BEST. DAY. EVER.

YOU GUYS.

I kind of had the Best Day Ever yesterday.

Unrelated to the Best Day Ever: Steven returned to the States yesterday, which means that we're down to eight Fellows remaining in Japan.  It's a little scary to think that I'll be the next person to leave.  Oh noooooooooooo.

Okay, now the actual Best Day Ever:

So I spent the morning slaving over my paper, which is now longer than I feel comfortable admitting.  It's also still not done, because I am insane.  But it's getting there!  I really only have to finish writing/organizing the interpersonal relationships section and write the introduction and conclusion and then do some smoothing out in the middle and I am DONE.

In the afternoon I headed over to Kawahara Shrine for the second day of their summer festival!

Everyone had been freaking out the previous day, because the weather forecast called for ~OMINOUS THUNDERSTORMS~, but it actually didn't even rain!  It sprinkled a little bit at one point, but otherwise it just stayed grossly hot and muggy.

Anyway, the moment I arrived I was spotted by a couple of the soudai who were chilling under the tent that had been set up (they were in charge of selling the offerings for the festival) and they called me over to chill with them.  As it turns out, chilling with soudai is a much easier way to people-watch than hovering awkwardly!  The more you know!

There was a special ceremony occurring at one of the auxiliary shrines at 4, but before that all the soudai gathered to take a picture and I got dragged into it because apparently I hang around the shrine enough that I count as...something having to do with the shrine?

After that everyone lined up to walk around the grass-loop and then walked over to the auxiliary shrine for the ceremony.  It was potentially the most cramped ceremony ever, 'cause there were roughly forty people trying to stuff themselves into a space that could comfortably hold maybe five people.  But nobody was crushed, so all was well.

After the ceremony, everybody was chilling under the tent again and drinking tea and talking about various things.  Then Yamauchi-san (who works in the shrine office) came up and said, "Hey, Dana, do you want to try on miko clothes?  'cause all the other foreign students got to."*
And I said, "...sure?"

So then I got dressed up as a miko.

FOR THE RECORD, miko hakama are more like a skirt than pants!  Also, if you tie hakama correctly, you will not be able to bend your back easily.

So, yeah, I got to dress up as a miko!  It was pretty exciting!

And then I was chilling in the shrine office and talking to various people about various things while Yamauchi-san and Itou-san whispered together a bunch.

And then Yamauchi-san was like, "WEEEEEELL, as long as you're dressed properly...want to help out?  We'll pay you in dinner."

And I was like, "YUS, FREE FOOD."

So I got to sit at the window of the shrine office and make shide** and I told a guy where the toilet was when he asked.  (...I don't spend too much time at the shrine.)  Oh, and a bunch of the soudai did a double-take when they walked past, 'cause they were like, "Oh, hey, we need [whatever]" and then they were like, "....waaaaaaait a second."
(Needless to say, everyone else in the shrine office was terribly amused by all of this.)

So then I got free dinner!  Which was delicious bento.  And I got to talk to the musicians who were performing!  And I had a lovely conversation with Itou-san, because all my conversations with Itou-san are lovely.

So then we were done with dinner and Itou-san said, "...so the other miko need to eat dinner...  Do you want to take their place doing suzubarai?  'cause we don't really have anyone else to spare..."

So I wound up doing suzubarai???***
Suzubarai, for anyone who doesn't speak Shinto-ese, is a purification using a bell-stick and a fan.  It is...not actually that hard to do!  I even learned how to give directions to people with the correct level of politeness.  (ようこうそお参りくださいました！)
So, anyway, Yamauchi-san and I did suzubarai for a while, and then Itou-san took over for Yamauchi-san.

As it turns out, the draw of getting suzubarai from the head priest and a random gaijin is pretty strong!  We had SO MANY PEOPLE coming for suzubarai.

Perhaps the best moment, though, was when this little boy (he was probably about 4) and his mom came to ask us for suzubarai.  We did it, and when we finished:
Mom: It's very unusual to see a head priest doing suzubarai!
Itou-san: Yes, this is a one night-only special.  You get suzubarai from the head priest and a one night-only miko!  (to the little boy) Where do you think she [meaning me] is from?
Little boy: AMERICA.
Me: Yes, I'm American.
Little boy: I CAN TELL FROM HER FACE.
Mom: (pretty obviously confused) Oh, is she...doing...some sort of...self-purification???
Itou-san: No, she's just studying Shinto.  She's going to Harvard in the fall!
Mom: Wow!
Itou-san: (to the little boy) Since you got suzubarai from her, that means you can go to Harvard too!
Little boy: O.O
Mom: Wow, it's so unusual to have a foreigner studying Shinto.
Itou-san: Yes, she knows a lot about things having to do with shrines.
Little boy: I KNOW A LOT ABOUT CARS.
...so then he started telling us all the things he knew about cars until his mum had to drag him away...
...but he came back later in the evening...
Itou-san: Yes?  Did you want suzubarai again?
Little boy: YES.
Little boy: But I want it from HER.
Little boy: SO I CAN GO TO HARVARD.
So I did suzubarai for him, and then he ran away and then ran back and then waved at me and then ran away again.

It.
Was.
Adorable.

So, yeah!

Then the other miko came back from dinner and took over, so I got sent to the honden to stamp people's heads.  It was EXCITING.  Some of the children were terrified of the stamps, possibly because they thought they were shots?  And then there were a bunch of people who wanted to know if the ink was permanent, because they didn't want to go into work the next day with a red circle on their foreheads.
Also, there were a lot of people who wanted stamps from the gaijin miko.
(Although there were also people who didn't realize I was gaijin.  Or at least not at first.  Some of them would get a stamp and get halfway out of the honden before stopping and backtracking to stare at me.)

Anyway, it was kiiiiind of amazing!  And I got to see a lot of bits of festivals that I wouldn't normally and it turns out that it's way easier to observe people when you're working (you turn into FURNITURE**** and no one looks at you twice until they have to interact with you) than when you are hovering awkwardly!

By the way, here are some pictures:

Outside the honden!

Inside the honden with some of the head-stamping soudai!

In the shrine office!

I'd like to the note that I was the only miko who had long enough hair to wear the hair decorations properly without having to wear a wig/hair extensions.
(I'd also like to note that I am holding my hands in the correct position in every picture LIKE A PRO.)

Itou-san also took a bunch more pictures, which she said she'd give to me the next time I visit.  So...look forward to that?

Anyway, after that the festival was winding down so everyone got dressed in street clothes and ran around turning off lights and locking up buildings and trying to find missing bicycle keys for kids (you would not believe how many kids came to the shrine office saying they had lost their bicycle keys).  And then Itou-san drove me home, because "I wouldn't let you walk home in the dark if you were my daughter."

So, all in all, a pretty fantastic day!

And right now we are having an incredibly intense rain/lightning/thunder/even more rain storm.  YAY, RAIN.
...and now I have hiccups.  Boo, hiccups.
Right-o, off to bed for me.

*There was a day when all the other girls from the dorm went to Kawahara Shrine to observe a wedding and then got dressed up as miko afterwards, but I had another commitment that day so I couldn't go.

**Those little zigzag paper ornaments that you see everywhere at shrines.

***Ultimate full circle moment: A little more than a year ago I was in the Tech House kitchen having a discussion about miko and Fulbright scholars that WOUND UP ON THE TECH HOUSE QUOTES PAGE, but, anyway, I was saying that I was actually eligible to be a miko but would never get picked.  OH, HOW WRONG I WAS.

****I just had really weird Umineko flashbacks.
Um.
Ow.

Sometimes stuff is problematic

So apparently nobody can figure out the shortened words.  Here, have some hints:
pasokon, meruado, and kopipe are all words having to do with computers
kaanabi and rimokon are both electronics
furima and infure are words you will most commonly hear in economics
shinse and santora both have to do with music
ama is the opposite of puro
YAY, now you will definitely be able to figure them out, right?  Right?  Right?

Other exciting news!  On Friday night we had our dorm's dance party, which went better than the Halloween party, but has convinced me that even if I have friends at them, I am just not into parties!
Additionally, I discovered that when I put on a dress, dudes apparently become really interested in flirting with me.  It's awkward, 'cause some of them were dudes who have never bothered to talk to me before and suddenly they were all, "Man, you are HAWT in a dress," and then ogled me awkwardly, and I was all, "OH MAN, IS THAT SOMEONE WHO DESPERATELY NEEDS MY HELP FAR ACROSS THE ROOM I GOTTA GO."  On the other hand, I had a bunch of actually good/interesting conversations with people who had things to remark on other than my hawtness in a dress/lack of hawtness the rest of the time.

Oh, on a totally unrelated note, several days ago, Ashley recognized my dorky Hitchhiker's shirt for what it is,* which led to SO MUCH GEEKY BONDING, as if we weren't already buddies because of our shared bronyism** and disturbing enthusiasm for Gurren Lagann (it is the best and if you disagree YOU ARE WRONG).

In other news, I have begun to realize exactly how right Alyssa's Law of Anthropology is.  Alyssa (who is the anthropologist Fulbrighter in Fukuoka) was saying at the conference that anthropologists like to spend a lot of time talking about how "problematic" everything is.  And recently I've been doing a lot of reading that has driven that point home.  Of course, sometimes labeling something as problematic makes sense, especially if it's a translated word.  For example, could you call a kami a god?  Maybe.  But that could be, ahem, problematic, because it might make your readers think that you're talking about the Western concept, with the gods existing in a different world/level than humanity.  It gets even more complicated when you're using words that also exist in Chinese, or words that exist across cultures, like "Buddha."  In Japanese, there's a phrase "to become a buddha," which is basically synonymous with "to die."  Except that's not how becoming a Buddha works in any other kind of Buddhism.  So it's pretty understandable if you have to put a disclaimer on that sort of thing.
...and then there are people who think pretty much everything is problematic.  This especially becomes a problem when you're talking about Shinto between 1868 and 1945, because everybody argues over whether it was a state cult or not and whether it was a religion or not and whether it was a state teaching or not and whether etc. etc. etc.  And it's fine to recognize that there's a lot of debate surrounding a lot of terms, but apparently some people feel the need to write a disclaimer EVERY.  TIME.  THE TERM.  APPEARS.  Yes, I got it the first time!  It's problematic!  I know!

On a final note, I asked Itou-san about finding a female priest who went through seminary as a college student (because both she and Nakano-san did the crazy summer crash courses), and she is amazing and knows a bunch of people and said she would introduce me and YES.  SO EXCITED.

...and on an actually final note, people have found my blog through the keywords "euphemisms for chest hair."
What.
The.
Fork.

*So many people have told me that my "whale shirt" is "cute," and then I wait for them to continue and they just stop there and I am sad.

**Season 2 ended today and it was amazing and I just, wow, you guys, wow.
I WISH I HAD A BBBFF.  OR A PFF.  OR ALL OF THE ABOVE.
ALSO, PONIES + OPERA WHY IS THIS SO GOOD
[obligatory spazzing]
Ahahaha, you probably all think I'm insane but I DON'T CARE BECAUSE PONIES.

Adventures in licorice

In case I haven't already pounded on your door in the middle of the night (sorry, Louki) and you haven't been notified by Tech House's vast and somewhat dizzying information network* and you haven't, I dunno, talked to my parents, I GOT INTO HARVARD.  It's pretty exciting!  So I'm going to be touring there during my crazy East Coast tour thing in two weeks.

