In and out of town

Life is starting to settle to a comfortable rhythm here. I have classes in the morning and afternoon, which leaves me a nice, 2,5 hour period between so I can work on any unfinished homework, have lunch, look at the books in the student union store or just go back to the dorm and take a nap. All the official procedures are now more or less complete: I even bought a Japanese mobile phone recently! It was a bit of a bother because I didn’t have all the necessary documents the first time I went to the shop and my Japanese ATM card still hasn’t arrived…but the phone does seem to be working.

The last weekend of October was surprisingly busy considering that I originally hadn’t had any plans. However, as soon as I had arranged a shopping / sightseeing trip to the Kanazawa city centre with a couple of international students for Saturday, my tutor told me that I could come mountain-climbing with her on Sunday, after all (originally we thought there would not be enough seats in the car to take us near the place).

Saturday’s adventure began with Kenrokuen. I had never seen the place in daylight and the weather was absolutely lovely, so it was a nice start for the day. We also visited the museum of traditional arts and crafts inside the garden.

As if I don't have enough pictures of Kenrokuen...

 

Some traditional Instruments...

 

...and some lovely boxes from the crafts museum.

From there, we walked to the Noh museum. The museum was pretty small, and the coolest thing there probably was the area where you could have your picture taken while wearing a Noh costume and a mask. The staff was pretty busy with the three of us suddenly showing up at once, but luckily it was a slow day in the museum.

 

Me in the Noh clothes. It was really hard to see anything with the mask on...
especially since I was not wearing my glasses.

By now, lunchtime was fast approaching, so we stopped to have a meal in an udon restaurant on the way to the Kanazawa station. The food was delicious, but it was a bit surprising that the drink the waitress brought us was not in fact water, but probably cold green tea (or possibly something like mugicha, barley tea? I’m not yet tea savvy enough to tell the difference). The taste takes some getting used to.

For the rest of the day, we visited various shopping centres and smaller stores. We ran into some other friends from the dorm, who could point us to an excellent 100 yen store. I got a full bag of useful things for everyday living with less than 1,000 yen. However, the most interesting place was undoubtedly right door. It was a shop that has nicknamed itself “exciting book store” and…it was an experience by its own right. As another student described, “it’s not the kind of place where you can find something you’re looking for”. You just go there and see if anything catches your eye.

Firstly, the place was absolutely packed. The shelves were full of stuff and there were so close to each other that I really had to be careful not to knock anything down while passing through.  I wonder if even the staff knows what items are where. The selection was different from a regular bookstore and they also had other kinds of things: CDs, toys, makeup products, candy, miscellaneous strange things… I actually managed to find a cheap witch hat for my Halloween costume here (so far I had only found ones that were too small or too fancy). I also could not help purchasing a volume of the original Moomin comics translated to Japanese!

The next day it was time to conquer Iou-san, the mountain. I left home around 7:30 to make it in time to the parking lot where the others were waiting. The party consisted of my tutor and her fellow students of the German language plus their teachers (Japanese and German). After a 25-minute drive to the visitors’ centre at the base of the mountain, we set off to the journey.

As a warm-up exercise, we walked on the other side and descended quite a long way to get to a place where a small waterfall had created a large valley in the mountain (or so the Japanese teacher told us). The waterfall was lovely and the leaves of the trees above us were sometimes torn free by gusts of wind, softly falling down on us. It was very calming and somehow inspiring.

After a short break, we started the actual climbing process. Now might be a good time to confess that I am not a sports enthusiast. I like taking walks and often opt for using my two feet instead of other means of transportation for convenience (and to save the bus fare) but otherwise, I tend to avoid unnecessary exercise. Thus I was not completely prepared for what turned out to be a 90 minutes’ hike on a steep path with no proper resting place – the best you could do was to lean on a tree branch to catch your breath while you’re letting someone from the opposite direction pass you on the narrow path. The teacher leading the group – a 60-something gentleman who was obviously used to hiking in high places – pushed on cheerfully at a pace that was impressive for someone half his age, while I found myself wheezing and hoping to just get the climb over with. This was when we passed a sign that said it would take approximately 45 minutes more to get to the top. It was not a particularly enjoyable experience, but I managed to make it without complaining or slowing everyone down. Thank goodness I had had the sense to pack a generous amount of water.

The view at our destination and the feeling of accomplishment made up for all the trouble, in the end. It was great having packed lunch up there with everyone while looking at the scenery – the sunshine felt incredibly nice, even though it made me very sleepy after I had finished my meal…

I had been dreading the journey back down as I am prone to tripping and falling even on perfectly level ground, but it wasn’t too bad in the end. At least I managed to get back safely to deliver these photos.

 

 On the next day, I got to participate in yet another different experience. There was a wagashi (Japanese sweets) making session for local and international students of the university. The teacher of the class was an elderly man who apparently had a traditional wagashi shop, so he really knew the tricks of the trade. He started by showing us two different shapes – the cherry blossom and the camellia flower – before we got to try making them ourselves. Surprisingly, I turned out to be pretty good at moulding the sweet mass (which I suppose was mochi?) around the anko paste. Usually I’m terrible at doing anything with my hands, but especially the cherry blossom turned out pretty nicely, and I got a lot of compliments for it. I accidentally skipped one step when trying to do the camellia, but the end result was decent.



A (somewhat skaken) picture of the fruits of my labour

After completing the sweet treats, we brewed some green tea with some basic tea ceremony tools. I did have some experience of this, so I was not too worried when we were told to make tea for the person on the opposite side of the table and not ourselves – the process of making green tea usually involves offering the beverage to someone else. The Chinese student whose tea I drank had made a small miscalculation when measuring the tea powder, so the drink wasn’t very strong, but it had a nice, gentle taste. I ate one of the sweets in class and saved the other for my private teatime in the evening – I’ve developed a habit of making green tea every evening.

BONUS: The entrance of the Kanazawa station is pretty nice.