Kyoto Life

Today is shaping up to be a good day. I don't have any classes, and school finishes at 1:30, so I'm making Cookies with my ESS (English Speaking Society)club students! and I won't even have to stay at school late. Usually when we do cooking, it goes waay overtime, but today we're starting so early.

There are 7 students coming! Normally, there are 3 regular members, but when it comes to cooking...my club expands...

Hopefully we will have some cookies left over today to hand out to the teachers in the staff room too.

Another thing that's good...only 3 months left till we go back to NZ! I'm going to the Post Office today to get some big boxes to pack some stuff we want to ship home! Things like books and winter clothing can be posted by ship. They'll probably take a couple of months to arrive back in NZ.

My cellphone light (which I thought had died due to endless dropping of my cellphone on the ground...) has come back on after about 6 months of darkness.

You'd never imagine how much hassle it is to have a cellphone who's screen doesn't light up. I had to turn it this way and that (to catch the sunlight at a special angle) to see what someone had written to me, or to check the number of someone who'd called me...oh, and writing messages was really really difficult. Not to mention I couldn't take photos because I couldn't see what was on the screen.

How did this miracle happen?
Well, I was getting embarassed at the sharp, loud ringing tone that was on my cellphone (and I couldn't see the screen to get to the menu section to turn the ringing off). It went off in the teacher's office a couple of times (giving me and everyone else a heart attack). So, I turned the phone off for the day...and when I turned it back on at the end of the day...hey presto...the light went on!

Looks like it just needed a break?
Electronics seem to have unpredictable moods!

Hello, well sorry for the long-ish silence. I just couldn't think of anything to write for a while.

Classes started again last week. After about a month of holidays! I do have a very cruisy job.

I've embarked on a long project with my second year (16 year olds) classes. Most of them are taking the 'cultural course' or 'social sciences' course, so we are doing a project on different countries. Basically each group of 4 has to research a different country and end up presenting it on a large poster, in front of the class (a challenge when they have to memorise their sentences in English). And I feel quite good when I see them learning something new about a country they may have only known by name previously. Also, projects are less 'Lecture and controlled time' for the teacher, and more time for the students to be in charge of their own learning, which I really enjoy (maybe I'm lazy...).

Not eaten together of course!!

Thursday (after my "how to learn English Vocabulary" seminar - which turned out very well, thank you) I bumped into Michael after school at the supermarket! I was there to buy butter to make cookies, and he was there to buy ingredients for the Thai curry he'd promised to bring to Ashley's house.

He made a Thai green curry with prawns. yummy. Apparently it takes a while to boil it down for the flavors to mix well, and we didn't have much time, so Michael boiled the curry on full heat. Consequently, we had green curry splattered all around the kitchen that night. I was not looking forward to scrubbing it! (Good news, I didn't end up scrubbing it, because I was too tired that night, and then I went out the next night, so Michael ended up scrubbing it...thank you!)

The curry turned out very well. Apparently Ashley doesn't feel like she's eaten curry unless her nose is running, so it was a spicy one! It was fine with me and Michael, as we are used to eating rather spicy things, but poor Irena seemed to be struggling...

I baked choco-chip cookies while the others watched a video. Some movie based on the classic board game 'Cludo' (or 'Clue' if you're American). I used Ashley's Mum's very addictive choco-chip cookie recipe. Basically requires a tonne of butter, white sugar, brown sugar, lashings of vanilla, and a heaping mound of dark chocolate chips...we should re-name them "Baked Artery Cloggers" or "Diet Killers" or something similar. I was very well behaved, and only ate 1/2 a cookie! I packaged some up for my tea ceremony teacher and the school principal. Didn't have enough to give to the other teachers in my school though...due to 3 friends drooling over the freshly baked cookies...Oh, but they are good when they're just out of the oven!

I'm going to help out with a seminar for our first year students today. The seminar is on "How to Memorize English Vocabulary". Gee how thrilling. Poor students. Poor us teachers too, we think the topic is just as boring! But the principal wants us to do it. So, we will try to make the topic a bit more interesting by turning it into a game/competition.