Aside from that, I haven't really been up to anything terribly exciting.  On Tuesday I had lunch with Itou-san, which was really nice.  She's so cool, and, yes, I've said this a million times, but it's STILL TRUE.  Also on Tuesday, Louki and I cleaned our entire common space.  Yeah.  The entire thing.  I think it was the first time it had been cleaned in about a million years, from the amount of grime that had collected.  (Literally.  Hi-chan didn't know where some of the stuff we were throwing out had come from, and she's been living in this room for more than a year!)  We also wound up with about seven bags of trash.  Louki did most of the work, to be honest, because she is crazy intense, but I did most of the kitchen, which I think we can all agree was horrifying, because there was LIQUID SLUDGE IN THE STOVE BURNER.  I don't even have words.  There was a point, while I was scraping handfuls of oily sludge off of various objects, that I began to wonder whether it would be physically possible for our kitchen to be any more disgusting.  But it's cleaner now, so yay!
Also, Itou-san showed up at some point in the middle and gave us warabi mochi,** because she is so awesome and also she's taken a shining to the girls in my dorm.

Today I had penmanship class, and listened to a very long discussion about whether or not Gosha Shrine is actually being haunted by ghosts/angels.  It was pretty exciting.  (Also, the three-year-old son of one of the women, who normally just sits quietly and hangs on his mom's arm, became incredibly talkative when ghosts were mentioned, and informed us all gleefully that if you go into dark places ghosts will get you.)  I was also told that the reason I like research is because my parents' smartness is embedded in the DNA of my soul.  The more you know???***

In other news, Louki has discovered the joy of feeding Americans Dutch licorice.  If you have never had Dutch licorice, let me tell you, you are probably better off that way.  I am unsure why anyone believes it to be edible, let alone a sweet.  Louki takes great glee in coming to my door with a giant bag of licorice and watching all the color drain out of my face.  I have been very good, though, and tried everything she's given me, and I've only had to spit it out because I thought I was going to die once.  Salt + licorice = DEATH.
(However, I got revenge on Louki by making her eat death mangoes, which are actually dried mangoes dipped in chili powder.  She turned bright red and keeled over.  REVENGE.)

On a final note, it's currently White Day, also known as Valentine's Day Part Two, in which dudes who got chocolate from girls have to give white chocolate back to them.  It was baaaaaaaaaaaaasically a holiday invented by chocolate companies to sell more white chocolate, and it worked, except that some people thought it would be funnier to give panties in return 'cause those are also white.  Way to go, you guys.  I'm hoping that All the Chocolate goes on sale tomorrow, because that would be awesome.

*I have gotten the strangest set of emails from Tech Housers in the past 48 hours.  Some of them were normal congratulations and some of them were Tech House-style congratulations and some of them were expressing glee at the potential opportunity to insult me for living in Massachusetts.  You know who you are.

**If you've never had warabi mochi before, it's somewhat difficult to describe.  It's kind of like jelly crossed with mochi, covered in ground soybeans.  SO DELICIOUS.

***Also in the last 48 hours, I was told that I owed it to humanity to have children with Nick, because with our combined DNA, all of our children would go to Harvard.
UM.
I don't even know what to say to that except AWKWARD and also HETERONORMATIVE.
'kay, I feel like a Brown student now.

So many sweets

Oh geez, I haven't written anything in here in a while.  Let's see what interesting things I've been doing the past few days...

Friday was Dutch Food Night, which meant that Louki and Kim made all the Americans Dutch food in repayment for American Food Night.  Apparently you can have pancakes for dinner in the Netherlands?  SO DELICIOUS.  Also, Dutch pancakes are really thin (more like crepes*) and not particularly sweet at all.  And sometimes they have cheese inside, like pancake quesadillas!  MMMMM.  And sometimes you cover them in caramel and powdered sugar and roll them up and eat them like burritos.   P.S. We are totally adults.

On Sunday we went on a big adventure over to Nagoya Station to visit Sweets Paradise, which is an all-you-can-eat sweets and pasta.  Unfortunately, when we signed up slightly before 1 p.m., our slot was for 4:20...and nobody wanted to eat lunch, so we just sort of snacked and tried not to feel hungry.  But in the meantime we went on an adventure and I FOUND A TIGER AND BUNNY KEYCHAIN.  It was a mystery box, which meant that I had no idea what I was getting until after I bought it, which is why I now have Yuri Petrov** hanging from my wallet.  Not who I would have chosen (okay, so I totally would have gone for Saito if I had a choice, because I am totally okay with having an overweight balding nerd hanging from my wallet), but he's a pretty interesting character (and also the character who my favorite episode revolves around), so it's all cool.

Anyway, after that we finally went to Sweets Paradise.  You basically have 70 minutes to eat, which means that you attempt to eat as much as possible as quickly as possible.  I have to say, I liked the real food better than the sweets (they had THE BEST fried potatoes), mostly because I am realizing that I am just not super into Japanese cakes.  Part of the problem is that Japanese cakes seem to consist mostly of air--especially chocolate cakes--so eating a chocolate cake gives me the same amount of chocolate as eating, say, a single square of chocolate from a chocolate bar.  If I wanted to eat a single square of chocolate, I would...wait, what am I saying?  When would I EVER want to eat a single square of chocolate?  Sheesh.
Also, Sweets Paradise appears to be a popular date spot, because, as one of the other girls pointed out, what could possibly more romantic than watching your date stuff his/her face?
So, overall, an interesting experience, but not likely to repeat it, simply because I am not into Japanese cake enough for it to be cost-effective.

Anyway, after that we went to the onsen because we are all about onsens and also it's cheap SO YOU CAN'T STOP US.  And I tried a sauna for the first time ever, and have decided that I am not particularly into saunas.  They have two saunas there, and the steam one made me feel like I was suffocating, and the dry one made me feel like I was suffocating...just more slowly than the steam one.  I would be willing to try Finnish sauna'ing, though.  YEAH, I KNOW I'M CRAZY, but it sounds better than suffocating.

