On this day, I woke up at my normal time and headed to breakfast without knowing when or where we were meeting for that day because I had missed the previous day's class. I asked a friend when we were meeting up to go to the boso-no-mura historical museum and he replied that he was heading out right now and he was worried about being late. I then kind of freaked out and ran back to my room to grab everything that I needed and ran to catch up with him. We got to the station with five minutes to go before the train left. We went to Shin-urayasu and met with everyone in the station then took a bus to the museum.
After we arrived, we all went to a building and had a lesson on how to make an ancient charm that predates written records in Japan called a magatama. These are curved charms made of a soft stone (ours was talc). You make them by rubbing a small stone in a groove of a much larger and harder stone until it is the shape you want it. Many people that I made one of the best ones which made me, being the perfectionist that I can be, very happy indeed.
This is a magatama (or you can just google it)
http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/magatama.html
After this, we went to lunch just outside of the museum. We had a bento box that was quite nice. We visited quite a bit, then got ice cream right after lunch (despite being quite chilly).
After lunch, we all went back into the museum again. The group got split in half partly based on groups that I suggested to Ishikawa-san the day before on the way to the school. Half of the group went to attend a tea ceremony while the other half was given 30 minutes to do whatever we wished. I chose to make a tatami mat coaster (a mini tatamimat essentially). The groups then swapped and now my half went to attend a tea ceremony which was awesome. They were using very high quality macha (the tea used in the ceremonies) to try to give young people a good memory of the ceremony and encourage the continuation of this ritual. There were only two people in the whole group that were able to sit correctly the whole time without shifting, I was one of them, but my legs still were fully asleep by the end of it.
Afterwards, I tried something called ama-zake which is sweet non-alcoholic, partly fermented sake. Some people did not like it, but I thought it was quite good. We returned to Shin-Urayasu again by bus, and from there, I went straight to do one more cultural observation of the library. It closed half way through our observations, so we returned, got dinner, and returned to our dorms where I did a bit of homework and crashed.
After we arrived, we all went to a building and had a lesson on how to make an ancient charm that predates written records in Japan called a magatama. These are curved charms made of a soft stone (ours was talc). You make them by rubbing a small stone in a groove of a much larger and harder stone until it is the shape you want it. Many people that I made one of the best ones which made me, being the perfectionist that I can be, very happy indeed.
This is a magatama (or you can just google it)
http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/magatama.html
After this, we went to lunch just outside of the museum. We had a bento box that was quite nice. We visited quite a bit, then got ice cream right after lunch (despite being quite chilly).
After lunch, we all went back into the museum again. The group got split in half partly based on groups that I suggested to Ishikawa-san the day before on the way to the school. Half of the group went to attend a tea ceremony while the other half was given 30 minutes to do whatever we wished. I chose to make a tatami mat coaster (a mini tatamimat essentially). The groups then swapped and now my half went to attend a tea ceremony which was awesome. They were using very high quality macha (the tea used in the ceremonies) to try to give young people a good memory of the ceremony and encourage the continuation of this ritual. There were only two people in the whole group that were able to sit correctly the whole time without shifting, I was one of them, but my legs still were fully asleep by the end of it.
Afterwards, I tried something called ama-zake which is sweet non-alcoholic, partly fermented sake. Some people did not like it, but I thought it was quite good. We returned to Shin-Urayasu again by bus, and from there, I went straight to do one more cultural observation of the library. It closed half way through our observations, so we returned, got dinner, and returned to our dorms where I did a bit of homework and crashed.