Happy Independence from Something Or Other Day

Little host brother: Why are you dressed up today, Mom? Is today a special day?

Host mom: No, I just felt like dressing up.

Me: It's a special day in the United States today, though.

LHB: Really?

Me: Yep, it's a holiday.

HM: Memorial Day?

Me: No, Independence Day.

HM: Oh, really? Independence from where?

Me: ...England...?

HM: Huh. I didn't know that.

In other news, I have pictures! But first, apparently I completely lost some people by not explaining words. OOPS.

Noh is an ancient theatrical form, first started by two dudes named Kan'ami and Zeami, who were father and son. Basically, they combined a whole bunch of folk dances and created what we now know today as noh. (Also, Zeami was totally having an affair with the shogun, but that's a story for another time.) In any case, most noh plays involve musicians (three different kinds of drums and a flute), and noh actors, who are the ones who actually perform the songs. Although "song" might not be quite the right word. It's more of a warbling drone. Also, all the movements tend to be extremely slow and understated. So a movement of extreme grief might be someone taking 30 seconds to raise his hand to his forehead. Like I said, VERY SLOW. Something that differentiates noh from kabuki (probably the better known Japanese theatrical form) is that all the actors in noh wear masks.

An onsen is a hot spring. It is very hot. VERY. People have passed out from the heat and drowned in onsens before.

Okay, now that's done with, pictures!

Here, have some random pictures of Doshisha University.

We don't know who these people were, but they decided to start playing a rock concert in front of the cafeteria.

Also, whoever their lead singer was...well, let's just say that she would have been VERY good at making ghosts appear. Especially ghosts named Lee.

So here we are at the Noh theatre on Friday...

The Noh stage.

And now we're going to explain everything you never wanted to know about Noh.

So once upon a time there was this guy named Zeami, and he came up with an awesome way of getting funding from the shogun...

Apparently they thought it would be funny to make a bunch of gaijin attempt to sing a Noh song. The results were approximately as hilarious as could be expected.

The leading actress in the play.

It's extremely unusual for women to do Noh; it used to be forbidden, but now Noh actresses are becoming a little bit more common. Still, it's super hard.

One of the students being used to show off how the same costume can be worn in different ways to show different things about the character.

And here're some pictures from the actual Noh play. Sorry they're so blurry!

And now fast forward to Saturday!

Here's the hotel which the onsen and the lunch were at.

I would not read any farther on an empty stomach. Go get something to eat.

Fed now?

Okay.

Looooooooooooooooooooooong table.

The starting set up.

Time to eat!

First course! (Or, really, the course that we ate whenever we were waiting for the next course to come.)

Keep an eye on that crab. It'll come back.

Shabu shabu! Essentially you have a bunch of vegetables and meat which you swish around in a pot of boiling water. It makes a "shabu shabu" sound. Best name ever?

This was some kind of Thai soup. It was tasty.

Fish! The fish that I managed to successfully debone!

How to debone a fish:

1. Split it open along its belly with your chopsticks. Don't try to split it along its back or you might break the backbone.

2. Carefully peel the flesh back until you have cleared area around the backbone.

3. Pull the backbone out. You should be able to just slide it out in one piece.

4. Eat the fish. (Everything except the head should be edible. The fins are the best part.)

Remember how I said the crab would come back? Well, here it is. We asked the waitress how we were supposed to eat it, and she just stared blankly and said, "Put it in your mouth?"

"The whole thing?"

"Yes. The whole thing."

Some of us had no problems with eating it. (It was delicious.)

Other people...

"NOOOO, NOT THE CRAB! It is too cute to be eaten!"

Or

"IT HAS SO MANY LEGS! I don't feel comfortable eating something with that many legs."

Tempura!

(Also, that dark thing covered in yellow-ish goo in the upper left corner is one of the most vile things I have ever put in my mouth. I'm pretty sure it had some sort of relation to wasabi going on.)

"Should I eat the crab? I don't know. It just looks so sad and tiny..."

"EAT THE FRIGGIN' CRAB ALREADY!"

Okay, we'll do it on the count of three.

Attempting to ignore the crab's adorableness and eat it...

Mission completion!

At first everyone thought it was custard, but then it turned out to be some sort of egg thing with mochi and naruto (fish cakes) and black beans that take two days to make.

A Thai rice dish thing.

HOW MANY MORE COURSES ARE THERE?

I'm not entirely sure what this was, but it was tasty. It was some kind of soup.

Dessert! An orange and some mochi. YUM.

YAY, WE FINISHED!

So then we went to get towels from the front desk.

Time to get in the onsen!

And then we went in the onsen and it was like this.

What? You thought this was a blog about Japan? No, this is a blog seeing how many times I can reference the Gurren Lagann hot springs episode before people catch on.

In other other news, apparently all our host families are being invited to our final class presentations. NERVOUSNESS. Better start practicing now!