Monday was the farmer's market at Kawahara Shrine, and a bunch of the girls from the dorm wanted to know where to get cheap vegetables, so we trooped over there.  I got kinkan, because it's not an addiction and I can stop any time I want.  The guy at the fruit stand gave me extra, which was nice of him, so I got something like 60 kinkan for 300 yen.  (He also give some of the other girls a "gaijin discount.")
Anyway, I had omiyage from Izumo for Itou-san, so I dropped by the shrine office to see if she was in.  She wasn't, but one of the women called her up...and next thing we knew all of us had been invited inside for a chat and some tea, which turned into an expedition into the honden (second group of gaijin ever in the honden? yeah) and Storytime About the Shrine and Its Kami.  As it turns out, two of the kami enshrined at Kawahara are the kami born from Izanami's urine and faeces when she was dying from giving birth to the fire kami.  (Itou-san: Yeah, kids think it's very funny.  "They're the poop and pee kami!")  The more you know!
...and then Itou-san took us out to lunch and a couple of the girls attempted to convince her to let them pay for themselves but she would have none of it.
...also, somewhere in the course of lunch Itou-san totally made a joke about Kim and Louki being lesbian lovers because they were the only members of the group who didn't have boyfriends.  FIRST TIME I have ever heard anyone joke about homosexuality in Japan.  It was...weirdly refreshing, given how incredibly uncomfortable it seems to make pretty much everyone else.
So, anyway, what was supposed to be a short trip took up a huge chunk of the morning and afternoon, and Itou-san has been voted the nicest lady ever.  This coming from the girls who were terrified when they were invited inside the shrine office, because they didn't know how to talk to priests.

Monday night was the dorm's Valentine's Day potluck.  The boys were supposed to make real food while the girls were supposed to make desserts and sweets.  I was thinking about rebelling and making real food ('cause we have so few boys in the dorm, and also because I CAN), but then Hi-chan told me that our microwave can be used as an oven????  Why didn't anyone think to tell me this before?  Anyway, I decided to make a chocolate decadence cake instead (Louki and Hi-chan helped), which was a hit and made Kim attempt to convince me to make another one.  (First she told me it was her birthday and then she said actually it wasn't and I said it was going to be my brother's birthday very soon, and she said, "You should make a cake for your brother and then send him pictures of us eating it!"  What do you think, bro?)  There was also this AMAZING pasta dish which I really want to learn how to make.  I am going to have to track down the guy who made it and ask for the recipe.

Today was Valentine's Day, and I avoided all the Valentine's Day-related things, because if you think Valentine's Day makes single people feel like garbage in the States, you should really not come to Japan.  I'm not really into making anyone feel like garbage, especially not people who don't buy Ghana chocolate.  There are literally advertisements saying, "If you really love him, you'll buy him Ghana chocolate."  Um, WHAT.  What if my hypothetical he is allergic to chocolate?  What if he doesn't like chocolate?  What if I don't feel like giving him Ghana and want to give him Meiji instead?  Sheesh.  And, yes, I know it's an advertising ploy, but seriously, it rubs me the wrong way.
Bah, heteronormativity and chocophilinormativity.***  Bah.
I feel like such a Brown student.

*SURVEY: Do you say "crape" (rhyming with "scrape") or "crep" (rhyming with "step")?  Merriam-Webster says the first pronunciation is correct, but I'm meeting a surprising number of people who go for the second...

**If you haven't seen the anime, DO NOT LOOK HIM UP, 'cause SPOILERS.  He looks like this, though.

***Totally made this word up, but everybody should use it.  All the time.  That's so chocophilinormative!  Let's make this a THING.

Adventures in mochi

So last night Louki and I went to the mochi party at the Nagoya University international dorm.  On the way there, Itou-san regaled us with stories of when she went to Izumo Taisha (with her brother as a sort of college roadtrip) and managed to not stay in a hotel room...or pay for showers...or pay for food sometimes.  Needless to say, there were extreme hijinks which involved bathing in rivers and sleeping in cars.  Man, it makes my adventures seem so boring in comparison.

Anyway, we got to the mochi party where everyone from the Tomodachi no Kai (literally "the club of friends," but they host events for international students so they can practice their Japanese) was still setting up.  We got to see a mochi machine in action!  It is the craziest thing--sort of like a cross between a rice cooker and a bread machine.  Basically, you throw your mochi rice in with water and once it has cooked, the machine starts spinning like a washing machine and the rice turns into mochi.  CRAZY.

Also, as it turned out, they needed someone to make an announcement about the party over the dorm intercom in English, and Itou-san elected me to do it, so I got to announce the party.  It was exciting.

Once the mochi was done, it was time to eat SO MUCH MOCHI.  You have never seen so much mochi in your life.  We had mochi with black sesame (definitely my favorite) and mochi with ground soy beans and mochi with red beans and mochi with grated daikon and mochi with spinach and fish flakes and mochi with cheese and seaweed (which is strangely delicious?).  Oh, and one of the students from Laos brought some kind of excessively delicious soup that I might have been way too into.
Also, while eating the cheese-and-seaweed mochi, something went horribly wrong and Louki wound up with both her hands stuck to the mochi...which was also stuck to her mouth.  The fact that she was laughing while trying to get unstuck wasn't really helping matters.  Itou-san decided to be helpful by taking a picture.

Also, all the guys in the Tomodachi no Kai kept telling us, "Mochi has twice the rice of normal rice,* so don't eat too much or you'll get fat!" and all the women kept telling us to eat more.  Clearly the women had their priorities straight.

