Sumo-San

Adding to the list of more traditional Japanese things, we went to a "lunch with sumo" thing today. We got to see a presentation with two ex-professional sumo wrestlers, where they explained what the life of a sumo wrestler is like, showed us some of the techniques that are used in a fight, as well as some of the forbidden techniques (like pulling the top knot), and then we got a chance to try our strength against them.

It's pretty fascinating, listening to some of the training they have to do. So every morning, the train for 5 hours, doing 100 leg stomps, pushing against each other, flexibility exercises, among other things. Then the lower ranked sumo will begin preparing lunch for everyone - chanko: a hot pot dish. The higher ranked sumo get to eat first, which means that in some cases, the lower ranked sumo will be left with nothing but soup by the time it's their turn to eat. Sumo will often drink about 30 beers as part of a meal!

It was amazing to see that despite their size, they are still incredibly flexible. The wrestler stretching in the picture has been retired for 10 years, and is still able to do this!

We learned that many sumo wrestlers don't earn a salary, and it's not until they reach a certain rank that they start earning a salary. Most will only get food and board in a sumo stable. The highest ranked sumo wrestler can get about $30,000 USD per match, with some matches only being 0.6 seconds, and some lasting as long as 5 minutes.

The main way to win a match is to push your opponent out of the ring. The other way to win is if your opponent touches the ground with anything other than the sole of their foot (which also includes the side / top of the foot), or if your opponent does a forbidden technique.

I never thought about it, but someone asked about life after being a sumo wrestler. They told us that the higher ranked sumo wrestlers will often become coaches at other stables. Those that don't make it as far may end up coaches at places like high schools, or amateur clubs. Others will open a restaurant. It is quite rare for a wrestler to keep competing at the age of 40, with most retiring at around 30. When they retire, there is a ceremony where their top knot is cut off.

I asked how sumo are able to travel, given their size, and I honestly can't tell if he was trolling or not, but he said that some of the smaller sumo wrestlers catch a taxi or travel by bike! Once they start hitting the 300kg mark, they're not allowed to use bikes anymore, as they tend to break them. He also told us that when they fly on planes, they have to tell the airline so that the airline can space them out in order to stop the plane from being unbalanced by having a large amount of weight concentrated in one area.

Everyone got the chance to wrestle with them, and although they let us win in the end, we got to see just how strong they really are. My sumo wrestling match with Pulkit at our graduation was nothing compared to this.

Ryokan

 
Another thing that we haven't done in Japan so far is stay in a ryokan, which is a more traditional Japanese hotel, so this time, we stayed at one in the famous hot spring town of Hakone. The floors have tatami mats and there were yukata and slippers for us to wear around the place. This one was also built over an onsen (hot spring), so we got to enjoy the baths as well.

I would like to say that we went the whole way and slept on futons as well, but we chickened out instead and went for a Western-style bed.

In anime and J-dramas, they always seem to play table tennis in yukata (a lighter version of a kimono), and MrFodder loves table tennis, so it seemed like it was something we had to do.

I lost pretty badly:

5-11
5-11
2-11
1-11
0-11

4-21
7-21
5-21

After that, it was time for a relaxing dip in the bath. Most hot spring baths require you to be completely naked, and you also wash yourself beforehand so that the water stays clean. The first time we went to one, it was during a weekday, so the place was pretty much empty and I was the only person in the bath. It was pretty good, as I didn't have to play the awkward avoid-eye-contact-at-all-costs game. MrFodder tells me that men's changerooms are usually filled with people who are happy to walk around naked like it's not a problem, so I'm glad I didn't have to go through that.

This time there were other women there (the baths are gender segregated), but not long after I entered, they all left, and then I was alone for about 30 minutes wondering what I did wrong and whether I smelled bad or something. Just before I was about to leave, someone else joined me: a literature student from Nagoya. However, I wasn't wearing my glasses, so I had no idea what she looked like. I also didn't get her name, which was one of the few things I had practice saying before we left! I spent the rest of the night awkwardly trying not to make eye-contact with anyone in case it was her and she got the impression that I had forgotten her.

