Tea ceremony

I'm sure you have been waiting for this moment, when I finally will write about this famous Japanese tradition. Tea ceremony - 茶道, pronounced as Sadoo. The event was organized by one of the clubs at university, so I went there with 30 other students from Rikkyo Univesity. The ceremony was held in Mejiro Garden,  just 15-20 minutes walk from Ikebukuro. Realy beautiful place, surrounded by modern buldings (you won't see those in the pictures, but believe me, each "piece" of nature in Tokyo is surrounded by some modern buildings):

So, let's start from the beginning - the most important attribute for the ceremony is a pair of white socks, everybody must wear ones.

You must bow before you enter the room (it's not a slight Western bow, but a Japanese one - you have to kneel down, put your hands in front of you, and bow your head towards the hands) and then you may enter and take a seat. The laidies (hostesses) were so nice and told us that we don't have to sit on our feet all the time, we could place them to the side, so it's easier for us to sit. Afterwards, the hostesses enter the room:

This is how the room looked like from the place I was sitting. There is a "hole" in the floor, which has some glowing coal in the bottom and a ceramic jar on top with water. Before preparing the tea, hostesses enter the room with some treats:

The pink one is a sweet potato ball covered with sweet rice paste, and another one is a simple sugar/green tea candy.

Afterwards, while one hostess prepares the tea, another brings the drinking bowls from another room - enters the room with a bowl in her hands, kneels down in front of another hostess, and leaves a bowl in fron of herself. If the tea is ready, she takes it to the guest, leaves the bowl in fornt of him/her and bows. The guest must bow at the same time, too, in order to show the gratitude. A ありがとうございます - (arigatoo gozaimasu) thank you very much - said when bowing is a common courtesy. The hostesses were entertaining us by telling the stories about their previous guests, and about how they do ceremonies. It was very interesting, though I understood maybe around 5% of what they said. Well, it's good that other students did speak in English, so if something was realy not understandable, I could ask them for a translation. 

This is the tea:

I must assure you - the tea tastes better than it looks; the taste reminds me a bit of a seaweed powder diluted by water. 

The bowls are taken away the same way - a hostess kneels in front of you, bows (you must bow too, and say thank you) and takes away the bowl.

After the ceremony we went to another room to do some ikebana (いけばな). We should kneel and bow in front of the basket with flowers, then choose a vase, and afterwards do the ikebana - choose flowers and arrange them.

The point is not to choose as many flowers, as possible, usually it's only 1 or 2 different ones you have to choose, but to choose the flowers that would look good in the vase you chose and enjoy the whole arranging process. When you're finished with arranging, kneel and bow in front of the flower basket again, and take your place.

These are our "masterpieces". Guess, which one's mine? ;)

All-in-all the ceremony was realy enjoyable, you feel afterwards like you did a deed of the week. 
 

Ghibli

Everybody's writing about Ghibli. And I will do it as well :D For all you, anime fans there! If the names Spirited away, Howl's moving castle or My neighbour Tottoro tell you anything, then you're in the right place. The world-famous animator drew this place; it was built 10 years ago, and still frequently visited both by Japanese and foreigners. This is what it looks like:

Exibits are inspired by the works of Ghibli studios, showing work-in-progress, tools, etc. There is a large Cat-bus to sit in, and it's not the only thing to see in the museum. Scenes and places are "revived" to a real life - Soffie's room at the Hatter's Store, Yubabas office with large porcelan vases, Japanese diner where Chiro's parents got turned into pigs... makes you fell like you are in a fairytale. All these exhibitions divided by a large fairytale-like "hall":

On the first floor there's a room full of eye-deceiving motion figures, which simply amazes you by showing, how unperfect our vision could be. Like this:

In reality this looks better, but well, the staff does not allow the visitors to take pictures, either :D

And if you'll look at the top of the bulding, you will see real grass!

A true story house, indeed! On the roof "lives" the giant robot from anime "Castle in the sky".

The last stop of our visit was Staw cafe, which served caffe latte with Sofie's hat drawn in chocolate:

Winter

So, Winter finally came. I guess, it's what Japanese call the ever changing weather here :) If one day the temperature is around +17 Celcius, on the next day there's only +5 degrees Celcius, as today :D Everybody's freezing, everybody has a cold :S I had one, too. Luckily, it's almost over, I wouldn't like to be sick, when there are so many midterms.
I guess, the only one who doesn't care about the weather are these:

I'm simply amazed that something can bloom in Winter.

What's missing ... or not

Maybe I have told this earlier, but Japan is all about convenience: the most shopping centres are located around the train/subway stations, convenience stores are open 24/7 (and you can buy there everything from food to tooth brushes, plus also pay your electric or other bills), trains are arriving every 5 minutes (depends on the line, though. Trains on Yamanote line, the one that circles around the central Tokyo, come every 3-7 mintes. On the other hand, the trains on Tobu-Tojo line, which I use every day to get to university, arrive every 10-15 minutes).
There are some things which I find inconvenient. Actually, only one - the last train for my station leaves at 00:30. The next train is around 5:40. That doesn't leave you much time to chat with friends from other parts of Tokyo.
Another thing is completely missing in the streets:

Yes! These are garbage cans! And you can be sure, if you miss the opportunity to throw you trash out, while you still can see one, it's unlikely that you will find another one around. Sometimes you can circle the whole area without finding any trashcans. And still, Japan is by far the cleanest country I've seen. Makes me wonder, what do we do wrong in Europe ... I guess, it's a culture difference - here you have to keep your garbage in your own bag :D

Autumn

Finally it's Autumn!! The season started for long ago, but finally you can feel the actual change in the weather. It's around 15 degrees Celcius outside, and sometimes it's even raining (once or twice in 2 weeks). Well, it's too early for the rainy season, it's in Winter. But this is what Japan looks like when it's rainy (sorry for the bad quality of the photos, I was taking pictures with my phone. I promise to replace them as soon as I can ;) ):

This is, by the way, the famous Shibuya crossing - the most crowded pedestrian crossing in the world. There can be up to 2.000 people crossing this road here on a Saturday afternoon at the same time.

And this lovely place is near Ikebukuro station :D

You probably noticed the transparent umbrellas - they are everywhere. Not all people remember to watch the weather forecast (which is about 90-95% accurate here in Japan) in the morning. So if it suddenly (for some people) begins to rain outside, they can go to the nearest convenience store, kiosk, drugstore or supermarket to buy one of these umbrellas. These are disposable umbrellas, only for one time use, therefore, they cost around 500 yen. Though, I've seen one in a supermarket for as little as 150 yen! If you're a fan of transparent umbrellas, you can also buy a normal one, which won't break after one use. These will be at least twice as expensive.

Nature

So, I made a video of my latest hiking trip, just to make it interesting for both you and me ^^ Enjoy ;)

The Language

I'm back ^^ So, here's a small post about the language, because there are some interestings issues in connection with it. As you can imagine, all the bigger nations are more or less self-sufficient, and Japanese is one of them. Most of the people living here are the Japanese, so there's no need to learn English. Therefore, except the buisiness life, English language is more like a trend. It's fashionable to wear t-shirts with imprinted English words or sentences that do not make any sence, or name a fashion shop in English just for the language's sake:

Funny, right?

Well, here is another example, just outside Ikebukuro station: