Shaler Area In Japan: 6/19, Wednesday

Hello. This is Alex, class of 2020. Today at school we were very busy. We had classes throughout the morning, and I’ve learned to dislike Japanese class in Japan. It is just way too difficult. After morning classes, they took us to a few special events. First, a large group of about 90 junior high school students met us in a large hall, where we gave a short presentation about ourselves, Shaler, and Pittsburgh. After that, we broke up into groups, and students introduced us to a wide variety of traditional Japanese games. It was really fun to interact with the students like that.

After that, most students had important testing preparation that we couldn’t attend, so instead we were taken to an art room with a small group of students, and together we made kaleidoscopes and origami cranes. It was funny because some of the Japanese students didn’t know how to make the cranes, so we had to teach them! The projects were interesting, but it was just good talking to students interested in learning about English and us. We closed out the day with a tour of Japanese clubs. There was so much more variety there, and students practice way harder than we do. Plus, there are more than just sports and music clubs. There are all kind of cultural clubs to get involved in. Most students have club every day (including weekends) and on school days, they will often be at club until 7:30!

After school Roman and I were picked up by our host mother, and she took us to visit a traditional Japanese house. Once there, we were greeted by the old couple that still lived there. Being a traditional house, the doorways were not suited for my height. I hit my head, twice. All of the 11 rooms had tatami flooring, so of course our shoes had to be off. We were given tea made with fresh leaves along with manju, a traditional sweet. There were tons of old paintings throughout the house depicting things like cranes in ponds and Kukai meditating. There was also a shelter room in the house, with doors that were 8 inches thick and it took three of us to open.

After chatting for a bit, we left the house for a Buddhist temple. We were greeted by the priest and his wife and led inside, something Balsomico-sensei says is unusual. They had us sit down and let us all try different kinds of food. The first was salted fish eggs and crushed umeboshi. Umeboshi are pickled plums and very very sour, and I, like most nonJapanese, am not fond of them. However, my hosts were very understanding. They offered us additional snacks of which I am unfamiliar with the name, and they included a kind of caramel covered French fry, a type of rice cracker, and a pretzel like cookie.

After eating and chatting for some time, the priest took us to an area where people come to pray. There were lots of chairs facing an enormous shrine to Buddha, which included a golden statue of Buddha standing up, surrounded by golden bells, flowers, and leaves. After admiring the shrine we went outside to a huge copper bell. Before sounding it, we bowed and pulled back on a rope which let a huge wooden log hit the bell. Before we left, the priest ran back to his house, then came with two cokes for us, as he said it’s too hot to leave without having something to drink.

We went home just around dinner time. We made onigiri, a ball of rice filled with a topping of choice wrapped in seaweed. I made one with fish flakes and one with cooked mushrooms. Lastly, for dessert, we were given a special treat: mocha with red bean cake. They were very different from American desserts as they don’t have the sweetness of some things we would have,

I am running out of data for my phone plan in Japan, so I will have to wait until we get to Kyoto on Monday to send in the pictures for our trip in the evening.