Dinner and breakfast was included as part of the accommodation, and.... well.... I did say that I was going to eat some raw fish this trip and now was a good a time as any...

I managed to get through it, and while I'm not a fan, I can at least say I don't like it after having eaten it now, rather than judging the food by its cover.

Dinner actually ended up being a 10-course meal, which was pretty intense, but we somehow managed to eat it all.

After that, we got an in-room massage, and these two sweet, old Japanese ladies came in to do it. It was a bit of a mental exercise trying to converse with them in Japanese. They asked us if we had children, to which we both said no. I asked one of them in return, and she said she didn't either, it was just her and her dog. We later found out that she had a daughter, who was half-blind, and ended up passing away.

I then asked the other one whether she had children, and she said she didn't either. I asked if she had a dog, and she said no. I felt really awkward now, but I hadn't learned my lesson yet, and moved on to asking if she had a cat. She said no. To make things even more awkward, MrFodder and his masseuse were now talking about how Chinese people eat dogs and cats (and MrFodder trying to assert in broken Japanese that this is actually a myth and that most Chinese people don't). I just lay there awkwardly.

The women kept calling MrFodder "Handsome Boy", and they seemed to really like him. At the end, one of them gave us some pressed flowers she had made, including two four-leaf clovers, which I thought was so nice of her!

I wanted to tell her that probably can't bring them back to Australia, and tried to refuse them, but she insisted that we take them. Hopefully it'll bring us some luck for the rest of our trip.

The Balloon Man

After a bit of shopping in Shibuya (there's a huge music store and we spent over $100 on CDs today - and I don't even remember the last time I bought a CD!), we decided to go for a leisurely stroll through Yoyogi park. While we were there, there was a guy making balloon animals (Balloon Moto), and he was starting to get a bit of a crowd, so we decided to stop and watch.

It was some standard stuff - Japanese TV show characters (you can see Doraemon on top of his sign), swords, love hearts, though he also made a balloon spring onion, which I thought was funny. He had a small segment where he seemed to pick the foreigners out of the crowd, and MrFodder got chosen (he called him MrJones, which I thought was hilarious). He handed them each one of the balloons, and challenge them to blow the balloon up. All while blowing the balloons himself and making more animals.

None of the people were able to blow the balloon up (despite all the time I spent learning to make balloon animals in year 12, I wasn't able to either, as I had always used a pump). He then took all the balloons back, and added another one, and blew up four balloons at once!

We weren't really able to understand all of what he was saying, as it was mostly in Japanese, but he started doing what looked like a sword swallowing act, except with a balloon, and that was pretty amazing. It's a bit eerie to watch, but what he did afterwards with another balloon was pretty funny - I know that sounds really clickbaity, but I don't want to spoil it.

I'll upload the video when I get home, as I can't sign into my YouTube account at the moment.

His entire show was really funny though - here's his website (in Japanese), I'd love to see him again.

We also happened to stumble across Kohachu, the "first real Pokemon Go in Japan".

He said things other than Kohachu, but his way of saying thanks was "arigachu".

Oishii Bento

Today's adventure was a bento cooking class. Bento are lunch boxes filled with lots of different foods, that people often take to school or work to eat for lunch. They are mostly served cold, so the things inside them have to last for a while without spoiling, but also be easy to carry around. It is possible to buy bento that is served hot. As our cooking instructor told us, Japanese people often eat with their eyes, so bento are usually also very colourful. Train stations often sell bento lunches, which commuters buy on their way to work.

The cooking class was very intimate, as we went to our instructor's home in Tokyo for the class. She started by telling us that bento are often divided into 3 parts: half of the bento should be a carb of some sort (usually rice), a quarter should be a protein (meat or tofu) and the last quarter should be the side dishes (vegetables and other nutritious things). Whereas a Western dish might mix all those things together, like in a pasta dish with a meat sauce, you generally keep everything separate in a bento box. In a commercial bento, you might see containers with dividers between each section, to keep everything separate, but for a home-made bento box, which often uses one container which might be divided into a couple of sub-sections, you can use these cupcake liner-type things to make sure things stay apart. You can buy cupcake liners with different colours to help brighten up your bento.

