Japan part 3

We ate out every evening in Kyoto and tried a wide range of Japanese dishes. And I was very proud of myself - I didn't have to ask for a knife and fork once, but got the hang of using chopsticks! My favourite experience was when we went to a sushi restuarant. I couldn't eat the raw fish, but there were plenty of vegetarian options and the atmosphere was great :)

The sushi plates went round on conveyor belts and when the dish you wanted came past your table you just took it off the conveyor belt. Or you could order specific dishes. There was a chute on the table that you slid your used plates down and it counted up your plates and then at the end you received the bill based on how many plates of sushi you had had.


This was a vegetarian dish I had - cucumber in rice wrapped in seaweed:

And this dish was chicken in pastry:

Trying to eat pineapple with chopsticks was an interesting experience and very unsuccessful. It didn't work and made quite a mess!


In Japan we tried lots of traditional Japanese crafts. One of the first we tried was sweet making.

This was the display in the shop where we had the lesson:
This was our group making sweets:
We were told we had to keep our hands very clean while making the sweets, but unfortunately I had an awful cold the week we were in Japan, so found it very hard not to touch anything when I kept needing to sneeze!

This was the lovely sweet making teacher:
Everyone in Japan so was nice and polite. The woman who taught us to make the sweets didn't speak a word of English, but the teaching assistant who went on the trip with us (Miss I) was fluent in Japanese, so she translated all the instructions for us. Miss I was fantastic and we couldn't have gone to Japan without her as she was invaluable in so many situations - from finding our way around Kyoto, to translating instructions when we were trying traditional Japanese crafts, to telling us what was in the dishes on a menu...

These were 2 of the 3 sweets I made:
And this was the third sweet I made (and ate):

A few days later we had a go at flower arranging. Surprisingly the best at flower arranging in our group was one of the boys! I found it tricky as everything had to be perfect and when one of the teachers first saw my attempt she told me lots of things needed changing. But then the next time she came round she said 'kirei' - which means 'beautiful' :)

This was my flower arrangement:

And the final traditional Japanese craft that we tried was paper making.
This is Catherine in one of the early stages of making some paper:
Lots of our finished products drying on the heater:
And Abi with one of her creations:
Another Japanese experience we had was karaoke:
Part 4 coming soon. To be continued...