Today is a national holiday in Japan. We started the day with breakfast of mochi - small gooey rice cakes - not exactly my favorites! Geraldine was funny, we walked out and saw several plates covered with beans. Ugh- but I was able to make it through and eat only the items without beans. However, I did try the natto - a popular japanese dish of fermented soy beans - very gooey, sticky and nasty.
Today was originally supposed to be a tour of the Nissan Motor Company and the portable shrine workshop - but since it was a national holiday - those places were apparently closed. Instead we were to visit a Children's Hospital and see a tea ceremony. The first stop was the city's information center - which was oddly enough - closed! We stood outside in the pouring rain until one of the Rotary members told Geraldine and I to sit in his car. We waited there for a bit then someone got in and said we were going for gas - so okay - we went along. But apparently it was more than that - we ended up at the Children's Hospital. I was a bit agitated - thinking we had left our host mother at the other location and never said goodbye to her. Turns out this was a Shimotsuke Rotary club only function - so eventually I got over it and enjoyed the tour.
One of the interesting things I learned at the hospital was that you children cannot have heart transplants in Japan. It has something to do with brain death - I never quite got whether the law wouldn't allow children to be brain dead even for a moment or whether they cannot determine when someone is brain dead so they won't perform the risky surgery on children.
Our next spot was lunch at an Italian or pasta restaurant. We had a lovely translator named Uli who was the best translator so far on the trip - she's a German woman living in Japan. Fascinating person. Confusion over lunch though - we were told the meals had been ordered, but a waitress came out and kept looking at us - eventually we figured out we were supposed to tell them which pasta we wanted - everything else was taken care of. Even with a translator there is confusion!
After lunch we went to a local Rotary club member's home to learn about Ikebana and watch a tea ceremony. The Ikebana was beautiful - one of the flower arrangements looked like a gentle breeze was blowing ... amazing. We then had the chance to create our own arrangements, sort of. The instructor basically put them together while we watched then either congratulated or tore us down. I, of course, got the latter. She told me mine was bad because the piece of fern was in the way of the rose - I wanted to say "Then why did you put it there?" but I just smiled and nodded. It was hilarious.
The same sensei then took us into her home for a tea ceremony. It was beautiful watching the women in their kimono moving around and giving us tea as everything was being described to us. We even got to keep the beautiful paper they put our 'teacakes' on. However, sitting in a cross-legged position for very long makes my legs go to sleep so at one point Sheila started massaging my foot - a bit tacky I'm sure, but everyone just laughed about it.
After the tea ceremony we still had about an hour left and there was some discussion about going outside - but since the rain was still pouring down - Geraldine asked if we could learn about kimono. The teacher pulled out a kimono to let Geraldine try on. By the way this teacher was perhaps the tiniest woman I had ever seen - not just short but stick skinny. She had to have her kimono specially made!
Geraldine looked great - the kimono was purple - my favorite color - and had a painting of the gold temple in Kyoto on the back.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment