The Best Day of Golden Week (so far)

Today's story begins in... this lovely place!

Well, I know I promised to tell you about my school buddies, but since I don't want a backlog of "things to blog" to prevent me from actually blogging about my recent activities, here's a short blog about what I did today (hey, an actual blog about something that happened recently! Wow!).
Today, I thought, would be like most days. You know. The usual... watch some Japanese boy idols sing on variety shows on television for a while, study a little, roll around on the floor, go out for a bike ride and buy my usual Kinoko no Yama snacks at the supermarket (well, I still did that today... I don't know why, but I just LOVE LOVE LOVE Kinoko no Yama... when I return to an Australia without them, that shall be a sad, sad day).



Even the advert fills me with unadulterated joy.　ちょう好き！

But today, my amazing Host Grandparents took my Host Sister and I out for soba at a delightfully traditional Japanese restaurant. We sat on tatami mats at low tables and had the most delicious tempura I've ever eaten. Ever!


Mmmmmmmmmmm! おいしかったよ！：’D

In Australia, I've often found the tempura kind of bland. "Why fry the vegetables?" I often wondered, "Why not just eat them fresh? The way they are?". Well, after trying the real deal, I now know the draw to good tempura... the flavour just burst in my mouth, and unlike in Australia, the fried panko-stuff was especially cr-cr-cruunchy! I've never really liked prawns, but the prawns (ebi えび） at this restaurant were nice and meaty, and I gladly helped myself to another after polishing off the first. The cold soba noodles were also very refreshing on such a warm day.


Then it was off to Totoro's Forest (well, not really, it was a park in neighbouring town 'Koganei', I think, but I did see a few little white creatures running about out of the corner of my eye - you never know!) with my Host Grandparents (after dropping Mina off at the house) to go and see the (or one of the) Graves of Murasaki Shikibu (a Japanese writer, responsible for the classic "The Tale of Genji"), which was very beautiful. I absolutely loved exploring the forest - so much greenery, a cool refreshing breeze whistling through arches upon arches of ancient trees, mossy rock structures abound - Japanese forests seem to have an element of mystery about them. Or maybe I've just watched too many Ghibli movies (personally, when I wandered through the forest, images of Mononoke-hime and Totoro sprung to mind).


The sign and three beautiful stone structures marking the grave of Murasaki Shikibu; 紫式部の墓　Murasaki Shikibu no Haka

Afterwards, we headed towards this mysterious hill, where Japanese children were playing with soccer balls in front of lines of Japanese people clapping hands. My Japanese is still not very good, so excuse me if I get the details completely and utterly wrong (which I most certainly will), but I managed to find out that the people clapping were actually praying. This area was famous for granting wishes about wealth, apparently. So, of course, I climbed to the top of the little hill, left my 1 yen offering on a rock, returned to the bottom of the hill and clapped my hands twice after making my wish.

The rock where I left my 1 yen offering. You can see other offerings have been left there, too!

You stand on a white line painted at the bottom of the hill (so that you're directly in the centre, facing the hill) and clap your hands (as demonstrated by my Host Grandmother in the two pictures! :D ).
The sound made when you clap was squeaky (thanks to some kind of echoing effect caused by the hill. I'm no scientist, so I'm just going to stick with my Host Grandparents explanation that it was the sound of the Crying Dragon (Nakiryuu) appearing suddenly when you clap, summoning it. Something poetic like that).

Please make me rich, crying dragon of the hill! :D

Afterward we joined the sake drinking, partying-underneath-the-cherry-blossom masses as we wandered about the park's 花祭り-Hana-Matsuri, or Flower Festival. There were people sitting under the blooming cherry blossom trees eating lunch, and small market stalls selling delicious food everywhere. My Host Grandparents treated me to a very generous sausage and Snowcone, which I ate gratefully (hey, it was pretty damn hot today!). See HANAMI / flower viewing on Wikipedia for more on this gorgeous activity!


Gorgeous flowers of the Flower Festival

We also went to a kickass farm area with neat industrial farm-house looking buildings (forgive my slowly diminishing English abilities).

This picture would be boring to anyone else but me. But I mean, look at it. It has cool steel wheels out the front! COOL STEEL WHEELS! :D

And angry MEGAhens!

Look at it staring at me. Like, "If this cage wasn't here, I'd be pecking you to pieces so fast, you meaty, meaty human." And the photo does not accurately convey how huge that beast was.

Anyway, that's today's entry. Tomorrow I'm going on yet another whirlwind adventure to go Apple Picking amongst the apple blossoms (ha, I love how perfectly cheerful that sounds - I bet we'll all make daisy chains whilst we skip and hold hands as well) with my Host Grandparents whilst my Host Sister goes on a date with Loverboy in Utsunomiya City and my Host Mum gets better at home (she's pretty sick atm). Well, またね mata ne (see ya later!)

- ルーシー Lucie

Your Utsunomiya Bunsei Campus Guide

The view from outside my window - now the sakura have gone green, but when I came, WOW!

Well, I’ve been in Japan for a more than a month now, so by now, it’s only natural that I would know my school well. You guys, however, don’t! So, before I can update you on all my adventures so far, I need to give you the setting of this story, and that setting is Utsunomiya Bunsei Girls High School.

The Place

My class, 1-3 (Koala/Tesshi Class). They're brilliant! More on them later, though. ;D

When I first entered the gates of Bunsei, I was pretty damn impressed. Like most Japanese schools, it has the token vast athletics field (“The Ground”, often frequented by a chanting regiment of soccer club members in the morning as they jog along the entire area), pretty white buildings, a small well-kept Japanese garden out the front (a place with neatly clipped trees, where the Japanese flag is raised every morning and lowered every afternoon to the Japanese national anthem) and a whole cluster of breathtakingly beautiful sakura trees (which have, sadly, since reverted from their ‘pinkity’ to their normal green state).

The school is full of gorgeous small gardens, and even a space/patch (2nd picture) for the different classes to grow their own vegetables or flowers. I'm on the planning committee for that, but actually forgot about it until seeing the photo again... guess we've just been too busy lately!

The main building is sea shell white and, in the spring, surrounded by pink sakura blossoms. The 2nd picture shows the main path and building a little more (near the school entrance).

Surprisingly, this is a picture of the garbage area! Interesting juxtaposition with the sakura against the tin shed full of rubbish, isn't it?!

What surprised me was that they also have a pool (which I have not yet seen, but that’s my homework! It’s used by the swimming club), an area for the kendou club to practice, a small dojo for the karate club, a small private exercise room filled with equipment (for the use of the teachers, apparently… wow, talk about luxury!), a few small gyms, rooms especially made for the art and music classes, a few dozen small gardens scattered about here and there, and a larger gym/assembly hall with a small stage, where assemblies, ceremonies and gym classes are held.

Bunsei’s restraunt is also amazing, and one of my favourite places to be (because there’s deeeelicious FOOD there, of course)! I spend a lot of my time (and money) in there. There’s so much to buy there… dango (small, round traditional Japanese snacks filled with sweet azuki bean paste), mochi (which, according to wise old wiki, is a “Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and moulded into shape”, filled with a sweet melt-in-your-mouth azuki bean centre… mmmmm-!), an assortment of sweet breads and drinks which you can purchase for around 100 yen, and, surprisingly, a huge range of hot ramen, curries and udon (pricing at around 300 yen each) to choose from.

The teachers in Bunsei can all be found not in staff rooms of different faculties, but in one main “hive” of teacherly goodness, which is most convenient (but at the same time, the atmosphere is very formal – you must enter the staffroom with a “shitsureishimasu”, meaning “excuse me”, but literally, “I’m being rude”) and there’s a certain lack of that “heeey we’re all pals here hangin’ in the same faculty, sharing lollies and high-fiving each other” smaller staffroom feel, if you know what I mean. It’s like everyone in the collective faculties Japanese staffroom means srs professional business.

So, what’s my classroom like?

There's a map, and two flags! :'D Plastic koalas are also abound!

In contrast to the staffroom, my classroom has a very homely feel. I suppose, because my classroom is home to the students of the Ryugakusei ‘Exchange Student Course’ (studying a more intense English-focused course in preparation for their one year exchange to Adelaide, Australia, next January) it is decorated with Australian memorabilia, from the homely (Aussie flags and a large map of Australia adorning the back of the classroom) to the sweet (clip on koalas, everywhere!) to the tacky (did someone say cardboard didgeridoos?). In a way, it’s certainly “natsukashii” (nostalgic) and, in a strange way, very comforting.

The hallway outside our classroom, and the signs outside our class welcoming you in (in English, of course - we're the English Class! :D). The Hello Kitty sign certainly sets the atmosphere for our class - light-hearted!

As you can see, everyone sits separately on different desks. You enter the classroom using the sliding doors (often with a big “ohayooouu gozaiiimaaaasu”, “good morning!” in the morning).Everyone will greet you with a big smile, of course.

Here’s the front of the room, where the teacher dictates their lecture to the students. The front of the classroom is also peppered with notes of all kinds that I have yet to learn to read (漢字があまりよめないから) and our class timetables, which I check often. Beyond the blackboard being a place of education, it's also the place for entertainment and hilarity with our しりとりshiritori games and countless まんがmanga renditions of our homeroom teacher, Tesshi.

Our second home-room teacher, Tesshi (teacher in 2nd pic), looking bemusedly at his mangaself (1st pic).

Well, there's more to post (about people, especially) but that's all for tonight. I've run out of juice! Please forgive any strange stuff happening with the post layout or fonts... this computer is a little hard to use without a mouse and has a life of it's own all the time, doing its own thing. Blogging takes forever!

Anyway, thank you for reading! I will get around to doing some individual emails and letters soon!

- Lucie ルーシー