The Land of Opportunity
Every semester CET plans a rip-roaring adventure to some city other than Harbin, most likely in order to convince students that not all of China is cold. The way they go about accomplishing this goal is actually quite clever: by going south. 12 hours south via train, to be precise. Now you may be thinking “the title says land of opportunity, I was unaware NAME-OF-YOUR-COUNTRY (to appeal to a wider audience) was south of China.” And you would be right, unless you’re from North Korea. But you’re not. (If you are, please comment otherwise).
Okayama
Today, I’m going to do that travel blogging thing and actually blog about, well, travel. A couple weekends ago, we went on the overnight trip sponsored by CET to Okayama and Kagawa. It was AWESOME. All of us Americans and almost all of our Japanese roommates piled onto a bus early Saturday morning and drove to Okayama Prefectural Shizutani Educational Center, up in the mountains two prefectures to the west of Osaka.
The Educational Center is a big building with classrooms, a cafeteria, baths, and these big tatami-mat floored rooms full of futons for sleeping. Japanese schools take their kids on trips to places like these to do group bonding activities, learn random skills, and generally have some good clean fun, so it was a cool opportunity for us to have a similar experience. Right when we got there, we got a talk about the rules and regulations about staying there (like how to fold our futons properly) and dropped our stuff before lunch in the cafeteria.
The Educational Center is also right next to the beautiful old campus of the Shizutani school, which is one of the oldest schools still around in Japan. Its history goes back to the early Edo Period (1660s). The main lecture hall building by itself is OLDER. THAN. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Yikes. A lovely guide gave us a tour of the grounds (even got a chance to pray at the school shrine) and we had some free time to wander.
After a brief foray in search of civilization (we were really out in the boonies), which yielded the delicious results of soy sauce ice cream (surprisingly tasty), we headed back to the school for a lesson in making Bizen-yaki! Bizen-yaki is a specific type of pottery unique to the Bizen region (in which we were staying). We got a brief how-to tutorial from the Bizen-yaki-sensei-in-residence and then they gave us our own globs of clay and a mini-wheel and off we went! I made three little teacups.
Once we cleaned the clay off of our hands, we headed back downstairs for dinner. Then, after dinner, we had the baths all to ourselves for two whole hours. For most of us Americans, it was our first experience with a traditional Japanese bath (a large room with showers along the wall to wash before soaking in the big tub of hot water in the middle), but it was significantly more fun and less awkward than I imagined. We ended up having a grand time being silly, singing Disney songs, and splashing around in the big tub. Afterwards, it was great to just bum around the rooms, play cards, and be silly before an early bedtime.
We woke up bright and early on Sunday to eat breakfast, fold our futons, and generally make our rooms and bathrooms spiffy before we got back on the bus on our way to Kagawa. We stopped for lunch and wandering in Kurashiki, and then back on the bus, headed to Kotohira, in Kagawa Prefecture on Shikoku (the island right to the south of Honshu, the main island).
We climbed the 1,000 steps to Konpira shrine on top of a mountain, during the peak of the cherry blossom’s beauty. Between the gorgeous trees and beautiful vista every time I looked behind me and watched the city fall away beneath us taking my breath away every five seconds, and the 1,000 freaking steps, I’m amazed I made it to the top alive. What an awesome opportunity.
After we all made it back down the mountain, we went to a school for making udon and learned how to make the dough and roll out and cut our very own udon noodles! It was a blast. Half of the process of making the dough is, after you mix it, you put it in a plastic bag and then dance on it. So, naturally, the Sensei put on some silly pop music and we boogied like pros. They fixed us some tasty tempura and we cooked the udon we made ourselves. I’m not sure whether it was that the udon ingredients were especially good, or that we’d climbed 1,000 steps that day, or that we made it ourselves, but those were the best noodles I’ve had in a very long time.
Exhausted, well-fed, and quite pleased with an excellent trip, we piled back on the bus and slept the whole way back to Osaka.
Traveling Seminar to Poland
One big happy family: the JS and CES crew in Krakow's Old Town Square at night.
Bright and early Thursday morning, Jewish Studies and Central European studies met on a coach bus and took an eight hour drive to Krakow. Most of us enjoyed some sleep, reading, movies and music in anticipation of our exciting nine day trip throughout Poland. Upon arrival, we checked into our hotel, got ourselves settled, and then reconvened for what our program director Jarka likes to call our “funny city tour”. A great tour guide took us around Krakow’s old town and pointed out some interesting sites and funny anecdotes. I keep realizing how much my time with CET is teaching me, and one great example was on our tour. The ground in Old Town Square and throughout the side streets of Krakow is uneven, and it turns out this is because, as businesses began to grow and streets needed to be more functional, they would repave. However, they would just pave over parts that needed work, making some areas higher than others. I found this so interesting, especially because we found ourselves having to step or stoop down to enter shops and restaurants throughout the city. I will always think of this reason when I see uneven roads now!
Our Jewish tour of Krakow was fascinating. We saw the remaining part of the ghetto wall, many places where Schindler’s List filmed, and many other interesting sites. The Krakow Ghetto memorial installation was interesting- it is a lot of weathered-looking chairs lined up around what was the deportation square, to symbolize waiting to be sent to concentration and death camps. Some of the chairs are in the tram stop and everyday people use them while waiting for their trams. This integration into everyday life events makes the memorial that much more meaningful in my eyes, forgetting is not an option when it is a part of your everyday life.
Dora and crew: The survivor who shared her story with us after our meeting with her.
We went to Shabbat on Friday and met two very cool people. One was the director of the Krakow JCC, who gave us a great overview of how much Krakow’s Jewish community is growing and how it is thriving in culture, education, and practice. The center was beautiful, and the joy of Jewish life exhibited there is so different from what I had heard about Poland’s Jewish population, especially because I was under the impression that the community was so small. It is in fact larger than I thought, but a number cannot really be named- the face of the Jewish population is rapidly changing and more and more people are embracing their previously suppressed Jewish identity. The other great encounter was Dora, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, who simply plopped down behind us in synagogue and asked us if we had a survivor, if we wanted to hear her story, and when she could tell us. Just like that, the day before our Auschwitz trip, we were able to hear a survivor’s story! She is 90 years old, which her demeanor and vitality would never have led us to believe. We did a little rearranging of our schedule and got to hear her story.
We loved all of the different tours and activities in Krakow and spent our free time really bonding as a group. We were glad to have a few more days together and to experience Auschwitz as a group before CES broke off to see some more of the Czech Republic on their way to Vienna as we headed to Warsaw.
Michelangelo, Bernini, Donatello and Tuscan Wine Tasting
Last week, I visited Museo del’Opera del Duomo with my Renaissance Art class. I wasn’t entirely sure what was inside other than Michelangelo’s late Pieta, but I quickly realized that it was full of art historical gems. When we moved into the room holding Donatello’s Magdalena my breath completely left me. This wooden statue of the penitent Magdalene is overwhelming. It looks like a form of Rodin’s style, only transplanted to 400 years earlier. She is so full of texture and emotion. And her feet! They are so real and full of weight! She has this emaciated look about her, but her feet are spread across her rocky base as if to grip the ground. The statue was amazing; it was both terrifying and beautiful at the same time.
Michelangelo’s Pieta had a similar effect. His sculpture, more massive and made of marble, was completely unfinished. He made a self-portrait of himself as Nicodemus, the man accredited with having made the first sculptural image of Christ, and shows a muscular and weighty Christ falling into the arms of his supporters. The way Christ’s head falls onto Mary’s unfinished cheek! Even without the smooth and expressive finish of Bernini, Michelangelo captures so much emotion, so much expressiveness. And his composition is perfect. The more I see of him, the more confident I am in his genius, as tortured and mangled as it may have been.
After that we moved into the Bargello, the old government palace meant to oversee the courts (coincidentally, this place is also ON our street, maybe two doors down from my apartment). It is a really substantial and influential medieval building in Florence, and is gorgeous on the inside, though fortress-like on the outside.
After wandering and admiring the famous and impressive collection of the Bargello, we came to the last room. We stood in front of a huge and initially unimpressive sculpture of a drunken Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. The closer I looked, however, the more I could see that this Michelangelo sculpture captured the inebriation and expression of Bacchus. The surrounding sculptures of the same subjects couldn’t match the physique, the glazed look, or even the hungry and erotic visage of the satyr at the god’s feet. Indescribable and unforgettable. I will be going back soon.
And just because I hadn’t seen enough, a friend and I decided to make our first visit to the Uffizi. It was overwhelming. Just their International Gothic room alone, holding the most famous altarpieces of Cimabue, Giotto, and Duccio, would be a blessing to any museum in the world. Each room we passed through was another surprise. Oh! There’s Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch. Oh! There’s Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Oh! There’s the Portinari Altarpiece. Oh! There’s a Caravaggio. It was absurd. All of these canonical paintings crammed into a massive museum with at least ten other paintings in the same room. Impressive doesn’t begin to describe it. I will need to go back, however, and visit single pieces over and over again this semester. I cannot get enough of the art here.
Later that day, the whole program attended a wine tasting. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this; I had never been to a wine tasting before. We walked into this fabulous little wine store called “Pozzo Divino,” made our way towards the back of the shop, and wandered down a small stairwell into the wine cellar and a small seating area. It turns out, this cellar was actually a part of the Bargello, and 700 years ago had been a prison, complete with secret passageway to and from the government palace. I know this seems a little scary to think about, but it was a neat little aspect of the building’s history–the exposed brick and medieval arches were all still in place, but were now just covered with wine racks and barrels. The man who owned the wine shop, Pino, was this very eccentric Italian man who spoke some English, but most of what he said had to be translated. Thankfully, my improving but limited Italian enabled me to understand almost all of what he said! My vocabulary has grown exponentially since I arrived, but it was so gratifying to be able to understand and communicate with a born-and-bred Italian.
Pino supplied us with white and red wine, along with some small plates to enjoy with the liquid. All of it was Tuscan: made with Tuscan grapes grown on Tuscan soil. The most famous wine of the region, a red and slightly fruity wine, is called Chianti Classico. It is loved by many in Italy, and can only be made in a small region just between Florence and Siena. We tried some of Chianti and another local red wine. The latter was much drier, and somewhat smokey. It was “piu vecchio,” translating to older and of higher quality, and was served in a specialty glass. The white wine was good, but not comparable to the flavor of the red wine. He also served us this incredible balsamic vinaigrette (aceto balsamico). I’ve never tasted anything this delicious. I put it on the tomatoes, the cheese, the bread. I probably could have had it by itself. It was 15 years old and 35 euro for each tiny little bottle. Tasting that stuff made me think it might be worth it though… It was interesting. It was not just about tasting the wine or knowing where it came from, there was a technique to it. We were taught how to identify a good wine just by looking at it, as well as understand the appropriate times to drink red or white wine, as well has how to drink it and what glasses to serve it in. It was so educational and very Italian–I think that was the best part.
CET Academic Programs