rotating sushi bar, field trip to kyoto

After a very long and unproductive day in the studio, I decided that I earned a trip to the rotating sushi bar. I went alone and genuinely enjoyed not having any company. I am starting to make friends in the printmaking department, but conversations have started to get more complicated than "what is this?" and "I am from America!", so it can be daunting. The sushi bar is wonderful because you can choose any plate you want, and it costs only 100¥ (85 cents or so). I ate lots of eel and other things which I don't know the names for. The sushi I ate was actually sashimi, which is fish or meat on top of warm rice. In American sushi restaurants, the rice is almost always cold. You would be surprised how much a difference it makes. The warm rice is absolutely amazing with the (if you get it soon enough) verycold fish. You can order things speficially via an electronic menu, which has very blurry pictures and Japanese words I cannot read. If you order someone from the menu, it comes around in the rotation on a special plate and then magically beeps when it reaches your seat. After you have finished, you put all of your plates into a slot in front of you. It counts them and your check is brought to you. I ended up spending 735¥, which is about $6 for a meal that would have, in the States, cost somewhere around $20 with cold rice, nonetheless. This is why I love Japan.

Tomorrow I am going on a school fieldtrip to Kyoto. From what I understand (which isn't much), we are going to a store which specializes in traditional hand-made papers, which apparently is the only kind of paper you can print on in the woodblock department. I have no problem with that! Also, the cheapest papers (which are quite large and nice) start about 10¥ each (8 cents) and go up to about 1,000¥ for the really nice ones ($8-9). I plan to spend a lot of money on paper. Also, we will go to the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto to see a Hundertwasser exhibition. I am really excited to see Kyoto. It is a very traditional Japanese city. Kumiko-chan, a girl in my class, told me that we might see a geisha! She was very excited about this, because apparently they are no longer very common. She had only seen one before in her life. I will report back on my findings in a day or two, likely with lots of pictures.

While it seems I live in a grimy industrial town, I am surrounded by mountains which are 90% of the time too cloaked in smog to see. This one is near my school and has patchwork farms on it. Near here is an ancient graveyard which you can get to via old mountain roads, which cars can no longer drive on. Perhaps I will take a hike one day soon.