Wednesday, July 4, 2007: Shodo, Cross-Cultural Discussions, and Hep Mall
On Wednesday, after my long trek to school with lots of sleeping on the train along the way, I began my day with a class about Japanese calligraphy, which is called shodo.
With an inkstone on the right, we poured in a little water and then ground the ink block, with some of the water, onto the stone for a bit. The ink block is the black thing with the gold characters on it.
We did this repetative task while the instructor gave a lecture about shodo... its history, various styles, and technique.
Soon, we were ready to begin our first set of kanji
Sun (hi, "hee") and moon (getsu, "gay-tsu").
It was fun!
... but very difficult to have anything even resembling "proper technique."
Getting those cool little trailing off effects and fancy corner turns is tough stuff!
It required a lot of concentration to get even our beginner's pieces....
After doing several sheets of paper (all of mine but the sun-and-moon one which I think sucked and didn't photograph to share), it was time to clean up. We washed our brushes and inkstones and headed to our next class: Cross-cultural Discussions.
This class was also taught by Dr. Micek (the American who taught the "Successful Communication in a Japanese Society" course who used to teach at EWU).
It was fun, but nowhere near as amazing as the previous course we had taken from him.
We joined his English class and talked about various controversial subjects with his students.... things like sex before marriage; if it were you, would you have an abortion?; how old is too old for a boyfriend?
and we also talked about cultural differences. The most popular one amongst us foreigners was, "Why do you use the bathroom slippers? You say you don't wash them so how exactly are they cleaner than regular shoes when everyone is sharing the same pair???"
They didn't really have any questions about our cultures... which was too bad. I think they were just being shy, because all of the girls in my group had been out of the country... in fact, as I recall, they had all been to America before (all to the Fort Wright campus in Spokane, I believe).
Here's my only photo from that class.... since there wasn't much to photograph except us sitting around talking.
Sarah, one of the Australian girls, was in my group and she just loved having all of these controversial conversations. She took full lead of the group she loved it all so much. :-)
After that class, we were done for the day, early. Most all of us hopped onboard the train and over to Osaka where we planned to have lunch and go shopping.
We ended up finally finding our way to the Hep mall near the Hanshin Umeda station. As you walk into the mall there are two large, red whales hanging from the ceiling 4 floors up:
On the 5th floor, above the whales, there is a red ferris wheel that sticks up and out of the top of the building. It's pretty cool... although none of us rode on it.
Instead, we found the purikura machines on the floor above and all 10 of us crammed into 4 or 5 various machines to take purikura!
I will update this entry with scans of the purikura sometime... once I get them scanned in.
We did take one with a fireworks background since it was July 4th ;-)
First you get into the booth, select which template you want to shoot, and then take a series of shots. You then chose a few that you want to keep and you exit to another area of the machine where you can decorate your purikura:
After decorating, you narrow your choices down again, select how many you want on your 4x6 sheet, and then they print.
After spending about 2 hours doing purikura, we all popped into Starbucks because we were getting hungry again!
I sampled the azuki bean frappuccino (azuki beans are those popular red Japanese beans that are in all of their bean snacks such as an-pan, bean popcicles, anko, etc).
It was tasty, but not a very distinct flavor.
And then I asked the girls to pose for a what-I-thought-would-be-kind-of-cool photo in this tube of a walkway right next to the Starbucks. I took the picture across the open area, next to where you board the Ferris wheel.
After this time was becoming limited. Some of the girls had to leave to go home, and that time was coming soon for me.
Claire wanted to go to an onsen (Japanese hot springs) that day, but we discovered we were not as near to one as we'd thought, and purikura had taken much longer than we'd thought, so we didn't really have much time left to go to one. Instead she went home and I went shopping by myself (which was fine, and I ran into a couple of the other girls once or twice during that).
It was nice to finally get a chance to shop. I had been there over two weeks and not really had a chance to check out stores and browse around yet!
There were lots of cute shops... one called Snoopytown that was, as you can guess, all things Snoopy. There was a Disney Store with all sorts of super-cute products, and there was another store full of cute little trinkets.... a store in which I found the coolest section.
I could not pass this by. My husband Mark is a big Muppet fan, so not only did I take this photo for him, I also purchased him something from there... even if there was nothing notably Japanese about any of that merchandise. You can see the item in the photo, actually. It is a metal tin, about the size of two decks of stacked up playing cards. It is hanging in the top row, third peg from the left (second peg you can see the label on ... between the items in pink and green packaging).
I also purchased some knee-high socks, some footie socks that were "extra long" and therefor big enough for my european feet (these are a style that you wear under dress shoes and they do not show), a hair clip for wearing with my yukata (a pretty rose thing with some dangling flowers).... and maybe some other gifts but I can't recall.
And on my way back down the escalators to leave for the day, I passed a dress shop with thie most amazing red dress in the window. I can only imagine how much it must have cost, but there was no way I could not stop and oogle and take a photo:
Afterwards I met Satoka at the Umeda station. After waiting around for her for a while I discovered that there were two entrances to the station and she had been waiting for me at the other one. I was still a bit turned around in there and it helped me sort out the confusion of the different routes we took in the morning and then in the evening to know that we were boarding the trains in one location and exiting them at another!
It turns out that the place we would board in the morning was further down the line than the place where we would exit (and Umeda station was the end of the line for Hanshin... but this was all at the same stop, just that one entrance was near one end of the train and the other was near the other end). Of course, I didn't figure all of that out for a few more days.
