Overnight stay at a zen buddhist temple!

Omikuji (bad fortune tied to a tree). I thought this was a Shinto tradition, so I don't know why there were some at a buddhist temple...
For an obscure reason, my camera pixelised and pinkyfied most of my pictures! I could save three of them with my friend Photoshop. :P

As many students from China and Korea are coming for a few weeks to YPU, various Japanese culture oriented activities are being organized. Last Friday, YPU's exchange students (the ones staying for a year or half a year) could tag along and go to Hagi, where we could experience life in a Zen Buddhist temple! Although I think most of the Chinese and Korean students found the experience somewhat painful, all four Quebeker folks loved it!
When we arrived to the temple, we had to sit seiza (on our knees) while the priest read sutras (Buddhist preach). It lasted maybe 10 minutes, but it's more then enough when you are not used to sit seiza! Fortunately Marc, Elliott and I had the tea ceremony class last semester and were used to do it.
After being explained various things, we helped with the preparation of diner and ate (in silence!) a vegetarian meal. Technically, you should eat everything. By everything, I mean that when you are done eating, you have to pour some tea in one of your bowls, wash it with a pickle, pour that tea in the next bowl, wash it, ans so on until you washed all 5 little bowls and plates. When you are done, you should drink the tea and eat the pickle! Not eating everything is not respectful to the life that was offered to you.
And although the food was delicious and the portions not so big (just enough, I thought), every single person at my table (we were about 12) except for me and the teacher did not eat everything. O_o

Then, we had a little class about basic principles of Zen Buddhism. It was SO interesting and what was said made a lot of sense to me. But the most interesting thing was to hear the priest talk about respect and principles of non killing, as the girl next to me was lying on the table in evident boredom and incessantly killing mosquitoes!

Buddhist class! I took the picture so I am not in it.

Next was zazen (sited meditation), which I really liked! If you sit correctly, your back naturally becomes straight and it is not tiring. Well, that's what I thought. It lasted at most 15 minutes, and halfway through a girl felt sick and went out of breath! A teacher and a priest took her away and the rest of us kept on going.

Bedtime was at 9h15 and wakeup time at 6h00! My grand-ma side was really happy and I slept every single minute allowed. :D Still, I was the last one in the meditation room at 6h30. I don't know how I did that. -.-"

We then helped with breakfast, ate it silently and helped with the dishes. When we were done, a monk took out buckets of water and rags. Oh yeah, we swiped all the floors running with our rags, like in animes!!

In the afternoon we went sightseeing in Hagi, which is a place rich in historical monuments and famous for its potters. In "hagi-yaki pottery", "yaki" is "to bake" so it means the "baked things of Hagi"!

From left to right: Jin, Seha, Evelyne, Tei and me.
OMG c'est le monde de la forêt!!

I really liked the temple experience, I would do it again for a week long! When you meditate, you are facing outside the room. That temple didn't have actual walls but only shouji (slidding paper doors), so at night you could hear the frogs and the rain like you were sitting in the forest, and in the morning the opened doors let in refreshing sun rays and you could see the gardens around the temple. It was so relaxing and peaceful! :)

St-Jean au Japon!

Spécial francophone pour ce billet sur la St-Jean que j'ai passé au Japon!
(French special for this post on Quebec's National Holiday!)

De gauche à droite: Elliott, Satsu, Evelyne, me, Sayaka, Marc, Kana et Maya.

C'est le 23 au soir que nous avons réalisé que la St-Jean était à nos portes! Super dernière minute, le lendemain nous demandions à l'école la permission d'utiliser l'espace de feu devant la cafétéria pour faire un barbecue. Heureusement, nous sommes copain-copain avec nos deux personnes ressource Nakashima san et Horie san, qui on poussé un brin pour nous faire permettre d'utiliser l'endroit! Nos amies japonaises se sont également joint à nous pour célébrer la fête du Québec!
Au menu: saucisses, pilons de poulet, crevettes, oignons, aubergines, champignons et patates sucrées. Pas tout-à-fait typiquement québécois, mais quand même! Pour compléter l'ambiance nous avons branché la musique québécoise de nos mp3 sur des hauts-parleurs.