The host grew up in the United States, so her English was flawless, which made it really easy to ask her questions. She was really funny, and sweet, and the class went by so quickly.

We started by making banno sauce, which she said translates to 10,000 abilities. She said it is used very frequently in Japanese cooking. It's pretty simple: 2 parts soy sauce, 2 parts mirin, 1 part sugar. Gently boil until the smell of alcohol is gone. Allow to cool. Tada - done!

From there we made a few salad dishes, some chicken mini-hamburgers, onigiri (rice balls) and tamagoyaki (Japanese egg omelette).

It's surprising how easy it was to make, and we got to eat our delicious bento at the end, which was so filling despite how little it looked!



After that, I made the trek to kappabashi, which had little kappa statues all over it. It's a street in Toyko between Ueno and Asakusa that's famous for having lots of cooking supply stores. They weren't kidding - there are stores for all the different aspects of running a restaurant: furniture, cutlery, appliances, knives, signs, menu holders, even those vending machines that dispense little tickets that people can use to order food. I found a store that had a wooden spoon that was almost as tall as I am!

There was a store that sold little knives (and regular-sized knives, too), which I was tempted to buy them for redbeanpork so he can tiny sushi, but the price was the better part of my salary, and I have a mortgage now! (You can see my hand in the photo to show how small the knives are.)

Very food-centric day today.

Not-So Final Fantasy

When Grad Daniel linked an article about the Eorzea Cafe on Facebook, it looked like something that we had to do. It's a Final Fantasy themed cafe, although specifically Final Fantasy XIV it seems. Back when it first opened, I read that you either had to book tickets online, or line up early in the morning to join the lottery and hope to get a seat. So with Grad Daniel's help (as the site is entirely in Japanese), I booked two seats (if you book online, you also get one free drink per person and a coaster). We went on a Thursday night (the 7pm session is 3 hours, rather than the usual 2 hours for all the other sessions), and the place was only half full. Granted, it's not a very big place, and probably only seats about 20 people, which would explain why they need to have a lottery for seats. I guess it has been open for a while now, so the hype has died down a bit.

They had a few computers and a PlayStation 4 set up with Final Fantasy XIV, but as our subscriptions have lapsed, we weren't able to play.

Before you enter, you are given an iPad which you can use to order from. If you squint really hard, you can almost make out the English text underneath everything, so we were partly able to work out what we were ordering. All the dishes were themed on the game.

We got the Ifrit pizza (which I think was supposed to look like Ifrit's lair from the game, that was a fun boss battle).

It wasn't that spicy, but came with a bottle of habanero sauce to add to the spice.

Then there was some other thing that we weren't sure what it was based on:

We ordered the "bomb", which amazingly was actually lit on fire.

Then there were the drinks.

Summoner.

White mage.

Astrologist.

Chocobo.

Lastly, what meal would be complete without dessert?

When you enter, you are also given a raffle ticket. I managed to win third prize in the raffle, so I got this:

The person who won first prize got this:

It was so big that she ended up cutting it up and sharing it with everyone at the cafe, which was really nice of her.

I think going to the cafe was fun, but the biggest impact it has had is that we both want to go back to playing Final Fantasy XIV now. It's a pity that we don't have as much time as we used to. :(

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Despite the fact that this is our third trip to Japan, we still haven't made a trek out to see Mt Fuji. Now that we've actually looked into it, I can kinda see why. Unless you're planning to climb the mountain, going to the mountain itself doesn't give a very good view. This website (http://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/9-best-places-to-see-Mount-Fuji) lists some nice places to see the mountain from, but a lot of them are pretty far from Tokyo, even by train. MrFodder wanted to visit the suicide forest (aokigahara), but even that is pretty tough to get to by public transport. In the end, we decided to go and visit Lake Kawaguchiko which is about a 3 hour train trip out of Tokyo.

