New Year, Fun Times?

Well, the new year started pretty well I guess with a trip to some local Kanazawa shrines courtesy of our friend Ishikawa-san who does karate :) It snowed most of the day but was pretty nice wandering around Kenroku-en & taking part in what's considered to be something traditional to do at New Year's in Japan. We went to 3 shinres in total, but I can't exactly remember the names off the top of my head :P
Dan's mum also visited around that time so she came with us which was nice, and a few days later we all went out for curry as a goodbye dinner.
Speaking of goodbyes, something sad did happen a little bit later which was the return of my friend Yoonjin to Korea, as she'd finished her year abroad. But lots of us went out for tasty "American-style" food which was effectively American, but in Japanese form. It was kinda weird to be completely honest. But anyway, Yoonjin left a little while later which was sad :( Though she did leave lots of Korean sweets, noodles & seaweed for people which was nice of her! I haven't actually written to her yet but I intend to soon cos I do want to try & keep in contact with people I meet out here.
On a more positive note we spent some time over January & February going on trips for our final Japanese cultural experience, in other words, the making of Ohi pottery. We were all able to make 4 pieces, 2 of which had to be tea bowls. I ended up making an extra little bowl & a pig for my optionals, not entirely sure why to be honest XD The fun thing about doing the pottery Ohi-style was that everything was done by hand, unlike normal pottery where they use one of those wheels. We shaped the clay and moulded it with our fingers which made each piece very personal, though the following week we did carve it better with a little tool thing, so they didn't exactly have finger marks on them or anything... In the end all my pieces turned out ok, not exactly amazing but hey art is not my forté... My pig looked pretty cool though with its greenish-silvery colouring, and one of my teabowls had a nice red effect in the centre :) Apparently getting red colour is lucky, good times.
Other than that, the snow fell, exams were taken & essays were written, which took up a lot of the start of February. Exams weren't too bad I guess, though I did find the reading class one quite hard. Essays were ok in general, just time-consuming! However I did have fun writing my Japanese Ways of Thinking essay in which I basically started my research on looking at hentai portrayals in manga, which was really helpful as I needed that for my Sheffield project proposal! Anthropology wasn't as great but at least we got a little extension for going to a symposium our teacher was speaking at, which was actually pretty cool as there were 2 really good taiko performances going on too :) Even the jodo exam went pretty well which was good, guess all the practice hitting Wolfgang paid off :P

Holidays began, karaoke was once again visited, we had a nice dinner out for karate & in general it was nice to relax for a bit! Then about a week after term ended I headed off on my trip home! Will write about that next post I guess, gonna head off & make some dinner for now. It's got warmer recently & I need to drink & eat more I think as I felt really faint earlier today XD At least the sleep pattern's improving a little. Peace & love etc ;) Kou x

November/December Catch Up Time!

Well, it turns out I am useless at keeping blogs. But currently I can't sleep so I will attempt to fill in the past few months, starting with... Winter!
I guess it's easiest just to list some fun things to start with.

Snow! There was a lot of snow. It came halfway up my boots & the first day I went out in it I fell over about 10m outside our dorm. Nice ;) Made getting to lessons take a bit longer as going up the steps became a bit of a health hazard. Also, as per normal, karaoke was visited, taiko was played & yakiniku was eaten. Sometimes even scary Finnish sweets (aka salmiakki) were consumed.

On the subject of taiko, I had my first taiko concerts! One was at a primary school which was nice & non-scary at least and I did mess up once but hey! The next one though was at a special exchange students' party with even the president of Kanazawa University attending, but to be fair once I was up on the stage it was more fun than scary. We only performed one song as it's all we knew properly at the time, but it was still nice to have the experience! In other news, Ryan & Alex put up a little Christmas tree in the common room & things felt kinda seasonal though not quite like home.

One thing that did occur around that time was our third experiences in culture trip, on which we ventured to a gold leaf museum type place, where we used gold & silver leaf to make our own design on an item of our choosing, in my case a little black box. I guess it could be a jewellery box but you could put whatever you felt like in it really. It could even contain a dragon to be fair, given the whole separate dimensional existence that Terry Pratchett claims them to inhabit... Or whatever it is. Anyway that was pretty cool though as per normal my efforts weren't really as pretty as most people's XD
Christmas was pretty good. We had a party on Christmas Eve then on Christmas Day I helped Ryan make Chistmas lunch for which we had chicken, potatoes & vegetables. We even had gravy courtesy of Richard :)

Then on Boxing Day I left on a trip to Kyoto with Petteri! I was really excited about visiting Kyoto, especially as it was the only city I really knew before this year, maybe asides from Osaka. The trip was in general really fun though a little short but we managed to cram a lot in. For example, we visited Kiyomizu-dera, the imperial palace gardens, Maruyama park, Kinkaku-ji and Kitano Tenman-gu as well as a day trip to Nara & Uji, where we visited Todai-ji, where the Daibutsuen (giant buddha) is, and the Byodoin (Phoenix Temple), respectively. It was especially nice as I got to meet up with my friend James from Sheffield Uni & also saw Ben albeit briefly :) So all in all was really fun & just to say also that Petteri was an awesome travel companion so that made it extra good ^_^

Then of course it was back to Kanazawa and time for the New Year! We had another party in the common room & sang Auld Lang Syne & watched the countdown on the Japanese TV so all in all was pretty fun I guess. Mel wore a cosplay outfit & I wore my yukata out in the snow :D So despite having had exams at the start of December I guess those 2 months were pretty good overall! At least they were only mid-terms anyway :) Will continue shortly... Oh, just one more thing. Something particularly funny that happened was once again Petteri was wearing his headphones & singing to himself whilst cleaning & in the end quite a large group of people had formed outside his door to listen to him :P He got a nice round of applause at the end of "Different World" by Iron Maiden & came out of his room all embarrassed hehe. Fun times :)