Friday: Shodo and a Festival

Here we go...

Friday morning I woke up early and like usual grabbed the train to Hikone, from where I rode my bike for about twenty minutes to get to JCMU.

At JCMU, I took my normal classes, but because it was Friday, class was only until noon, which after we had free time. Instead of hanging out with my friends like I normally do, I headed out directly after class to make it to the train station.

First, I stopped at Vidal's, which is a small bakery run by a woman outside of her home. She makes/sells pastries for really cheap, and it's a great lunch when we are tired of ramen and rice. The size of the shop is about the size of my closet (literally), but it's really nice. Recently, my friends and I have been saying "Tadaima!" when we arrive.

Culture Note: When the Japanese ever leave the house, they say "Ittekimasu", which literally translates to "I will go and come back". When this happens, the people within the house say "kiotsukete" which translates to "be cautious/ have a safe trip". I say this to my Okaasan and Otoosan every morning when I leave for school.

When the Japanese return home, they say "Taidaima" or, "I'm home". In response, the Japanese say "Okaerinasai" or "Welcome home". It's a neat little culture thing that I will probably bring back to teh United States. (In English of course).

After Vidals, I hurried to the train station. When I parked my bike, I looked at my watch and saw that I had a decent amount of time until the next train so I decided to treat myself to an early 4th of July celebration. That's right, I went to McDonalds.

I ordered a plain cheeseburger and fries off of the hyaku-yen menu, (100 yen/ 1 dollar). I took my bag with me to the train station, sat down between an old man, a mother and two school girls and ate my burger.

Culture Note: It's kind of rude to eat in public.

Culture Note part 2: The Japanese and foreigners use a term called "gaijin smash". "Gaijin" is slang for "foreigner", the actual word for foreigner being "gaikokujin". It usually carries a negative connotation, but because we're actually foreigners, (and we use it on each other and ourselves rather often) we're pretty chill with it. Besides, we know that we are foreigners and we are always going to look like foreigners. Might as well go along with it.

So anyways, one day the term "gaijin smash" was created. Basically, this means that we use the fact that we are an obvious foreigner to our advantage when it comes to culture and social ethics. We know it's wrong, but we pretend to not know and just go along with it. It sounds really bad, and to be honest, I have been staring at this sentence for ten minutes and I can't really justify it why we do it. I think it's because I get stared at every day anyway, I might as well have a burger to go along with it.

For example, I got a burger at the McDonalds, but I wanted to make it to the train. So, I got the burger to go and then ate it in the station even though it's considered rude and impatient to not wait until I was on the train or back home to eat my burger.

Because I'm an obvious American and foreigner, they totally ignored the fact that I was eating a burger and just left for their trains when they came. Win-win situation. The Japanese ignore the (already) painfully obvious American eating McDonalds, and I get to relish in a little bit of home.

Just to let you know: it was the best burger of my life.

So, I finally grabbed the train back and then I met my Okaasan at the train station. From there, we made a small stop at the grocery store, and then we went to Shodo class, or traditional Japanese calligraphy.

Traditional calligraphy involves ink, pens, brushes, thin paper and lots and lots of dedication. When I come back, I plan on bringing back many papers in with calligraphy and I'll be happy to show everyone too. In fact, it's on my to-do list to pick up some calligraphy materials. Eventually, I would like to get into traditional English calligraphy. I like writing and making everything look organized and pretty. Calligraphy is just that. It's art in words. (literally).

For the first two hours, I practiced writing a cursive script with a pen. From far away, the words looks like one letter that just bled all down the paper, but if you look close enough you can pick out various hiragana. I also practiced writing my hiragana with a pen. Writing calligraphy is different than writing normally. In order to make all of the characters one stroke of the pen, you have to hold the pen lower on your hand. Otherwise, you'll have to stop every now and then, readjust the pen then continue where you left off.

After the first two hours, we then had a Japanese snack. It consisted of green tea and some treats. The treats weren't may favorite because they all had chocolate on them, but in order to be polite, I ate one of each. Sensei, (teacher) was really nice and we had a stimulating conversation about Japanese history, which involved me looking over at Okaasan for a translation (individual words, not sentences) only a few times.

Okaasan and I then went home after I got some words from Sensei to practice with. First though, we stopped at the bakery shop and picked up a coffee cake. (It's really good over here).

After dinner, Okaasan and I went to the festival in town. It was raining and baseball was on the TV so Otoosan stayed in. Okaasan and I drove a little bit into town, then walked a little to the actual festival. It wasn't really much, just a bunch of Japanese festival food and some small booths that were mostly rip-offs. We hung around for about a half hour and then we headed back where I practiced some shodo and then went to bed.

More coming soon!