll mention that we sat on the floor here too. Real seats are too mainstream.

Week 11 in Japan: Shrine, Shopping, Karaoke

This last week was pretty great. I'm going to give a brief overview of what I did and then post pictures and have more of the content relating to the pictures I post. Monday I went to a mall called Donkihote for the first time with my Romanian friend Alina. One thing I bought was a cool "My Neigbor Totoro" towel. Totoro is a Studio Ghibli movie which has all kinds of very famous animated movies (even fairly famous in the United States) like Spirited Away and Ponyo. I actually haven't seen My Neighbor Totoro yet but it was cute so I bought it. Tuesday Richenmin, Ryouen, and I had a little party and played cards. More people were supposed to come but they didn't so it was just us 3. It was fun and I learned a Chinese card game.. well I have no idea if it is really Chinese in origin but Chinese people taught me it so it is Chinese to me. Wednesday was really great weather (I think it was in the 50s and sunny.. in December) so after class Teppei who is from Hokaido, Japan (Hokaido is the northern island of Japan), Yunseok from Korea, Karen from Taiwan, and I went to a shrine that was only about a beautiful 15 minute walk from the University. of course people go to shrines for religious reasons but from what I can tell they are also kind of like parks (a lot of times I think shrines are in parks too). Very pretty and a great place for a little walk. We all did Omikuji which is like a really detailed fortune cookie. The ones we chose were 200 yen or like 2 dollars. You get a detailed fortune that can vary from bad to good and also cause of the ones we chose we got a little cat too. I ended up getting "daikichi" or the best luck possible. I was very happy about that. Wednesday night I fixed Richenmin's computer. It was getting the blue screen of death if she went on the web. It took me a little while but I ended up getting it fixed. It was actually a nice nostalgic feeling fixing somebodies computer. Thursday I went to a Museum in Akita City that was all about the different festivals in Akita Prefecture. Friday I went and had Ramen with Kaori and Sasha followed by karaoke with some other people as well. Saturday I went to Donkihote again and ended up seeing a couple of my friends Balgeum and Yunseok there. They are from Korea and are pretty awesome. We were already planning on hanging out that night but since we met then we just hungout from then on. We eventually met some other people as was planned and then went and did Purikura which is like a photo booth and I think I already explained previously. After that we went to an "Izakaya" or bar to have dinner. It was really fun because we had a private room rented out for the night. The main dish was "Nabemono" or usually just called "Nabe". Nabemono means pot with things in it which is basically what it is. It is like a soup. They give you a pot and there is already a gas cooker on your table so you just turn on the gas cooker and put the pot on. To put it very simply there was beef and vegetables in the pot. It was delicious. During the dinner we had Nomihodai (a buffet for drinking) for 1 and a half hours. One thing that makes Nomihodais fun is that you can try drinks that you might not otherwise be willing to. Since you are just paying once and get unlimited drinks you can try different things. I liked the Umeshu, which is a Japanese wine. After eating we went and sang karaoke. We ended up singing karaoke from midnight to 5 in the morning! Renting the karaoke room for the night (until 5am) with free drinks was only 700 yen (about 7 dollars) each with a total of 5 people. That was a basic outline of my week. Now I'll have some pictures and maybe elaborate a little bit.

 The entrance to the Shrine area. 

 Here is the shrine itself. What is common for people to do is throw some change into an area right behind those ropes and then they ring a bell by shaking one of those ropes. Then they clap twice and pray for a few seconds. I've been to two shrines in Japan (well I guess ever) and they really don't seem too popular. Like I said it was very nice on the day we went and yet almost nobody came while we were there.

 Here is a picture of my Omikuji. I hope it's not bad luck to show you haha. There are a bunch of different colors of cats and they have different meaning based on their color and what paw is up and other things too I think. I got green but the other three got white. I think even though they all got white based on the details of the cat I think their fortunes were slightly different. I was able to decipher a little bit of what my fortune says but I had Teppei translate it the best he could. Later in the week I showed it to another Japanese friend Marina who speaks good English and she read me the fortune too.

