I had a Salsa lesson in Japan by an American in Japanese

I like the group dynamic of exchange students. They are easy to motivate to go out together as a group. When you are in a foreign country, where you have been cut out of your familiar networks you are usually stick together in a group of people who are in the same situation and who also look for new people and activities. So in the end we were about a dozen people who went to Salsa together.

First steps

 

The Salsa teacher was overwhelmed by the amount of exchange students that flooded her Salsa course.

If one comes, many others will come, too. 

It was fun!

Dangojiru

I love traditional Japanese food. It is so different than German food.

I wondered if there is a dish that is not only traditional Japanese, but even locally specific. I asked our Japanese turors if there is an Oita specific dish and there is! It is a noodle soup called dangojiru. Dango are long and flat noodles made of wheat flour, which are served in a miso soup with vegetables. In addition, a locally specific fruit is kabosu, which tastes like lemon and has a really aromatic flavor and smell. This fruit is produced in Oita and known all over Japan. Outside Oita is is quite expensive!

I also like to eat in little local restaurants, because the individual character of the owner shows in the interior decoration and the taste of the food. Our tutor took us to a place where the owner was very talkative and communicative. The decoration of his dangojiru shop was colorful, cozy, chaotic. And he had singing fish hanging on his wall, which he proudly presented to us, because he was so excited to have Germans in his small shop.

 

 

 Cozy local shop

 

My first Dangojiru - very delicious!

Khaki

I never ate Khaki before. I wondered if you eat it with or without skin.

It looks funny.

It tastes good!

Even with skin.

My friend told me that she eats it without. 

Next time I will peel it before eating. 

Even monkeys peel bananas before eating right?

My first izakaya!

Going out in Japan: it is impossible not to go to an izakaya. An izakaya is the Japanese equivalent to a bar. Actually I would describe it as a mixture between a restaurant and a drinking bar. Often, you pay a fixed price and can eat and drink as much as you want. (Drinking flatrates are called nomihodai and eating flatrates tabehodai) In Germany drinking flatrates are controversial, but here in Oita you can find them everywhere.
The izakaya that we went to did not offer flatrates, but every dish and every drink (including coctails) cost 315 Yen, which is inexpensive for going out in Japan. When I think back to the first (Mexican) bar that we went to - 600 Yen for one beer or coctail...
What was really impressive when we went in the izakaya called Sennen (1000 years) was the design of the place. It was beautiful! It was stylish, but yet cozy and had a Japanese touch. Every group had an own place seperated by curtains or plants. I immediately felt relaxed at that place. And the food and the coctails were delicious! I think that Cassis Orange and Fuzzy Neburu could become my favorite drinks ^^

A beautifully designed place

 

  It was so cold outside, but we still had a lot of fun ^^

At all the fun, good drinks and food we were so enthusiastic to squeeze 10 people into a Purikura booth. Purikura is a cool thing - they are photo booths where you can take crazy pictures and then decorate them little computer screens before getting them as stickers. Additionally, you get them as a digital version on your cell phone via infrared or via text message.

Adding hearts, stars and glitter to the photos

 

Many mini stickers with our crazy facces on them. 

Only we would want them.

At then end the question is how to share them equally. 

Usually scissors are provided at the place.

My first Purikura photos!

Pocky Day in Japan

Today at lunch break I studied at a cafeteria table with some friends, having some free cafeteria green tea. After some time I started to notice some giggling and excited high pitched voices at the table next to us. Eight girls were having a chocolate party or something. The whole table was covered with chocolate candy and they were exchanging their candy, having fun, laughing. It was like watching a high school pyjama party, only that it was 2 p.m. and they were not wearing pyjamas. Watching Japanese girls - even at university age - having fun often is like watching children play. They always laugh so freely, enjoying themselves like children, having fun childishly as if they did not have a care in the world.

 What are they doing?

What were the girls doing? At the Paderborn University you would never see female students occupying a whole table in the cafeteria, covering it with chocolate, exchanging them, and giggling.
I suddenly noticed that all their candy had the form of chopsticks. They all had different kinds of chocolate sticks (similar to German "Mikado"). And then I remebered an email from a German friend that I had read this morning. He had said that the 11th of November is 11.11, which looks like sticks. On this day, people give "Pocky" chocolate sticks to their loved ones. My Japanese tutor said that this day has been invented by the company, which sells Pocky. So the girls were having a Pocky Party to celebrate the 11.11! Japanese culture seems to be evolving even nowadays... ^_^

Pocky Party

Pocky Day - invented by the Pocky company of course ^^

So we rushed to the shop and bought some Pocky to have our own party ^^

Happy Pocky Day!

