Kyoto Castles, Cooking and Music
We are now about halfway through our stay in Kyoto and it feels like it’s going way too fast. We are all loving it here and it will be super sad to leave. We did some cool things this week including visiting a castle, taking an awesome cooking class, learning a little bit about how to play a taiko drum, and continuing our Japanese classes. This city is super amazing to be in, and I am very glad to be here.
One of the most interesting things that we have done not only in Kyoto but in all of Japan was visiting Nijo Castle. Nijo Castle is a castle that is in the center of Kyoto city and it is a super cool place to visit. I liked it so much because it has amazing scenery with all of the super ornate buildings and plum trees, but also walking around in there is pretty much a history lesson. Nijo Castle used to be the home base for the Tokugawa clan of shogun and samurai. They stayed in this castle from 1603 to 1867, the period when they ruled Japan. In 1867 the 15th shogun of the Tokugawa clan to live in the castle announced that the Tokugawa rule was over, and the castle was given to the emperor, giving him the imperial control. The castle was then given to the city of Kyoto and opened for public viewing in 1940. It was cool walking all through this huge castle and learning about ancient Japan.
Another really neat experience this past week was going to a super cool cooking class. We biked for about an hour and met our teacher at a train station and walked with her and two other people over to her apartment where we would take our class. We first learned about everything that goes into ramen broth and combined all the ingredients, but the ramen would not be the main part of this class. We spent the rest of our three hours learning how to make gyoza. Gyoza is a Japanese dumpling made from flour, water, all sorts of vegetables, and a little bit of meat. After chopping up cabbage, spring onion, and chives we combined that with some pork and let it sit. We then had to mix the flour and water to make the skins for the dumplings. After mixing the two ingredients thoroughly, we shaped them into small circles, put our vegetable and meat mixture inside, folded them up, and fried them. We ate them with the ramen and had a delicious meal! It is really neat to have now done a cooking class in both Japan and Mexico and I still can’t decide which class I liked more!
One last major activity this week was learning how to play a taiko drum. Taiko is a type of Japanese music that almost always includes a sometimes large, sometimes small drum called a taiko drum. Many groups are now using many different kinds of drums so that they can make more versatile sounds. We arrived at this building and we were taken upstairs into a double-doored, very insulated room. We were taught how to hold the sticks (close to but not at the bottom) and a couple of rhythms to learn how to play. We were eventually taught an entire song, and we got to play it all, which was super fun. Taiko drumming is something that I had never heard of before coming to Japan, but now I know what it is and think that it is a super fascinating part of Japanese culture.
Toby, Mom, and I have all continued to take our Japanese classes, and I enjoy learning more about the language and culture of this country that I still feel like I know very little about. We are now in our final week in Kyoto and we are trying to pack in everything that we can. We will all miss this city very much; it has been so amazing staying here and doing everything that we have done. Despite all of that, we are excited to continue our journey around the world!
