Ikebana, Tea ceremony and life

So last week for our tea ceremony (Sadou) class, we got to try a little bit of Ikebana (flower arrangement).  The teacher put in front of us 2 piles and I forgot what each one is called, but one pile had the greens (leaves and stuff) and the other had the color (flowers, etc.). So we were instructed to pick one from each, pick a vase and arrange them in there.  It doesn't seem hard at all, but some flowers just don't go well with some types of leaves, and you have to pick a vase that provides the right aesthetics.  By the time I got access to the piles, most of the good ones were gone (in my opinion) and I guess I don't really have the right eye for this, so the teacher helped me a lot.  So even though I would like to take credit for my arrangement, I really can't lol.  Since this ikebana was for sadou (part of the ceremony involves gazing and appreciating the beauty of the flower arrangement in the room), it's supposed to be beautiful, but simple.  Basically it's not supposed to attract too much attention because the focus is on the tea and not the flowers.
Also when you arrange them, they should either stick up vertically or lean forward, never backward.  There's a lot more to ikebana than this, but this is all they really taught us since it's a sadou class.  This is mine, isn't it pretty? :D




My friend and I after finishing our ikebana; that's our sensei (teacher) in the back doing last minute touch ups:




Everyone's ikebana. Can you spot mine? =)




These are the okashi (sweets) that we eat before drinking our tea. They are always really good (very sweet) and really pretty and cute. The reason why they're so sweet is because the tea isn't sweet whatsoever, in fact it's a little bitter, so eating this before drinking makes the tea less bitter and more enjoyable. I will explain tea ceremony in more detail next time.
 



Normally for the ceremony there is only one flower arrangement in the room, just FYI. =P




 I took these pictures to give you a good sense of what the traditional room looks like. The floor is made up of tatami mats, and all the doors are sliding doors. The ones leading to outside (the ones you can see in the pictures) are just made of paper and wood. They are pretty delicate and fairly easy to break I think.  Also that's my friend again, and he is sitting in traditional seiza style with feet tucked under and hands places elegantly on the thighs (your sitting directly on your heels/under arch of your feet).  This seiza position is pretty natural for Japanese people, but not for most foreigners.  For me I physically could not do the seiza position the first class, because it immediately cuts of the blood circulation and puts your foot to sleep.  With each class I've been getting a little better at it and able to sit for longer each time, but it's still painful for me lol.  I think the average Japanese person can sit in seiza for around an hour or so before it starts to get uncomfortable. 




 There's us both in seiza, and that's an example sadou style ikebana behind us.




 Both rooms in one shot; the room beyond is the waiting room, and the room I'm taking the picture from is the room the ceremony takes place (where you drink your tea, etc.)





Every once in a while we go to the gyudon place to eat because it's super cheap, and close to our dorm (next to that izakaya we always go to, and Cafe de Cozy Cozy).  This was actually also the first place I ate at when I arrived in Japan :)
Just as a reminder, gyudon is basically beef over rice, and there are 3 kinds you can get; the most expensive one is not only slightly bigger in quantity, the quality of the beef is better too.  I always just nami, or the regular kind since I don't really care, and it's the cheapest (380 yen).  That's it in front of me:





 Later that week we had Japanese curry night at our dorm, so we all helped out cutting vegetables and cleaning, and then sat together as a family:




The curry turned out to be really good, better than the one I buy at the campus cafeteria.  One of my dorm-mates came up with the idea of sprinkling some mozzarella cheese on top of the curry at the very end before eating so that it would melt with the heat, and it was surprisingly delicious.  (you can't see it here since we sprinkled it on our individual plates)





One night my friend and I were hungry but didn't want to spend too much money, so we went to the convenience store, bought some cheap soba, a packet filled with greens, and some sweet niku dango (meat dumplings) and returned to my dorm to cook some yakisoba.  Here's my friend cooking it:




 Everything without the noodles (and yes people here often cook using longer chopsticks):




 Added the soba:




Mix mix mix!




Ta-da! She said it would have been perfect if we had eggs to go with it, but whatever:





The next day during lunch break I ate at a different cafeteria.  For like 550 yen, you get salad, soup, and pasta.  I got to make my own salad; the only thing is I couldn't recognize any of the food items because they were all Japanese, so I just had fun with it and added a little bit of everything.  It was actually pretty good, and extremely colorful (lots of pink stuff) and I wish I had taken a picture of it but I forgot to.  You can see the remnants in the top plate.  For the pasta, I ordered something with spinach in it, and it was also really good:




This was the soup; it was alright, pretty tasteless; I think it was some kind of variant of egg drop soup:




 Me after eating; I'm really happy because the food was good and I didn't have class after lunch lol:




