Day 212 - 30th of March

11:41pm　セミナーハウス

天気：晴れ

The weather has somewhat improved (it was actually sunny all day), but I have been informed by Hugo that the rest of the week will be rainy; wonderful. Today was filled with lots of interesting though… In Speaking, we started off watching a few interesting videos, and then introduced us to another song さくら (Sakura), a vocal solo sung by Moriyama Naotoro; you wouldn’t believe just how many songs go by the name, sakura. Sensei showed us one website that came up with 50 pages of songs containing sakura in the name, many of which were named simply sakura. This “version” (although that’s probably not the right word) of sakura was very simple but beautiful; accompanied by just the piano. The male singer had an amazing vocal range, and sung very high in parts; it’s a song that I’m certainly going to try to tackle if I find it at karaoke. After that, we got stuck into chapter 7; here we go again. In my break, I sat with Rachel, Sarah, and Katie, and did my homework, before reading some more of Reborn; it’s getting really good. Soon enough, it was time to go to Religion, and today we learnt about 天理教 (Tenrikyo), which is a new religion that was founded by a woman in the early 19^th century; it’s pretty far out.

We’ll be going on a field trip on Saturday (after much deliberation, the class final decided on that day), to the headquarters of Tenri in Nara, which I’m really looking forward too; I might make it a day trip. After class, a few other students and I stayed back to hear from two members of Soka Gakkai; they are both over here on exchange from America. When they arrived, we had just got into the biscuits the professor had generously provided for us; they were so yummy. It was really interesting to hear about Soka Gakkai straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak. The two girls, Crystal and Kim, had been born into Soka Gakkai families, and while Kim was an avid practitioner, Crystal did not identify herself as strongly with the religion; so there was an interesting contrast there too. They were very informative, not only justifying what the professor had told us about Soka Gakkai in class, but also broadening our understanding of the religion, and telling us their personal stories; they even taught the professor a thing or two. She was most surprised when they revealed the Soka Gakkai colours to be blue, yellow, and red; she hadn’t known they had a flag. This reminded me once again of my trip for years ago, and when I went to the Soka Gakkai school. In fact, they gave as all pins depicting a flag bearing those colours. At the time, I had just thought it was just the school colours, not realising the magnitude of their importance; so I was really surprised too.

That lasted for a little over an hour, so I ended up getting home at about 4, at which point I had lunch. At around 6:30, I spoke with my family over skype for about an hour and a half. In that time, I was able to book the hostel Carly and I will be staying at in Tokyo, so I was really happy about that; now we just have to plan it. After that, It was definitely time to eat, so I went up to the kitchen and heated up my leftover yakisoba; too easy. At 9, I had to leave the conversation, and go clean the kitchen. Although it was technically our week last week, since no one was really here, there was no formal cleaning duty. Everyone showed up tonight though, so everything got done in no time. Then I was able to interview Natchan about her religious views. I’m happy enough with the findings, although I probably should have asked a few more questions, and teased out more of the ones I did ask; oh well. I came back down here at 9:30, and spent the rest of the night writing up the interview since it was fresh in my mind. I’m almost finished; just have to make some of my own comments, and sum it up…