Well, dear readers, I suppose it's once again time to emerge from my den of procrastination. I hope you're all doing well. Let the flashbacks begin...
Friday, July 4 – In class, we began a unit on material that I had already studied in my class at Yale, so things were feeling especially tedious. But for our third class period of the day, though, all the host families came to visit and sit in; Okaasan and Mariko both came and traded off visiting my class and Nick's, which was very nice of them. During that class period my teacher had us write haiku and senryu; both have the 5-7-5 syllable pattern, but haiku generally focus on serious topics/natural beauty while senryu are more humorous/cynical. Here are a couple I wrote (the translations don't have the right number of syllables – forgive me):
[Haiku]
海や山
毎朝僕を
出迎える
The sea and the mountain
Each morning to me
They send a greeting
[Senryu]
鮭の子は
きれいに泳ぐ
おいしそう
The young salmon
How beautifully they swim.
They look delicious.
(I know, I am hilarious.) After class, the four of us went to a pizza/pasta restaurant, which was an interesting experience indeed… The spaghetti I ordered was fairly normal, and a nice taste of home, though some of the pizzas were questionable. The desserts, however, were delicious – we got to pick three from a buffet. Afterwards, Okaasan took Nick and me to another side of the Hakodate peninsula where we could walk on the rocks along the edge of the sea.
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| A dessert waffle, almond custard, and raspberry mochi |
Then, several of us participated in a demonstration of Kendo (the same head-smacking-traditional-sport from the video in my last post). We learned 3 of the basic strikes – on the head, forearm, and waist – and got to practice them, on people who had their full protective gear on and actually knew what they were doing. I definitely had some initial qualms whacking people on the head with a staff, but with their metal-head-cages on they assured us it was alright. Mmhmm… At the end of the demonstration we watched a couple one-on-one matches. You win by getting two acceptable hits, though I couldn't figure out at all what made a hit acceptable versus not. The nuances are beyond me.
In the evening, after dinner, Okaasan walked with Nick and me to watch the proceedings of a local high school festival. Teams of about 20 students ran down the street with home-made lanterns in the shapes of popular characters, chanting "Washoi!" [
heave-ho] as families and neighborhood residents looked on. The lanterns were very impressive, and there were a ton of them. Apparently many high schools have a special celebration like this over the course of the summer (or at least that was my understanding).
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| An Elmo lantern |
(above: Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse lanterns)
After all the students ran by, they gathered on a large field and, in their groups, did a traditional dance in a circle around their respective lanterns. And at the end of the proceedings, a fireworks show – a much-appreciated coincidence for this American far from home on Independence Day.
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