Sado and the Second Semester

Here's to another Tuesday. And another awesome breakfast:

Washoku style: grilled salmon, tamagoyaki, tsukemono, miso soup, rice, and a little package of kamaboko

Today in class we started the new Tobira textbook and kanji book. And that's all I have to say about it for now. I don't even want to start...

So let's just move on with the day and participate with some Sado Tea ceremony activities at Gyokusen-en Garden, a short bus ride away from school. 

Upon arrival, we were divided into three groups, each to participate in a rotation of three activities.

For my group, our first activity was the Sado tea ceremony. Before entering the tea house, we had to properly cleanse our hands and mouth with with water from a wooden ladle to "purify" ourselves from the outside world. 

Then we all sat inside: socks (preferably white) required 

In the tea house, there were two red areas, one on each side. The group that was farther away from the entrance would make the tea first, while the other group would drink the tea that we made. 

So, I mixed the matcha powder with hot water using the chasen whisk to make usuicha, or thin tea. We presented the students on the other side of the tea house with our tea. Then we switched sides, and I got to drink tea (made by Makino sensee!!!) and eat the wagashi!

After the tea ceremony, we had a tour of the gardens. The guide was talking in complicated Japanese though, so I didn't understand what he was saying. Luckily, I had an English brochure to help me along.

 It's pretty disappointing to be studying so much Japanese, and yet still have to rely on English translations. But, at the very beginning of the school year in the fall when I started Japanese 101, Sato sensee warned us that Japanese is the most difficult language to learn for native English speakers, so...

The pond behind us is in the shape of the Kanji character for water 水. 

By the end of the tour, we were approaching two hours, and I was beginning to lose it a bit. After three hours of class a day and two hours of a relatively silent after school activity, I was getting pretty restless. However, we had another Sado tea ceremony to endure. I'm not quite sure why we had two ceremonies; a girl can only handle so much tea and wagashi! 

At least the wagashi was good! And we were all pros at Sado by that point, so we had all the phrases down pretty well, including "Otemae chodai itashimasu" ("Thank you for making tea" said when you are presented with the tea). 

So our three hour activity was a little rough to get through. It also didn't help that the second years got SLAMMED with homework that day from our new textbook. Just pages upon pages. 

I definitely wish I could be their age sometimes...

the pre-homework age. Oh how nice...

At least I got a great dinner to fuel me through the rest of the night! Tonight my mom made a variety of tempura, grilled fish, roasted eggplant, miso soup, and homemade tsukudani! Yummm. 

Ok. Break time over. Now to hit the books HARD. I stayed up until 3 am finishing my endless homework and studying for my quiz. It was a rough night. Definitely wasn't one of my prime moments. I hope it's not indicative of the upcoming "semester."