Ame, Oh-Ame

Japanese lesson # 5 (6? Whatever. You still learn):

1) Ame: rain
2) Oh-ame: big rain

It was raining cats and dogs yesterday. In my opinion, Kyoto gets more rain than London. Then again, I wasn’t in London during March 2005, when my former flatmate emailed me during vacation and told me “Good thing you went home, the weather here is so bad, we don’t know whether or not to go out.” I am presuming that what she meant by
“weather” was rain. I never got to experience a right proper downpour until my last day – I had been wanting one for so long (yes, it does seem twisty, but I haven’t experience right proper rain until then) so I did leave home happy. There is a picture of me on the 73 bus going back to my dorm sopping wet – and with a big grin on my face.

But that downpour was in June. Earlier that day, the weather was very nice. It is December here, and then add to the rain a cold atmosphere. However, it’s not that cold – yet. According to a girl who used to live in Westchester for 5 years, Kyoto gets colder than New York. We shall see about that. And in the meantime, I won’t rush out to by an electric heater (though Professor S. highly recommended a kerosene one, he uses it and I noticed one in my koto teacher’s room as well) – I finally figured out how to heat my room with the lowest fan setting at 20 degrees Celsius, as opposed to 30 degrees Celsius and the highest fan setting. The key is in the orientation of the vents – one day I was playing with my remote and pressed a button and noticed that miraculously the vents changed their orientation. Eureka! That’s why there is hardly any hot air in my room, it was blowing down as opposed to out because the vents were facing down as opposed to out.

I have been drinking a lot of HOT English breakfast and Greek tea to warm my un-acclimated innards. So the experiment is working, for the moment. Let’s see what happens when I get my first real electric bill. I got one for 349yen for like my first three days but I have no clue why I got one so fast. I just went to the combini and paid it.

I figured that by the time I become totally miserable, it will be mid-February and I plan to travel that month and a half around Japan and Asia (latter part if possible) so I won’t be around much to justify the purchase of an electric heater. Then spring comes, and I would have survived my first winter, so that means I can get through another one.

So back to yesterday. In spite of all the rain, the people at the International Students Center still hosted the mochi-tsuki event. Mochi is sticky rice cake, often covered with powder to prevent it from sticking it into your hands. I had some when I went to the temple bazaar on Imadegawa a few weeks ago; that mochi had a strawberry in it. Yum!

Traditionally, they make a batch at New Year with a stone bowl and a BIG pestle. You want big? See big:



It was about 400 yen for pretty much all-you-can-eat mochi, tea (as always) and this miso soup thing that you pour on top of the mochi, the kind that is not rolled into rice cakes and covered with the powder. The miso soup was a little too salty though. I was really happy when they started to make the little rice cakes. I had mine with kinoko – something that is like a cross between cinnamon and brown sugar, I think – and adzuki, red beans. Red bean is used a lot in Japanese sweets; I like it a lot because it’s sweet but not too sweet.



I didn't pound the mochi myself – the pestle thing is really heavy and I am left-handed so I would place my hands somewhat backwards on the handle. It was already rather crowded under the tents since there was little space to stand around. Just as I was leaving for class, they began to make matcha-mochi and adzuki mochi. The bastards! I wanted that from the start; luckily during a class break I had some adzuki mochi, since they were still pounding away even at 3pm. No more matcha-mochi, unfortunately.

I asked if there was any kinoko left and I dipped the (big!) mochi in it – the lady manning the mochi trays said “Ippai!” (More!) good-naturedly.

So I had my mochi, and kinoko too.