Japanese Cakes Make Me Happier

This cake was one of the most delicious I've ever had, chocolate cake, chocolate ganache, vaguely strawberry flavored fluffy frosting, mixed crushed nut crust at the bottom, topped with chestnut goo and a chestnut. However this wasn't the one I ate tonight, I sadly didn't have my camera with me and I ate it in the shop at one of their cute little tables with my friends. Tonight's cake was amazing as well: very moist matcha flavored green cake, filled with bright green matcha fluff and a little bit of cake hiding in the center, and topped with chestnut goo mounded in a way that vaguely resembles noodles. There were many other tempting chocolate choices, but I decided that I should go with the special Japanese flavors that I know I'm going to miss.

Hmm methinks this sounds a bit food obsessed...
But I do so love a good dessert, better even than the most succulent piece of meat.

School has been very school-like and therefore I am learning, but not really doing anything too exciting. In order to be done with this semester I still need to participate in a final for Japanese Business Culture, do a presentation for the same on Monday, do a final for Shodo which will be most mystifying I am sure since I am not even very sure which style we practiced was which, write a 3,000 plus word essay for anime class, a 5-6 page paper summing up what I have learned about nihonjinron and Multiethnic Japan, and a take home final for US Social Problems. Joy.

I'm feeling very stressed out about getting all of my stuff home again safely, especially any fragile things I might send. I have a lot of manga, papers, and books that I need to send home via surface mail, but that means acquiring a big box and mailing it. I did see a hard sided piece of rolling luggage bigger than anything I own at home which could transport my fragile things more easily than me attempting to carry them, but I'm not sure if I should spend $100 just to be able to carry more junk. I am beginning to worry about getting presents for everyone and figuring about how to get them home, oh how I loathe dealing with logistics. Nevertheless there are many people who deserve something really cool from Japan, so anyone reading this should let me know what you would most enjoy, or at least what type of thing (book, cloth, ceramic, toy, etc...) so that I can make a guess.

I'm really looking forward to the end of school because I am going back to Tokyo for almost a week, then it is off to Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka, then back to Tokyo again to fly home. I'm really glad that I'm going with Steven, he got me to start making plans way in advance so now I'm not worried about logistics, all I have to think about is getting the right trains to Kyoto and what I want to do with myself once the destination is achieved. It's going to be crazy crowded in Kyoto because of New Years and everyone will be going to the temples. I plan to definitely go to Fushimi Inari, which is a Shinto place with tori lining the path up and around the hill and it's also a fox shrine. I hope for some really good pictures since it seems so cool, but there will probably be lots of people in them.

I haven't given up on Ikebana yet, I seem to be doing OK at it once I know how it is supposed to look. Although this view from above does not allow one to appreciate the nice curves of my branches, it's very hard to get the whole thing in the picture without having lots of other junk too. I'm pleased that Abe-sensei only rearranged my speckly green leaves and the fluffy pine sprigs, which I had no real idea of what to do with anyways. I realize that by showing this view, I can however explain the concept of this type of arrangement. There are always 3 main parts to basic arrangements, and one always goes towards the back and very straight. For this layout, since the main long bits are nice bendy willow, it called for a curving of the branches to make them more beautiful. The 2nd main bit of the arrangement is the biggest branch on the left, and the idea was to bend it so that it crosses the 1st branch. Finally there is the 3rd which always off-sets the other two, and is "very coming forward" in the words of Abe-sensei. Then the remaining branches are placed to compliment the main ones, bending in the same direction but positioned so that the don't occlude any other branch. I was lucky this time and all of my branches were fairly regularly shaped and therefore easier to reshape properly rather than being stubborn and going off at odd unchangeable angles as has been the case in the past. The flowers are added after the main bits, and there is usually a gradation in size and type which makes it easier to decide how they should be placed. The purple ones smelled faintly pleasant, and were also large, sturdy, and one was bigger than the other, so it was easy to chose which to make taller. The idea for the tapered sturdy flowers they go in towards the back and are taller than the other flowers. Any other flowers are usually the kind with individualized blooms, so those are placed in the middle, front and center for attention, but of course shorter than the ones in back. The rest of the vegetation is added to balance it out and hide the kenzan (prickly, heavy metal thing the flowers are stuck on), and always they must be placed with the idea that they are facing towards the sun, which is above and to the right of the viewer.
And that is the basic how-to of ikebana, see I have learned a Japanese art, albeit in no great depth. I am going to miss ikebana club time because it was very soothing to just sit around and think about how best to arrange flowers according to their natural abilities and the prescription of the model. I'm thinking about bringing a kenzan home with me so I can gather plants and arrange them, I only really need one or two flowers to make an arrangement.

