Drunk Karaoke and Kyuudo

Oh homework Sundays. They are a huge Debbie Downer, but that's why I'm on here blogging instead of doing my homework (sorry Mom and Dad!)




So this past Thursday I learned how to make udon noodles and how to cook things with tempura batter.  One of my roommates, Fran, and a Japanese student who was teaching us, Asami, were in a group to make these things.  It was a very messy and somewhat dangerous experience.  The udon was pretty much just flour and water, kneaded into a dough, and then foot stomped, so pretty much the Japanese equivalent of  stomping on grapes to make wine. Once our dough looked right (and it didn't for a very long time), we had to let it sit for an hour.  Then we got to make TEMPURA!!




For anyone who doesn't know what it is, tempura is a Japanese batter that you deep fry almost anything in.  And it is very oishii (yummy!)!! So we were putting shrimp, fish, some kind of glorp, a kind of sweet potato and eggplant in the tempura batter.  Once its fully covered in the batter, we placed it in a frying pan that had about an inch of oil in it.  It's fairly simple and quick.  You just watch the food, flip it, and eat it!  But the oil is constantly fizzling at you, so I have some grease war scars on my legs from where it hit me :(




After we finished cooking the tempura we had to finish our udon.  We took out the dough, flattened it so it was super thin, folded it twice, and then cut it into very thin slices.  Afterwards we unfolded the cut pieces and boiled them in water until they were thoroughly cooked.  For being only flour and water, they were very delicious! The three of us got to sit down afterwards and eat all the food that we made.  Here's a picture of me, Fran and Asami with all of our tempura food:

I'm definitely going to be signing up for more Japanese cooking classes.  It's going to make life a lot easier because they really don't have a lot of North American food in the grocery stores, or if they do, I haven't figured out how to read it on the packaging!




On Friday night, me and some friends hopped on our bikes to go out for my first night of Karaoke jams in downtown Hirakata.  For about $15 bucks we got to stay for 3 hours and have free drinks (non alcoholic).  But it was totally okay to just step outside to the convenience store and grab some beer, coolers or some mickeys of hard liquor to bring back in.  Not that the alcohol was totally necessary, but it does get everybody a lot more into the singing.  I tried my hand a couple of times at some Japanese songs, but I had no clue what the rhythm was and reading a foreign alphabet is pretty hard.  But I did choose some pretty goods songs that got everybody into it: a couple of Queen songs, Rollin' by Limp Bizkit, Shania Twain, All The Small Things by Blink 182, and Pretty Fly for a White Guy by The Offspring.  Limp Bizkit was a lot of fun, probably because of all the swearing, and I really took it away with the rapping parts.  It felt like I OWNED that song!!!




You weren't subject to stay to your own room either.  We had some friends in other Karaoke rooms that we could freely move too and join them for a bit.  I'm super excited and ready to go out and do some more Karaoke!  This is our Karaoke room:

So we had the room until 1 o'clock in the morning, and then we decided that we weren't ready to go home yet.  So we found a 24 hour MacDonald's for a MacAttack.  I'm still so flabbergasted at how much bigger the burgers are here than at home.  We were trying to find a place to continue drinking, but Hirakata is a city that goes to bed early.  There isn't much in the way of clubs or bars there.  I'm pretty sure the group that I was with was the only thing out and making noise.  So at 2:30 we got some ice cream and water from a convenience store and decided to start making our way home.




We had parked out bikes illegally, so I was really worried we would have tickets or  have them towed (seriously, Japan will tow your bikes and have them impounded).  But luckily there were still there, ticketless. Probably because nobody wants to mess with our bad ass biker gang.   But there was a group of guys that kept driving by us on their mopeds.  They were probably looking for a race, but I wasn't going to humiliate them buy making them eat my dust, so we just passed that up.




There is this HUGE hill to go up when coming back from downtown Hirakata to rez.  But I biked up it.  Drunk.  I was super proud.  But I thought there were cops on the hill and that they were going to charge me with a DUI (I wasn't steering very straight), but they were just construction workers directing traffic.  Whew! I made it home by 3:15 and went straight to bed.




The next day, my friend Robert and I were going to try out Kyuudo: Japanese archery.  One of the girls who helped with tempura, Maiyu, has been practicing Kyuudo for awhile, so she said she would take us for a lesson.  I've been doing archery since I was 3 years old, and this is totally different from any archery that I've done.  First of all, the bow is about 3 times the size of my bow at home, and weighed about as much as a pencil:

And there are very specific ways of holding and drawing back the bow.  You don't draw back by pulling with your arms, you pull with your shoulders and chest.  You hold the bow in your left hand, and the string in your right hand, at about 45 degrees above your head.  You then pull the bow part with your left shoulder, and then pull the string part with your other shoulder.  Your anchor part on a regular bow is near the corner of your mouth, but on a Japanese bow (yumi), it's about 3 inches behind your head! It's very difficult to get used to, here's the supposedly correct position, after Maiyu's sensei rearranged my body to the correct position:

And that's my friend Robert with the bow.  He's a 6'5" Dutch boy, and that bow still towers over him.  Oh, and we weren't allowed to shoot arrows yet, because we were new and were still trying to draw the bow properly.  So that's why it looks like we're shooting a a wall.




There's a lot of ritual, zen and spiritualism to Kyoudo.  Everything is done a specific way and your posture and breathing must all be in sync.  The targest don't even seem to be important.  Except for the very experienced archers, everybody wasn't trying to hit the target (or at least, it didn't seem so), the release of the arrow was some sort of spiritual release.  They were also all dressed up in Hakama (the traditional black pants, or skirt for the girls) and a white Gi (the white top they wear).  I have a video of Maiyu-sempai shooting her yumi, but for some reason it won't upload on here.  And since I'm pretty sure all of my followers are also friends on facebook, I will just post it there.  Sempai is someone who has more experience than you in a class or something.  So even though Maiyu is a year younger than me, she can be referred to as sempai because she has more experience in Kyuudo than me.  She was also teaching me, so she could have also been Maiyu-sensei.  Anyways, here's photo of her at full draw in full garb.  Oh yeah, girls have to wear breast plates too.

Maiyu was a wonderful teacher! Robert and I had a blast learning Kyuudo, and hopefully we'll be able to go back and learn some more.  Also, a big thank you to the Kyuudo club for letting us come and use their facilities for the day! Doumo Arigatou!

And here's how Robert and I finished off our big day of learning a new sport:

Oishii double cheeseburger!

Now I best be getting back to my homework.


Until next time!


xox