So. Last weekend was the International Festival, presented by the Japanese students of Kansai Gaidai for the community of Hirakata. It started Friday (Japanese students had Friday off from class, whereas for 留学生 such as myself, class was in session) and ended Saturday. Friday was spent having to go to those pesky things we call classes, say "yo, I'm here, k, see you, bye." Fortunately, most teachers simply took roll because they were forced to by the CIE and told us to go enjoy the festival. I saw a group of pre-kindergarden aged kids in their little pre-kindergarden sized band do a band preformance with such a high level of cuteness that it almost outdid the Razorback Band. Almost. I also watched the cheerleaders do their routine. As a competeing entity, their preformances were really good!
And then, instead of being a good little kid, I chose to go with Heather and Zack to Kiyomizu Temple in hopes that we'd catch it in it's bright red finery. Many photos were taken, but the maples on the temple grounds hadn't quite begun changing their colors so it wasn't as fantastic as we had hoped... Oh well, we'll just have to go again. I also discovered three very important things in Kyoto while I was there. First, there is a candy store near Kiyomizu where you can try the japanese candy before buying. Normally, the traditional candy of Kyoto is red bean paste wrapped in a soft floury substance. It is absolutely fantastic, but... Even better, I discovered, was the same thing essentially, but with chocolate instead of red bean paste and the floury thing flavored into either banana or strawberry. Oh goodness. Second, there is a little shrine at the bottom of Kiyomizu that was selling, of all things, candied clementines and red bean paste in fried pancake batter. Both were also absolutely fantastic, but the clementine was the best. And third, I discovered indian food. This being Japan, Indian food is much less spicy than the real thing, but that suits a spice weakling such as myself just fine. I had dal, nann, and a pomegranate lassi (I simply must learn how to make this amazing food), and tried butter chicken, and some sort of mutton curry (the mutton curry wasn't so great, but that's because that curry was the next step up on the spicy scale (which, in Japan, medium is nothing and high is OMGMOUTHONFIRE!!!). I also tasted mango lassi and blueberry lassi, and decided that I was the wisest of the three in choosing a pomegranate lassi. And decided that I must learn how to make this thing called a lassi myself.
Saturday, I spent most of the day at the festival. Justin was the gaijin-on-display for the opening ceremony, so of course I had to be evil and show up and take photos. Heather was busy being Canada for a day, so I of course went and harrassed her at the Canada booth as well. Nikki preformed for the world dance exhibit (more blackmail photos), and Ruth was America for the Fashion Show. Strangely enough at the fashion show, America was the only country besides Japan that got an excited applause. Interesting. I have photos of the fashion show too (evil laugh). I also watched Tomoko and the rest of the Cheerleaders one more time in an attempt to get better photos (a successful attempt too). After the fashion show, Ruth and I went and caught the last half of the Sound of Music, preformed in butchered english with cues and tones taken straight from the movie. And completely off-key, with the exception of Captain Von Trapp, who managed to sing Adelweiz fairly decently. Ruth and I have determined that we must watch this movie again soon. Especially since the Japanese preformance ended immediately after Von Trapp sings for the first time and tells Maria to stay.
I spent the rest of the day Saturday at home, working on the powerpoint for our presentation due on Monday. Mind you, my host family recently bought a new computer with windows vista on it, so nothing in powerpoint is where its supposed to be anymore (not that I was that familiar with powerpoint in the first place). Secondly, its entirely in Japanese, so I spent my time saying things like, "Hm, what's this say? Su-la-i-do. Slaido. Slide! Okay, slide, okay, I need one of those. *click* Okay, I have a slide, now I need a graph. Oh hello, random kanji that I don't know. Um... Kay. That looks like a graph, let's click it! *click* Oh, wait, no, that's not a graph, that's a picture, back up. Okay, that ALSO looks like a graph! *click* Yay! I found the graphs! So that's the kanji for graph. Okay, now how to enter data into the graph... Okay, that icon looks like the icon for excel, which is usually used to put stuff into graphs... *click* and she finds the data input! Yatta! ...more kanji I don't know. Hm. Kay. This one's on the left, so it probably means okay, this one is the middle and I have no clue what it means, and this one says Ki-a-n-so-lu... Cancel. No, I don't want to cancel, I want to click okay..." It went on like this for hours and by the end of it all, it was midnight thirty (yes, midnight thirty is a perfectly acceptable time word), my brain was mush, and I'm sure my host family (who doesn't go to bed until 1 I found out) thought I was absolutely crazy because I was saying all this out loud to myself to make sure I was doing things right. Then I had to figure out how to save it in a non-vista-compatible format. That was a real trip.
Sunday was spent sleeping, having lunch with Heather, and then going to Yawata to finish working on our presentation with Ruth and Nikki. I evilly added the blackmail pictures to the powerpoint presentation. Mwa ha ha. Anyway, we worked on that for a while, had dinner with her host family, and then Nikki and I went home.
Monday was presentation. We were first. Apparently we did freaking awesome and scared everyone else. We did not feel so confident. But then again, I hate presentations. Went home, went to sleep.
Tuesday and Wednesday were Kanji tests (of two sorts). My free time (what little I had) was spent making an emergency birthday gift buying run to Hirakata on Tuesday and an emergency birthday gift wrap buying run to Kuzuha on Wednesday. I love wrapping gifts, so naturally, I had fun.
Yesterday was a three person birthday day. Audra, Nikki, and Nikki's friend Sara all turned 21, so that evening I went with Nikki to her birthday dinner. We took her to a sushi restaurant where the sushi comes to you (see here). The sushi there wasn't as great because it had this little dash of wasabi they put in the rice under the meat. I didn't know until I bit into the sushi and went "what is this thing that's biting into my tounge? Oh, it's wasabi... >.< (<--unhappy face)" But for 100 yen a plate, it wasn't so bad. After sushi, we took Nikki and Sara to Ages Cafe. If you think coffee house and substitute the coffee for alcohol, you have Ages. You can order snack food at Ages, but the main menu is the bar. And by the way, peach snops with apple is fantastic.
This weekend is going to be busy too. On Saturday, I will be going to Umeda in the morning to go electronics shopping with Ruth. My headphones are a piece of crap and I can only hear out of one ear now so I'm going to go buy some freaking nice headphones in a country where quality electronics are their number one export. So for the same amount I spent on my good headphones that are sitting at home in the US, I will get not "good" headphones, but "freaking fantastic!" headphones. I likes this idea...
And Sunday is a trip to Fushimi Inari. We're starting out at Fushimi Inari but we might somehow end up in Shijo for candied clementines, indian food, and maybe this little place called Kiyomizu that we've all heard about but never been to... :) Have to be home before dinner though. I am eating dinnerwith my host family because its my host sister's birthday! I fully intend to do my birthday shopping while I'm going to shrines and temples (shrines and temples always have tons of shops around them, which of course is a fantastic business location because of tourists).
Thus is the extent of my plans. And before I end this blog, I must give a shout out to Reggie, being the bravest of us in the computer lab to complain to the staff that it is entirely too hot in this room (it's like 85-90 in here while the rest of the world is like 50). It's been like this for weeks and finally someone complained.
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