Japan is my cup of tea

Lots to catch up on!  So on the day of the eclipse, I had my instructional class on how to hold a Japanese Tea Ceremony.  It's ridiculously complicated! There is specific ways to hold/fold the napkin, a specific way to whip the tea up, and specific ways to hold the cup (rotating it twice before drinking it!)

But the end result is a very peaceful and absolutely delightful cup of Green Tea.  Which I'm a huge fan of.  The only hold up of the ceremony is remaining sitting on your feet for an extended period of time.   It really hurts!  Japanese people make it look easy.

The next day, I learned to play Go!  Go is a fantastic game that I really like, because it is really easy to learn but incredibly hard to master.  Here is how my experience went:

I walked into the room sort of late and everyone I knew already had a partner.  The only person who was left over was in the far corner with the board already layed out.  I sat down and introduced my self, and asked "So is this your first time?"  to which he responded "No."  Very intimidating.  And he had his fan out, which I learned several minutes later that all Good go players will do, to signal how they are feeling.  I had pretty much convinced myself that I was going to lose.  Our game lasted about 30 minutes...and I won! It felt awesome.  It even inspored me to start reading

"Hikaru no Go," a famous manga that actually brought about Go's current popularity.  This picture was taken at a time felt very Japanese, because I was reading a MAnga in Japanese sitting in Lucky Pierrot, and drinking a soda I bought from a vending machine.  Kirin soda tasted like a smoother version of Coke.

After I got home I sat down my backpack and camera, and rushed out the door with Mamasan to go see the new Harry Potter!  But first, dinner.  We went to a Yakisoba place and I had the absolute best Soba I have ever had in my life.  I definitely plan on going back.  Harry Potter was great, sort of sad but great.  But the real shocker to me was that after the movie was over...noone left! In Japan, everyone sits until the very very end, after the credits are over.  Very different from America, but sort of cool.  Even if I was getting antsy.

The next day (Friday! finally!) went quickly, and the best part of school was getting the bowl that I made, now fully glazed and done!  Here it is!  Friday night I went to Goryokaku, and hung out with friends while drinking drinks made in Hokkaido and eating dried shredded squid.  

Today was a very lazy day, but spent recovering from an incredibly exhausting week of work.  The reason I missed updating my blog for a few days was because I was literally staying up doing homework for 3 days straight, and was too tired to write.  But now I'm all caught up on sleep and ready to attack a new week!

High: Today I had Mini-volleyball again! And this time I brought my friend Koh with me who also liked it a lot.  Hooray for Mini volley ball! Mamasan has her big tournament tomorrow!

Low:Lack of sleep

Hero: Kate Selker who's currently in Paris doing all kinds of cool things! Like hiding notes for French people to find, and fearlessly exploring.  <2