Maya et Kana célèbraient la fête du Québec avec nous!

Comme une St-Jean se doit d'être soulignée par des feux d'artifice, nous sommes allés à la librairie (?!) pour en acheter un paquet. Au Japon, les petits feux d'artifices que l'on tient à la main (un peu comme des feux de Bengale) sont très populaires et en été on peut apparemment en acheter presque partout.
Il était évidement défendu de consommer de l'alcool sur le terrain de l'école; nous sommes donc allés nous installer dans un pré sur le haut d'une colline où nous avons bu une symbolique bière tout en brûlant les feux d'artifices. :D

Bonne fête, Québec!

Ikebana: the art of flower arrangement

Here are the arrangements I made so far in my ikebana class! The flowers are picked on a spicky base in such a way that the flowers are standing by themselves. There are various styles of ikebana, but most commonly the flowers are arranged in a triangle. Every class the teacher picks different flowers to arrange and talks about ikebana styles. There are three main factors to consider when arranging: balance, line and rythm. We get to take the flowers home after the class! :D
Enjoy!

Hotaru matsuri: The fireflies festival!

Last saturday was the day of Yamaguchi city's fireflies festival. I never thought I would see this many people at the same time alongside that river - especially around the stalls where you could hardly walk!

It was very interesting to me that although it was a fireflies festival, people were much more excitted about getting to weat their yukatas (summer kimono), meet up with friends and eat festival food (I must say I was pretty happy myself getting to eat a taiyaki, a fish shaped cake filled with sweet beans paste :D ).
For exemple, I first got there with a japanese friend, but we couldn't see the fireflies yet because it was too early. So we bought some food, ate it, and my friend said "Well, I don't have much interest for fireflies, so I'll go back home right now. I guess you could come back with the other exchange students when the sun is down." I thought, what's the point of coming to this festival then?! Oh, well.
I did come back afterwards and the fireflies were really pretty! But I'll go back again when there is less lights on.

Oh, and here is a bowl I made in my japanese pottery class! :D (It actually is a chawan, a cup to drink tea from in traditional japanese tea ceremony.) The diameter is about 15 cm.

Suibokuga, or Ink Painting

As there were no ink painting classes given at the university, I asked a teacher to help me out finding something outside of the school. I wasn't expecting much, but in the end I could take a special once-a-month class given by a well known artist (濱中応彦, Ohgen Hamanaka) that comes all the way from Osaka to Yamaguchi to teach it! I am so glad!

During the first class, all I did was painting vegetables. First year students usually stick to doing such exercises but as I am going to be there only a few months, they said I could skip a step or two! Yay!

People taking the class with me are all so very nice. Mostly all retired people, they are asking me where I come from and they always have a sister of their granddaughter's husband who's been to Vancouver once. It makes me very happy that my japanese level reached a point where I can have a decent conversation with an adult, because being polite in japanese is not only about manners and appropriate vocabulary! But let's put that aside for now.

A week after my first class they had a group exhibition and they insisted on me participating! They took the eggplant you see there, but I had to sign it properly, say with an "incan" (the red seal). There was no way I could exhibit the work without it, so someone called his friend who makes them incan and asked him to make one by then... for free! O_o

One day trip to Osaka!

Marc, me, Evelyne and Elliott in front of Osaka-jou, one of the most famous castles of Japan!

We thought we had to go to an Air Canada desk to decide on the date of our flight back to Canada before realising we could do it by phone. But then we were already into the mood for going to Osaka, so we went anyways! We rode night buses so we wouldn't have to sleep anywhere, and from 7am to 10pm it was intense Osaka visiting!! Lots of fun, we first visited the famous Osaka Castle and then walked down the streets for window shopping. We meet up with Marc's twin brother and former room-mate who came to visit Japan for three weeks, ate Osaka's trad food (okonomiyaki) and took pictures in a purikura booth!

View from the top of the Castle, one of the two fishes traditionally found on japanese rooftops. They are supposed to protect the building from unlucky events due to bad weather.

Super intense flashly street of Osaka!

Typical purikura booth!
Its particularity is that before it prints the pictures, you can draw, write, add glitters and other super duper cute stuff on it! The printed sheet has only one size, but you can choose how many pictures you want on it so that you can share with many friends.

