August 7, 2007

Japanese Experience Day 9 (Aug 6) ‘What’s that way over there?!’’ in Japanese, kimono colored folding cranes & the swish, roll and slice of Soba noodle making!!!

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Intermediate Japanese group with Yano Sensei!


Monday start began with everyone arriving looking a little sleepy from active weekends, but enthusiastic. Mr. Fukuda had taken Marvin to the beautiful seaside town of Kamakura, about an hour south of Shibuya by train, home to many temples and a famous 13m tall Great Buddha statue.


The girls Jessica, Angeline and Justine became fast fans of Japan’s karaoke box system, spending some 3 hours on Saturday belting out all kinds of tunes. Sunday they once again explored Harajuku.


Yano Sensei and myself got things rolling Monday with our two Japanese lesson groups. The beginners learned ‘this, that’ and ‘hey, what’s that thing way over there’. The intermediates with Yano Sensei studied ‘What am I?’, with Yano-Sensei describing a picture the students were looking at and then they would have to answer in Japanese by choosing from a vocabulary list.


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Learning origami from Yogo Sensei!


After break to check emails, Eikin Yogo, the school’s art teacher and a professional painter, brought in loads of special origami (folding paper) of all sorts of colors, some painted with brilliant kimono themes. Yogo Sensei’s plan was to challenge everyone with difficult origami and cutting origami (sort of like folding and cutting white paper to make snow flakes, but much more formalized), however, everyone just really got into basic, and very fun, ninja throwing stars, frogs and flowers.


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For sure they could have sat for several hours folding, shaping and compiling origami since they were enjoying it so much, which I was happy to see.


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Paper cranes!


August 6 is an important day in Japan being the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I told the students a famous story of Sadako Sasaki, a 12 year old girl who was 1 mile from ground center at the time of the blast. While she survived the initial bombing, 10 years later she developed leukemia, and was given one year to live. While in hospital, she tried to fold 1000 paper cranes in the hope there was some truth in Japanese saying that anyone will have their wish granted should them accomplish this feat. Supposedly she made it to 664 before she passed away less than a year later, but her friends made many more and now there is a statue of her at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.


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Origami group photo with Yogo Sensei!


In the afternoon we hopped a few trains over to Koiwa City area of east Tokyo, getting off at the easy to remember Koiwa Station, arriving at the home of Mr. Masao Ito. Ito Sensei is a master at making soba (buck wheat) noodles!


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He is 76 years old, he retired 10 years ago, and right after he retired he remodeled his living room with 5 cooking stations (really big wooden tables) to teach people how to make real homemade soba.


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Chopping the soba dough!


Mrs. Ito was there to help and Jun-Sensei, a young protégé of Ito-Sensei, also came by to instruct.


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Ito Sensei helping Jessica and Jun Sensei helping Marvin. Learning how to make soba, like anything in Japan, is really a one-to-one experience!


What a treat! Ito-Sensei really got into physical beauty of making soba! He said learning to make soba takes ‘’3 years, 3 months and 3 days!’’ There are 14 steps, the first 6 (mixing) takes 3 years to learn properly, the next 4 steps for rolling takes 3 months, and the final the 3 steps for cutting takes 3 days.


Everyone got a wonderful demonstration for the whole process; mixing the soba flour with water and a little udon noodle flour (2 parts udon flour to 8 parts soba), then the ‘wax on, wax off’ finger style of mixing in a huge bowl, then hand rolling into a dough pyramid followed by pounding out the dough on the table into a circle (if your heart has a clean conscience, a perfect circle is easy Sensei said!), before using several rolling pins to make the dough 1.5cm thick in a square shape, and finally finishing by cutting the dough into long, thin strips with a very big, very sharp knife!


Afterwards, all the students had a go, with Ito-Sensei and Jun-Sensei madly moving from table to table to keep everyone on track through each step in the process! And the students did quite well, all having several servings of soba prepared. Ito-Sensei seemed very pleased (at least he didn’t make anyone start over from scratch).


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Mrs. Ito also very kindly ran out to the local store to get very fresh Japanese sweet pears, which she peeled and cut up for us, adding them to small plates for everyone with edamame green beans!


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The final meal, since it's summer 'zaru soba' or cold soba noodles, plus soya dipping sauce, sliced onion and grounded wasabi paste to mix into the dipping sauce (you determine how much you 'kick' you want) plus fesh pear and edamame. Wow, healthy, or as the Japanese say 'he-ru-shi!'


After everyone was done, Ito-Sensei deftly cooked up one serving that each person made in boiling water (another process with several precise steps) before we all sat down to enjoy the ‘soba of our labor’, trying to make loud slurping sounds as is custom when eating soba to improve the taste.


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Jessica and Angeline try their best sluuurrrppp!

So everyone left feeling full, happy, and somewhat tired (from all the physical work, but also the heat outside and maybe still some lingering jetlag), but having for sure learned Japanese culture from nothing to something! It was also curious to see how the importance of one’s balance of movement with both sides of the body, the control of one’s center line and the awareness of the finer points of the process for soba-making kind of relate to the tea ceremony, to judo, to karate, demonstrating a further link between all the traditional customs of Japan. The sense of one learning a ‘way’, following a ‘path’ and the key to success being serious, consistent effort for years and years, with fun too along the way!


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The final group shot, everyone stuffed and happy! Left to right: Richard, Angeline, Jessica, Mrs. Ito, Mr. Ito, Marvin, Justine and Mr. Fukuda.


At night Jessica and I attended a training session with the All-Japan National Karate Team Head Coach, Toshiaki Maeda, at his Monday night practice not far from the school.


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Jessica, Maeda Sensei and Richard, all 'just' perspiring a little...!


We got lucky because few students attended the class (probably because it’s August) and Maeda Sensei kindly did not drill us into the ground due to the heat, but he shared with us several fine points about basic movement and how to prepare our body for countering an opponent’s attack in a sport’s karate match. Never overbearing or negative, and still moving faster than both of us even at age 53 (he grumbled he doesn’t want to turn 54 next week!) we had a great sweaty time before the practice seemed so quickly over.

Richard

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about Seiritsu

Seiritsu Gakuen is a private co-educational high school created in 1925 and it is located in Tokyo, Japan.

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