You get an EPIC catch-up post. This may have to be done in two parts.
No, seriously.
(Note from the Author of the Completed Post: I've been sitting here writing this for four hours, so enter at your own risk and PLEASE feel free take more than one sitting to read it. Otherwise you'll just be cursing my name and long-windedness by the end of it. That is all.)
FRIDAY: Aizome, Museum, and Zen Temple. All in one day. OUCH.
Aizome
Left Global House at 8:20-ish to catch a bus and a train to get to Muashi-Kogane station where we met the rest of the C4 students and teachers and hopped on another bus to the Edo Tokyo Open-Air Architectural Museum (Tatemonoen). Got there a little early and hung out waiting for the students that were biking. Once everybody was there, we headed to a back room where they explained how to do Aizome. It's basically tie-dye to the power of 10,000 using more than just rubber bands to make patterns.
First they showed us how to arrange the fabric in order to get certain patterns. Then they let us loose on the handkerchiefs that they'd given us. This is what mine looked like before we put it in the Aizome dye:
Crazy, right? After that, they took us out to the dying hut where we put our handkerchiefs in these huge vats of dye, keeping them in for thirty seconds and then keeping them out for thirty seconds and repeating the process three times. We had to wear plastic gloves while we were dying because the dye is so potent that it will turn your whole hand blue if you're not careful.
After that, we rinsed the cloths in cold, clean water until the dye stopped most of it's bleeding. Unfortunately, the woman helping me with my handkerchief told me that I was done a bit sooner than I actually was, meaning I took my gloves off a bit too soon and wound up with blue fingers/fingernails. It looked funny, but entertained the heck out of me.
After we finished cleaning them up, we took out everything that we'd put on the handkerchiefs and rinsed them a bit more. Then we hung them up to dry. (Once we got home, we put the handkerchiefs in VERY hot water to stop the bleeding and ironed them out. And thus, they were done!)
After we finished that up, we went out into the museum at large. Rather than just jump right into that though, I'm going to go ahead and explain how we made some of the patterns so that anyone feeling particularly ambitious can give them a shot the next time they decide to tie-dye something. If that's not you, go ahead and skip down a bit to the fun stuff.
This first pattern was made by wrapping three marbles in the handkerchief fabric and fastening a rubber band beneath them to secure the fabric around them. On the full handkerchief you can see two others (one near the top right and one at the top in the middle) made from one and two marbles respectively.
This pattern was made using a film canister arranged with the lid on one side and the case on the other thus preventing all dye from seeping into this area of the fabric.
This pattern was made by wrapping a rubber band several times around a small rectangular block of wood. You can see another one like it just above this one in the full handkerchief; that one was made using two separate rubber bands.
This pattern was just made by clipping a clothespin over a folded-over portion of the cloth.
This pattern, as well as the one (visible in on the full handkerchief) on the opposite corner, was made just by tying a knot at that corner of the handkerchief.
The other two corners have simple slashes made by securing two similarly-sized blocks of wood VERY TIGHTLY with rubber bands on wither side of the fabric, thus preventing the dye from seeping in, thereby leaving you with a relatively straight line. (These patterns aren't particularly visible in the shot above, but I'll take some more shots and put them up is anyone's really desperate.)
Edo-Tokyo Tatemonoen
Not really much to tell here; we wandered around the museum, looking at all the cool Edo period buildings. Most were pretty exciting, and there was precisely one that was SUPER exciting:
This building? Apparently one of the buildings that inspired the bathhouse in SPIRITED AWAY. OMGYAAAYYYY!!!! AND I got to go inside and sit in one of the tubs!!!
Anyway, other museum pictures and ranting and ravings can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031959&id=1186934580&l=88480c78ea
The real reason I don't have much to say about the tatemonoen? I only had about forty minutes to look around. The reason I only had forty minutes to look around?
Zen Temple
Hopped on a bus back toward school to go visit a Zen temple at around 12:30 and only just managed to find time to snag lunch before we met up with the group a little outside the temple. Once there, we were led upstairs and, after a brief introduction from the Sensei, invited into the main meditation room. Once there, we all offered a brief prayer to Buddha before Sensei explained a little about the room and the importance of the statues etc. He also showed us the bell, gong, and drum that are used to call for morning meditation, mealtimes, and for particularly important celebrations respectively. (I think I got that order right...)
Once that was done, we went back to the first room we'd been brought into where we went over the proper order in which to open, set up, clean, and close a Buddhist meal bowl set. I forgot to take a before picture, so here's hoping that I can remember the order. Before beginning anything, the sensei says a prayer of thanks for the food. After that, you begin by opening up the cloth covering on the bowls, placing the napkin in your lap and the drying cloth between you and the bowls and the chopstick bag on top of the drying cloth. After that, as quietly as possible, you remove the bowls from where they've been stacked inside one another and lay them out as you see below. From left to right, these bowls are used for rice, soup, and one of the additional sources of flavor (I'm blanking on the technical name for it.) You then remove the washing stick, spoon and chopsticks from the chopstick bag and lay them out as you see in the picture below. The chopstick bag is replaced beneath the drying cloth. The large cloth that the bowls are placed on is folded under at the corners and on the side closest to you, again, as seen below.