Osaka style okonomiyaki!
Cabbage and a meat or fish of you choice are mixed to a special doe and cooked like a pancake. It is topped by okonomayi sauce (indispensable ingredient), mayonaise and dried fish flakes. It's really, really good!!

*those two pictures come from Wiki!

Festival in Shimonoseki!

Last week-end we went to see a festival (which name I forget, haha) in Shimonoseki, one one the biggest cities of Yamaguchi prefecture.
You probably already know about geishas, those ladies whose life revolved on practicing and performing feminine arts for the pleasure of nobles and other high-class people.
Orians, on the other hand, were courtisans. Because they were just as beautiful as geishas, they had to wear their obi (kimono's belt) the other way around so that you could clearly recognize an orian from a geisha. The pleasure house they belonged to would once in a while have their most beautiful orian walk down the streets in a very special way, in order to attract customers. This walk, considered an art in itself, is the major attraction of the festival we went to. Although pleasure houses are no more, the beautiful aesthetics and traditions related to orians are still passed down, and performers are practicing the year long for the day of the festival. I really was beautiful!

Orian, walking.

I recommend you watching Sakuran, a simple but very beautiful movie about the life of an Orian. The kimonos are really amazing! Here is the trailer, with english subtitles. You can see a bit of the special walk in it!

Shimonoseki being close to the sea, there were various other events in relation with fishing or naval war. It also has a enormous fish market where you can buy freshly made sushi. DE-LI-CIOUSSS!!

Children performing taiko by the sea.

Samurais walking down the streets of Japan?!!

They turned out to be actors in a play performed for the festival.

Hanami: flower viewing!

Here are pictures of flower viewing with friends in Yamaguchi!
Truly amazing.

Great picnic!! XDFrom left to right: Sayaka, Noriko, Marc, Evelyne, Seha, me and Elliott.Marc, Evelyne and Seha.Elliott played soccer with some japanese boys! Photo grand angle prise par Elliott! ^^

Need to buy my own camera..!

Well, this is so that you can have an idea of what I am drawing lately. This picture was drawn some months ago, and I left it as it was. Later I decided to use that style when drawing the japanese notebook's illustrations (which scans I should have in April).

Then I really got into it and I am working on a series of paintings and colored drawings.

They say that when you stop looking for something you find it- well as I decided I shouldn't wait to have found the ultimate style to start creating something constant, right now I am happy to explore this one. I don't think it's defenitive or anything, but it's good for now. :)

Strawberry picking & scanvenger hunt!

Little news of past activities around the Gooch! I'll upload stolen pictures soon hehe...

Last week Rie, Sayaka, Marc, Bridget and I went strawberry picking! You pay about 9$, and you can stay (almost) as long as you want in a huge greenhouse filled with delicious strawberries. Oh my god was it great. We were so full we slept in the car on the way back. Sorry Sayaka! " "

Then a few days ago, the people from JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching programme) organized a scavenger hunt in Yamaguchi, and that was lots of fun! We were divided in 4 teams with cars, and we had 3 hours to find the most items we could. Here's some examples of what we had to find:
- Boxing gloves (1 pt)
- Living duck (1 pt)
- Cleaning product with only english on it (2 pts)
- School children in order of descending height (2 pts)
- A fruit or vegetable bigger than a person's head (2 pts)
- Dead duck (no one found that one I must say!) (3 pts)
- High school boy wearing a girly hair pin (3 pts)
- A pyramid of cup noodles of at least 10 stories high (3 pts)

Great times. :)

Umemi, or plum blossoms viewing

This week Sayaka, Marc, Bridget and I went to a park in Hikari (a little far from Yamaguchi city) to see the plum trees blooming! Although it was a bit late and most of the flowers were already gone, it sure was a very nice place and we had a good time !
Then as we were close to the sea we decided to go for a walk, and we scared away a poor couple with our big gaijin voices. But anyway, the beach felt great!
The pictures were taken by Buri. ありがとう！

