Updates from Japan

Hey ya'll,
Between school, Kyudo, and visiting the elderly homes I have been staying busy most days of the week. I have gotten to do a few social things in the past few weeks though. A couple weeks ago I went to Kawanaka-san's house, she works at Hanasaka-sou, to cook Indian food for the staff, and to learn how to make maki zushi, which are sushi rolls with a variety of stuffings. We also made a dessert called mochi, which is rice that has been soaked for a few days, and mixed into a glutinous paste. Then it is formed around azuki been paste, to make small not so sweet patties. I say not so sweet because Japanese people are not especially fond of overly sweet dessert. The mochi is a famous food around Japan even though I had never heard of it before coming here. It is normally made at the new year, but since I will not be here at that time they made it for me to experience. It was a fun night of eating new foods for everyone, as none of the other folks had tried saag paneer or chapathis.
Then last weekend Kobayashi-san invited me to go to a Kaiseki ryouri restuarant. Kaiseki ryouri is traditional gormet food from Kyoto. It was a ten course meal, and definately the best food I have had throughout the whole time in Japan. There were unidentifiable salads, soup made from the leftover grain of sake and the reproductive organs of a fish, sashimi, tempura, roasted fish and flavored mochi, delicately cooked vegetables, miso soup and plum ice cream. The most interesting part though was a woman who ate with us. She was 87 years old and an old Geisha, or Geiko as they are called in Kansai. She was a riot, and a true hostess. She did not let up for a second to fill people's glasses, and even sang a couple traditional Geiko songs. After the dinner, she decided that we should all go out for a snack. I was thinking that we had just eaten a ten course meal, probably did not need to eat any more. It turned out to be a small private bar with a young geiko providing special attention to our group. The old woman is a geiko mother to the young one, so we got special treatment. I have a few pictures from the time, but for some reason the files are not downloadable on my computer.

A Kyudo Addiction

Last night, I hit my first bulls eye from 28 meters. It was my third official day mato no mae (in front of the target). Official because the week before Mita-sensei said I was ready to shoot at the target I went to my friend Chen's college dojo to try out shooting at the target, and that was without the permission of the sensei at our dojo. On the second day of practice I had an amazing experience of beginner's luck. When the sensei first introduces a student to the target he or she takes the student to the 14 meter mark to get the feeling of aiming without the distance. In my case, I hit the target on the first two tries, so he said that I should go back to the 28m point. I missed the next two shots, but hit three of the four following. I then hit a few more times before my form started to collapse. Too much ego, or thinking, or attachment to hitting the target. I am not sure whether it was one of those, or all of them together. Mita-sensei just smiled and pointed back to the bale of straw saying, "Makiwala o renshu shimasu." (Practice the shooting bale) I spent most of the remaining session attempting to readjust my form until Nakagawa-sensei arrived. Almost immediately Mita-sensei started telling him about how well I did on my time in front of the target. Nakagawa-sensei simply crossed his arms in a casual manner, and told Mita-san that he wanted to see me shoot. The pressure was on, and I buckled. All four of my shots had bad form, and were far from hitting my intended spot. Then yesterday evening i returned to the dojo. When i started practicing in front of the makiwala it was as if over the weekend I had forgotten everything i had learned in the past month. I started hitting my face and chest with the string again, and my center line was way out of balance. I had to slowly remind myself of how to shoot. After one hour, I felt that I was ready to go in front of the target again to try my hand at aiming. Unfortunately, I was just as poor at that as I had been at the form earlier that evening. I certainly did not repeat the multiple hits in a row, but did have the ocasional good shot. And for the first time in my career I hit the bulls eye.