On the train, there was snow everywhere. We saw so many fields and houses covered in snow, it was so pretty. As you can imagine, I was pretty excited to go and play in the snow given I have lived in Australia my entire life. The first smooth patch of snow that we found was immediately taken over by us to make snow angels. Mine were pretty ugly, but MrFodder made a pretty one.

After that, what else was there to do but throw snowballs at each other? Although the term snowball is used loosely, as the snow was too powdery and soft to really pack into a ball.

We finally made it out to the lake and got a nice view of the mountain, and then began the long train ride back to Tokyo.

It was nice to see the mountain, but to be honest, it wasn't really any different from seeing it on the train. The nicest part of today's trip was having the chance to play in the snow. If I didn't already have a billion and one hobbies to occupy my time, I might almost be tempted to take up skiing.

Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the doggy park, which I'm a bit sad about, because I wanted to rent a shiba inu for the day.

Meat the Foddersons

(Sorry, though this picture was taken in Japan, this isn't going to be a post about Japan, just one of my musings. I'm not sure what time we'll be returning tomorrow, so I don't know if I'll get back in time to make my photo-a-day blog post, so I'm pre-writing it.)

I hinted at my reluctance to eat traditional Japanese breakfast foods earlier, and that's nowhere near the extent of my pickiness. While on the train ride from Kyoto to Tokyo (~3 hours, but longer today because of the snow), I was thinking back to my childhood eating habits. I remember only eating rice, as it was one of the things I was familiar with. Then slowly my parents managed to incorporate new things into my diet. I think a lot of kids loved going to McDonald's, but for me, I didn't - the food was too foreign. I would get a burger, and scrape everything off the meat patty, and just eat that and the bottom bun (because the top bun had sauce all over it that I couldn't remove). That was pretty much what I would eat: meat and rice (or some other carb if rice wasn't available), and it had to be completely plain, no sauces or garnishes at all.

I think people at school thought I was weird, as I was completely happy eating two pieces of white bread. I was often asked if I was going to put anything on it, and I happily replied that I was not. Eventually, I discovered tomato sauce, and I fell in love with it. Not just because it was delicious, but also because it helped me blend in with others. I could eat anything as long as it was completely covered in tomato sauce. I wasn't that weird kid who only ate plain white bread anymore, I was the weird kid who ate too much tomato sauce, which seemed to be less weird than just eating plain white bread.

Over time, my repertoire grew, and I came to love Italian food and eventually take-out Chinese food (though for a long time, I didn't enjoy eating that outside as I ate so much Chinese food at home). Now I can mostly eat like a normal person, though there are a lot of things that I still refuse to eat.

Despite my guilt over my workplace crush (who will now be called MrCrush), there have been some positive things that have come out of it. One of them is that he was the straw that broke the camel's back when it came to my habit of always ordering the same thing at a restaurant.

We had lunch together, and I pretended to look at the menu, but in reality, I had decided what I was going to order long before we even left the office, as I always order the same thing. He hadn't been to that restaurant before, so he asked me what was good. Normally when that happens, I usually repeat feedback that my other friends have given, but I think I was too nervous and nothing came to mind. So instead, I sheepishly admitted that I always order the same thing, so I have no idea how good the other things on the menu are.

He looked at me weirdly and I explained that it was because I knew that this thing was good, and if I ordered something else that wasn't as good, I would be eating with the feeling of regret that I hadn't ordered this good thing. And since I don't like to waste food, I would force myself to finish eating this less superior meal. Seems perfectly logical to me. (I pointed this out to Uni Paul during a lunch we had together, and he made fun of me and so I picked a different dish, and it was terrible. This was before the lunch with MrCrush, so I was determined not to make the same mistake again.) He pointed out that I could be ordering one of the average dishes on the menu, and could be missing out on the many better dishes, but I said if it was average, then there was a roughly even chance that I would get something better versus getting something worse. I was willing to settle for average if it didn't run the risk of something worse.

