10-09-06 Monday "Beans and Pottery"

Monday, October 9, 2006 -“Beans and pottery”

At breakfast today, I saw something I thought that I had recognized, but not in this setting. A number of little cups of what appeared to be backed beans sat stacked in a pile by the baked goods. Thinking that this was odd, I grabbed a cup and brought it back to the table to try this treat for breakfast.

Bad idea.

I took a big spoonful helping in my mouth and almost gagged. It turns out that I pouched a large helping of what someone said was aged tofu beans. This delicacy was the only thing that I had to spit it out thus far in my journey east. Looking back in the cup, I learned that the gooey substance (that almost looked like a sticky stringy caramel sauce when the beans were pulled apart) was the fermentation decay process underway. Y-U-C-K-Y!

After breakfast I rushed back to the room to do some blog catch up, knowing that we may not have any internet for a few days. Actually browsing the web through AOL (yes -American Online works in Japan,) I began getting barraged with instant messages asking about my trip.

Losing track of time, I saw that I only had 3 minutes to get to my lobby… AND PACK! I quickly shut down my computer and threw all of my junk into bags and emptied my tiny, formerly cluttered room.

Rushed out of hotel, I jumped into a tiny cramped bus to visit a museum in the house that raised the Miyazaki brothers; a family of brothers who helped change the political mindset of Japan.

For lunch, we went to a Japanese-style Korean BBQ. From what I understand, there Japanese renditions are nothing like the real thing, but some like the change even better. At this establishment, you cook your own meat and some veggies on a grill built into the face of the table. On our menu, we were served pork and beef, though chickens and fish are also served. Side dishes on this particular day included kim-che, mushroom, miso soup, and a tasty pear sorbet. The way it worked was a number of objects were served to us raw on a plate. We would throw them on a little grill (next to our neighbor’s strips) to cook the meal our selves, turning the morsels periodically with chop sticks. The food was incredible!!!

The next stop on our agenda was to work on authentic Arao Shoudai Pottery for about an hour at a local pottery workshop/museum called Shoudai kougeikan. This style of pottery includes a gazing and two month process that is alien to most pottery techniques – but many believe is well worth the wait.

The history of this pottery tradition goes back to between the Nara and Heian era when there were nearly 100 potteries in Mt. Shodai area. At the end of the 16th century Kiyomasa Kato (the war lord who ruled Kumamoto area) brought potters over from old Korea. A combination of the original technique with the Korean style formed the unique style of Shodai Pottery.

After the Meiji Restoration, the government abolished both promotion and the support of the pottery business, thus Shodai Pottery ceased to exist. But, Mr. Chikashige and Mr. Jyojima were dedicated to the art. Their commitment was responsible for the popular return of the pottery form, which later became an official national craft work. The style of this pottery is heavy glaze with a white flowing decoration.

After trying my hands out, unsuccessfully a few times at first, I scratched “Ken” in kanji on the side of my masterpiece and added mine to the mix to be shipped out to me at a later date. (It will take two months to kilm correctly, and because I am cheap and will ship this by ship, I probably won’t see my masterpiece until February; four months from now.)

Met with the host family next in a waiting room in the pottery workshop. NEITHER OF US SPEAK THE OTHER’s LANGUGE!!!! We were able to use translator calculator communication and decided on the Kumamoto castle festival as a point of visit for the host family stay.

Now in Arao, our mainstay in Japan, we pulled up to a crazy looking horse-shaped coliseum-ruin looking hotel called Hotel Verde. The Mitsui Verde is painted appropriately powder pink with sea green highlights, being located between two amusement parks; Mitsui Greenland park and Ultra-man Land. Having an amusement park on both sides, one might think that we would get no sleep. However, both parks close before 5:PM and that is about when we would get back to our room each day, or later.

Unlike The Omuta, at The Verde, there was no Internet for free. In fact, there was no internet at all. This disturbed much of our group who had planned on doing blogs every night as part of their follow on plan. As I write this right now, I am currently dumping my journals into a big Microsoft Word Document, planning on piecing things together when we get back to Tokyo for our group presentation at the end of the trip next week.

This seems to be becoming a common practice among the other educators, who too feel as if we have been cut off from the world that we know.