 Here a picture fromt the Purikura. It was a little tricky with 6 people but 6 is not too uncommon or bad to do. A friend of mine said that he once did Purikura with 20 people and they got everybodies faces in the picture. This time the Purikura was 400 yen so we played Junkenpo which is a game similar to rock paper scissors to see who out of the 6 of us had to pay 100 yen. A 100 yen coin is similar to a dollar bill in America accept it is more popular, therefore that was the easiest way to split up the cost. I won so I didn't have to pay. Also we each got a little strip of the pictures. There were six of us so we all got a really narrow strip with all six pictures on but very tiny. I took two pictures and then cropped them together.

 Here is a picture of us at dinner. It was actually Balgeum's Birthday and that was why we were hanging out together. Balgeum is from Korea and she is the one on the far left. Behind her is Teppei, he's from Hokaido Japan (Hokaido is the northern island of Japan). The guy behind Teppei is Sebastian from Romania. Next is Karen from Tawain. Next to me is Yunseok, she is from Korea.

 Here is another picture of us all. We asked our waitress take the pictures. Karen has a new Polaroid camera and I took a picture of the picture it printed for this and the previous picture. It was so nostalgic and fun getting the pictures right away. Shake it like a polaroid! We actually at first just took one picture which is the other one above where I listed everybodies names. Everbody loved it so much that Karen generously offered to give us each one. I say generously because the polaroid film is not cheap. Although it is a new polaroid camera there is no digital copy so it was going to have to be another 5 different pictures. We asked the waitress to take 5 more pictures. We did a little bit different poses in each one (people moved spots too because there is a little time while the picture is printing) so we played Junkenpo to see what order we could choose the pictures in. Junkenpo is a super common in Japan for these situations.

Week 10 in Japan: New foods and parties.

        This was another fun week in Japan. On Thursday I spontaneously decided to have a Thanksgiving party in my room. I saw a friend on my way to class and invited and said "Happy Thanksgiving" and I then decided it would be fun to have some people over and celebrate a holiday that almost nobody I've talked to here has even heard of. I only had a few hours before the party so I only invited a few people and of course even less were actually able to come. It ended up being a friend named Ouki, Richenmin, Hakusetsuhi, and Ryouen who came. All four of my friends who came are actually from China and can all cook better than me but I did my best. I made Yakisoba which in this case was noodles (soba noodles), vegetables, and pork all fried together (yaki means fried). We also had snacks and other stuff too. I like making plans with people on the spot, it kinda throws people off.

