'Tis the Season

I can't believe it's already halfway through December! Whatt. At least now my friend can wear her gloves and scarf, which she is very happy about. Winter scarves are very popular here, for both genders. Happily my host sisters gave me a warm scarf and mittens for my birthday, which are very useful for biking to and from school. Also shoutout to Aunt Cathy for sending me CuddlDuds; they are very appreciated! So far I've seen my room get down to 51 degrees and I won't be surprised if it gets colder.

It being December, I'm now ok with Christmas-themed things, which is good because they are everywhere. My school has a tree and lights outside, wreaths on the doors and a manger scene inside, and the daily morning song is "Joy to the World" (in Japanese). Last weekend I had two Christmas parties, at my tea ceremony sensei's house and with my Rotary club.

At the tea one, there were about 10 older ladies, I think students of the main sensei. Although when I have lessons, usually one of them teaches me. The beginning was traditional; two of the ladies made tea for everyone and we had the usual red bean paste sweets to go with the strong matcha. But after the traditional part was over, all the ladies suddenly burst into festive activity, bringing out a snowman tablecloth to put over the tatami mats, putting on the Frank Sinatra and other classic Christmas music, and serving cheese and crackers and cakes. They had a lot of fun with the sparkling wine, and being embarrassed over their pink faces. We had all brought $10 presents, which my host sister and I, wearing a Santa hat and cape, randomly distributed. Overall it was properly fun and Christmas-y, and just amusing to be with a bunch of excited old ladies :)

Sunday evening was my Rotary Club party, and my sisters and I made it to the right room in the hotel without even getting lost. It was a nice dinner program, mostly with the older Rotarians I had met at previous meetings, but with some families too. We were serenaded by the club's lovely choir, some people talked, I was reintroduced, again, and said a few things, and a hip hop dance club performed. There were first graders through high schoolers, and they were all impressively skilled, even they first graders. Then we played Bingo, which I thought was very fitting, and everyone was a winner. So again it was a pleasant time, although I'm getting tired of disappointing my counselor every time I see him by still not having been to Prague.

This last week I went to two more seasonal festivities. Thursday night, I went by train to Kobe to see the luminarie, an annual light festival to commemorate a big earthquake in 1995. The big streets are closed off around it, and filled with a huge stream of pedestrians. We walked with the crowd for 15 minutes before getting to the place itself, because there was fencing up to handle the traffic, and that was actually really pleasant. The weather was clear, although cold, but I've finally decided it's cold enough to be worthy of my winter coat, although most people have been wearing them for weeks, so I was warm. The main part was about a block fully covered with lights, and at the end there were more big light decorations. It was really beautiful. After that there were many food booths, mostly selling beef, on skewers, in stew, in buns, and rice things, so I finally got to try Kobe beef. It was good :) Actually the next day I had an expensive lunch of Miyazaki beef, which is also famous, so there was just a lot of beef those two days.

Last Saturday night there was a local festival near my house. We missed the beginning so I'm not sure how it started, but when we came there was a huge bonfire. Then a bunch of shirtless men, wearing the traditional pants and boots everyone had at the danjiri festival, ran at the fire with big bamboo poles. There was a big crowd so I couldn't really see what they were doing, but I think they were knocking down the logs in the fire to make it die down. When it was mostly glowing embers with only a few flames, guys ran across it carrying someone who represented a god. I'm not quite sure what the whole story behind the festival is, my sisters were unclear too. Then all of the shirtless guys ran back and forth across it, yelling, until the embers were more scattered and burning less. Then it was open to the crowd, which surprised me. But then I went too! It was very hot in the middle but happily my boots came out unscathed. After everyone that wanted to had run through, they poured water over the embers to put them out, creating a lot of smoke. This was apparently good luck, so many people went into the smoke, but my sisters and I decided we didn't need to smell for days. One of my favorite things about Japan is definitely how well they're connected to their traditions.

I also finally made Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies with Hannah, and they turned out well! My family loved them. It was way easier than the pumpkin pie because Hannah brought measuring spoons and cups from America. We had some trouble finding baking soda, though, because everywhere only had baking powder. A nice store lady finally pointed us to a drugstore where we got it in little sodium bicarbonate packets, which was interesting.