Japatech: the cell phones

In Yamaguchi there is a long arcade mall with plenty of interesting shops. In that mall, hiding over a drugstore is one of the nicest café I’ve been to (even in Québec)!
You’d miss the entrance – and its part of what I like about it: You have to know it exists to go there. The narrow staircase leads to a western wooden door; the ones that open to outside, except we're already inside! The café itself is a mix of western styles; the walls and tables have a cool Scandinavian feel to them, while you can sit on French and English style couches/sofas. There is this feeling I get when entering a place that wants to look western in Japan, but the many design, art and decoration magazines available to read there tell me that the owners actually wanted to mix the styles. I love it! The menu includes Japanese and western foods as well as a varierity of drinks. And they play jazz music! And the coffee is actually good (I must tell you my friends, good coffee is no common thing in Japan)! But most of all, they have wireless internet!!!

Did you think that Japan was the land of technology? That every regular Japanese person had a computer? That you might get the internet even in the middle of the forest??
NO! Wireless internet is not in any restaurant or café and most families have a single computer for the whole household, if not at all. How come?!
The answer is: cell phones.
The Japanese cell phones are monsters / wonders of miniaturisation. With a Japanese cell phone you can:

- Text, and include smilies (from a selection of about 2000), animated backgrounds of hearts twirling around and happy suns and other really really cute stuff;
-Have your whole agenda on it; with alarms for important events, birthdays and so on;
- Access Internet and you regular email account, watch videos online, upload and download files;
- Take high resolution pictures;
- Listen to your music like it was an MP3 player;
- Watch your videos and clips like it was a MP4 player;
- Watch TV;
- Call I guess, although I don’t recall seeing a Japanese person actually calling: it’s impolite in public anyways.

From Docomo, Japan's biggest cell phone company.

Most of my friends at the university started to use a cell phone around 14 – and nowadays kids are given cell phones around 10!
There are many Japanese websites expressively made for people using cell phones. For exemple, a trendy thing to do is writing stories from your phone directly to a specialised website. Some popular stories even get published / become a movie, a manga or an anime!
Crazy.
In the meantime, I am sad not having internet at the residences, and my cell phone not having an internet contract. ｡+ (ノД`)・゜・。


By the way, have some finish music and click "Husky Rescue" in the Sweet Playlists category ! You can also find them on Myspace. Love it love it love it. Wanna go to Finland now. It's my fisnish roommate Tanya's fault. She's the devil.

À saveur de fraise. <3

Hello guys!

I refrained from putting only text up on the blog because I didn’t have any pictures to add with it… I sent news letters to some of you with photographs in it, but I there were all my friends’ and I can’t just take them and stick them here, hehe. My small problem is that both of my cameras broke: my digital right before I left and my manual right after I got here. ( ; ￣▽￣)

The other thing is that I found myself not doing much art, if not at all since got here!! Well, now the semester is over and for the spring holiday I am not going to do anything but art. JE SUIS EN MAAAANQUE!!!
Japan is filled with beautiful landscapes and great art. I fortunately could pick the subjects of my papers and got to do comparative studies of Japanese and western art, and it’s the most interesting thing!!
Can’t take it. I have to do something. OMG!!!

I am lying; I got to do some art, as I could get into that fashion design class! Yet the teacher still has all of my works. (。-∀-) Also, for one of them classes I had to write a diary entry for each lecture or activity. I imposed myself to draw a picture for each instead. The teacher still has that, too.
A-ah… yeah why didn’t I put them up before? Well you guys know me; I drew all 12 pictures in 2 weeks before I had to hand it over. （。´∀`）b　Success!! I didn’t lose my speed!!

So I decided to stop being stupid and wanting to put only art on the blog. I am too perfectionist for that; in fact I should stop being perfectionist at all. So I am just going to loosen up for now and go for the writing! (。-`ω´-)

See you guys very soon!!

Here’s a picture from the fashion show I took part in! Me and Marc (on the left) worked as a team on both the design and fabrication of our clothing. The only things we did not make were the shoes and Marc’s belts! That was a heck of a lot of work!! But we won the second price, yay! (｡￫∀￩｡) Unjin (next to me) modeled for Petri (on the right side). I know one of my friends took other pictures; I’ll try to look into that. ;)