Today was a bright sunny day indeed, and as some pals and I were sitting outside the Ryoyukan cafeteria eating our spoils, we noticed tons of people around us looking up to the sky, mouths agape. They were taking photos as well, with their phones and cameras.

The sun was almost directly above us. What's this?



A circular rainbow?!
Yes indeed. I've never seen one before, except on the plane, and then the plane's shadow was in the way. I didn't even get all of this one in the shot, but of course there wasn't a plane this time.

Then I had the feeling my eyes would soon burn off, so I focused my attention back to my cafeteria-bought handmade warabi mochi.

Good morning!

I woke up bright and early today with a cup can of coffee and some tarako pasta:


Tarako is the roe of a pollock (?) and it exists as a blob of tiny pink eggs with a tangy flavour. Evidently one day someone tossed some into pasta and found it to their liking, because it's a common sauce flavour over here. It's mostly put into spaghetti, but I found some cheap butterfly pasta (haha, I'll always call it that) and went for that. Note also the little strips of seaweed in there. One can find packs of premade sauce like this very easily.

I've been trying to eat good breakfasts lately, and then grabbing lunch at one of the uni dining halls when I can't find the time to make something. Please don't recoil in fear, the dining halls are a lovely invention. At Vic the food situation is... hmm. This Salient article from last year might give you some idea. At Rits, on the other hand, you can rock up to one of the halls with the knowledge you'll get reliably consistent, quite tasty, and somewhat nutritious stuff. There are a couple of halls that are open at different times during the day, so theoretically you could get all three meals out of them, if you could escape the onset of menu boredom. The fare is mainly hot meals; various kinds of stuff-on-rice and noodle bowls. If you want one of these, you join a packed line of other students, and wait for a staff member to eyeball you so you can yell your order to them. When you get to the business end of the line, your food should be there, made for you in a production line-looking way by some very very fast-moving ladies.

Apart from these, there is an underground convenience store with lots of edible and inedible items, and another above ground for food and drinks. These are run through a co-op system - we each paid some money as share capital at the start of the year, and the shops are run through that. We are able to get discounts on books and such as well.

Overall I'm satisfied with the food on campus. The hot meals are quite a bit cheaper than one could expect to pay off-campus, and not much more than what the raw ingredients cost to buy (although I'm learning how to make that cheaper too). Some time soon I'll show some photos of the dining hall environment, once I figure out how to import photos from my phone onto a computer. I'm thinking of buying a memory card and reader for the phone for this purpose. It's a lot less conspicuous and dodgy-looking taking photos of everyone on a phone :P

On another note, yesterday I went to my first meeting at the bijutsu-kenkyuukai (art research society). Research society?? Psssh. It's the art club, basically. We draw and paint pictures and exhibit them. The next exhibition is in a few weeks, and I'm going to put something in. More updates on that club to follow!

♥
Sophie

Yesterday was the second wagashi (Japanese sweets) lesson, and the first lesson where we made something.

In accordance with the season, we made sakura-mochi! It's mochi (rice cake) containing an (red bean paste) and wrapped with two sakura (cherry tree) leaves.

You take a blob of mochi and flatten it somewhat in your hand. Then, take an equally sized blob of an and put it on the mochi. Rolling this in your weak hand and pushing the an down with your strong hand, you (should) eventually get a nice round blob of mochi, filled with the an. Then you wrap it with a leaf, or sit it on one leaf and place another on top.

The finished product:



And... the leaves are salty! They've been marinated in something to give them a salty and slightly sharp taste; one that would be a bit much on its own, but when wrapped around the mochi is so good... the taste and scent is totally unique.

The mochi is called Domyoji (yes, as in Doooomyooooojiiii~~~~) and consists of rice grains that have been cut into sixths. Apparently the sakura-mochi made by the pros with these ingredients are about $3.80 a pop from the shop. I would send some to you but I think the mass of melted leaves and beans would cause the biggest biosecurity alert ever!

Here's a rather cute video from youtube showing sakuramochi being made, by a 2½ year old no less. She does a pretty good job!


I hope your life is sweet too :)

Hi there chaps. Family, pals who might be reading...

This is my account of moving to Kyoto to study Japanese for a year as an exchange student. Let me acknowledge all the hard work on the part of my family to help me get here. ♥

Um, well. I have now been in Japan for a little over a week, and it's a little hard for me to set everything out in chronological order, but I'll try my best. If I get lazy with posts later on, please give me a good nudge!

Thank you for reading.