2002-07-05 - 6:03 p.m.
Yesterday I did the coolest thing I have done yet in Japan -- but that comes at the end of the entry. I went to an elementary school for the day where they threw a good-bye party for me. A teacher at this school took a liking to me the first time I went to the school in October. In November she took me out sightseeing in Kimitsu for a day, and in June she asked me to come back and spend a morning teaching the sixth graders.
Yesterday, the sixth graders had transformed a classroom into a Japanese theater, with bamboo adorning the walls and doorways, and straw mats on the floor with one cushion, for me. The kids came up to the front in groups, and each group taught me something about Japanese culture. There was an origami group, who gave me some beautiful origami dolls. There was an ikebana group, who taught me flower arranging and gave me a bamboo vase. Then there was a tea ceremony group, who walked me through the traditional method of drinking matcha. The next group gave me a handmade dragonfly toy, a bamboo stick with a propeller on the end. You twist between your hands and then let it fly. Finally, there was a festival music group, who performed their own composition with a bamboo flute, metal buckets, and a bell. After a short break, I was treated to a performance -- in English -- of the Japanese fairy tale, Princess Moonlight, complete with narrators, stage lights and samurai costumes.
Okay, here’s the really cool part. After the play, I knew that we were going to eat somen noodles, because the teacher had mentioned it in the car earlier that morning. She asked if I had ever eaten “somen nagashi,” which I didn’t really understand. “Nagai” means “long,” so I asked if she meant “long somen.” Yes, she replied, it will be very, very long! From the window of the teacher’s room I saw the students hauling vats of cold, cooked somen onto the lawn. The somen was followed by two ladders and a desk, which was followed by two 20-foot long bamboo stalks, which had been halved lengthwise so they were trough-like (bamboo is hollow, of course). They put one end of the bamboo up on the top of a ladder -- about 6 feet off the ground -- and the other end on the desk. Then they put the second piece of bamboo on the desk, so it connected with the first piece, and lay the other end on the ground, resting in a colander. The result was a 40-foot inclined chute. Can you guess what comes next? Two teachers climbed the ladders to the top of the chute. One teacher held a hose, sending a stream of water rushing down the bamboo. The other teacher slowly released clumps of somen noodles into the water, so they were carried away by the stream and went whizzing down the chute. The rest of us gathered around the chute and tried to catch the passing somen with our chopsticks, dunking it into little cups of cold soup with scallions and shredded seaweed and then slurping them up. Needless to say, the kids absolutely loved it. Every Japanese person to whom I’ve mentioned this since has gotten almost giddy with excitement, remembering their own somen slip ‘n slide experiences. This has to be the best food idea I’ve ever encountered. I can’t wait to rig this up in the backyard. I wonder if anyone does this anywhere in the U.S.? I think it could catch on...