Weekend Homestay Experience

“Do you prefer Ninjitsu museum or pottery museum?” Ah, the choices of a young man staying with a Japanese family for the weekend come down to espionage or art. The first thing that comes to his mind is that his mother would choose the pottery, but then again, are there really museums about Ninjas? Maybe that would be fun, and maybe he can learn something about the mysterious figures that so many young boys dress as during Halloween. What is it about males and their attraction to swords, secret identities, throwing stars, and hidden passages? Oh well, I will try not to look too deeply into my reason for choosing the ninjas over the bowls and vases, he thinks.
The Satake family and the young man drive back to their house for some lunch before the expedition to the museum. They do their best find out what are his interests. His responses are in the form of likes and dislikes. “Ryouri ga suki desu.” (I like cooking.) “Hiking ga suki desu.” (I like hiking.) His Japanese is very limited, so he often substitutes English words for the Japanese he does not know. They soon drive up to a rather large house, for Japan anyways, to find a sweet old woman and a small dog to greet them at the door.
They ate a dish with fried noodles and vegetables, called yaki soba, and drank beer for lunch. Each time his glass reached the half-full level it was quickly refilled, which soon made him feel a bit tipsy. Afterwards, they all got in the BMW, and took off for the ninja adventure. The rain started coming down in torrents during the drive, and he tried to translate a colloquial phrase into Japanese. “Neko to inu ga furimasu ne,” (It’s raining cats and dogs.) he said while thinking how funny he was. The statement issued blank looks from all of the other occupants. His explanation took a good twenty minutes resulting in short contrived laughs. He thought, Maybe I should keep to slapstick.
The Ninjitsu museum was actually the historical site of an old Ninja estate, and certainly was old. He was not sure whether the cobwebs had been cleaned since the place was in full operation. Everyone did their best to act like they were enjoying themselves, but between the rain and the unexciting museum it was a bit of a struggle. The throwing stars did provide a little fun in competition, but that lasted about five minutes. They, then, plodded their way through rushing muddy water back to the car, reaching it with thankfulness. On the drive back to the house, both he and their son, Nori, fell quickly asleep, only to wake on their arrival.
“Kairu-san, darutsu o shimashyouka?” (Should we play darts?) asked Masao after they all changed out of their sopping attire. Wait, did I hear him correctly? I don’t remember writing that I liked darts in my application, Kyle thinks to himself. He says that he would love to play, and that playing darts is one of his favorite activities. They had a board one the wall in the family room, and he soon took them for a ride on the Kyle train of dart trouncing as he has been playing since he was eight years, taught by dart-loving alcoholics. Surprisingly, they loved his boisterous and competitive attitude that surfaced when the game started, and it loosened everyone up enough to laugh freely.
By the end of the game they were hungry, and decided to go out to a local restaurant. When they asked him what he wanted to eat he said that he wanted to eat food that he had never tried before. Reiko-san, as generous as a mother could be, simply read off the menu asking if he had eaten each item. She ordered everything that he had not eaten previously. They had many dishes that night, but ones that stuck in his mind were dobi mushi—a soup with the very delicious matsutake mushrooms--, a mochi soup that is usually eaten during the new year (mochi is glutinous rice that has been pounded), and the freshest sashimi that can be in existence without eating a live fish. The fish’s spine and head were literally still flopping on the plate. He knows many people who would have gagged and refused to eat it, but decided that he should suck it up, and think of it as a cultural experience. The texture was the main difference that he noticed between fresh and super fresh fish. The super fresh is initially soft, but when teeth sink into its meat there is a soft snap of the still vital muscular tissue as it is broken. The older fish is generally mushier in nature, and does not produce that satisfying sound when bitten.
During dinner conversation they asked what he studied in school. He told them that he was interested in elderly healthcare, and specialized in elderly massage. Masao got very excited with this news, and asked if Kyle would give obaachan a massage. Later that evening he gave her a massage, which aroused everyone’s interest in receiving massage. The next morning was filled with giving the other three members of the family massages, and by the end he was a bit tired. But that was not the end for they had more plans to take him to Biwako, the largest lake in Japan.
Biwako makes up forty percent of the total area of Shiga prefecture, and is the main attraction for tourism to Shiga. It provides potable water for Kyoto and Osaka as well as the cities and towns of Shiga. Good thing for those pamphlets the home-stay people gave me otherwise I wouldn’t know a thing, he thinks. They only visited a small section of the lake, so he was not able to get a view of its immensity, but he new it was big from the maps. Before returning to the house for dinner, they went to a lakeside temple called Ukimidoji. It first built about one thousand years before in honor of the Buddha, Amida. The temple was actually built on pillars over the water, and was destroyed in the 1937 typhoon. It was rumored that Basho, the famous haiku poet, visited the temple, and there were a few of his haiku carved into stones along the shore.
To make for a grand finale, Reiko-san cooked suki yaki—a beef and vegetable stew—with omi gyu niku, which is a special beef that is marbled with fat from feeding the cow sake, special grains, and massaging its muscles. To eat it he first had to crack a raw egg into his bowl, scramble it, and dip the beef and vegetables into the yellow goo, then slurp-up the bite with a satisfying noise. It was actually delicious, but he had to forget all of the warnings he heard during his childhood about not eating raw egg.
On the train ride back to Kyoto he thought about his experience, and realized that he had a culturally new experience. He never would have had a chance to visit those places or try those strange foods, had he not gone to that home-stay. And hey, he got to play darts.