So, once we were reunited, we headed to the JR station and began the long journey home.
With an inkstone on the right, we poured in a little water and then ground the ink block, with some of the water, onto the stone for a bit. The ink block is the black thing with the gold characters on it.
We did this repetative task while the instructor gave a lecture about shodo... its history, various styles, and technique.
Soon, we were ready to begin our first set of kanji
Sun (hi, "hee") and moon (getsu, "gay-tsu").
It was fun!
... but very difficult to have anything even resembling "proper technique."
Getting those cool little trailing off effects and fancy corner turns is tough stuff!
It required a lot of concentration to get even our beginner's pieces....
After doing several sheets of paper (all of mine but the sun-and-moon one which I think sucked and didn't photograph to share), it was time to clean up. We washed our brushes and inkstones and headed to our next class: Cross-cultural Discussions.
This class was also taught by Dr. Micek (the American who taught the "Successful Communication in a Japanese Society" course who used to teach at EWU).
It was fun, but nowhere near as amazing as the previous course we had taken from him.
We joined his English class and talked about various controversial subjects with his students.... things like sex before marriage; if it were you, would you have an abortion?; how old is too old for a boyfriend?
and we also talked about cultural differences. The most popular one amongst us foreigners was, "Why do you use the bathroom slippers? You say you don't wash them so how exactly are they cleaner than regular shoes when everyone is sharing the same pair???"
They didn't really have any questions about our cultures... which was too bad. I think they were just being shy, because all of the girls in my group had been out of the country... in fact, as I recall, they had all been to America before (all to the Fort Wright campus in Spokane, I believe).
Here's my only photo from that class.... since there wasn't much to photograph except us sitting around talking.
Sarah, one of the Australian girls, was in my group and she just loved having all of these controversial conversations. She took full lead of the group she loved it all so much. :-)
After that class, we were done for the day, early. Most all of us hopped onboard the train and over to Osaka where we planned to have lunch and go shopping.
We ended up finally finding our way to the Hep mall near the Hanshin Umeda station. As you walk into the mall there are two large, red whales hanging from the ceiling 4 floors up:
On the 5th floor, above the whales, there is a red ferris wheel that sticks up and out of the top of the building. It's pretty cool... although none of us rode on it.
Instead, we found the purikura machines on the floor above and all 10 of us crammed into 4 or 5 various machines to take purikura!
I will update this entry with scans of the purikura sometime... once I get them scanned in.
We did take one with a fireworks background since it was July 4th ;-)
First you get into the booth, select which template you want to shoot, and then take a series of shots. You then chose a few that you want to keep and you exit to another area of the machine where you can decorate your purikura:
After decorating, you narrow your choices down again, select how many you want on your 4x6 sheet, and then they print.
After spending about 2 hours doing purikura, we all popped into Starbucks because we were getting hungry again!
I sampled the azuki bean frappuccino (azuki beans are those popular red Japanese beans that are in all of their bean snacks such as an-pan, bean popcicles, anko, etc).
It was tasty, but not a very distinct flavor.
And then I asked the girls to pose for a what-I-thought-would-be-kind-of-cool photo in this tube of a walkway right next to the Starbucks. I took the picture across the open area, next to where you board the Ferris wheel.
After this time was becoming limited. Some of the girls had to leave to go home, and that time was coming soon for me.
Claire wanted to go to an onsen (Japanese hot springs) that day, but we discovered we were not as near to one as we'd thought, and purikura had taken much longer than we'd thought, so we didn't really have much time left to go to one. Instead she went home and I went shopping by myself (which was fine, and I ran into a couple of the other girls once or twice during that).
It was nice to finally get a chance to shop. I had been there over two weeks and not really had a chance to check out stores and browse around yet!
There were lots of cute shops... one called Snoopytown that was, as you can guess, all things Snoopy. There was a Disney Store with all sorts of super-cute products, and there was another store full of cute little trinkets.... a store in which I found the coolest section.
I could not pass this by. My husband Mark is a big Muppet fan, so not only did I take this photo for him, I also purchased him something from there... even if there was nothing notably Japanese about any of that merchandise. You can see the item in the photo, actually. It is a metal tin, about the size of two decks of stacked up playing cards. It is hanging in the top row, third peg from the left (second peg you can see the label on ... between the items in pink and green packaging).
I also purchased some knee-high socks, some footie socks that were "extra long" and therefor big enough for my european feet (these are a style that you wear under dress shoes and they do not show), a hair clip for wearing with my yukata (a pretty rose thing with some dangling flowers).... and maybe some other gifts but I can't recall.
And on my way back down the escalators to leave for the day, I passed a dress shop with thie most amazing red dress in the window. I can only imagine how much it must have cost, but there was no way I could not stop and oogle and take a photo:
Afterwards I met Satoka at the Umeda station. After waiting around for her for a while I discovered that there were two entrances to the station and she had been waiting for me at the other one. I was still a bit turned around in there and it helped me sort out the confusion of the different routes we took in the morning and then in the evening to know that we were boarding the trains in one location and exiting them at another!
It turns out that the place we would board in the morning was further down the line than the place where we would exit (and Umeda station was the end of the line for Hanshin... but this was all at the same stop, just that one entrance was near one end of the train and the other was near the other end). Of course, I didn't figure all of that out for a few more days.
So, once we were reunited, we headed to the JR station and began the long journey home.