 Since we were all free, I made everyone go to the Lawson convenience store so I could buy some ice-cream.  I got this again so I could share it with my friend (and because it's cheap lol). I keep forgetting what it's called, Pariko or something, but it's coffee-flavored and goooood:





Back at the gyudon place again, it's called Yoshinoya (I never really looked at the name till now) and it's a chain restaurant:




Aaaand back at the same izakaya (called Torinosuke--also a chain restaurant).  I ordered my usual lychee sparkling juice :)




 They're so colorful and pretty! Mine's the white one :)





Since I don't have a random picture to end the post this time, I will comment on something random.  The birds here in Nagoya (at least the ones in my neighborhood and on campus), make the most strangest sounds.  I am not exaggerating when I say that they sound like they're dying or in extreme pain.  When I first heard it outside my window, I was legitimately alarmed for a long time, and it kept waking me up in the morning days afterward.  Finally I realized that a bird was making that sound ( I couldn't even tell what animal it was until then!) and that it was simply its way of chirping.  I've lived here for almost 2 months now, and this sound is extremely aggravating to hear now............ok my random rant is done.  I'll post again soon!

Food, food and more foooood

Last Wednesday I spent the day with my Japanese dorm-mates. We went to a cafe close to my dorm called Lancia, and the food was very good, although slightly expensive.  We occupied a corner of the cafe:




Doesn't it look really good? It was a place that served salads and sandwiches and the like.






It's a rather small cafe, but cute :)






After lunch three of us went to Osu Kannon to look for Halloween costumes.  We couldn't find anything suitable, and plus they were all too costly anyways, so we gave up. We stopped at a supermarket that's supposed to be cheaper than the one close to our dorm, and there I bought some shampoo and conditioner refills.  Afterwards I was craving cake, so I made them take me to another cafe. Unfortunately they were out of pretty much everything, so I just ordered a caramel chocolate cake. My friends got strawberry shortcake and something pumpkin-flavored (anything pumpkin is popular here).




I asked the waitress to take a picture of us :)




After returning from Osu Kannon, I had dinner plans with some other friends (everyone is mostly free on Wednesdays because there are no afternoon classes).  We went to the family restaurant Gaston again since it was close by.  My friend ordered this for her dinner lol:




After 15 minutes of deliberation (their menu is HUGE), I finally decided on this. They bring it on a skillet thing so it's still sizzling for a while. I had to be extra careful since I'm very good at burning myself :P




Both of them are studying English, and they are VERY fluent.





The next day was this girl's birthday, so she's all dressed up, and ready for her date with her boyfriend! =p




 One of my dorm-mates brought back some pudding from her work place and shared it with me! She poured some kind of strawberry sauce on it too, it was really good.




That night we all went out to this Indian restaurant within walking distance of our dorm.  There was only one Indian guy working there, and he spoke very little Japanese, unlike the guy at INPAL lol.




We all kind of creeped on him cooking haha:




Unlike at INPAL, I had no say in what we were ordering, although they only had like 5 different dishes total anyways.  But my friends ordered TWO butter chicken dishes and one regular chicken curry, with 3 different kind of naans including the infamous cheese naan. Needless to say I stuck with my plain and garlic naans. Everyone really enjoyed the food, so I didn't tell anyone how mediocre I thought the food was....Also after we were done people were still hungry, so they ordered ANOTHER butter chicken and lamb curry. I was disappointed with the lamb as well, but didn't let on. I enjoyed everyone's company though, so I didn't care too much.




Everyone got free chai (Indian tea) as part of their service! I was so happy, and it was good too!




This sweet also came free, and everyone was wondering what it was so I decided to try it and see if I could pick up on any ingredients. I'm not sure what it was called, something papadi, but the texture is extremely soft to the touch and falls apart easily, and it literally melts in your mouth.  I could taste saffron in it; it actually kind of tasted like rasmalai to me. The Japanese people didn't like it; it was very sweet so I thought they would like it, since the Japanese love their cakes and stuff, but I guess I was wrong lol.
The worse news though, was that I had an immediate allergic reaction to the sweet. I took medicine immediately and was fine for about an hour, but then it reached my stomach and I felt terrible.  After we went home, I told them I wouldn't be able to celebrate that girl's birthday (the girl above) with everyone and went straight up to my room.  I rested for like 2 hours and felt a little better. I realized later that the sweet probably had basin in it (I'm allergic to peas and chickpeas or chana dal) Why you no like me Indian foooooood~





The next day, even though my stomach was still feeling kind of beaten up, I really wanted cake (AGAIN) so I dragged this guy with me to Cafe de Cozy Cozy, really close to our dorm.

 





The cafe is slightly expensive, so we shared a cake set. We chose a chocolate banana cake (the best one in my opinion), a type of cheesecake, and something else........I can't rememberrrr. Oh well it was pretty good; usually I'm not a big fan of cheesecake, but this one was good. 




