Interesting Weekend
Thanksgiving
My American friend Katie, who lives about three and a half hours away, came to visit for the weekend. Living in the boonies, she gets out as much as possible, and this was a good weekend to come through considering it was Thanksgiving.
American Thanksgiving and the Japanese Labour Thanksgiving Day (a holiday honoring labor, always on the same date) luckily fell on the same day this year, so nobody had to work on Thursday. A friend in Harimacho held a Thanksgiving potluck, which was amazingly delicious. We had a traditional American feast with a lot of food sent from America, but it was about half Japanese people and about a third of the invited guests couldn’t come, so it felt a little weird. Listening to rap during dinner was a bit of a change, too. It brought me back to my first Thanksgiving away from home in Oslo, when Joe and I invited our American friends from around the country for dinner. I think we used curtains as a tablecloth and ate chicken instead of Turkey (purchased at OBS, of all places), but it was fun. Natsukashi…
Friday was normal. Katie was in Osaka for the day and I had to work (graded notebooks almost all afternoon). Then Katie, Kelly and I went to an Izakaya (Japanese-style restaurant where you can order a lot of different things and share) at night.
An Afternoon on Mount Rokko
I finally ran with Takiko on Saturday morning, and she showed me a waterfront running path near my house and a beautiful temple a few kilometers away. It was fun. Katie and I spent Saturday afternoon in Kobe. I’ve been trying to get to the Kobe Fashion Museum forever to check out the French prints exhibition (I wanted to see the same exhibit in Chicago last year, but didn’t have enough time), but when we checked with tourist information in Sannomiya (central Kobe) we found out that the exhibit had ended a month ago. Frustrating, but teaches you to not procrastinate!
Instead of the museum, Katie and I headed over to Mt. Rokko, a famous mountain in the Kobe Area. We took the cable car up the mountain (like in Bergen) and spent the last of the daylight hours exploring the area. I especially liked the little Christmas town we discovered (even though I know it was a tourist trap), and the view of the city below (‘the Million Dollar View’ of Kobe) was breathtaking. Definitely worth the trip. We would have stayed longer, but we had to get back to a barbecue that a Japanese woman in my community was hosting.
Romeo & Juliet... in Swahili?
Sunday was fun. While having dinner with my neighbors, Jane (British) and Chigusa (Japanese), last week, Jane and I discovered that Chigusa had studied Swahili – of all languages – in college (she’s a high school English teacher)! We were so excited about this fact that Chigusa invited us to a cultural festival at her old college, the Osaka University of Foreign languages, this weekend. Jane couldn’t go, but I went and got to see Romeo and Juliet in Swahili. It was really good, except it completely threw me when they switched the entire cast halfway through (except for Juliet’s father, whose potbelly was an inner-tube in this guy’s shirt). They probably did it so that everyone in the program could be involved, or so the lines were easier to remember, but it was still confusing. I obviously did not understand a word, but I know the story so I really enjoyed the production and I liked that they used music from the Claire Danes/Leonardo DiCaprio movie. After the play, we hit up the food bazaar. I spoke Norwegian with some Japanese students of Danish who were selling ‘poelse’ (hotdogs) and got to see the Korean national costume for the first time. We were going to see Oliver (the English production) later in the day, but I had to get to the Apple Store and wasn’t feeling well, so we went home early and I was in bed by 6:00 on Sunday.
My American friend Katie, who lives about three and a half hours away, came to visit for the weekend. Living in the boonies, she gets out as much as possible, and this was a good weekend to come through considering it was Thanksgiving.
American Thanksgiving and the Japanese Labour Thanksgiving Day (a holiday honoring labor, always on the same date) luckily fell on the same day this year, so nobody had to work on Thursday. A friend in Harimacho held a Thanksgiving potluck, which was amazingly delicious. We had a traditional American feast with a lot of food sent from America, but it was about half Japanese people and about a third of the invited guests couldn’t come, so it felt a little weird. Listening to rap during dinner was a bit of a change, too. It brought me back to my first Thanksgiving away from home in Oslo, when Joe and I invited our American friends from around the country for dinner. I think we used curtains as a tablecloth and ate chicken instead of Turkey (purchased at OBS, of all places), but it was fun. Natsukashi…
Friday was normal. Katie was in Osaka for the day and I had to work (graded notebooks almost all afternoon). Then Katie, Kelly and I went to an Izakaya (Japanese-style restaurant where you can order a lot of different things and share) at night.
An Afternoon on Mount Rokko
I finally ran with Takiko on Saturday morning, and she showed me a waterfront running path near my house and a beautiful temple a few kilometers away. It was fun. Katie and I spent Saturday afternoon in Kobe. I’ve been trying to get to the Kobe Fashion Museum forever to check out the French prints exhibition (I wanted to see the same exhibit in Chicago last year, but didn’t have enough time), but when we checked with tourist information in Sannomiya (central Kobe) we found out that the exhibit had ended a month ago. Frustrating, but teaches you to not procrastinate!
Instead of the museum, Katie and I headed over to Mt. Rokko, a famous mountain in the Kobe Area. We took the cable car up the mountain (like in Bergen) and spent the last of the daylight hours exploring the area. I especially liked the little Christmas town we discovered (even though I know it was a tourist trap), and the view of the city below (‘the Million Dollar View’ of Kobe) was breathtaking. Definitely worth the trip. We would have stayed longer, but we had to get back to a barbecue that a Japanese woman in my community was hosting.
Romeo & Juliet... in Swahili?
Sunday was fun. While having dinner with my neighbors, Jane (British) and Chigusa (Japanese), last week, Jane and I discovered that Chigusa had studied Swahili – of all languages – in college (she’s a high school English teacher)! We were so excited about this fact that Chigusa invited us to a cultural festival at her old college, the Osaka University of Foreign languages, this weekend. Jane couldn’t go, but I went and got to see Romeo and Juliet in Swahili. It was really good, except it completely threw me when they switched the entire cast halfway through (except for Juliet’s father, whose potbelly was an inner-tube in this guy’s shirt). They probably did it so that everyone in the program could be involved, or so the lines were easier to remember, but it was still confusing. I obviously did not understand a word, but I know the story so I really enjoyed the production and I liked that they used music from the Claire Danes/Leonardo DiCaprio movie. After the play, we hit up the food bazaar. I spoke Norwegian with some Japanese students of Danish who were selling ‘poelse’ (hotdogs) and got to see the Korean national costume for the first time. We were going to see Oliver (the English production) later in the day, but I had to get to the Apple Store and wasn’t feeling well, so we went home early and I was in bed by 6:00 on Sunday.
posted by Brenda Ann Elizabeth McKinney @ 2:32 PM
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