It's been very relaxing here in Osaka. I was worried that I was going to be stressed out going from being a country bumpkin in Uto and Kikuchi to coming to this city. However, Keiko and Seibun's house is in a perfect location. A 30 minute bike ride to a big shopping center, 5 minute walk to super market, in an urban area yet with nearby rice fields (only in Japan!), 10 minute bike ride to the train station, and after that, the possibilities are endless.
I haven't been doing a whole lot, I suppose. Keiko has been helping me with pottery everyday and we cook dinner together. I have learned how to make pot stickers, koroke and katsudon and tonight for dinner we ate oden, which is for some reason so simple and so incredibly delicious. That is pretty common with Japanese food though, I could eat Japanese pickles and rice forever. We also went to sushi the other night, which was great. Salmon is an amazing fish - that is all I have to say about that.
Pottery lessons have been good. Everyone is probably thinking, "Your own mother is a potter, how come you haven't learned from her?" But if you think about it a little harder, you realize that it is really difficult to have a student teacher relationship if you are parent and child - it just doesn't work out. However, when I was little I played a lot with clay in Mom's studio. Now, I go when it is convenient for me or whenI need help from her on something. It's really the best situation. But with Keiko it is different since she's not my mother, and I will listen to her lecture and critique without huffing and puffing. So, because of this, I've learned some things! And it's fun to let those creative juices flow. I also am working on a couple short stories...drawing...and I've been reading like a maniac. I finished The Help and am half way done with that book that I can never remember the name of ... incredibly close and extremely loud...or the other way around - Gena reccomended it to me last year. It has been an amazing book (just like she said it would be). I'm in love with every character in the story... I laugh and tear up and think and sigh and bite my nails and it is all because of what I'm reading. I love stories that take an ordinary life, or perhaps not ordinary, but definitely someone's, and makes it this beautiful magical intricate world. It makes me think of my life more, how magical it is in its own way. I love things that make me appreciate life more and open my eyes wider and wider. There is so much to see!
But there is something else I love too...and that is shopping. There are so many cute things, everywhere, always. Luckily, there is one thing that saves me and that is the 100 yen shop. Because everything there is literally 100 yen, sometimes you find a rack of things for 300. And there are so many things! Dishes, clothes pins, bags, food - just about anything, really. So I can go there, get my shopping fix and spend only 500 yen and come home with a bag full of things. Like today, I bought clothes pins, a grinding stick, bamboo colinders, a bag...well, it must have been 11 things because I spent 1100 yen. I'm going shopping for dorm room supplies here and sending it home by sea mail, that way it is cheaper and I will get the package sometime in the summer - perfect time. I also went to the Gap today, and I went around feeling small because I wasn't a SUPER EXTRA MEGA LARGE but a medium and I went around happily touching and looking clothes that were American sized (of course that meant the store carried down to XXS, since, I am in Japan). I also saw about five women who were twice or tripple my age but with legs the size of my arm. I love my body...I love my body...I love my body... :p haha
Keiko and I went together and it was very fun. Mixed with her bright and encrouaging personality and brutal honesty, I've decided she is a very good shopping partner. She bought me a drink at a natural products store and let me choose between honey and yuzu or konyaku and grapfruit. Konyaku is when you take a konyaku bulb and grate it then strain it and then that water that you strained it with turns a little like extra stuff jell-o...I think. Anyway, I loved grapefruit and I love konyaku so I thought I'd give the konyaku grapefruit drink a try. I opened it and tried to drink but the konyaku was a big blog in the bottle so it blocked the juice at the mouth of the bottle. I thought, how am I supposed to drink this?? Keiko said she was going to take it back to the store and see if it was supposed to come with a spoon. Then she stopped and shook it and opened it to see if it was drinkable now, and it was! She handed it to me, "Well it was a good thing to shake it before the store woman would think I'm stupid!" I drank it and it was a very interesting texture, exactly like loose jell-o mixed with grapefruit juice - it was delicious! And a definite first. I also bought chocolate covered wheat puffs there...and yes, they are good. I'm eating them right now.
At a bakery I bought sweet potato bread, I wonder if I can make something like it at home. Use a normal puffy white bread recipe or sweet bread of some sort and put chunks of sweet potato and sesame seeds in it...not the same probably, but close? We will see.
Tonight we were eating oden which has all kinds of things in it, konyaku, egg, daikon, fish paste tempura, meat and mochi. But there is also one item called "agetofu". Keiko said it "ah-get-oh-fu", which she thought was pretty amusing. It is, by I have learned to not act quite my age since I'm always around adults...but she didn't think I got it so I ended up laughing a lot. Then there is the one that was a joke in our family for a long time , "doitashimashite", which sounds like "don't touch my mustache". There is a lot of accidently amusing things, to a foreign mind that is...
Tomorrow I will finish some more bowls, hopefully send a package, take a loooooooooooooooooooong bath, do the OSCA application and send it to home and start on some scholarship essays. Though it is still January...I know college is right around the corner. These five months well, now only 4.5, are going to go way too fast.
At least now I've made it my goal to return...and I haven't even left yet.
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