First Sunday

Finding a Catholic church in Nagoya was surprisingly easy. There's a famous one in Sakae (the major shopping and eating area), and a smaller one within biking distance of my house. There aren't any afternoon masses here, so I had to fight my way awake to get to the 9 a.m. one on time. I decided to try going to mass (ミサ) in Japanese, at least for the first week.

It was a small church with a kindergarten attached. Since my religious vocabulary is pretty slim, I understood about a third of what was going on. Aside from getting the G-stare* from one of the altar boys, it was a pretty great experience. I was out of dress code, though: All the other women were wearing these beautiful, white lace veils over their hair. I'd never seen it before, but all of the veils throughout the congregation was an amazing visual. One of the nuns told me where I can buy one after mass, though, so I'll be super-prepared next week.

My host mother picked me up and took me to the local coffee shop. The guys who work there were hilarious, so I think I'll probably end up biking over there a lot. Since I have no idea how far things are in kilometers, I've had to resort to the plane scale. So if I said somewhere in the US was about an hour from my house by plane, they would give me a comparable plane ride from Nagoya to other places. So I still have no concept of kilometers, but I'm an expert on Japanese plane travel times.

We went for lunch with my host mother's mother, and we walked to a nearby park called Shiritori Garden (白鳥庭園). It's a tea garden, but the actual tea ceremony cottage, which extends out into the middle of the pond, was closed for a special ceremony. It's a completely quiet even though it's in the middle of the city. There are some visual reminders that you're in a modern area, though, like in the picture on the right:

My host mother and her mother decided to stay in the shade while Reiko and I explored. We went by a waterfall, and ended up at the edge of the pond, where some children were feeding koi. They were dropping pellets in the water and the carp went crazy. About ten close to the bank, and as soon as the pellets appeared and the first koi started fighting each other, literally hundreds of koi from all over the garden would swim over. They were splashing water everywhere, swimming over each other, and fighting their way to the center as more joined the fray. I'm kicking myself for not having taken video, because a picture doesn't adequately express how weird it was. The picture below is of about a fourth of the koi pack. Please note that the dark areas are made not of water, but of black koi.

The beginning of the frenzy:

We found out later where the kids were getting all the food. There's a little hut with cups of green pellets and instructions to feed the birds. Under no circumstances, it says, are you to feed the koi. And so of course that natural reaction for the kids was to feed the carp and find out why it was a bad idea.

My host sister, Reiko, looking at some of the more sedate koi. Even when you don't have food, they come to the edge of the water just in case:

I'll be setting up a Flickr account soon so I can post more photos.

What I'm listening to:
Happiness - 嵐
Rebel Rebel - David Bowie
Digital Love (Daft Punk cover) - Alphabeat
Great Balls of Fire - Chuck Berry
Wake Up - Arcade Fire

*G-stare:　When a Japanese person stares at a foreigner (gaijin). It happens occasionally on the street, and a lot on the train. It's like being a B-list celebrity or having a hand growing out of my forehead. I don't know which.