Irasshaimassääääää

The Oita Unversity hosted the University Festival from Friday until Sunday. It is like wonderland for everybody who likes to eat Japanese food, because there were so many booths run by student clubs, which sold different kinds of food: okonomiyaki, yakitori, omanju, ankodango, cookies, cakes, sweet potatoes, udon, yakisoba, and many more.

Okonomiyaki

 

Yakitori

 

"Octopus balls"

 

Ankodango

On the festival stage you could witness funny, entertaining and sometimes embarassing things: a band played, the theater club performed some unfunny comedy (the audience was completely silent), and last but not least, the highlight of the university festival - the Mister Lady contest! Guys dressed up as girls performed on the stage as if there was no tomorrow. It was hilarious! I loved it! It was so nice to see that the Japanese guys do not take themselves too seriously to goof around. They were having fun making a fool of themselves. They danced like Britney, they were "sexy", they breakdanced, they flirted with the audience. It was so entertaining ^_^

Everybody is waiting for the main event - the Mister Lady contest!

Our hostesses, ups sorry, hosts

 Pretty dress

 

 

 

On Sunday all the international students were supposed to run their own booth and sell food, which is typical for their country. We chose Kartoffelsalat mit Frikadellen - German potato salad with fried meat balls. Have you ever tried to make 200 servings of potato salad and meatballs?!

 

It was hard to estimate the amount of potatoes, bowls, meat, etc. to buy for 200 servings

 

3 out of 5 containers with potato salad and meatballs

 There were so many potatoes that I could not write my blog

On Sunday we had to set up our booth and sell that stuff. Unfortunately, right next to us there was the Korean booth. Imagine an owl sitting next to a peacock. The Germans were the owl. Not only was the Korean booth much more colorful and lively, they were also making their Korean pancakes fresh! The delicious smell, the appetizing sizzling of their pans, the hot steam coming from their cooking - the customers were all drawn away from our booth to theirs! Even our own Germans (including me) were, one after another, buying the competition's food! (It was delicious!) Haha.

 

Koreans (left) and Germans (right)

The Koreans cook their food

 The Koreans make their pancakes

 

 The Germans put their potatoes on the plates

At the end of the day we still had much food left that we could not sell. One reason was probably the constant rain. It was not good festival weather. The second reason is that Japanese just love Korean food more than western food. No, this is not just an excuse, it's a fact. The third reason was, that the Koreans just master the Japanese style of attracting customers. It goes like this: whenever you see potential customers approaching you have to attract their attention by shouting as loud as you can. "Irasshaimassääää!!! Doitsu no ryori wa ikaga desukaaaaa!!!" (Welcome! How about German food!) You have to be loud because all the other booths are also shouting for customers. And when you actually managed to fish some buyers, you have to do the cheerleader, like you were supporting your football team through the last game of the season: cheer, hop around, laugh, applauding, and scream. So you can imagine that for us Germans it was kind of hard. It felt so unnatural. Rather we looked like this:

Servicewüste Deutschland

 And the Koreans looked like this:

 

The Koreans cheering because someone decided to buy their pancake.

(These photos are not faked!)

In the end the Koreans even helped us sell our food, because they felt pity for us ^_^ They actually managed to scream-attract some customers for us. Learn from the masters...

The German team plus one Korean ^^

All in all, it was hard to sell our food. We made too much. 100 servings would have been enough. We did make some profit, but the effort of making so much potato salad (7 hours of cooking and preparing on Saturday!) was just not worth it. But we did not make any loss! Well at least not in regard to money (but manpower). It might be enough for 1 beer per person ^_^

Dancing with the Japanese

Have you ever tried to picture Japanese people dancing Salsa? I have - and I failed. But as the Salsa night at the PEI Pub revealed, Salsa is not limited to certain cultures. Japanese, Germans, Americans, and one Fin alike - all swept away by the Latin dance music!

We had to have a drink for courage before getting on the dancefloor

At the end of the night everyone was happy and some a little bit drunk ^_^

 

 We met some tall American basketballplayers

The PEI Pub is bar in Oita, which is owned by an American. Many foreign people frequent this bar. Now we are some of them. The pub is actually hard to find. It is located in a building that looks like a normal apartment building. But instead of apartments, you find many bars in that building.

The ceiling of the PEI Pub is covered with handwritten greetings from many visitors. Thank you Paderborn people of 2008 for saying hello in this way ^_^