Ise and Harry Potter!

On Thursday last, I had class til 230, then met with my language partner for the first time. We only met briefly but she’s really nice and her name is Eri. Then I went to my English teaching class where I taught a team-teach lesson with my friend Richard. It went so so – I talked too fast. We had set up a whole lesson on how to express your opinion in English. “I think blank is better than blank and this is why.” Because Japanese people have a lot of trouble with this in English I think. They don’t voice their opinion in Japanese very often.

After classes on Friday, we went to Nishinomiya gardens to reserve harry potter tickets. The theater was so big and pretty! But apparently you can only make a reservation for the reservation. So I have to go back two days before it actually opens and pick the time and theater. Then we ate a bit at the panya (bread store) and had pomegranate juice which was delicious! It was 1000 yen for one cup but every sip was amazing: tangy and sweet and an explosion of taste in your mouth! Then we met up with our other friends at Sannomiya and went out for yakisoba (fried noodles) and a few drinks at a nice small bar. The only thing that sucked was that to go in the bar you had to buy at least 3 drinks which was 900 yen. It was a good time though. Japan amazes me because on the way home a man puked in the train and he held his puke in his hands for what must have been a solid 20 seconds and then 5 different people handed him tissues to help his cause! He cleaned it all up and the guy next to him (which I hope was his friend) took out pieces of paper to wrap all the puke tissues up and held it for him presumably until they could find a trashcan to throw it away! Disgusting but impressive. Only Japan!

On Wednesday I went back to pick the time and theater for our harry potter show. My Japanese friend couldn't make it so I had to do it by myself. I managed to book the time, reserve the specific seats for 14 people and make sure that we were seeing the English version and NOT the Japanese one. Success!

Thursday was the start of our second field trip. We took a bus three hours to moku moku farm. Yes, that was the name of the farm. The animals looked like they weren’t living the high life though. The pig was so cold it was shivering and the cow’s utter was so full of milk that it was literally dripping on the floor. We ate lunch at the restaurant there and it was surprisingly tasty: meat and onions and vegetables. All cooked by ourselves over a small grill inlayed in the table! It was a lot of fun!  While on the bus I started reading the Harry Potter book that my language partner lent to me. It's in Japanese. It's difficult but I know the story so well that I'm learning new words left and right! We took a ride to a ninja museum, which was a bit of a tourist trap but they had a show (only 200 yen) that was this awesome ninja fighting. It was sweet. They threw ninja stars (shuuken), had sword fights and did some awesome action fighting.

Then we went to a place where we made bracelets made of string. It sounds kind of lame, but it was actually quite relaxing and we all ended up with really cool multicolor bracelets at the end. There’s a spinner with a hole in the middle, and about 8 different strands of string (3 colors) were coming out of the middle and they were tied to really heavy, weighted spools. And you’d take two of them at a time and move them to certain places and it creates a pattern. Mine was purple and yellow and gold! It sounds like a weird color pallet but I think it turned out kind of Arabian looking. =) 

 

When we were finished crafting, we finally arrived at our hotel. And man, they weren’t kidding when they told us the hotels would be going downhill from the grand Hotel Okura where we first stayed. It was smoke filled in a kind of run down city and the rooms were cramped (their idea of a double was a single with an extra bed squeezed into it) and the bathroom doors had a large step up to them where the door had an extra 2 inches or so of space. Very interesting. But we only really used it for sleeping so it was alright.

We were put on our own to go out and get dinner. Our group ended up going to a yakisoba place. It was quite the experience. We had a hard time deciding whether or not we were going to eat there or not so we were standing up and a couple of the group members got a little loud and the waitress “shhh!”ed them really loudly. I couldn't believe this was still Japan. And there was a spider climbing up the wall! To which I freaked out at considerably. The food was sub par, the noodles were really saucy, and it was just overall not a win. After that level of disappointment, we needed a pick-me-up so we found the nearest combini (convenience store) and stocked up on junk food. And since Harry Potter was coming out the next day, we decided to watch the 6^th one has a group to get in the mood. We all crowded around in one of the tiny “double” rooms and watched it on a laptop. Fun times!

The next day, a few of us woke up super early and took a brisk morning walk to the temple that was close by. It was small but really pretty and with the sun still rising, the lighting was beautiful.  We went back for breakfast, which was a bit frightening but nevertheless, acceptable. We were saving a table of six so our group could sit with each other but this guy just sat down at the table we were standing at and stole the whole thing for itself! We couldn’t believe it.

Our first attraction of the day was the Gozaisho Ropeway. You take a cable car to the VERY top of the mountain to see the view. It was breathtaking. We were lucky enough to have amazing weather for both days so it worked out really well. You could see the whole city of Ise nestled in among the surrounding mountains.

Then we traveled to a smaller town that held the Ise Jingu temple of Amaterasu, the sun goddess. We at lunch at a ramen shop and did some shopping and then made our way up to the shrine. There are two major shrines (the inner and the outer) which form a path between them. It is said that if the sacred mirror of Amaterasu is hung from a tree opposite the cave in which she resides, she will come out and aid the Imperial Family. There was also a beautiful river flowing through the grounds and the way the light hit the water was just stunning. We all put on our model poses to match the backdrop. =P

The last stop for the trip was Meoto Iwa, which consists of two giant rocks connected with a thick rope that symbolizes the bond between a married man and woman. It was right on the ocean! It was really cool to realize it was my first time seeing the ocean from Japan. =)

We had a long bus ride back so we amused ourselves by making weird noises and messing around. When we finally got back, we split up for dinner and met back up again at Nishinomiya Gardens for Harry Potter!! Japanese theaters don’t mind you taking in food with you so we stocked up big time! 3-D is also way cooler in Japan. We were all given 3-D goggles that had adjustable straps just to watch the awesome 10 minute long trailer for Tron, which I wasn’t excited for at first but I have to say, it looks sweet. The movie was really much creepier than I had expected. They kept really true to the book. Most of the lines were direct quotes. They did change some things but overall I thought they did a really good job with it. Can’t wait for the second half!

Word of the day: 眺め　ながめ (nagame), or scenery. =)

それではまた次回！