I don't think I've mentioned the bathroom here yet. It has some pretty cool features.
Here is the toilet room:
There are no bathroom slippers which surprised me, and the sink is in an adjacent room. There is a sink on top of the toilet too that runs when the toilet is flushed, but it seems like most people use the other one. The shelf on the right is hallow behind the two middle shelves, so you drop toilet paper rolls in through the top hole and can store a ton of them without it being obvious or taking up lots of room. When you open the door, a puff or air freshener sprays from somewhere. I've been trying to figure out what triggers it, but I can't for the life of me even find where it comes from. Also, to flush the toilet you press a button on the box on the wall above the toilet paper. This box also has ビデ（bidet） and おしり（bottom） buttons, but both of these are quite cold instead of warm like the hotel ones.
Also, why do we not have toilet paper roll holders like this in the U.S.? Seriously, they are amazing and everywhere here. Even the Japanese style toilets (squat toilets) at school have these:
Also, I think it's interesting that in Japan you see a lot of super fancy western style toilets, and a lot of Japanese style toilets (which are often thought to be more sanitary), but not many plain western style toilets without the fancy buttons, whereas in the U.S. it's odd to see anything but these. I also think it's interesting that almost every toilet/toilet accessory item I've seen here is made by TOTO, even the traditional Japanese toilets. Finally, The bathroom stalls here go pretty much from floor to ceiling which could have partially come from the whole squat-toilets-are-everywhere thing, but is also just really nice.
Anyways, breakfast:
七夕まつり（tanabata matsuri = Tanabata Festival） is coming up, so today my host family set up their Tanabata Matsuri bamboo. Tanabata is basically a holiday that comes from a Chinese story about two lovers separated by the milky way that can only see each other on the seventh day of the seventh month of the year. Part of Tanabata Matsuri is writing wishes/hopes on slips of paper, then hanging these on a decorated bamboo branch.
Here is my wish:
It says something like "I hope I become able to speak Japanese well."
And here is the (plastic) bamboo:
Scrunchie:
Bag-ception:
We went to the library for a little while and this time capsule was there:
We stopped at a bread shop afterwards and each picked out a bread and drink to go with lunch:
I ended up getting a ham and cheese bun and this strawberry milk:
We ate lunch on kind of a public patio thing above a parking garage. My host mom brought sandwich fillers and we made sandwiches with some of the bread we got.
Sandwich:
Patio thing:
My bun:
After that my host family dropped me off at HIF so I could go on the Jomon Archaeological Tour.
A bus took us from HIF to the museum. There was a moth outside the museum.
We started off in a room with a big timeline on the wall describing what the Jomon era was and why it probably occurred. Basically, the general climate changed so people switched from being nomadic to settling down in villages.
The we moved to a bigger room with lots of things in it. A lot of the things reminded me of exhibits in Seattle about the peoples indigenous to the Pacific Northwest which I guess makes sense due to the similar climate, ocean proximity, and landscape similarities.
Lots of pictures:
This is a grave:
The Jomon would coat threads in a red lacquer which didn't break down the same way over time and left a rough outline of the person wearing the lacquered items.
Lots of jade:
What a Jomon person probably looked like (note the said red lacquer):
The tour guide pointed out that the pots got smaller over time which probably meant they were storing less food:
When babies died they made impressions of their feet in clay:
Big interesting sign that I took lots of pictures of to read later, but that I still haven't really read:
Bird shaped flute that survived an fire by arson:
Creepy dark cement hallway:
This figure is named Kakku. It is the main attraction of the museum. It was found by a housewife working in a field, is important because it is the largest hollow clay figure in Japan and because of its "highly valued design," and it was declared a national treasure in 2007. One reason it is significant is that figures at this time in history generally depicted pregnant woman, but Kakku has both masculine and feminine traits. Historians don't know what exactly it was used for, but based on its structure it seems to have been used for a ceremony during which it would be broken (because it seems to be designed to break easily is some places and most of these figures are found in pieces). More information about Kakku can be found on those signs I took pictures of.
Tiny yarn Kakku:
After touring the museum we took a bus to a site where some of the Jomon village structures have been recreated. On the way there I talked with one of my friends from class, Kieren, who is doing his IS project on the Jomon period. His major is related to archaeology and he said that he finds the politics of archaeology really interesting. I thought this was really cool because I had never even thought about how those two things could be related. Apparently, because most countries' governments are left in charge of that country's own archaeology and history, politics has the potential to highly influence general perceptions of history. The Jomon period, for example, is generally thought to be an incredibly peaceful time that ended only when other peoples came into the country, but this might not be entirely accurate. Some people suggest that the Jomon period was likely just as full of skirmishes as other similar indigenous peoples worldwide, but that it is in the Japanese government's best interest to portray the Jomon, and thereby the Japanese, as inherently peace-loving, particularly after WWII. I have no background in archaeology, but I think it's a really interesting idea.
The site and structures:
The structures sit on top of ditches dug into the ground. There are holes in the ground which would have held huge poles to support the roof structure and a set of stairs that curved down around the inside of the perimeter:
The pit near the large hole would have held the fire and was considered a spot of great importance.
Also, it was very, very rainy:
This pit was likely not a living space, but more ceremonial:
Here is a fully reconstructed one with the roof filled in:
Clover:
Tonight my host mother was gone, so we had 手巻き（temaki = hand + a type of sushi） as an "easy dinner" (かんたんご飯). I was originally surprised to hear sushi considered an easy dinner, but it actually was really simple. We pretty much just made a big dish of sushi rice, then had seaweed cut into squares and various fillers on the table. You would grab a piece of のり（seaweed）, add a scoop of sushi rice and whatever filling you wanted and some 紫蘇（shisho = perilla, which is in the mint family）, wrapit up and eat it. It was a lot like a self-serve taco night.
My host dad had me stir rice vinegar into the rice while he prepped the fillers and こちゃん fanned the rice with a cut open milk carton.
A ball of tofu with fish flakes and sauce:
Some 手巻き:
たっくん the sushi chief:
Natto sushi:
Later that night I tried a few of the snacks from Onuma. The caramel was really great:
The little black squid ink cakes were kind of disappointing:
They were pretty good, but more blob-shaped than squid-shaped and didn't really taste like anything.
The ramen-flavored chocolate bar had cute little animals and various other cute items (umbrellas, cars, etc.) printed on each piece and mostly just tasted like chocolate, but also had savory undertones which was sort of cool.
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