        The weekend was pretty busy for me (in a good way). On Friday I went to karaoke which was a really great time. As I mentioned in a previous blog at this particular karaoke place you get free drinks other than alcoholic ones. I tried a drink that I now have been told is fairly common/popular in Japan. It was essentially corn soup, but you drink it like you would a coffee. I was really surprised by this. To me it is strange to have an option between things like variuos sodas like coke and fantia, and various warm or cold teas and coffees, and then you have an option of choosing corn soup. I can't say it was bad because it tasted fine (as far as corn soup goes) but when I'm in the mood for a beverage to drink I wouldn't choose it again... because it is soup. I now see that this drink is in vending machines fairly often too. On Saturday I went to a chain pawn shop called Hard-off. It is a pawn shop but it had more of a thrift store feeling to it because they are not trying to rob you at least as far as the prices go for buying and I can tell they don't research and try to get every penny (or yen) out of everything they put out which for me makes it way more fun to look around. I ended up meeting my friend Fancy there who was in a previous blog so I stayed for longer than planned because we looked at stuff together. In the end I bought a Super Nintendo and 3 games for it. The Super Nintendo was about 3 dollars. 315 yen. Can't really say much other than my mind was blown. Also the games I bought were Dragon Quest 5 & 6 and also Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Time. The games were cheap too. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was about 1 dollar. Saturday night I went to a "house party". My friend Kaori's parents who I had met and had dinner with once already invited us to come and have a party there with them. The people there was me and other friends of Kaori's and then her parents and a few of there friends. One guy who came owns a ramen/sushi restraunt. He made some really great sushi and we watched him make it too. He was a pro. There was a lot of other great food too including Kiritanpo. It was funny when they first brought out the dish with kiritampo they asked us what we thought it was and I guessed it right. The stars aligned for me at that time and I think I made a good first impression to a few people at that time. I actually had never had Kiritanpo before but I knew about it because I like food a lot haha. Kiritanpo is actually a dish that Akita Prefecture is known for. If you look into Japanese food you will notice that each Prefecture and also individual cities are known for certain foods. For example I've heard that yakiniku is best in Aomori Prefecture, Okonomiyaki is from Osaka, Yokote is known for their unique Yakisoba etc etc etc. Kiritanpo description "Freshly cooked rice is pounded until somewhat mashed, then formed into cylinders around Japanese cedar skewers, and toasted over an open hearth." -Wikipedia. It was really great! The party was really fun! In particular I liked talking to the adults. Sometimes I feel like I'm sapping all their knowledge and wisdom. We also played Uno later that night when the parents' friends had left so it wasn't so many people. I think still 8 people though. Anyways we only played one game cause it took a while but I actually won. I won pretty fast and then the rest finished over about 20 more mins. I'm only putting the uno thing in the blog cause I won. :) . We stayed over night at the house too. It is a kind of traiditional house so we slept on futons on a tatami mat floor. Actually very comfortable. The next day we went to AEON, went to the park and also ate Okonomiyaki. I actually met some friends by chance on Saturday on my way back from buying the Super Nintendo. At that time I was hungry and they were litterally just 30 seconds away from a shop they were going to. So at that time I had Okinomiyaki for the first time and the next day I had it for the second time ever. It is one of my favorite Japanese foods so far! I'm not going to go into the details of the food but it is prettty amazing.

       Well I'm done writing for this week. I almost never proofread or correct what I write here and I hope there are not too many mistakes in general when you are reading. I'm saying that now because I'm still not going to generally re read or correct my blogs before posting them but tonight I'm really tired and I know there are probably a number of mistakes. Oh well. Now for the best part; pictures.

 I don't know if I said this earlier in the blog but I just want to mention that I ate an insane amount of food. It was so good. Anyways heres the guy making sushi. At the moment I think he is actually making a seaweed wrap with natto inside. I wish his face was in the picture. But for most of the pictures you can assume I didn't take them.

 I wish we would have taken a picture with everybody together but this is still pretty good and displays the young people of the party. On the far left is Kaori's older brother who is handicapped. Then there is Kaoris older sister Sachiko, Timuleen from Mongolia, Sasha from Russia, Kaori, Me, and Kano.

 Here is a picture of me, Kano, and Kaori's dad. He's a cool guy.

 Later on that night we played SNES (not mine, they had one at their house that they had just found they still had). Timuleen from Mongolia was kind of just posing for the picture (trolling). Me and Sachiko were actually the ones dominating Super Mario World. We really were not very good but better than everybody else (or at least the will to keep trying) so everyone was saying we were game "Otakus" or game nerds. Apparently even in Japan nobody likes those people. At first I tried to resist the title of Otaku but then I decided to wear it like a badge. Ended up getting to know better because of our gamer status so that was really fun. Played til 4am (but didn't start til late).

 Here is the only picture I have fromt he park. My phone died basically immediately after this. It was a really pretty park. The people in the picture are my friends. duh

 Okonomiyaki on Sunday night. Really delicious. Google is your friend on this one. Protip: Google is always your friend.

Bonus Picture 

 I found a car on Wednesday night with anime characters all over it. I laughed and then said I needed a picture with it. I've been in Japan for a little while now so my poses are getting better. There is actually a specific word for this type of car. I said that would be awesome/hilarious to have/dive. Friends think I be crazy.