After that, said food is brought to you and you go through several special non-verbal exchanges of thanks and explanations about how much food you want. Often there will be an additional bowl of food to complement the rest of the meal; you can see this below (they made two such special dishes for us). Once that is completed, the sensei says another prayer and we begin eating. Then the spoon is placed in the rice bowl and the chopsticks over the soup bowl and we begin eating, using the spoon for only for the rice and the chopsticks for everything else and all while holding and picking up the bowls in very precise ways. Once you are finished, you receive tea in your rice bowl. After swishing it around (for reasons that were never made clear to me) you pour the tea into your soup bowl and drink from there. Once this is completed, you are brought hot water, again poured into the rice bowl and moved from there to the soup bowl to the third bowl and, in conjunction with the washing stick, used to clean said bowls. The special dish bowls will usually be taken from you to be cleaned by others. After you have cleaned and dried the bowls you (again, as quietly as possible) replace them in the order they were originally in. You do the same with the spoon, chopsticks, washing stick, napkin and drying cloth, replacing everything as it had been when you first opened the arrangement.
And there you have it, the method of eating a Buddhist meal.
After we were taught how to eat a meal and before actually EATING said meal, we meditated for a little over an hour; half an hour of sitting meditation, five minutes of walking meditation, and then another half an hour of sitting meditation. After that, we went up to the bell tower where a few of us got to ring the morning wake-up bell, which was pretty cool. Then we went into the building next to the bell tower and were allowed into the room containing statues of sixteen of the greatest Buddhist teachers of all time. Sensei explained the room to us and told us that visitors are almost never allowed inside. Which is why the Zen-temple photo album I'm linking below is FILLED with pictures of both the inside and outside of the building.
After that, we went back to the meditation room for dinner. Unfortunately, because no one told me that we were on a time schedule, I didn't eat fast enough to be allowed to clean my dishes and thus, in my mind, properly finish the meal. But hey, I decided to put respect for my food, body, and eating habits ahead of a schedule that I didn't know existed and I think that was the right decision. (/self-righteous rant)
After that we went back to the room we first went into for sweets, watermelon, green tea and a Q&A session that had me in tears for the following reason.
I've been searching for religion in my life for about a year now (more 'in life' than 'searching', but you know...) and for all that I've talked to people about Judeo-Christian religion and as much as I know that I will always have inherently Judeo-Christian values because that's the society I was raised in, I've never been so emotionally moved by a religious explanation of the world as I was that night. I've known for a while know that I am very culturally connected to the Japanese and have suspected that this was due to the prevalence of Buddhist and similar thought in the Japanese culture, but hypothesizing is very different from having something like that all but proven to you by an interaction like this one. It was one of those things that I hope to never forget.
OKAY!! Night ended with another trip to the main meditation room for photos and another prayer to Buddha. Then we left and I got home around 8:20. EPIC. Photos can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031963&id=1186934580&l=2c93c5d32c
SATURDAY: DISNEYSEA
Normally I'd have written this all up on Saturday, but instead I left the dorm at 7:45 and didn't get home until about 12:15. The reason being...
DisneySea
Charlene and I had talked about it a few days earlier, but I wasn't sure I was going to follow through. I'M SO GLAD I CHANGED MY MIND.
Like I said, we left early, and were apparently being watched over by the Disney Gods from the moment we left Global House, because we managed to hit the station/platform only moments before EVERY train/bus that we needed to catch. Anyway, we hopped on a bus to Mitaka station, headed out for Tokyo station via the Chuou line, switched to the Keiyou line for Maihama station which landed us in a DISNEY UTOPIA. Again, we seemed to be being looked out for by the Disney Gods; the weather was FANTASTIC. We headed the rest of the way into the park, bought tickets, went to get me some sunglasses because I accidentally left mine in Denver, and managed to stumble into the "Chip and Dale Cool Service 'Deluxe'" which was basically a lot of singing, dancing, and spraying the crowd with water (again, THANK YOU Disney Gods for that timing). COOL.
After that we headed through various parts of the park, making it about halfway through before lunch, almost always landing in the front of every ride we went on (and ONCE AGAIN, THANK YOU DISNEY GODS). After lunch we continued our trek through the park, but slipped back to the "Mediterranean Harbor" at the front of the park to watch the "Legend of Mythica" show (because I'm a dork like that), which told the story of the battle that destroyed an island of mythical creatures that were later saved by the warriors born of humanity's belief in mystical creatures, led by Mickey, the Warrior of Imagination. We also managed to sit RIGHT IN FRONT of where Pluto comes off his ship to dance for the crowd. AWESOME.