When the waiter came to take our order, I ordered my usual dish, and then MrCrush said he was about to order that, too, but now he had to change to something else. I felt vindicated in my choice, as if he wanted to order it as well, then it must be the best thing on the menu, which I pointed out to him, but he said that might not be the case, and ordered something else. I asked him why he changed, and he said that this way, I can try something else on the menu, without feeling obligated to force myself to eat it, and if it is good, I can order it next time.

He ended up ordering a cream-based dish, so I wasn't able to try some of it, but the intent was there. It made me think about all the meals that I have had with MrFodder in the past, and how I've been forcing him to eat what I eat - not just because of my allergies, but because of my pickiness. In trying to maximise my own enjoyment, I have been forcing MrFodder to live with averageness. I may be perfectly fine with average, but I know that he likes to try new foods. I know that in the past, my reluctance to eat things like kangaroo meat has frustrated him. I also know that he has tried to trick me into eating new things, which made me angry at the time, but should have been a warning sign to me that maybe I'm being unreasonable if he has to resort to that kind of behaviour.

I feel bad that it took a crush for me to realise how bad I've been. And now to loop it back to the image for today (as the challenge isn't to post random images and write text). I've never been a fan of Korean BBQ, so if given the choice, I would never have gone to a restaurant like Chifaja (with the all-you-can-eat meat BBQ). But MrFodder was keen, and in the spirit of trying new things, I went. I ate liver (still not a fan), but I also tried shabu-shabu (thinly sliced meat), which actually ended up being my favourite thing. We did go some of the safer options as well, like chicken thigh and pork ribs, but I am proud of myself for trying beef tongue and I was willing to give heart a shot, too, but we were pretty full by that point, and the restaurant charges you a fee if you have too much food leftover.

Have I been converted? I still wouldn't choose to go to that kind of restaurant of my own volition, but if someone else wanted to go, I probably wouldn't dread it.

Use Your Noodle

I can't remember what triggered it exactly, but about a month ago, I suddenly had a desire to visit the instant ramen museum while we were in Japan. I think the one I was thinking of was the one in Yokohama, but the one I ended up finding via Google was the one in Osaka - the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. I went to their website, and saw that they had a tour of the instant ramen factory, which included a class on making the noodles as well. How could I possibly turn down an opportunity to learn a cooking skill? With Grad Daniel's help (because the form was entirely in Japanese, and Google translate wasn't very helpful), I managed to sign us up for a class. On sign up, there were 3 categories of students: elementary school (grades 1, 2, 3), junior school (grades 4, 5, 6), middle school and older. I figured we were technically in the middle school or older category, so that's what I signed us up for. To say that I was excited about the experience was an understatement. I was telling everyone and anyone and grinning like a serial killer every time I remembered that we would be learning to make ramen.

When MrFodder's sister asked what we planned to do in Japan, I immediately had to tell her about the instant ramen factory. I mentioned the part about the 3 age groups and MrFodder suddenly asked, "Wait a minute... is this class for school kids?!" I said no, because the form distinctly said middle school or higher (Grad Daniel checked), and we were the "or higher". He got that look on his face that said, "What has Anna signed us up for now?", but it's OK, because I'm used to seeing that face, so it's not a big deal.

Well, today was the big day - chicken ramen factory day! We caught the train to Osaka, but since there was quite a bit of snow today, it was delayed. It didn't matter though, as we had left quite early to leave us enough time to explore the museum itself. We didn't really eat breakfast or lunch either, as the museum has vending machines for you to buy cup ramen to eat, and they have some of the rarer regional cup ramen flavours that you can only get in certain parts of Japan.

Finding the museum wasn't too difficult, but we were both pretty surprised at how many people were going to see it as well. Entry is free, but the factory tour noodle making part requires a reservation and is 500 yen for middle school or higher people. While the museum does have a brochure in English, and the staff are pretty fluent, all of the attractions were in Japanese, so we weren't really able to understand some of the finer points. We understood the gist of the process from the pictures though, so that was OK. They had a wall filled with lots of different flavours of ramen, and you could see the evolution of the packaging over time, from the plainer packages at the start, to the incredibly colourful packages now, often with misleading looking pictures (cup ramen never look like the pictures).

