Approaching the 1/4 mark

Let’s get right to it.

There were about 35 people in the cooking class. There were only five males. There was only one American. In the beginning it was a little confusing because people kept speaking in Korean and I wasn’t exactly sure what to do at the beginning (my group got split in two and then the other two people got put on a special “vegetable-cutting team” which left me as the lone American with a stupid look on his face). After a while, when I got stuff to do and some of the Koreans actually spoke Japanese for a bit, it was a bit more fun. I talked to a few people I wouldn’t have met outside the class, including a Korean from another level 3 class who said my pronunciation was a lot better than the other Americans in his class (so many compliments on pronunciation! how much of it is just because they expect any American who opens their mouth to have a terrible accent?). There were also some level 1 Koreans and one Chinese kid who struck up a conversation. Talking to level 1 people is a huge confidence booster. It really makes it feel like you’ve learned something. The opposite is true when you talk to a ward worker and attempt to register for health insurance.

We made two dishes: Cheesecake and Shabu-shabu. The work was spread out over so many people that I couldn’t really take what I learned and make these dishes myself without a recipe, but at the same time it didn’t feel like what I was doing was irrelevant. I crushed some cookies in order to make the crust at one point, I pulled the root of some vegetables off at another point, and boiled slices of meat near the end. While we were doing this, one of the teachers was making the rounds with a video camera, and I couldn’t help but notice that he was paying an awful lot of attention to me. The other problem with being the only American is that I was the most “exotic looking” person in the classroom. Sort of how if you’re one of the few ethnic minorities attending NNU, you’re guaranteed to wind up on the webpage at some point.

All the food was really good. We ate at tables of about 8 each, and I met yet another teacher that I want to have next semester. The Shabu Shabu was especially good when we added some spicy sauce that a Malaysian kid brought. Everyone was amazed that I knew how to use chopsticks and that I was using them right. Thanks, Mr. Eyer!

I went to bed pretty early on Friday because I didn’t want to take any chances of being too tired to enjoy the Ghibli museum the next morning.

In order to reach the Ghibli museum, you need to go about 20 minutes West on the JR Chuo line and get off at the Kichijoji station. From there, you have to (get to) walk through Inokashira park, which is the the most idyllic park I’ve seen in Tokyo yet.

My tickets were for 10:00 am, and I got there around 9:15, so I had some time to kill. I decided to get a rare breakfast at a nearby Lawsons. I got some grapes that only cost 120 yen, but it turns out that you have to pay more than that if you don’t want spiders in your grapes. People began lining up at about 9:30, and I soon got in the pack.

As expected from something that Hayao Miyazaki himself helped design, the museum had a ton of detail everywhere you looked. The building itself had an air of nostalgia to it that felt completely like all of the Ghibli film’s atmosphere. There were stained glass windows with scenes from the movies. Everything was perfectly clean. Rooms were painstakingly decorated to look like they were part of some old house. I was really impressed by a room that seemed to be a recreation of Miyazaki’s drawing room. There were books and pictures all over the walls with images from all over the world; all the influences for the images and stories from the films. There was a drawing table that had paper all over it, some character sketches taped above it, and a box filled with all sorts of different pencils on the floor beside it. It felt as if Miyazaki had just stepped out of the room for a moment.

There was a significant section of the museum dedicated to the birth of animation as a whole. I think my friend Ray back home would have started freaking out with joy if he would have seen it. One of my favorite exhibits showed a shelf with models of characters from the film. The same character was put in a row, each model a little different — the equivalent of frames of an animation. Next to the shelf, there was a glass box with all the models attached to rods spinning in a circle. At first it was just a blur, but then the light inside the box started strobing and it created the perfect illusion of motion. Each model looked as if it were moving as fluidly as the animation from the films.

There was also a movie theater that showed short films made by Studio Ghibli, which rotate every month. This month was コロの大散歩 (Koro’s Big Walk), a story about a dog who gets lost. After the movie, I headed over to the gift shop. Although I didn’t buy anything, I was darn tempted. There was also a cafe that would be fun to go sometime, but I had already ate breakfast.

I didn’t get any pictures of the inside of the museum, but I will next time. Oh yes, there will be a next time.

After the museum, I decided to finally watch Harry Potter at the theater. Yes, it cost 1500 yen, but the theater was really nice. It was in English with Japanese subtitles, so understanding was no problem. Interestingly, they have assigned seats in the theaters. When you buy your tickets, they ask what section you want to sit in and then they give you an assigned seat number.

During the movie, I was struck by how quite Japanese filmgoers are. I hate going to the theater in America because, well, theatergoers are only slightly less obnoxious than dachshunds in heat. In Japan, you could easily forget that you were in a room with hundreds of other people. So it may have cost 1500 yen, but I felt like it was worth it. Oh yeah, the movie was good as well.

Nothing really special happened the rest of the weekend. Next week is Midterms, so I’ve been doing some studying and generally relaxing today. While I was sketching tonight, there was an earthquake! The room was visibly shaking and it lasted about a minute. It was never really bad enough to worry, but still a little disconcerting. Don’t worry too much about any catastrophic earthquakes happening while I’m over here. The bad ones happen on a pretty consistent about-every-70-years schedule, the most recent one being the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Based on that, it won’t be until about 2060 until we need to start worrying again.

EDIT: Okay, it turns out that earthquake was bigger than I thought. It was actually a 7.1 quake (the Kobe one was a 7.2), but it struck in the middle of the ocean about 200 miles away from Toyko (despite what the alarmist Fox News says about “Strong 7.1-Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Tokyo Area”). No Tsunami warning issued.