We got one cup of tea with the cake set, so we shared it. I think it was Ceylon tea.......I'm not sure! >_<
But it went well with the cakes.
And I almost forgot to mention the best part......they were playing ABBA songs the entire time we were there!~ I was in a very good mood that day ^________^





That weekend we went to the burger place Layers again! I'm pretty sure we are on our way to becoming regulars =D Here's us after ordering (all starved and excited):




After getting our DELICIOUS milkshakes. I made sure to order chocolate this time:




After getting our burgers.  I was so hungry, I ate really messily and ended up needing like 6 napkins.....





It's not intentional but I always seem to end a lot of my posts with something completely random.  But after leaving Layers, we went to Book Off (a place you can get new and used books, CDs, DVDs, games, etc. for various prices) and I saw this while browsing. For you Vampire Diaries fans lol (it's around $50--the freaking dollar value keeps falling T-T).

Indian food, Chinese food, and Baskin Robbins!

I finally had my first Indian food since coming to Japan! It was my friend's birthday and we decided to go to Osu Kannon to celebrate it. We didn't know what to do for dinner, so we walked around and ran into this Indian guy trying to get us to eat at his restaurant (typical Indians).  The restaurant was called INPAL, India + Nepal.  Since everyone was up for it, we decided to go ahead and eat there. We were seated upstairs where no one else was dining, and I took the time to explain the menu a bit.  After debating for a long time, we finally ordered bhindi (okra), mutton (lamb), and aloo and gobi (potato and cauliflower) dishes.  We ordered, and then it was time for pictures. By the way we're a pretty diverse group: Malaysia, Thai, Japanese, Philippines, France, and then me =D




So I had to take a picture of the menu, because I'm pretty sure you only find this in Japan. Apparently Cheese naan is relatively popular in Japan. There's also dry fruits naan, chocolate naan and honey cheese naan.........O_O  Needless to say I refused to try the cheese naan although the same guy did his best to make us buy it (typical Indians), and I told everyone that the plain naan or garlic naan would be best with the dishes.




The naans were bigger than I thought they would be, which was good. Although they put them in baskets which were difficult to eat out of.  But overall the food was pretty good, and I was in heaven since it had been so long. To top it off, they were playing Bollywood songs (Zindagi na Milegi Dobara, etc.) so I was in a really good mood haha.




Me and the birthday girl :)




Before paying the bill I quickly went out to go pick someone up, and on the way I ran into another Nanzan group of foreign exchange students. They were wondering what to do for dinner, so I told them about INPAL after which they needed no more prompting. I told the Indian guy later I was giving him good business =P




 After dinner I was craving ice-cream, so I made everyone accompany me to the Baskin Robbins in Sakae.  As expected there were so many unique flavors; I tried the tea and apple one which was actually not bad at all, but I finally settled on pistachio and chocolate (I had to restrain myself from the hazelnut chocolate).






 It was around 10pm by this time, so most of the stores were closed. By the way this place is all underground connected to the train station.




  That same night my friend really wanted to go out drinking, so I took her to (yes) the same Izakaya.  I invited some of my dorm-mates as well. 




I ordered a Nihon-syu again (hot Japanese sake), and two other fruity drinks, and ate a lot of edamame. That's not beer, just water in the beer jug, FYI. =P  The one on the far right is the sake; you serve yourself from the bottle-like thing. I think it was made of some kind of stone, probably because it was hot sake.





The next day I made dinner for one of my Japanese dorm-mates, since she had made me that spaghetti bento earlier that week.  I cooked her an Indian (Hyderabadi) style chicken curry.  Though it was my first time, I thought it came out pretty well if I do say so myself!  I asked them to pose, and this is literally what they did not even kidding. Oh Japanese people sometimes.......=)





Another day my new Japanese friends took me out to a Chinese restaurant.  It looked extremely shady from the outside, but the inside was normal enough (why are all the best places located in the shadiest areas?!)  I couldn't get a good picture, the lighting sucked.




I let them do all the ordering, since I couldn't even read the menu. They ordered SO MUCH haha.




 It was my first time eating something like this; it's pork and I think it's like the backbone or something. I felt like a caveman:




 I don't really know the other stuff they ordered, but here's what they looked like:




This kind of tasted like sweet and sour chicken:








They ordered gyoza, of course =P








 Dumplings!




 It was so much food oh my gosh




But we finished it all! We would have slept at the table if we were allowed.




 On the way back to the train station, we stopped at a Lawson (convenience store located all over Nagoya, maybe even Japan). I saw this and had to take a picture. I didn't know it was possible to make Toy Story cuter than it already was; leave it to the Japanese: