So many cultural experiences, so little time

It's been a long (and short week) here in the future. Apparently our teachers decided that the best way for us to be tourists in the area around Kanazawa was to take us on a two day trip that was packed full of more cultural experiences than I care to think about. But we had a good time, and of course I must explain it all right here.

So we started off bright and early Sunday morning, all bright-eyed and chipper and ready to greet the day. We first went to a temple fairly close by and wandered around a bit. My friends and I might have gotten in trouble for walking on some bridge with our shoes on, as we could not read the no-shoes sign in Japanese. I also took a billion pictures of the graveyard there. Graveyards are ridiculously pretty in Japan; because of it being so hilly and limited amounts of space and whatnot, they're usually tucked away onto the sides of hills, amidst a ton of trees and generally beautiful scenery. The one we were in at the temple looked like fairy land. Also, the tombstones just look so elegant. I think names look better in Japanese than in English; there's just something so graceful about the characters that roman letters can't really get at.

After that we went to this shrine and saw some purification ritual or something like that. Apparently the shrine is all about good luck and marriages and stuff like that. I gotta say, though, they had some wacky head gear there. One girl was wearing holly leaves that shot straight off her head like antlers, and the guy had some weird black stuff in a boxy design on his. I'm sure it was all very significant, but I didn't really get it.

After that, we all piled back in the bus and trucked it to one of the more interesting locales on the trip: the beach drive way. This essentially is a place where cars are allowed to drive on the beach, pretty much right next to the water. It was so weird to be cruising down the sand with the water almost lapping our tires. Other cars had parked and people were having cookouts (but it was freezing out, and considering how temperature-sensitive the Japanese I've met can be, this was surprising). We stopped and had lunch here, and played around on the beach for a while afterward. Some people went in the water, and one poor girl fell...that must have been a shockingly cold experience. Also, it made her dress see-through, so the teachers had to shield her as they took her back to the bus for new clothes. She survived okay, though, and we moved on in our journey.

The next stop was Ganmon, which is essentially this spot on the coast that has a huge rock formation that sort of looks like a gate. I am assuming this is the areas namesake, as the word for gate in Japanese is "mon". We got to play around on the rocks, which had mini tide pools and fun stuff like that. We took tons of pictures there, especially since it pretty much looked like Lost.

Finally, we made it to our final destination for the day, the Kagaya hot spring hotel in Wakura. This place was EPIC. I always feel like I don't really need to be rich, but let me tell you, this place makes you want to be able to afford it. We stayed in HUGE suites, complete with mini bathroom (including traditional Japanese tub), tea room, bedroom/dining room (they used futons so it was the same room), and a room whose purpose we never determined. All the floors were tatami mats. We got to dress in yukata, which are kind of like less intense versions of kimono, and prance around the hotel...it was awesome! They also threw us a little party, and then gave us a huge meal involving several courses and a ton of entertainment (aka drumming by dudes in masks and a bunch of girls dancing with clicky-clacky hand things. We actually got to go up on stage and dance with the girls, which was SO FUN). We then watched people make mochi, and some people helped too; mochi is essentially rice that's been pounded until it's all sticky and sort of paste-like, only more solid than paste. It's hard to describe, but it's amazing.

But the night was still young when we finished, so a few of my friends and I went down to experience our first Japanese onsen. Onsen is the word for hot spring in Japanese; essentially, this hotel pipes in fresh water from hot springs that's all nasty and salty and sulfer-y and let's people take baths in it. Now, bathing in Japan is a whole big deal; this was essentially what I do every night, only with other people and in a nicer place. You're not allowed to take towels into the bath, so you just get to run around naked with other peeps for a while, which was weird at first but then okay. Before you can get into the bath, you have to shower so that you don't take any nastiness into the bath with you. Then, you get to submerge yourself in ridiculously hot water (my bath at home is 42*C, or roughly 107*F; I have no clue how hot the onsen were, but probably about the same) for as long as you can. We did this for the next hour and a half or so, as there were a total of three baths on the women's side and we wanted to see them all. My favorite was the outside one, where the cool breeze really helped take the edge off of boiling your body alive.

I also discovered something else: I really like being the giggly gaijin who speaks a language pretty much no one else around can understand. It's funny, because in France I usually hated speaking English and hated the foreigner label it gave me. Now, because my looks pretty much give me away as a gaijin anyway, I care so much less. At first I was worried some people might understand, as English is required in all the schools here now. However, upon close observation, I have discovered that the average Japanese person is somewhat less skilled at English than one might think. Particularly fast English; sometimes they can get words if you say them slowly, but grammar in particular is lost on them, so if you speak quickly, almost no one understands anything. Of course, this is the same with me and Japanese, so I can't really feel good about my knowledge of English. I think this proves just how difficult it is for Japanese and English speakers to learn each others languages.

We woke up to tea and a very intense breakfast far too early the next morning. After bidding the hotel a reluctant farewell, we made our way over to a huge morning market in Wajima. It was really fun to walk around and see everything, and we picked up some weird pancake sandwiches (mine with cream in the middle!) as a quick snack. Next stop was the Kirico museum, which is all about an annual festival in Japan. We had our picture taken; I look horrible in it. Post-lunch, we went to a nearby rice field. I know this sounds boring, but it was actually really gorgeous. I made the poor choice of trying to run up the hill from the bottom to the top...I had to stop halfway, and I def was not making good time. The lack of exercise here is definitely detrimental.

Finally, we headed back home. As this leg of the trip was 2 hours long, all of us passed out, as most of us had gotten about 4 hours of sleep at the hotel. I have some pretty hilarious pictures, both mental and physical, of what everyone looked like asleep. It was a really really great time, even if it was a bit exhausting.

Today was also a lot of fun! One of the girls invited a bunch of us over to her house and we made soba, which is a kind of buckwheat noddle that's extremely popular in Japan. It's actually really easy to make, and I could probably manage it at home, provided I could find the right flour. It was really fun to just hang out with everyone and chat, as we don't really get much of a chance to talk to each other in English. I keep getting surprised when people I've only heard speak Japanese speak in English. For example, one girl in my class has a really high-pitched voice in Japanese; her voice in English is at least an octave lower, and her accent is not at all what I expected. It makes me wonder how different my voice is in other languages.

Anyway, this post is far too long, so I'm ending it here. Fun differences between Japan and America will just have to wait for another day!