Once that was done we went over to the "Mysterious Island" and hung out/went on the rides there until we went to see the "Big Band Beat", a highly entertaining, Mickey/Minnie/Daisy incorporating jazz show. We went on two rides between that and the night show, "BraviSEAmo", which told the tale of a water spirit and a god of fire that fall in love, and tell it with all the Disney shazam. We ran BACK up to "Mermaid Lagoon" to hit up four of the five rides we'd missed on our first pass and then scooted over to the "Arabian Coast" for the "Bonfire Dance" show. We slipped out of there a bit early to go on the last ride we hadn't gone on yet before heading out front to do some quick souvenir shopping. After we were done, we said our respectful goodbyes to the park and headed back to ICU.
Our Disney God protection magic seemed to have more-or-less worn off by then because we had to wait for both our trains and walk form Musashi-sakai back to campus. Charlene had warned me that we might have to walk back to campus because the buses stop running at 10-ish, but I didn't want to believe her... which made the 20+ minute walk back to campus all the more painful. Especially because we only made campus curfew by about 2 minutes. Still, we made it back and that made everything okay.
The two Most Important Highlights of the trip:
Storm Riders: The ride that has now usurped Star Tours as AWESOMEST RIDE EVAR because the 'pilot' is a crazy-awesome badass maverick (and yes, I know that word has some ridiculous connotations nowadays, but whatever, it's the only word for what he is.) that TOTALLY saves the day. ALSO, we got to go on it TWICE because Charlene has an eye for when to hop on rides because they're nearly empty.
The Amount of Time we Spent There: Because it meant that we got to go on EVERY SINGLE RIDE and see most of the EPICALLY OVER-THER-TOP-BUT-IN-THE-BEST-WAY-POSSIBLE LIVE ENTERTAINMENT SHOWS. Seriously. It was epic.
The Would-Be-Downside-that-Actually-Turned-to-our-Advantage:
Me Losing my Disney Passport: Which meant I couldn't get FastPasses to anything, but which ALSO meant that we weren't waiting around or circling back to do rides with said FastPasses. Also meant that we often got to go on our rides of choice before our FastPasses would have let us. Since we didn't know which rides we were SUPER excited about, this turned out to be okay, and even a blessing in disguise.
The single Downside-that-was-More-Than-Made-Up-for-by-the-Awesomeness-that-is-DisneySea:
The Sunburn: Because sunburns are bad for your skin. But it was also apparently being guarded by the magic of the Disney Gods because it hasn't really been that painful.
AND THAT WAS MY ADVENTURE TO DISNEYSEA!!
Photo albums can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032122&id=1186934580&l=7e6b80890e
and here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032124&id=1186934580&l=1e0f92cc63
I'm also going to throw some of Charlene's end-of-the-night photos (my camera battery died at around 8:00) once I figure out how to do that in a space-conserving manner; I'll let you guys know when that's been done.
Enjoy!!
SUNDAY
The Boring Day of Non-Productivity and Avoidance of Essay Writing.
MONDAY
The Day of Oversleeping (both in the morning and my afternoon nap), Class, and STILL Not Writing my Essay. (Until about 11:00 at night. *headdesk*)
TUESDAY
The Day of Getting Up Early to Finish my Essay/Study for my Quiz But Deciding to Talk to Mary on AIM Instead, followed by The Beginning of my Final Project Translation and Completion of my Essay. Also, The Day of More Napping. Also, the Day of Curry Being Made for Global House Residents and the Day of Going Grocery Shopping at 8:00 at Night. Hmm. Apparently a more interesting day than I gave it credit for.
WEDNESDAY
TODAY!! Which consisted of class, lunch, and the Rhythmic Sho lecture!!
Rhythmic Sho (書) is NOT calligraphy. Apparently. Sakuta-sensei made that very clear within the first five minutes of his presentation. Like the meaning of sadou and kendou I explained in the Tea Ceremony entry, Sho or shodou (書道) carries the meaning of "the path of writing" which is why Sakuta-sensei doesn't like to translate it. The bulk of the lecture revolved around using the movement of the body and different types of strokes to give a sense of movement to the writing. He and his helpers demonstrated several types of drawing styles etc. before they had us practice the different types of strokes (vertical, horizontal, and diagonal each way) and then practice writing the character for big (大) on basic paper.
After we'd finished that, they gave us three boards on which to practice the same character, before giving us towo more to use for whatever character we may choose; I chose to do light (光).
And that was it!! Went over to the dollar store with James and Katie after Sho, and that was my day.
Sho photo album can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032481&id=1186934580&l=20525a5431
AND THUS ENDS THE EPIC TALE OF THE LAST FIVE DAYS!!
Wow, I really hope you did that in more than one sitting because I just did it in one and it was painful... Hope you enjoyed it though!!
~ Anna
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