Nara

This is called massive picture dump while the internet works. I will rearrange them and put captions later.
Today was another great rainy Saturday. I went to Nara with Taylor, James, Ali Baba (Haha), Sister Sato, and Sister Sugimoto. I had an amazing time!

First, we went to a big park with deer all over the place. I'm serious. They were everywhere. There were warning signs about the deer, but also every shop sold food for the deer. We all bought some senbei (crackers) and fed them. It was really fun at first, but after a while they got a little annoying. Especially since they made my hands all dirty.

Me feeding the deer.

All of us taking a picture with a deer.

Next, we went to see the Daibutsu - a huge statue of Buddha. I have never been so happy to see one of the ritual places for hand-washing or drinking out of metal cups. Yay for being clean again! The Buddha statue was way tall, and we were actually allowed to take pictures of this, so I will upload some. We also went through Buddha's nostril. What I mean by that, is that we got to take turns squeezing through this hole in a large wood pillar. My picture is a little blurry, but I will try to get it up. Oh, there was also a statue outside that kind of looked evil, but the impression was smothered by the conflicting impression of wearing a shower cap. I don't know why, but I found it very amusing.

We grabbed lunch really quick at some fast food place, and I got pork on rice. We had less than ten minutes until an appointment, so we had to eat way fast. I couldn't eat it all in time, so I had to finish it later.

Honestly, most of the time I don't really know where we are going until we get there. In this case, it turned out to be a meeting with a man who makes ink. There are 12 places in this area that make 95% of the ink in Japan. This man and his helpers ran one of the 12 places. The black ink is made out of charcoal (either from red pine or coal), glue, and perfume (so it doesn't smell so bad). The perfume was also specially made at this place. First he showed us the way they make blocks of ink. They take the rubbery mixture, roll it one way to get air bubbles in it, roll it into a ball to make it smooth, and then roll it out to the size of the mold. The man did it all in about 10 seconds. One of our purposes in coming was to learn about the ink making process. The other was to do hand imprints with the rubbery ink. We all got to keep our imprints, although we can't open the boxes for 3 months. The man also gave us a present: his personal, hand-made ink from 25 years ago. The ink improves with age, so this was a very generous gift. The ink cost roughly 6 dollars at the time, but due to the time and the improved quality, it is now worth much more. Wow.

When we asked where we were heading next, we were told that we were going to go study. I was almost disappointed, until I heard the next part: we were going to study brush-making and try to make our own brushes. Once again, we were told about the process, and given partially completed brushes to finish. When we finished, we were allowed to keep the brushes. The brushes being sold in the shop ranged from $30-$140. There were all sorts of brushes: brushes made from horse hair, cow hair, flying squirrel hair, weasel hair, and more. It was crazy, and cool.

We rode in the car for a while after that, and talked about a bunch of random things. The only thing I can remember clearly was discussing a book where dinosaurs invade the earth from the moon. It was a free book on kindle. We made fun of the idea for a while, but when James let me start reading it on his ipod, I actually liked it, which led to bit of teasing from Taylor.

The other place we were going closed before we made it there, so we headed back to Sakai.

In Sakai we ate dinner at Ohsho's - my second time this week. I was really happy because I got to eat Annin dofu again. I also got teased a bit for having a cat's tongue. I have heard this phrase a ton this week. It basically means that you can't handle hot foods. I think it is common sense. You don't eat something that will scald your tongue! Of course I blow on hot soup and hot foods before I eat them!

After we finished dinner, we decided to all go to the Sato's and watch a movie. We watched Megamind. It was my first time seeing it, so that was nice.

Overall, today was a great break. Weekends seem to be just as busy as weekdays, but I am doing fun stuff, so I don't mind being exhausted by the end of the day.