I’m in!

Well, if I want to be in that is. It seems after a slightly stressful audition/class I have been accepted into a local Japanese pottery class. I’m not one hundred per cent sure I’m as excited about the class as I was before, but I am absolutely thrilled that the sensei will have me.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to some people in my cooking class that I like pottery and that I was hoping to find a class here. Well, with a Japanese sort of eagerness to welcome and guide that never ceases to amaze me, one student called up a friend of hers who does pottery and handed me a handwritten sheet of information on classes in Ota.

I had an English teacher at school help me with the initial phone call. I basically had her communicate who I was, that I have taken some pottery classes and that I’d like to enroll for the Tuesday night class. The response was not exactly what I expected. It wasn’t a yes, we have room, or no, sorry the class is full. Rather it was a request to come in for a one on one lesson to see if I liked it and the teacher liked me. Okay…?

The truth is I’m not sure I did like it that much. It was very frustrating. I was instructed to make a bowl on the wheel. But, I had to do it EXACTLY the way the teacher wanted me to. For example, don’t just wedge the clay, wedge it THIS way; don’t just score the clay, score it THIS way. That, combined with the fact that the wheel I was using was just a little wee disk plopped down on the table and powered by hand, was enough to make me crazy (I don’t even like kick wheels, that’s how spoiled I am.) On the positive side, I did learn some new techniques and might one day be equipped with enough knowledge to make a round vessel in the caves of Afghanistan.

Today, I had to go back to glaze my bowl. It looked okay. It was round, solid. The kinds of things I look for in my pieces. And the glazes were all new and lovely to me. Again, new techniques had me tenuously gripping the delicate foot ring of the bowl while lowering it into suction-griping glaze. The bowl and I made it though. A real feat for me – my friend Erin can attest to the fact that I have a tendency to drop my pieces… usually a lid I have made to measure while it is still soft and malleable.

I was invited to come to class next week at 7 pm. And, it was nice to see that the other students were busily working away on their own pieces, with the occasional assistance from the teacher. Decisions, decisions, decisions…

Mushroom Madness

So, the other day, I get a ride home from a guy who’s been living and working in Japan for about 8 years. He started as a JET in Ota and told me a story from his early days in Japan. Apparently, what he thought was going to be a day of mushroom picking on the mountain was a ceremonial procession of mushrooms. How interesting it all sounded. A mushroom ceremony here in Ota? Who knew?


Well, apparently anyone who bothered to read the many posters plastered all over town knew. I, of course, cannot read Japanese. I was only able to discern that there was event coming up on October 7th and that it was in Ota.

Using my cunning smile and foreign charm, I was able to get someone at a small, local restaurant to explain when and where the event would take place. Lucky I asked someone in the food business too because he knew the English word, “mushroom” and that’s when I put the puzzle together; the mushroom march would be this weekend!


Caitlin and I were at the Daikoin Temple at precisely 11 am for the kick off of the event. There were dignitaries on hand and the temple looked especially festive for the occasion.


The local media were there too, cameras often panning over to the two foreign women in attendance (yes us.)




And at the centre of it all was a group of young men and women, probably high school students, who were going to march baskets of mushrooms from Mt. Kanayama in Ota to some place in Saitama (the whole march, including pit stops and a long lunch break, was maybe four hours, at a snails pace.)


The outfits were traditional, right down to the footwear.


Mushrooms ready, banners and weapons poised, the reenactment began.




We followed the marchers from the Daikoin Temple, out the gates and along the busy streets all the way to Ota city hall.



And, the stars of the show? These funny looking mushrooms. Apparently, a sight to behold, and smell.


For being such loyal followers, Caitlin and I were rewarded with bowls of mushroom soup, and rice with mushrooms for lunch.

Serious Fun

Thursday was sports day at Ota Girls High School.

Sure, I remember sports days from middle school. I hated them. Everyone in their drab blue on blue gym uniforms competing against each other and hoping for lame participation badges. It was a day that mostly felt like a series of standardized tests. Yuck.

In Japan, each school holds a sports festival once a year. And, it really is a festive occasion. Rainbow coloured t-shirts, music, dancing, and lots of laughter.



Mind you, the students still take much of it pretty seriously. One girl burst into tears on the track when her relay team finished in last place. Thankfully, only one student was rushed off the field in a stretcher and she was apparently fine, much to the relief of her classmates who formed a small mob outside of the school nurse’s room.

Some of the games were familiar to me: sprinting, tug of war, and three-legged races – only these were with teams of three people tied together instead of two and I hear it can get to an impressive 20-person tethered team from time to time in Japan.



Other games were totally new to me. For example, the obstacle race that included grabbing a bagged pastry with your teeth, and the game with the giant bamboo poles in which opposing teams rush to the middle of the field and try to haul as many large poles to their side within a time limit and against the efforts of their opponents. It’s fierce fun and hilarious when one student manages to out-race all the others and claim a pole totally on her own. Or, when a pole is dragged across the field with several losing team members along for the ride.



Some races are just for fun. The club relay is an event in which students run along the track while either doing their club activity or trying to represent it in some way. The entire brass band spent more than half an hour setting up to play about 30 seconds of musical accompaniment when their counterparts were racing along.



Even the tea club played an important part in the day. Their tea stand helped to keep participants hydrated with a variety of tasty concoctions.



A personal highlight for me was the concluding group dance at the end. Most school choose an international folk dance to close off the day. I understand there can be a lot of square dancing and that sort of thing. Not at Ota Girls. Imagine my surprise when seven hundred Japanese students burst into Hebrew! How could I resist joining them for a round of Mayim-Mayim? “Encore,” they yelled when the music ended. Encore indeed.



Click here for even more photos.