As it turned out, most of the students from Nagoya U. who came speak absolutely no Japanese.  (Literally no Japanese at all.  I have no idea how they take classes, but maybe Nagoya U. offers them in English?)  Some of the Tomodachi no Kai members speak English, but a lot of them speak very minimal English, so they were THRILLED OUT OF THEIR MINDS when they discovered that we could actually understand what they were saying.  So a whole bunch of people came over to talk to me and Louki about a whole bunch of things, which was pretty cool.

...also there was this really awkward moment where this old guy asked if Louki and I were planning on getting Japanese boyfriends, and Louki (very sensibly) gave a very noncommittal answer while I said I already had a boyfriend.  Then he told me that Japanese boys were cool.  And I said I was sure that was so, but I kind of like my boyfriend 'cause he's pretty awesome.  And then he told me that when I break up with my boyfriend I should let him know so he can hook me up with a Japanese guy.  One of the older women overheard him and was horrified and told him he was horrible and made him apologize.
Yeah.
It was exciting?

There was also a guy who kept trying to convince Louki that Japan has significantly more equality than the Netherlands by citing the fact that less than half the population in the Netherlands is allowed to go to college.  Except, of course, that's not true and we have no idea where he got this statistic from.  (He appeared to believe that certain people are forced to become farmers because of their social class?  Maybe he was confusing the Netherlands with the Edo period...)
The same guy tried to convince me that atheists don't exist.
It was an exciting conversation.

But I had a cool conversation with a Japanese woman who just finished up her master's at Nagoya U. in foreign language studies and with a bunch of older ladies who foisted food on me and with some Chinese master's students in engineering.
Also, this random guy called me cool?  He said, "You strike me as the kind of person who, if a cockroach suddenly appeared, would calmly kill it while everyone else freaked out."  Ahahahahaha.  That's definitely not happened before.

So, yeah!  It was fun!  We ate SO MUCH MOCHI.  And it was delicious.  And we were invited back any time we like.  Apparently they have activities every Thursday, so I might start going to those.  It seems like a fun group, even if some of them are committed to seeing me with a Japanese guy.
I...I really don't know what to say about that.

Anyway, I am currently writing this post from a hotel room in Izumo!  I took three trains (uggggh don't even talk to me about it) with my advisor and Torii-san (the only other girl in my advisor's seminar) to get here.  It was about 8 hours in transit.  UGGGGGH.  There was some serious freaking out on the way (not on my part) 'cause there was no snow in Nagoya and then there was SO MUCH SNOW in Gifu and somehow my advisor heard that there was a foot of snow in Izumo and when we got to Tottori there was about a foot of snow and it was snowing and everybody (except for me) was freaking out everywhere...and then we got to Izumo and there was no snow at all and it's above freezing.  LAME.  I miss snow.  Which is ironic because I've only really had one winter with proper snow.  BUT WHATEVER.

Tomorrow we're going to see Izumo Taisha and also a museum related to Lafcadio Hearn...?  And probably other things that I don't know about yet.  But hopefully it will be exciting.  Two of our other classmates are taking a night bus up, so we'll see how awake they are...

*I think they meant that because mochi is basically super compacted rice, it's twice as dense as normal rice...?

Recap: Life after the S-As' departure

Last time traveling post for now, so might as well enjoy it while it lasts!*

Some stuff that has happened since Nick left for home:

1. My new suitemate came.  Her name is Louki, she is Dutch, and she cleans things when she is bored.  Needless to say, we get along well.  Also, our suite is significantly cleaner and sometimes I don't have to wash a sink full of dishes every time I want to make dinner.

2. The semester ended.  Our Monday and Tuesday classes were definitely not parties.  I could see how an outside observer might think they were parties, but that outside observer would be wrong.  Definitely very serious classes.

3. Tuesday-sensei apparently knows someone who wants an English conversation partner, so he said he'll put us in touch.

4. I finished my graduate school applications.

5. I wrote an article for The Fulbrighter.
5a. I found out my article is going to be published.

6. I set up an interview with a priest at Ueno Tenmanguu for next Tuesday.  Hopefully it will go well.  I'm trying to type up and revise my interview questions so that I make sure to hit all the important points in a single sitting.

7. I was told that I must have been Japanese in a previous life.  (This is the standard response when people can't figure out why the heck I would be interested in Japan.  Never mind that it's interesting or anything.  I MUST have been Japanese in a previous life.)

8. I read Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan, which convinced me
A. I really don't want to join a millenarian movement
and
B. I really don't want to engage in any research where my research subjects are likely to try to murder me.

9. I tried Dutch licorice.  It is...really odd.

10. Itou-san invited me (and my roommates, so Louki is coming with me) to a Thing at Nagoya University tomorrow.  It involves mochi and foreign students aaaaaaaaaaaaand that's pretty much all I know.  But it should be fun!

11. I had penmanship class and somehow managed to screw up the kanji in my calligraphy name as well as the stroke order for pretty much every kanji ever.  MY SHAME IS UNBEARABLE.
It got to the point that Nakano-san would be chatting to the other ladies, and it would sound like, "Oh, did you hear that Suzuki-san is STROKE ORDER, DANA-CHAN moving to Hokkaido?"
11a. On the upside, Nakano-san gave me two children's books that are published by a publishing company that is associated with a shrine.  Needless to say, they're supposed to teach kids about Shinto.  The one I'm currently reading is about a hinoki (Japanese cypress) tree growing up in a forest.  Thus far in the story, the wind has taught the hinoki about the kami and how everyone has a meaning in life and the hinoki's best friend (a dung beetle) dropped dead from the cold.  It...is kind of morbid yet happy?

12. I bought a tea pot!  So now I can drink SO MUCH TEA.

13. I developed a minor addiction to kinkan, which my dictionary tells me means "kumquat" but is definitely not a kumquat.  Or at least what we think of in the states as a kumquat.  It's about twice as big and DELICIOUS.  I would eat a million of them every day if fruit wasn't so darned expensive.