Tonight I'm going to bake cookies at Ashley's house as a 'thank you' for my tea ceremony teacher who so kindly took us out on Sunday. My house doesn't have an oven, so baking cookies is a special occasion for me!

I was very excited to be going to the Miyako Odori on Sunday.
It's one of the 'must see' Spring events in Kyoto. An opportunity to see Geisha and Maiko dancing for an hour! Michael and I were very lucky, because Ohta (my tea ceremony teacher) organized everything for us. She bought us reserved seat tickets, and a ticket to have a tea ceremony with the Maiko. By the way, "Maiko" are trainee Geisha.

So on Sunday, Ohta took us to lunch first. We drove into the mountains of Uji, to eat at a small (but excellent!) soba noodle restaurant. It is owned by one of her previous student's parents. It was such a cute and peaceful place. We ate traditional 'farm/mountain style' cooking. It was so delicious...

Here we are taking in the mountain views.

The old man who owns the place made us some of his home-grown tea. It was really strong, but tasty! Apparently he's a bit of a rich man and owns a few mountains!! He's also in to collecting antiques, and we were sitting next to 1000 year old pottery! We were really careful when we moved around his small room. He also owns a real samurai helmet! It's rare to see one out of a museum case.

After that, we made our way to the Miyako Odori in Gion. There were a lot of tourists from around Japan and also many foreigners. It really is 'the place' to go during Spring. We took some photos by the cherry trees...

Tea Ceremony with Maiko:

All their hair ornaments were so pretty and dazzling. Their hair looked very heavy. I assume they are wigs... it was great to see the Maiko so close-up. From time to time, we might catch a glimpse of them walking around Gion, but we are usually too shy to take photos or stalk them. So this was a wonderful opportunity to take some closeup photos. However, we were a bit disappointed by the "tea ceremony". The Maiko 'making the tea' seemed to be there just for show, and we were herded in and out of the room with cold efficiency. Not a very zen experience. A loudspeaker announced that we had to eat our sweets and drink the tea quickly to make room for the next crowd of tourists. That was a mood spoiler! Ah well, got to keep the dish my sweet was on...

The dances were wonderful! So many bright colors and beautiful scenes. They moved very slowly and gracefully, and all in sync. I was really impressed with the precise way they would turn their heads with each movement, like living dolls!

Hope you enjoyed looking at all the photos! We sure had a great Sunday!

Hanami means "Cherry Blossom party". I agree with the Japanese tradition of sitting under the cherry trees and eating and drinking all day! It was a bit of a mixed lunch, with sushi and sake, french stick and cheeses, and wine, and sangria...hey it all mixed together quite well.

We went to Maruyama park (the central park in Kyoto with a famous 'weeping' cherry blossom tree). Irena had been there since about 8am, saving us a spot under the cherry trees, and next to the stream. It was so nice of her to do that. Lots of groups put their plastic tarps out early in the morning to 'save' their choice spot, and arrive again later to eat and drink.

Hanami craziness, let's blame it on the sake eh?

Free Hugs anyone?? We couldn't pass it up, and gave the man a big group hug. The lady, however, was finding it a bit more difficult to get free hugs. I think men here feel uncomfortable hugging strange women... we thought that if she were in NZ, she would be mauled by lots of men wanting their free hugs.

In the early evening, it started to rain quite heavily, so we ended our Hanami.

Remember my post "Random acts of Kindness"? Well, finally, here are photos of the paper cutout and the printed silk that the old man gave me. First, he cut out the picture and my chinese name from the paper. Then, the old lady used the paper as a stencil to paint the design on the piece of silk. Think I'll frame it when I go back to NZ.

Well, when I unsubscribed to the pro account, I forgot that I'd already paid for a year's subscription, so I get to keep the pro account till May 23rd! hehe.

Hello all, sorry bad news but I will be changing my blog to a different site soon. Reasons is, that this one is not free to upload my many many travel photos. I cannot join up myspace, or blogspot, or yahoo 360, etc. because the firewall on my school computer won't let me log-in to those supposedly "dating" sites. So, I am setting a blog up from a free travel-blog site. Not as nice of a set-up as this one, but good for free and I can upload as many photos as I want, and even video!

Will get back to you with the new website address when it is ready.

~Vic~