Here is the milk (on the right) and carton of something else (on the left):
Breakfast:
Here are the erasers I got yesterday. They are supposed to be strawberry, vanilla, and melon, scented, but they all just kind of smell generically yummy. I didn't know what the difference between けしごむ（keshigomu）（eraser） and ねりけし（nerikeshi）（this kind of eraser I got） was until I tried to use one of them and it squished in my hand. Apparently ねりけし means kneaded eraser which wasn't my first choice, but I still like them. I've only used the green one, and enjoy messing with it in class, but sometimes get annoyed that I have to mold it back into a little rectangle every time I'm done using it. I realize that I don't actually have to do this, but it would bother me not to. They are also full of glitter which I didn't notice originally, but somehow all the glitter stays in the eraser and never gets on me which is a great yet rare quality in glitter filled items.
Today, they were selling inari during our long break which I was really happy about.
I forgot to take a picture of lunch, but I decided to get the special instead of curry rice, and it turned out that todays special was curry rice anyways.
After class, I went to a traditional dance class. The woman running the class talked a lot about the different kinds of dance, and I wish I had understood more of what she said.
One of my friends from class is doing traditional dance for their IS project and is taking lessons from the same woman, so she knows a lot about it and I hear about it from her sometimes. For example, I she told me that there are two main kinds of Japanese theater: Noh, which is slow and dramatic; and Kabuki, which is higher energy. This class was about Japanese dance in general and wasn't in either category.
Almost every pose in the dance represented something which usually relates to a story. Some of the moves that we learned included "Bamboo," "Turtle," "Eating/Drinking," and "Pine." The music we danced to reminded me a lot of the folk music workshop, and sometimes the lyrics actually matched the name of the poses in the dance. We got to use shiny gold fans:
We learned how to walk around and sit while dancing, then learned a short dance. It was pretty slow, but I think this made it a lot more difficult because you had to be really accurate and precise.
There were also very specific ways we had to hold the fan for each move. Otherwise the pose was wrong or you couldn't shift to the next pose as easily.
We had to sit in seiza (where you fold your legs directly under you) a lot which was kind of tough after a while. I think we all sat in seiza a lot more than we actually had to, but it is a very common and traditional way of sitting so most people I've talked to really want to get better at it or prove they can do it. What makes it difficult is if you aren't used to it, your legs get really, really sore and start to go numb after just a few minutes.
Me outside of city hall (Hi, Mom and Dad!):
My host parents were excited that we were having hamburgers for dinner because it is an American food. I was expecting something a little different, but they were cheese-filled and delicious so I'm definitely not complaining.
Finally, melon jelly for dessert. It was kind of like a slightly squishier Jell-O, and a lot like the smaller melon jellies we had at the picnic.
