10/7~10/12

10/10

Tokuoka-sensei requested if I could visit his class for field research at the mountain just to the north of the campus. I met up in his office with two other students, one whose name I couldn't remember and one named Taguchi. We walked from there over to the "staging area" for the hike. Along the way we talked about different things, but one of which was the keyaki tree at the Wakamatsu Farm in Placerville. I showed him pictures and he said "that is not a keyaki tree." 

The place where all of the students met up is called Issoan 一草庵, the hut that a famous poet lived in. We discovered that someone was actually sleeping in the waiting area, to the surprise of everyone. People kept showing up and I was being introduced to several people by my tutor, Rin. Guys named Oya, Ten, Nishikawa. Girls named Misaki, and Hina, etcetera. Rin was very happy to introduce me to everyone, much to the detriment of many of them. When she introduced Hina, she said she was very interesting and shyly she said "Rin, stop it." 

Many of them were majoring in disaster prevention, which I found interesting. 

We went up into the forest to collect tree samples. My professor said it's a "weird mountain" because there are oak species which are fairly uncommon in the area. That's pretty much all we did, and there was also a team that was putting up trail cams for animals. 

The mountain is interesting as it's freely open to anyone at any time and there are Buddhist and Shinto stone altars here and there. We saw a couple bugs, but other than that nothing. The view at the top was great.

10/11 Very fun day

I headed back and later got ready for the special event at Dogo we were invited to! Because we were students at Ehime University we could go for free to an otherwise expensive hotel!

We walked the 40 minutes over to Dogo where we entered a massive hotel called "Yamatoya Honden" and invited to the fourth floor. Up there we had to sign in and take off our shoes to enter a tatami mat area to watch the show. We waited a bit before the hosts asked for six people who wanted to go join the show. Too many people stood up so we played rock-paper-scissors to see who would go. I lost the first round, so those three got to join the first event. They were Tijs (Belgium), Noa (France), and Marie (Norway). I won the second round though, so I got to go. Those of us who were joining had to put on special socks called "tabi" which are socks that have a slit between the big toe and the next one to make it easier to wear "geta" sandals.

The show schedule was as follows:

1)Kyogen-Comedic Play (about 25 minutes)

2)Ozashiki Buyou-Geisha Dance (about 10 minutes)

3) Yakyuu-ken (Ozashiki Drinking Game) (about 10 minutes)

4) Wadaiko- Japanese Drums (about 5 minutes)

5) Jidai Engeki Buyou - Historical Dramatic Dance (about 15 minutes)

The show started with a taiko group, but I've seen better in Sacramento. After that a old man and young man performed a traditional kyogen comedic show. It was about the feudal lord ordering his servant to go fetch water, but the man didn't want to so he pretended to be an oni (demon) to scare the lord and have him treat the servant better. But later he discovered it was actually the young servant, and chased him off the stage.

Tijs, Noa, and Marie went up on the stage and wore the oni mask, shown how to prounce around the stage like the demon, and how to do a theatrical laugh.

Next up was the geisha dance. It was impressive that they were able to dance in time considering the music had no tempo. It seemed very difficult. Then they called up the next three to go join in. This was my time to shine. They showed us the special form of baseball/dance that originated in Matsuyama called yakyuu-ken. Then we had to join in. Stephanie from Romania tried first, and she won! She was given a Dogo tart pastry. I went up next and did my best, and also won! I got to go use a Japanese instrument while the third person went up.

After that the taiko came back for a short moment and had a "fue" flute player! They were done quickly, and were replaced by some girls dressed in some sort of traditional kitsune/fox costume who danced to Livin' la Vida Loca and it turned into some sort of all-out dance with a colorful lights too. It was awesome! After that song was over they danced to Sing, Sing, Sing (1936) by Benny Goodman. That song is so incredibly popular in Japan that it's had to convey. Every school in Japan plays it in their bands. Every group plays or dances to it in Japan. It was also awesome!

After that an incredible dancer came out who used fans, swords, and Japanese parasols. He danced to a rendition of "Smooth Criminal" on Japanese instruements. A group of people came out and they did a short skit of helping him change into "very" fancing clothing to do more traditional dancing. He did some more "formal" dancing, starting off with the Japanese cover of Amazing Grace by the incredibly famous 80's Japanese idol and popstar Minako Honda. It was incredible.

The next dance was to the world-famous idol Hatsune Miku's fusion of Japanese and rock song called "Senbonzakura." During it the actor would cover his face with his sleeve and put on demon and oni masks. It was awesome.

At the end, they all bowed and came over for us to take pictures with them.

On the walk back we couldn't stop talking about how amazing the show was. All the way to the izakaya bar where they wanted to go. We went and played a European card drinking game, and I found out that I can order non-alcoholic Asahi beer.

That was fun.

10/12

More orientation on this day, but about disaster preparation and laws. Afterward there was real-life practice with a fire extinguisher!

Immediately afterward we had an international student party with the AISA club. We were given snacks and talked amongst ourselves, as well as enjoying a bingo game.

There also happened to be an event at the castle, so some other exchange students went to check it out. Some sort of local performing group did something for the Moon watching festival (Tsukimi), and we ate orange ice cream!