祭り Festivals

I've been to a bunch of festivals lately and learned about some interesting Japanese traditions. The festival for the city of Nagoya is very large, with several parades and musicians and lots of food. They even re-enacted some historical battles!

Other events were smaller for the local neighborhoods. At a Shinto shrine near Nagoya University, I participated in mochi-nage, or mochi throwing.

People gather around and some participants toss mochi into the crowd. It was pretty scary. The old Japanese ladies are really competitive and they push and shove their way to the front so they can get the most mochi. Also, even though most of the throwers tried to gently toss the mochi, they are pretty dense, so if they hit you in the head, it hurts. I went with the "hold the bag open above my head and hope for the best" approach, and I caught one mochi! The people who actually tried caught around 5 mochi.

The spoils!

Although many festival events are now secular, they are based on religious celebrations. An important part of any festival is when a large group of people carry a portable shrine called mikoshi through the neighborhood. I *almost* got to help carry a heavy mikoshi at the Katayama Shrine Festival. Unfortunately, the event was rained out... BUT! we still got to try on the traditional hanten jacket and some really complicated wrap-around pants called momohiki. And since there were supposed to be a lot of people working hard to carry a heavy mikoshi, there was a lot of food provided, so we got a nice lunch and they let us take home the extras. As a poor international student, I really appreciated their generosity.

Not Lazy: Class Round-up, Castles, and Engrish

Well, I don't have to worry about feeling lazy and aimless anymore, because now I'm super busy. The intensive Japanese course I enrolled in is, in fact, intense.  I have Japanese grammar, conversation, reading, and listening for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Plus, the instructors speak almost entirely in Japanese. I can usually follow along okay, but my brain hurts when the class is over. I'm also in a kanji class and a business Japanese class, which are also taught in Japanese. Guh. My non-language classes are economics, pre-war Japanese cinema, and Japanese culture & communication (taught in English, thank the Baby Jesus). I have homework nearly every night. The homework isn't very difficult or time consuming; it's studying 18 new and really difficult kanji every week that seems to require the most study-time. When I'm not studying my little heart out, I've gone shopping on the weekends, played some ping-pong, tried some new tasty Japanese food, and saw a castle!

Here are some pictures of Nagoya Castle.  The castle itself is actually a reproduction because the original one was bombed in WWII, but the towers around the castle have survived since the 17th century. The inside of the castle is full of cool old stuff from the castle that made it through the destruction of the war.

 One of the towers from old timey times with the palace in the back.

Nagoya Castle front gate

 

Another view of Nagoya Castle

 A helmet from the Hōjō clan, who were apparently pretty powerful.

 It's probably because they had the Triforce.

 This weird fish-type animal is a "shachi" and they live on top of Nagoya Castle. 

You can kinda-sorta see them in the photos above.

The Japanese love foreign languages and are always trying to use foreign words to add flair to products, but they don't always make sense. When they don't quite use English correctly, I like to call this "Engrish". According to the French-speaking students here, they tend to misuse French a lot as well.  Lately, I find that my purchases are based largely on how awesome the Engrish is. Here are some of my choices:

 I really enjoy milk tea. This particular drink is "The Pungency". 

I did not find it to be very pungent.

 

The writing is tiny on this little memo pad I bought.

It says "If I were an angel, could I send my favor to everyone all the world?"

 My mug has a few inspirational phrases all around it such as

"Have a nice day! Gentle time is on my side"

 "under that sky..."

"Today's feeling is what color."

 "Dental Floss: Hippopotamus and small bird"

There isn't anything incorrect here, but I'm not sure what 

hippos and birds have to do with my dental hygiene...

*Edit!* Just learned some animal fun-facts from Megan:
"In the wild there are specific birds that actually clean the hippo's teeth for them"

The business is a tattoo shop named "Boobies"

I giggled about this much longer than a girl in her 20's should...

FOOD PHOTOS!!! I'm getting better at this whole being a tourist and taking pictures thing. Check out the yums:

 Grilled meat on a stick!

 

Takoyaki!

 

This is a new discovery for me. It's called "tsukemen" and it's awesome. Instead of noodles in soup, the noodles are separate and you dip them in the broth as you eat it. So good.

 

 To finish up, here's a cute little candy I received. The kanji are 名大 or "Mei Dai" which is the shortened version of 名古屋大学 or "Nagoya University".

School pride! Sweet! (see what I did there?)

Lazy

 So, classes have only sort-of started. Japanese language courses begin next week, and this week I have been going to regular classes. Once all of my classes have begun, I'll have Japanese all morning and some afternoons with a few other classes sprinkled in there.

Monday was "Economic Theory and Applications II". Most of the class missed out on "Economic Theory and Applications I" which was last semester, but the instructor is going to try to review the basics for us before going into more advanced theories. It isn't terribly exciting, but I think it will have important information for my field of study.

Tuesday was "Japanese Culture: Language and Communication". I think it will be a very interesting class discussing the importance of cultural context in conversations.

Wednesday I will have a hardcore "Kanji 1000" class which teaches me the 1000 most common kanji characters I need to know. In the evening I went to "Pre-war Japanese Cinema". I mostly attended because I need more credit hours. I originally thought it would be very boring old movies, but after sitting in the first class, I actually think it will be pretty interesting. It deals with social issues like nationalism and colonialism in Japan's history.

Thursday I have only Japanese classes, so this week I had a free day. I sat around and watched Japanese TV and played cards.

Friday(today) I went to "Outline of Japanese Culture Since the 16th Century" only to find out that the class doesn't begin until next week. Another free day!

All of this free time feels really weird. It's nice to have time to explore, I guess, but I don't really have money to travel around and see much, so I just sit around, update blogs, and hang out with other students who are feeling the same way.


Anyway, I've already been yelled at for not posting pictures of my food, so I guess now I will have to be "that girl" that takes photos of all of her meals : P  It's not really such a terrible thing, just something I'm not used to. So, here's the first food photo:

This was an especially green breakfast from the cafeteria. Green tea and kabocha melon pan. "Kabocha" is Japanese pumpkin. "Pan" is the Japanese word for "bread", which they learned from the Portuguese. "Melon pan" is only called that because it kind of looks like a melon. It is not usually melon-flavored.

Also, I didn't order it today, but they sell crepes.

Here is an example of their choco-whip crepe and strawberry-whip crepe. I thought it was funny because in Japanese it's "choco hoippu", and I imagined Stewey Griffin saying it.