1. fresh matcha chocolate, 2. Tea @ Rikugien, 3. 蕨 (bracken), 4. Lets Biking

It’s time for Things I Love Thursday (Japan Edition)!

• Omiyage, Wagashi, and Matcha! In Japan, it’s tradition to give omiyage, which are gifts. If you go away on a business trip or vacation, you bring back local sweets or snacks for your co-workers or family. It’s like a souvenir, but the sentiment is more “sorry I went off and had fun in Hokkaido while you were chained to a desk. Have a cookie!” You also bring them for the whole office when you’re the new guy in town (I brought cookies, plus coffee and tea for the higher-ups & English teachers)
  While you usually just get biscuits or crackers or something for omiyage, sometimes one of the teachers will bring in wagashi, seemingly just for the heck of it (or maybe some homemade wagashi, which was like green tea jello, ooo). Wagashi are japanese sweets, served at tea ceremony. The fancy ones are pricy, but beautifully made to look like flowers. Wagashi are usually flavored or filled with anko, which is a sweet red bean paste that I absolutely love. I am going to become fat and poor from eating wagashi. You can make anko from adzuki beans, but if you put them in a regular chili, it’s also really delicious!
  Matcha is green tea, which I had tea-ceremony style for the first time today! It’s full of nutrients, so you feel satisfied and invigorated (according to Ma-sensei, my sort of… hum, she’s like my caretaker. She helps me wade through the red tape).
  

• My Bath! Who doesn’t like a nice bath? I actually just use the shower, but I’m always thankful to have a place to get clean after sweating it out on my bicycle. Like everything in Japan, it’s small (if I sit down, I’m a bit wedged in) but it’s quite efficient! I don’t go in the bathing room unless I’m getting clean, because it’s too stuffy in there, but the heat feels good… sort of like a sauna?

• Emails from family and friends! Before or after (or sometimes during) work, I check my email. It’s really nice to hear from people, and it really picks up my day. The other day I was feeling like poo when I came into work, but then I read a short message from a friend, which made me smile and laugh, and it really made things seem not-so-bad. (Also, when is it a week when we DON’T love hearing from family and friends?)

• Helpfulness. Recently, I’ve met a lot of helpful people. All the senseis at work have been helping me jump through the hoops of starting a life here and it’s been amazing. I don’t know how I’ll ever thank them enough (I’ll probably just bake and bake and bake for them until we all die from overeating, haha).
  But also I love the people I meet in shops, and at the post office. When I go there alone, it’s a little scary because I don’t speak Japanese enough to ask for what I want, or to understand instructions. But people have been helping me with endless patience, and it rocks! Soon I won’t be a pest, but a smooth-sailing customer. Thanks, post office ladies and gents!

• I LOVE Every time I can figure out some writing or speaking! Even catching a word or two makes me feel great. It’s even better when I can remember a word or phrase to say in reply. I’m learning! It’s wonderful!!

• Finally, I love SURPRISES. Surprises are SUPREME. It’s like biting into what you thought was just a cookie, but there is strawberry filling. Yum!
  My first surprise this week was yesterday. I had a crappy, boring day at work. Part of it was I just felt blah, and the other part was that there was nothing going on in the office, and nobody to talk to. I read a 2006 issue of TIME magazine cover to cover, I was so bored. Towards the end of the day, I decided to write in a fancy pen color, just for the heck of it, so I started rooting around in my file cabinet. Lo and behold, in a drawer which I thought was just old folders, I found several english-language books, and some dual language Tale of Genji comics! This was absolute treasure, as I am seriously without literature lately.
  My second surprise was today, after Ma-sensei and I walked to the bank to take care of some more boring red-tape, we walked around to another bank and the post office. On our way back through the park to school, we were talking about traditional gardens and tea ceremony, and Ma-sensei says “You know, we haven’t eaten lunch yet, so it is the wrong time for tea… but do you want to do a japanese tea ceremony?”
  Do I want to do a japanese tea ceremony?! Does the pope wear a funny hat?
  We went to what was apparently the most famous tea house in Tokushima EVER. They served us three kinds of tea (salty welcome tea, frothy matcha, and a famous local tea), two kinds of wagashi, and a local citrus juice. It wasn’t the scary formal ceremony, but there was a lot of bowing and we did lots of little rituals, such as turning the bowls three times, thanking the bowls, and eating/drinking everything in a certain order. I love you, tea ceremony!
  Then suddenly, we were back outside in the real world. It was one of those excellent detours from modernity to antiquity that pop up every so often.

• Honorable mentions: My rice cooker; blueberry pocky; the “petite cadeau” line of dishes and kitchen things from the 100 yen store; thunder in the morning; my fan; Kirin milk tea; writing in notebooks at my desk; dreaming up things to do with my students; breaking the rules with a teacher and laughing about it; making my own lunch in a cute little box; and the number of yummy food shops close to school!

Ok, everybody! I’m off for today! Tomorrow I’m giving a speech at the Prefectural Office (Oooo, I am le tres excellent speech-giver) and so off I trot to practice it.

love,
-Emily