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This week went by so fast. It was the last test of the semester, before the final exam. I have gotten so used to the routine that taking the test felt like no big deal for me. This week I had 2 cultural classes. First was mochi and soba making at a really nice restaurant in Hakodate. I love mochi! We make the mochi by using a wooden hammer to pound the rice that is in a big wooden warm bowl thing until it starts to stick together. Then in a synced rhythm, one person pounds, the other person makes sure the mochi doesn’t stick to the wooden bowl or the hammer by applying water. We all got a chance to do this and my friend took a video of me doing it, so please watch. It was hilarious. I’m only slightly pissed that they gave me a lighter hammer because I’m a girl. Sexism much? After they roll small bits of the mochi in a flavorful beige powder or cover it in chunks of sweet red bean paste. Then, viola! Delicious mochi for everyone! I brought some home for my host family, but had to walk 40 minutes in the rain to get home from the restaurant (some arbitrary place, there was no bus or anything that went straight to my neighborhood) and so I think my mochi got soaked. I got home and told my host family I walked with my umbrella (which didn’t do much because my hair got wet) and my mochi in the other hand. I did my best to protect the mochi, holding it close to my face, where it might get the most coverage from my umbrella, but I still failed. So I told my family it might not taste good at all. But my host mom put in it the microwave and ate it with my host dad and said she could taste a bit of the rain and was thankful. I was happy they ate it.
We also helped to make soba noodles. They use some buckwheat flour in a huge bowl and stir some water into it. Then they flatten it out with huge rolling pins. Then they slice it not too think not too thin. Then they all had us sit down and eat some soba and some tempura (shrimp and other veggies). I was so excited! After, some people ordered apple ice cream. It was apple flavored ice cream in a real apple. It looked so refreshing and tasted amazing!
A few days later, we had calligraphy class. I suck at writing so I was not excited, but vowed to try all the culture classes and so I went. We saw the Nishi High School girls do calligraphy outside with huge paintbrushes (the paintbrush was literally the size of my arm or longer and the bristle part is bigger than the size of my hand). And we practiced inside the school for about an hour. We learned how to express different feelings, how to insert emotion, with just one character. Calligraphy is an expression of simple creativity and emotion through the words of everyday language. One character could tell a story. For instance we wrote mother and father (of which there is one character for each, chichi：父 (father), haha：母 (mother)) in whatever emotion we wanted to convey. If you wrote in a bolder font, using wider brush strokes you could convey a strong/strict mother and father, if you used narrow brush strokes you could convey a weak/nice mother a father. Also, we wrote kaze: 風 (wind) but adjusted it to convey the wind of our hometown. 3 people from NY, thinking about the wind of NY wrote the character for wind in 3 different ways. We each had a different interpretation of the same place. At the end, as a present for our family back at home, they gave use some fancy paper to write whatever character we liked the best. I suck at kanji so I wrote kokoro：心 (heart). Using thick, confident, strong strokes I aimed to convey the love I have for my grandmother, grandfather, sister, and mother in one character. A strong, warm heart. When I finished, I held it up and smiled. I thought: my grandma might like this.
We also helped to make soba noodles. They use some buckwheat flour in a huge bowl and stir some water into it. Then they flatten it out with huge rolling pins. Then they slice it not too think not too thin. Then they all had us sit down and eat some soba and some tempura (shrimp and other veggies). I was so excited! After, some people ordered apple ice cream. It was apple flavored ice cream in a real apple. It looked so refreshing and tasted amazing!
A few days later, we had calligraphy class. I suck at writing so I was not excited, but vowed to try all the culture classes and so I went. We saw the Nishi High School girls do calligraphy outside with huge paintbrushes (the paintbrush was literally the size of my arm or longer and the bristle part is bigger than the size of my hand). And we practiced inside the school for about an hour. We learned how to express different feelings, how to insert emotion, with just one character. Calligraphy is an expression of simple creativity and emotion through the words of everyday language. One character could tell a story. For instance we wrote mother and father (of which there is one character for each, chichi：父 (father), haha：母 (mother)) in whatever emotion we wanted to convey. If you wrote in a bolder font, using wider brush strokes you could convey a strong/strict mother and father, if you used narrow brush strokes you could convey a weak/nice mother a father. Also, we wrote kaze: 風 (wind) but adjusted it to convey the wind of our hometown. 3 people from NY, thinking about the wind of NY wrote the character for wind in 3 different ways. We each had a different interpretation of the same place. At the end, as a present for our family back at home, they gave use some fancy paper to write whatever character we liked the best. I suck at kanji so I wrote kokoro：心 (heart). Using thick, confident, strong strokes I aimed to convey the love I have for my grandmother, grandfather, sister, and mother in one character. A strong, warm heart. When I finished, I held it up and smiled. I thought: my grandma might like this.
That apple ice cream looks amazing.
ReplyDeletewhen I made mochi, it was just mochi rice powder and water -_-;;
guess I made it wrong lol
The calligraphy sounds amazing. I bet your grandmother will love it.