I feel better now, having written a little. Now for some photos from the mildly foolish trip to Sendai, learned a lesson about making hotel reservation in advance and also that internet cafes are the place to go when you have no where to sleep at night.
This was taken from the window of the Shinkansen, which actually only got us there in an hour's less time than taking the bus would have, because it stopped a lot along the way, but still, I have experienced it and its eerie quietness.
He rings the little hand bell but he does not go "Ho Ho Ho"
I love Gundams... that's why I played the Gundam game in the arcade. You are in a big plastic cockpit with an adjustable seat and head set, and you pilot your gundam with a joystick, I guess that would be the best description for them, in each hand and two foot pedals. The screen is huge and wraps around the pod, and there are things to make the cockpit shake with you get hit. It was truly amazing to experience, and made me wish I had better honed video game hand-eye coordination skills so that I could destroy multitudinous Feddies with my Zaku, however such is not my destiny.
Just in case you had forgotten how weird Japan is... these are Dollfies and very expensive, totally customizable with a wide assortment of premade costumes available, but instead people in this store decided they wanted a Dollfie sumo display. Professor Ashmore led us to this shop because it is the closest place shy of Tokyo to get Dollfies and accessories. He was having one built with little fin ears and white hair , I thought it was going to be a weird little mermaid, but no he says she is supposed to be a vampire girl that his girlfriend wanted. I liked the store because there were lots of really cool models and figurines. They were all way more than I would ever pay for a thing like that, but there were some that I would definitely buy if I could find them used somewhere, which is entirely possible since I'll be in Tokyo for a while. I will definitely enjoy assembling the Deathscythe Gundam I got at Mangasoko.This reminds me of a fetish, and its buddies were all carved in a similar style. This is outside of the VERY CLOSED visitor center for Akiu, the hotsprings area we arrived at at 9 am after spending the night in a karaoke booth in Sendai. All I wanted was to fall immediately into a nice bath, but ooohhh no, none of the baths opened until 11am.We stopped in possibly the fanciest hotel I've been in, except for maybe, maybe,the hotel that Mama and I took tea in in London.There was a wrap-around stream-like koi pond inside seperating the main lobby from the slightly raised railed deck, I say deck because it was wooden floored and reminded me of an old-fashioned cruise ship where the wealthy sat in plush chairs around little tabes to take tea, were they served tea, coffee and cakes only. My tea was Assam that was supposedly exclusively for the hotel, and it was topped with a dense layer of frothy, sweetened, matcha-flavored cream. It was amazing, and even more so since the only thing to pass my lips since 6am was cold, cold water and it was not a warm morning. There was even a small gallery, with a sign that explained that a shogun had been cured of arthritis by water from here, so this hotel was quite old and revered indeed, and also had a standard on display that had been taken into so 18th century battle in the area.These images are all from the above mentioned hotel, and its beautiful, inaccessible inner courtyard.
I'm also excited about going home and resuming my former existence with a new flair, or at least a better understanding of the world at large. Also I'm quite excited about the prospects of preparing to co-teach an Honor's class next Fall, keeping my fingers crossed that our course gets approved, and then doing the Eastern Legacy trip to India in the summer! ...just to make sure you understand= !!! I am going to get myself a cute little planner, maybe a Totoro one, while I'm still here and make a resolution to use it this year to be as productive as possible with the time I have.

KanjiMyBlog.com