A Few Days in Japan

I was taken out by one of my students for lunch yesterday. We had a delicious sushi set lunch sat at the bar so I could see the chef preparing each dish. I ate the usual tuna and salmon sashimi as well as other kinds of fish, some egg like spanish tortilla and also some small white fishes with black eyes-a little squeamish with that one! I tried sea eel and had a delicious okra sushi. We also had a plate with a tiny helping of stir fried veg and pork, a bowl of miso soup and a little bowl with a savoury egg custard type thing. Everything was so beautifully presented. We had a desert of tiny pieces of green tea jelly, ice cream and a sugared fruit type thing with plum tea. 

After lunch we went to a beautiful coffee shop in the middle of nowhere in the mountains with a stream running by-it was exactly the perfect image of japanese countryside. The coffee place was a traditional wood building with open doors to the veranda and low floor seating. We met her friends and there was a lady who makes bead jewelery and I was made to choose some beads to make into a necklace as a gift. It was a little surreal but very, very kind. 

The coffee place was a kind of Nirvana, quintessentially Japanese in it's peacefulness. I can't wait to return.

Today our secretary bought us each a gift of a name stamp. It is a piece of bamboo with each of our names in Kanji inside a case with silk lining that contains a tiny red ink pad. It's necessary for official documents instead of a signature. Mike's means dance and poem which is kind of beautiful but mine means apricot and to begin which is kind of meaningless. But what an awesome gift! I quite like being Joanne over here-Japanese people have a wonderful pronunciation of it that make it sound lovely. They don't put that 'W' between the A and the O. 

Okay enough rambling I'm just too excited about Kyoto.