We got to customise our own cup noodles as well. You buy an empty cup for 300 yen, then you get to colour it in and draw on it. There were example images for you to copy from, like this one:

And then here are our works of art (mine is on the left, his on the right):

After that, they put in a dried noodle cake, and you get to pick which soup base you'd like, and which 4 ingredients you want in your cup noodles.

I picked a curry base, with naruto, spring onion, corn and crab. MrFodder picked a curry base with spring onion, naruto, pork and egg.

They put a lid on it, and shrink wrap it. Then you put it in this inflatable bag so it doesn't get crushed and take it home to eat later. They say to eat it within a month. They also say if you are flying by plane, not to take the inflatable bag, as the cabin pressure can mess with it, so we'll probably have to deflate it and eat it soon.

We made it to the vending machine area, but we didn't have enough time to actually stop and eat as the factory tour started soon, so we headed upstairs. Fortunately, we saw quite a lot of adults taking the class, and it didn't look like it was just teachers either, so we didn't feel so bad about signing up anymore.

The tour fits up to 48 people, and you must do it in pairs, so you can't register alone (which is why poor MrFodder got dragged along). You watch a demonstration on TV first, then you get to make it yourself. One clump of dough was enough for 2 people, so we both didn't get to try every step, but we did get to do most of the process. The most impressive part was putting it through the noodle machine. The dough that we kneaded was pretty ugly and messy, but after a few passes through the noodle machine it was beautiful.

After that, you need to let it rest a bit, and then pass it through a different setting on the noodle machine to make it flat. You do that a few times as well, and then there's another section of the machine that cuts it into strands. Those strands get steamed (the staff did this part), and then you mix in some seasoning and put it into the moulds. It gets fried (staff did that part, too), and then left to dry for a bit, after which it is placed into a package and sealed.

Once again, we had to decorate the package, and we were given some example pictures to draw from.

Look at these works of art:

If you think MrFodder and I drew those, you weren't paying attention earlier. They were drawn by the cute Japanese girls next to us (didn't get any names of phone numbers, unfortunately).

These are the ones that we drew (mine is on the left, his on the right):

Since it is almost Valentine's Day, which is a huge event in Japan, we made heart shaped noodle cakes. They also gave us these cute pink bags to place the packets in. The bandanas that we were wearing were also a souvenir for us. The cute girls next to us loved MrFodder's picture of a chicken, they even took a picture of it, and then took a photo of him as well.

That was the last part of the tour, so we left the museum (which was now closed) and headed back to Kyoto. I had a great time, and I'm really glad we went.

Much Ado About Bamboo

Today's adventure took place at the Arashiyama bamboo grove. As it is another populate tourist destination, there were a lot of people around, but most of the grove is fenced off, so people can't walk there. There is a small section that people are allowed to walk through, however, there are a bunch of rules that you're supposed to follow: walk around in a clockwise direction, no tripods, no eating or drinking, etc. We saw people breaking all of those rules while we were there. We also saw some guy flying a drone around. One of the things you're supposed to be able to do in the area is enjoy the sound of the bamboo swaying, but all we could hear was the buzz of the drone. Then he flew the drone into the bamboo, so you could hear the propeller cutting into the bamboo. That was a really sad sound.

There are quite a lot of temples in the area around the forest, so we tried to visit some of those, too. GP recommended we visit one called Jojakko-ji, which is about a fifteen minute walk away. It costs 400 yen to enter, but it was really nice to look at. It wasn't filled with people trying to buy charms or anything like that, so it was nice and peaceful. And with the recent snowfall, it was also really pretty. There was a section called the Immortal Poets Shrine there, and I thought I'd take a break and see if I'd get inspired to write some poetry, Here is the fruit of my labour:

We are at a shrine
Climbing lots of big steps
Je suis très content

MrFodder also tried, here is his poem:

My talent is the
best because I don't follow
the proper format

He then told me that I wasn't even standing at the Immortal Poets Shrine, but at some random building and that the actual shrine was a bit more to the right. Oh well, placebo effect!

We were able to leave the temple when we noticed that there was a section that we hadn't explored yet. We saw that it looked like someone else had built a snowman there recently, and of course, being from Australia, we had to build one, too! The snow was so soft and powdery, so it was really easy to put a snowman together. I really wanted to lie in it and make a snow angel, but it would probably be really rude.

Here is our second snowman!

Samurai Kembu Performance

One of the other things I signed us up for was a samurai kembu performance. Kembu is a ritual that samurai used to do before a battle in order to prepare their body and mind. Samurai don't exist anymore, but there are kembu groups around Japan who try to keep the samurai beliefs alive (not the part about killing themselves, but more the morals and values that the samurai had, as well as their skill with swords and fans).

We weren't allowed to take photos of the performance, but it was a great experience. Each performance was only a couple of minutes long, and set to a Japanese poem. Between the performances, one of the actors would come on to the stage and explain what was going on, and give some background on the life of a samurai, or the way that they live.

We found out that samurai were not supposed to show any emotion when others are around, which was reflected in the performances as all of the actors were expressionless throughout the entire thing.

I had no idea samurai also used fans, although it makes sense why Kenshin was carrying one in the anime now. We learned that the fans were used to show respect to others, as you would lay down your fan in front of you. It was also used amazingly in the performances, with the actors twirling them around, and folding and unfolding them with great effect. The fans were also used to illustrate different things in the show, like blood falling, or being shot with an arrow.

The middle actor was called Hitomi. Which means that's the first name of a cute Japanese girl that I've managed to get so far. I wasn't able to get her phone number though. And the fact that she gave us her name as part of the performance isn't relevant either...

She told us that there technically weren't any female samurai in fuedal Japan, but the wives of samurai often had to learn to fight in order to defend the family home in the event of an invasion, so they would often train with the male samurai, and instead of katana, they used a blade with a longer handle called naginata. They would also hide small knives in the folds of their kimono, so even though they looked harmless, they could inflict quite a lot of damage to an unsuspecting foe.

Despite the fact that there were children at the performance, they discussed the fact that samurai would participate in a ritual called harikiri, where they cut their own stomachs as a form of suicide. It is used to avoid falling into enemy hands, and also as a punishment for a serious crime, or if the samurai has brought shame upon themselves. They will stab themselves and cut across with a smaller blade, and in order to lessen the suffering, another samurai (if they were around), would cut their head off. I thought the whole thing was a bit gory at first, but as MrFodder pointed out, samurai are given a great amount of power, and the thought that they may have to kill themselves if they abuse that is a good way to moderate how they use it. The samurai honour code, bushido, also seems like a really respectable way of life, and I can appreciate it, even though it might be difficult to live like that in the modern age.

It was a really entertaining performance, and at the end, we even got to swing a katana, which made MrFodder so happy, as he said he has always wanted to do that. It was even a metal katana (although the blade wasn't sharp), and not a wooden one, so it was actually quite heavy.

Wish Come True

Today's adventure took place at the fushimi inari taisha, a shrine in Kyoto famous for the red gates that line its paths. It was a couple of train rides away from where we're staying, but you could tell it was a popular tourist destination as it had station staff dedicated to checking JR passes, and as soon as we got out of the station, we could see large crowds of people posing for photos.

We almost regretted going on a Saturday, as the path was full of people, and it was incredibly crowded, but we found once we made it past the main shrine, the crowds started thinning out, and once we made it to the top of where the gates seemed to go, it was practically deserted.

In the main shrine, you can buy fox shaped ema (votive tablets) where you write your name, address and wish, and hang it up in the shrine so that the shrine deities can receive your wish. So we decided to buy one and make a wish.

I wanted to wish that I wouldn't die from eating too much fried chicken, but MrFodder came up with a better wish, so we wrote that instead. You also need to draw a face on the front of the charm. Mine was meant to look like Tsukuba's peko-chan face from Chihayafuru.... and this is why I'm a programmer and not an artist.

