Thursdays, as always are my heavy class days. They make Anya a dull girl.
I kicked off the day with a lab for E 40. Fun. Fun. Fun. Then Japanese. Lunch. Religion.
Thankfully, to break up the monotony of straight class religion had another field trip. Hooray! I love field trips. They're not quite the same as mommy waking up at 5 to make me spam musubis for lunch awesome, but I still get pretty excited. We went to a zen temple for the field trip, where we met a monk who happened to be this 50 or 60 something year old white guy from Connecticut. Apparently he came to study abroad in Japan for the year and never left. I guess those things really do happen.
He talked to us about Zen and about meditation, for what seemed like hours. It probably seemed longer because we had to struggle to sit on tatami instead of chairs (hey, I'm American, I'm allowed to lament the lack of chairs at a Buddhist temple). But finally, we got to meditate in a sweet monk meditation hall, which meant more uncomfortable sitting, but this was uncomfortable sitting with a purpose where I could close my eyes without pangs of guilt attacking my conscience. Oh, and during the meditation, he walked around with a cedar stick and whacked people with it on their back near the top of their spine if they so desired. Apparently it hits some acupuncture site and wakes up the body. When he first described this to us I thought he was crazy. I mean, he did run off and become a monk after all. But then everyone tried it, and my curiosity won out and I tried it too. It's not as crazy as it sounds and it didn't even really hurt. It was just this sweet tingly jolt that did kind of wake you up. Or maybe that was just the adrenaline from the thought of getting hit by a cedar plank. Whatever works, I guess.
Rice paddies by Kenny's house.
Kenny had invited me for dinner at his host family's place, so after that Zen business, (did I mention it was at Arashiyama, which meant that I had ice cream yet again?) it was off to dinner. I've been hearing this whole trip how awesome a cook his host mother is and I finally got to taste his claims. They were delicious. We had a lot of really good food. There was tempura, karage chicken, tofu, somen, rice, tsukemono and I feel like I'm leaving things out, but let me tell you whatever that woman served me was delicious.
After dinner we sat around and chatted for a bit. His host father even took Kenny and I up to his hobby room, which was basically a hodgepodge of random things from baseball memorabilia to model planes and just some strange trinkets. Then dessert. Yum. It was some kind of cake thing and coffee. The host father runs a coffee shop and is kind of a coffee connoisseur. I don't even like coffee, but I took some to be polite. I put in a little bit of cream and a minimal amount of sugar, but even I who does not enjoy coffee enjoyed this.
It started to get late so I got a ride from Kenny's host mom to the station and went home to pack for Koya-san. Hooray for adventures!
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