14. I found out that the Fulbright mid-year conference is going to be on March 22, so I will be in Tokyo March 18-23 at the very least.  Might be there longer, depending on whether some other things pan out.  I'm definitely going to try to hit the Ghibli Museum and Washinomiya Shrine (the Lucky Star Shrine) while I am there, though.
14a. I found out that at the conference I have to give a presentation on my research...that is 3-5 minutes long.  I AM GOING TO GO INSANE.  How can I say anything worthwhile in that space?  lskjskhekrhaea
14b. I'm going on a tour of Nikko, sponsored by the Tokyo Fulbright Alumni Association, March 18-20.  It should be cool.

15. I apparently caught Steven's post office curse**, because when I went to the post office to get a customs declaration form so I could send (really late) Christmas presents home, they were convinced I actually wanted a box.
"I need the form you have to write the contents of the box on." 
"You mean a box?" 
"No, it is paper. If you put noodles in the box, you write 'noodles' on the form." 
"You mean a box?" 
"NO, it is a FORM for WRITING WHAT IS IN THE BOX. You post it on the box when you send things out of the country." 
 "You mean a box?"
PLEASE LISTEN TO THE WORDS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH.

So, yeah.  It hasn't been all that crazy exciting, but I've had some time to sit and read and do all the things I wasn't doing while I was traipsing all over Japan.  Tomorrow I've got the mystery mochi thing in the evening, and then Friday through Sunday is the fieldtrip to Izumo Taisha.  Updates will come...when updates come.

*I totally had this stuck in my head about a week ago, so now I will INFLICT IT UPON YOU MWAHAHAHA.

**Every time Steven goes to the post office, it inevitably ends in disaster and suffering.  Last time he went, their ATM malfunctioned.  Clearly the post office curse is contagious.

Recap: Nagoya Port, Osu Kannon, and the Nagoya Science Museum

Well, it looks like it's time for our daily dose of time travel.*

It's time to travel back to Wednesday, January 11, 2012!  Also known as the day we decided to check out Nagoya Port.

Despite having lived in Nagoya for four months (has it really already been that long?), I'd never actually been down to the port, because it is on a separate subway line than pretty much everything else in the city.  But there were two things we wanted to check out down there: a spinning top museum which Miranda had found online and the Nagoya Port Aquarium, which pretty much everyone lists as One of the Things You Do in Nagoya.

The Spinning Top Museum is on Wikipedia...but after visiting it, I must wonder about who put the entry up.  I can honestly say that it was the strangest museum I have ever been to--and I have been to some pretty strange museums.  It's in a warehouse...basically...and there's no sort of organization to it.  It's just a bunch of spinning tops in cases.  Sometimes there are signs up telling you where in the world they are from, but sometimes there aren't.  And all the tops are just sort of heaped together. Also, there were random other toys thrown in and a whole bunch of children's clothing on a rack and rocking chairs and bicycles hanging from the ceiling?  And we were the only visitors.  And the only other person there was this old lady who sat behind a counter at what we think was a register to buy tops, but we couldn't figure out what was for sale and what was on display.  It was.........................really weird.

So after that we got lunch at a really good noodle place where the waiter/chef realized I spoke Japanese and then gave me a bunch of advice on noodles.  

And then we headed over to the Nagoya Port Aquarium.  It was a bit pricey (2,000 yen or about $26), but pretty nice.  I wouldn't say it was as nice as Monterey Bay Aquarium, but then again, I am kind of spoiled in that respect.  They had two buildings with a whole bunch of exhibits and dolphins and killer whales and belugas and SEA TURTLES.  I am all about the sea turtles. I tried to convince them that they should be friends with me, but they were more interested in doing sea turtle-y types of things.

That evening we met with Itou-san for dinner, 'cause she said she wanted to meet up with the S-As again before they left.  We wound up going to potentially the best Indian restaurant I have been to in my life.  It was SO DELICIOUS.  And we had a nice time chatting and trying to figure out what was in the dessert (it turned out to be coconut milk).  All in all, a fun time.

So that was Wednesday.

Thursday was Miranda's last full day in Japan, and she and Nick wanted to get some souvenirs for people back in the States, so we went to Osu Kannon, which is a sort of shopping arcade/temple district thing across the city from me.  There are also three kofun (burial mounds) in the area: the one I went to before with Geoff plus two more.  So we decided to explore and find omiyage and generally be the intrepid young people we are.

Here's a tiny temple we found on our wanderings.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but it was so cold that there were chunks of ice floating on the top of the water in the hand washing basin.

Needless to say, not the most pleasant experience.

Here's a little shrine we found.

And here's Osu Kannon, the temple which the district is named after.

They have a whole ton of pigeons.

They also apparently have a Jizo for mizuko.  Maybe I've just started noticing a whole lot more of these, now that I've read about mizuko, but they seem to be EVERYWHERE.

Here's a little Inari shrine we found while wandering around. It's called "Maneki Inari," which can be roughly translated as "Beckoning Inari."

(Maneki neko, by the way, are those beckoning cats [usually called "lucky cats" or something equally dull in the States] which you see EVERYWHERE.)

...someone was having some height issues again.

Hey, look, it's a Maneki Inari!

This was the shrine right next to the Inari.

...and here's a tiny temple!

Whoa, it's NOT a dragon.

This is a pillow filled with salt.  Apparently it solves a variety of issues, including insomnia and back pain?

So then we went to this little cafe...

...where they allowed everyone who came to write/draw something and then put it up on the walls/ceiling/wherever there was a space.

Needless to say, we drew stuff.

...here is my exceptionally silly comic about mizuko.  I don't have mizuko on the brain.

(In Miranda's words, "You have a thing about dead babies. It's kind of creepy.")

So then we went to ANOTHER temple in the area.  It included one of Oda Nobunaga's graves?

THIS IS THE BEST RESTAURANT EVER.

All they sell is buns.