After we hung up our wish, we decided to explore the area around the shrine a bit. We ended up following some people up a path where we found some people sitting around, and there was a cliff that gave us an amazing view of Kyoto. But that wasn't enough for MrFodder, and we continued upwards, as far as we could go. It got to the point where we were starting to see signs saying to be wary of boars, but we still hadn't gone as far as we could go. It was also at this point where we realised we were the only people around. I didn't want to pull a Robert Baratheon, but it was actually really tranquil out here. There were also small patches of snow leftover from when it had snowed in Kyoto a few days earlier (once again, we have managed to time our trip to miss all the snow!).

We had walked quite far when MrFodder suddenly stopped and said, "Can you hear that? It sounds like people shouting." We both stopped to listen, and I thought it sounded like machinery grinding, so we kept going. But as we got closer, it did sound a lot like people shouting in a rhythmic fashion. We both came to the same conclusion that it sounded a lot like some sort of ritual, and I started to think maybe it was some secret cult that kidnaps isolated travellers in order to sacrifice them to the hungry Fox deities. Or maybe it some kind of creepy shrine torture ritual like in Higurashi. Whatever the reason for the shouting, we both decided it was probably a good time to turn back.

Except we were totally lost at this point. We began to retrace our steps until we got back to the top, but we were the only people around still. Until we saw a Japanese hiker, and we thought, if he's happy to walk here, then we'll probably end up somewhere. So we headed down the track that it looked like he was following until we hit a chain in the road. We were set to turn back when we bumped into him and he told us the chain was just to stop cars, but people can continue walking through.

So we started to follow him, and it looked like we were heading somewhere, as we could see some buildings in the distance. But then I heard the chanting again. We were heading back towards the ritual place!

I'm not entirely sure what MrFodder was thinking at this time, but my first thought was of that scene in Rat Race where two people are supposed to be transporting a heart that's ready for a transport operation when they accidentally lose the heart. The realise they're in big trouble until they notice Rowan Atkinson's character, who is a hiker with no family in the country. Nobody who will miss him at all. And they plan to kill him for his heart. What if this Japanese hiker wanted to kill us for our organs and was leading us towards the crazy ritual place?!

We were really lost at this point, so we kept walking, but I was prepared for a fight.

Fortunately, the road branched, and the hiker ended up taking the branch that went downhill, but we were not equipped to walk that track (he had walking sticks) so we took the left fork, and ended surrounded by Japanese houses.

MrFodder pulled out the pocket WiFi that we had, and checked where we were. We were nowhere near the Fushimi Inari shrine, but somehow had managed to walk over the mountain / hill thing and ended up on the other end. Fortunately, we ended up near a completely different temple, and got to explore that as well.

After that experience, we decided to take a lunch break before continuing the rest of the day, but it seems that the Fox shrine deity is already working its magic.

Fodder Potter and the Japanese Shrine

To continue with my challenge this year to try and do different things, I signed myself up for a pottery class in Kyoto. It was pretty fun, and I think because it's currently Winter here, I was the only student in the class.

The teacher has been doing pottery for the past 9 years, and she was pretty amazing. She made something first, to show me how it's done. First you wet your fingers in the bowl. She said that you have to keep your fingers wet as the clay is quite fragile. You put your feet on these blocks so that you can rest your elbows on your knees. The instructor helped build the foundation of my bowl so that I could do the rest.

Then you use your thumb and your middle and ring fingers on your left hand to gently pull the clay upwards. This makes the clay into a vase-like shape. Then you put the fingers of your right hand inside the pot, and the fingers of your left hand on the outside, and gently widen the pot. Finally, you use reindeer skin and a sponge to smooth out the clay.

Here's my finished product (it's meant to be a rice bowl).

The workshop offered to ship my bowl back to Australia, so I look forward to seeing it arrive! I asked that she put a teal glaze on it, so it isn't going to match any of our crockery, but I don't care, because I made it!

The pottery class also happened to be where one of Kyoto's most popular shrines happens to be. So while I was doing the pottery class, MrFodder did some exploring. It really was a beautiful place, and we ate some pretty delicious food!

MrFodder managed to find an unfortunate example of Engrish.