Okay, I'm going to run away and finish writing my essay now. Bye bye!

Oh, wait, I almost forgot! The answers to yesterday's random Japanglish slang:

何ザヘル (nan za heru)

What the hell?

これはサックス (kore ha sakkusu)

This sucks

エピック失敗 (epikku shippai)

Epic fail

ドラゴン失敗 (doragon shippai)

Dragon fail

(I have never heard this slang in English, but other people insist that it is real.)

WTFという感じ (WTF to iu kanji)

A feeling like WTF

(There's actually a kind of funny story behind this involving one of my classmates seeing our schedule for the next week, screaming, "WTF!" and then remembering that she wasn't allowed to speak English, so she hastily added, "という感じ.")

彼女もそう言った (kanojo mo sou itta)

That's what she said.

あなたの顔は＿＿＿ (anata no kao ha___)

Your face is___

エピック勝つ (epikku katsu)

Epic win

Points for people who actually figured most of them out. Negative points for people who thought they could run it through Google translator and it would make sense. I AM ASHAMED.

Okay, essay writing time! Bye byes.

There's boring...and then there's Noh

Well, apparently my reading comprehension fails late at night, 'cause there was no gender change in the crazed-kidnapping-murdering-nurse story. Still, she switched babies and then murdered one of them. WHOO.

In other news, today we went to see a Noh play. Or, really, we went to a Noh theatre, got talked at for two hours (during which time I was trying very, very hard to look interested while falling asleep) and then watched ten minutes of Noh. The Noh itself wasn't boring. Although I couldn't understand a single word they were saying. Then again, according to the Noh guy, even the Noh actors can't understand what they're saying sometimes. What is the deal with reciting things which you don't know the meaning of? But anyway, we only watched ten minutes of Noh, and I've heard that most performances last 3-4 hours, so I think that it would get very, very boring very, very quickly. Especially if you didn't get an explanation of the story beforehand. So, yeah. That was my incredibly exciting Noh experience.

In other other news, I have been putting together material for the class I'm teaching next week. And you know what I have discovered? I don't like following instructions. Well, I guess we already knew that, but really. If I'm going to teach a class, I don't want to have someone else tell me how to do it, and I don't want to put together a minute-by-minute plan. I'm good at improvising and playing it by ear and figuring out what people are struggling with, but having to create a minute-by-minute lesson plan with set discussion questions doesn't allow me to do that. PFEH. We'll see how it goes. I have a feeling that I will not stick to my lesson plan and get a failing grade, but at least that way people will actually learn something.

[/frustration with incompatible teaching styles]

What other exciting things have been going on? Lessee...tomorrow we're going to an onsen. Yeah. Well, we'll see how that goes.

Also, little host brother's hearing has not improved at all despite being on antibiotics. Not good.

Also also, I should pretty much stop asking my host mom what I'm eating, 'cause if I don't recognize it, it's probably some kind of seaweed. Seriously, every time I think I've eaten all the kinds of seaweed there are to eat, more of them show up. And they are all delicious.

I have seventy thousand pounds of homework this week, so I think I'm going to start on that tonight. WHEE.

Oh, yeah, and remember how I said no one wears a helmet? She wasn't in our program, but one of the girls in another KCJS program got into a bike accident (I haven't heard all the details but I believe there was a car involved?) and broke her arm. She wasn't wearing a helmet. Correlation? Clearly lack of helmet ----> accidents.

Okay, going to run away now! Bye bye!

I am about to fall asleep on my keyboard but I figured I'd let my parents know that I haven't died in some ditch somewhere

I just finished writing the most jaded essay ever about how ANA is stealing money from people who don't feel like drinking things on airplanes. I don't even know.

Also, remember that story that I said I thought would end with a kidnapping? Well, I was sort of right. It actually turned out that the stalker-nurse had switched rich-lady's baby boy with her granddaughter at birth (and for some reason no one noticed, you know, the child's sudden gender change) and then killed the baby and buried his bones in a bag in her garden. Suddenly, Seiji seems to be really mentally stable. (Wait, no, I lied. He's never mentally stable. Especially not around pens.)

Other than that, not a whole lot going on over here. Tomorrow afternoon we're going to see a Noh play, which everyone (including my language partner and my host mom and people who have seen Noh plays before) tells me will be excruciatingly boring. Well, with a resounding recommendation like that, I bet you can guess that I'm bubbling over with excitement.

And then Saturday we're going to an onsen. For the entire day. Yay? I don't really understand how you can spend an ENTIRE DAY at an onsen, but I guess I'll find out on Saturday.

In any case, I'm going to go cut this short and go to bed 'cause I am so tired it's not even funny. G'niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

P.S. Oh, wait, but today I fangirled about M.T. Anderson...IN JAPANESE. I think this just upped my nerdiness a level.