For 160 yen (a little more than $2) you can get either a vegetable or meat bun.

THEY ARE DELICIOUS.

We might have bought some and then came back later and bought some more and then came back later and bought even more and then came back the next day and bought some.

They are THAT GOOD.

(Also their slogan is "a taste you will want to eat again.")

...also, tacos.  And beer.  I don't even know.  Nothing they serve even slightly resembles Mexican food.

So then we went over to the Nagoya Science Museum, which was in the area.

IT.

IS.

GREAT.

We might have stayed there (doing SCIENCE) until they kicked us out.

Miranda and Nick still hadn't been to the Nagoya Television Tower, so we headed over to Sakae...only to discover that the TV Tower is closed until April.  Ugh.  So much for that.

So instead we grabbed dinner and then went up on the roof of Oasis 21.

And then we did the only possible logical thing we could do on the roof of Oasis 21 at about 8 p.m.

We played Bananagrams.

The next morning Miranda left on her crazy birthday adventure to Helsinki (yeah, I know) and Nick and I headed back to the science museum (after getting more buns), because WE HAD NOT DONE ENOUGH SCIENCE YET.  We did SO MUCH SCIENCE.  We also learned the SIGNS OF PUBERTY.  And HOW YOUR LUNGS WORK.**  And how recycling works.  And what people eat in the JUNGLE.  And what FUTURE SCIENCE will look like.

Basically, we were giant dorks all over the place and everybody probably thought we were super weird gaijin, but WHO CARES, 'CAUSE SCIENCE.

*...and now my references are just getting obscure.  Points to anyone who gets it!

**So the human body room was probably the lamest, 'cause it would say, "Push this button to find out how your lungs work!" and we'd push the button and it would just illuminate a sign.  If I wanted to read signs, I would go to a SIGN MUSEUM.

Also, the signs of puberty exhibit was kind of like, "You will get acne!  It will be upsetting.  Oh well."  It also said that when you hit puberty you will become sexually attracted to the other sex.  HMM.  I know a number of people who apparently got a failing grade in puberty.  OOPS.

In which I 迷惑 big time

So last night Itou-san called me up and said, "Hey, do you want to see a funeral tomorrow?" which is perhaps the strangest invitation I have ever received.
While normally I am not a particularly big fan of funerals, since there are virtually no Shinto funerals performed ever,* this was an amazing research opportunity.  As it turned out, the funeral was for the guji of Masumida Shrine, who passed away at the end of November.  Because he was a Shinto priest, he was having a Shinto funeral (performed by the other priests from the shrine), and Itou-san said I could attend without it being awkward and weird.
...there was then a moment of panic when I realized that I didn't have a black top (I mean, seriously, I did not expect to be attending any funerals in Japan), but Itou-san said that I could just wear something dark colored with my black coat on top.  Okay, phew.

So this morning we hopped on a train together to Ichinomiya and then walked to the funeral parlor, where I discovered that in Japan funerals are public functions, which is to say anyone can come.  Seriously, anyone.**  And it seemed like half the town had shown up.  And then Itou-san said there weren't very many people there because it was the middle of the work day????  Yeah.

Anyway, we checked in, which basically meant that we handed over business cards so that the family could keep track of who had come.  There were so many people there that the reception had been divided into areas like "people associated with shrines," "relatives," "people from rotary," "people from the town," and "other people."  (We got to go in the "people associated with shrines" line.)  We were also given gift bags with tea in them?  According to Itou-san, it used to be that guests to funerals would pay a sum (like 5,000 yen) to the family, but then the family would have to return a portion of the sum (like 3,000 yen) in the form of a gift.  But now people have decided that that's too ridiculously complicated and just give people little gift bags at the start of the funeral.

The funeral parlor had been set up so that the ceremony would be performed on the third floor with television screens on the first and second floors so that not everybody had to cram into a single room.  We went up to the second floor to discover that all the seats had been taken, so we joined a quickly growing crowd of standing people.  They also had photo albums set up of all the things the guji had accomplished in his lifetime, and WOW.  He seems like he was an amazing guy.  He reached the highest rank of the priesthood (which apparently has to be given for services rendered; you can't test into it), he was active in the Japanese rotary club, he arranged some amazingly elaborate festivals (literally people in happi FLOODING the streets of Ichinomiya), and he was apparently an all-around really nice guy.  (Itou-san had met him once when he had visited Kawahara Shrine, so apparently she didn't know him very well.)

Anyway, then the ceremony started.  There was a quick purification (most of which I couldn't hear because the microphone on the third floor was having issues) and then one of the priests went to the front of the room to read a special norito which had been composed for the occasion.  Itou-san told me in advance to pay close attention to the norito, because at funerals the norito basically tells the story of the person's life...all in incredibly archaic Japanese.

About three lines into the norito, I suddenly started feeling...really weird.  Within about fifteen seconds I went from concentrating really intensely on understanding as much as I could to "uh oh, I don't feel so good" to "oh frig, I think I'm going to pass out."  Of course, I decided that I was NOT going to pass out, because passing out in the middle of a funeral is approximately the SECOND WORST place you could possibly pass out.*** Fortunately, I didn't pass out, but my legs gave out from under me and I collapsed in approximately the most graceful way I could manage.  I have to say, everyone reacted surprisingly calmly.  If I were at a funeral and some random gaijin suddenly collapsed all over the floor, I would be freaking out everywhere, but Itou-san and some of the funeral parlor staff just scooped me up and dragged me out of the crowd and got me a glass of water and waited patiently for me to be able to form coherent words.  Apparently collapsing does not do good things to my Japanese!  Also, I realized that I don't know the Japanese word for fainting.  WHY DID YOU NEVER TEACH ME THIS, JAPANESE CLASS?  Anyway, one of the funeral parlor employees wanted to call an ambulance (because apparently I had turned completely white), but I was very adamant that I would be okay and I did not need an ambulance, because seriously, the last time I passed out and wound up in an ambulance, they just spent the whole time asking me if I was pregnant.  AUGH.

Anyway, they took me off to a sitting room on the side and I apologized about a million times and they told me to SIT THERE until I felt entirely better and NOT GET UP.  And Itou-san came with me and I apologized about a million times again, and she said it was pretty understandable because the room had about a million people in it and I had probably collapsed from the heat.  Except, you know, I was the youngest person in the room, and I had eaten breakfast and wasn't dehydrated and am actually pretty healthy, so my legs have no excuse for going all noodly under me.

So I wound up sitting there for about an hour (during which time I apologized profusely and Itou-san said that it was fine and then asked me to teach her how to say a bunch of stuff for weddings in English, because apparently she has a lot of foreigners come to the shrine to get married and they don't speak Japanese?) and missing the entire funeral.  GAH.  I feel really bad about being a 迷惑 to everyone.  Fortunately my 迷惑ing was reduced by the funeral parlor staff and Itou-san, to whom I am super grateful.
Moral of the story: UH, DON'T OVERHEAT WHILE DOING FIELDWORK?
skjglashjtoehagoishgoa
I APOLOGIZE TO THE UNIVERSE.

So, after that adventure, I went to eat lunch with Itou-san and then hopped on the train back to Nagoya and she offered to drive me home but I said I was okay and I was sorryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.  And then I went home and sat and then went to Japanese class where we learned how to count on our fingers in a whole bunch of languages and my sensei and my classmates stole my notebook to look at my doodles.  Oh dear.

In any case, I've decided that it's probably a good idea to go to sleep early today so that I don't go around collapsing everywhere tomorrow, so with that I shall sign off.

I'm so sorryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.  ;_;

*Almost all funerals in Japan are Buddhist.  Part of it has to do with Shinto taboos about death, and part of it has to do with Shinto funerals apparently being incredibly depressing.

**This would explain why it was okay for me to randomly show up.  There were people coming who had never even met the man or his family, but only knew of his reputation.

***The absolute worst being the hallway of the fourth floor of Metcalf, aka the dorm of the living dead.

In which Geoff's hair is alarming and mystifying

So on Wednesday, Geoff and I went to visit Ise Shrine, since he wanted to go and I am all for visiting Ise as many times as possible.  After some drama involving not realizing that you need a high speed ticket AND a normal ticket to ride the high speed line, we finally made it to Ise in pretty much one piece.

OH HEY, I WAS HERE LAST MONTH.

While it was less crowded than last time, there were a lot of tourist and pilgrimage groups visiting the shrine.

This is officially the coolest tree.  And, yes, those two pictures are of the same tree.  IS IT COMPLETELY HOLLOW?  I DON'T KNOW.  MAYBE IT'S FILLED WITH AWESOMENESS.  CAPITAL LETTERS.

So when we finished at the outer shrine, we decided to walk to the inner shrine, because it's only about a 3.8 kilometer walk, and the bus costs 460 yen or something ridiculous like that.

And on the way we found a tiny Inari shrine.

And GORGEOUS momiji.*

So many fox statues!

I assume that the combination of the rock and the trees was sacred, but I'm not entirely sure, 'cause I've never seen a rope tied like that...

On the way to the inner shrine, we passed by a construction worker who was so impressed with Geoff's hair** that he radioed his colleague to tell her about it.  DANG.

So then we grabbed lunch, where there was an amusing incident in which our waitress remarked to me how good Geoff's Japanese was (I guess I look the less foreign of the two of us?) and I said he was my kouhai.  When she came with the bill, she gave it to me, since I was the senpai.  SUCCESS.  I have NEVER been given the bill while eating with other people before.  Geoff was not amused.  (Especially since, as he never fails to point out, he is older than me.***)

So then we headed over to the shrine:

Since Ise has to be rebuilt every twenty years, there's always a lot of construction going on there.

Here's one of the side shrines I didn't get to see while on the field trip.

TREE.

BOSS KOI FOREVER.

CHICKENS.

(I bet you are incredibly impressed by this commentary.  Honestly, I don't have that much more to say about Ise this time, except that going to Ise with an art major is pretty epic.  You get to hear all sorts of interesting facts about architecture.)

Anyway, after that we walked back to the train station and took the train back to Nagoya, where we visited an onsen.  If you've never been to an onsen before, imagine the hottest bathtub in the world and then multiply it by 1.3.  There are people who have passed out from dehydration in onsen.  Also, because it's communal (although gender segregated), it means NUDITY EVERYWHERE.  If you have any modesty at all, an onsen is not a place for you.
But it was really nice!  I hadn't been to an onsen in so long, and they're about 150% better when it's not summer, so the air outside is actually colder than the water.

...and then we ate dinner at 11 p.m. because we are ADULTS.

Thursday morning I mostly caught up on work I hadn't been doing because I was out ADVENTURING, but then Thursday afternoon Geoff and I met up with Itou-san for...tea?  It was a meal at 3 p.m., which I think would be tea.  Except there was no actual tea involved.  In any case, we had a nice chat.  (Although, when we stopped by Kawahara Shrine to meet her, the women in the shrine office saw Geoff's hair and were stunned into silence for a few moments.  He leaves one heck of an impression.)

In other news, I finished reading To Dream of Dreams, which Professor Dorman recommended.  It's about constitutional politics and post-war religious freedom in Japan.  I already knew a lot of the material, but it was still a pretty interesting read.

...on a final note, Geoff has spent today texting me about how awesome Kyoto is.  Excuse me while I make disgruntled faces.
>:I

*Maple leaves, especially in fall when they're turning all sorts of pretty colors.  They are pretty much my favorite leaves.

**Geoff has an incredibly impressive afro.  It inspires stares of awe.  It also makes small children burst into tears.

***By a whopping three months.