Harry Potter and the Deathly Tako

And I'm back!

This weekend was a very fun filled weekend. Full of movies, frisbee, and takos.

Saturday I went to play frisbee with my friends, Mal, Emily, Eric, and Kimu. We went to a park in Odori where we just passed the frisbee back and forth to each other. Kimu is the sensei of the group so he was teaching us all different kinds of moves. It took me a while, but I finally got one of them down. Frisbee was a lot of fun, but we were all beat afterwards. Pictures: Left (Mal and Kimu) Right (Eric, Emily, and Mal).

After frisbee we all went to get a small lunch and then met up with Euna, Bethany and Yumoa at the movie theater. We also ran into our friend, Ayami, surprisingly. She was working at her part-time job when we went to see the movie. Once everyone was accounted for it was off to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. We saw it in IMAX so it was slightly expensive, but it was definitely worth it. The movie was great. It followed the books pretty truthfully and was easy to follow. Unfortunately it was only Part 1 and I have to wait until the summer before I can go see part 2.

After the movie a lot of us then went to do Purikura. Purikura is basically a photo booth. However in Japan you try to fit as many people in it as you can and you take pictures in front of a green screen where the background can change. Once you have taken your pictures you can then decorate them with different pictures or write things. They are pretty neat and very popular here in Japan. Once they are done they tend to look something like this:

After purikura, yes we did a lot today, Eric, Emily, Mal and I went to a soup curry restaurant for dinner. The soup curry was pretty good and really spicy. Then we went to find the big Christmas Tree in the building. The tree was decorated and the lights would change colors depending on the song that was playing, it was pretty neat. Not many Japanese celebrate Christmas as a holiday, but they definitely get into the Christmas spirit.

Well that is all for Saturday. On Sunday Mal and Euna came over to my host family's house. My Otoosan loves to cook so he made us all Ramen. It was really good and he really enjoyed making it for us and taking to us while we ate. Okaasan and Daisuke also ate with us. Unfortunately we didn't get to see Otoosan make the ramen, hopefully we will be able to learn how to properly make it another time.

After lunch it was time to make tako, kites in Japanese. First you take four long wooden sticks and tie them together to make a rectangle. Then you take two more sticks and tie them in diagonally followed by one more through the middle. Once you have them all tied together they should look something like this or hopefully better:

They you need to design the paper for your kite. Daisuke helped me come up with the kanji for my name. So I used my calligraphy skills to paint my kanji name onto the kite and then further decorate it with colorful lines. Beautiful. Mal and Euna were very artistic and drew neat pictures on theirs. Theirs turned out really well. Once you are done decorating your paper you then glue it over the stick frame. Then it is time to add more string so you can control the kite in the air and then you add some newspaper tails. They should hopefully turn out like this in the end:

Once we were done making our kites, it was time to take them on a test drive. That is a lot harder that it sounds. We went to a nearby park and tried to fly them, but none of us could keep them in the air for very long. They would always come spiraling down and crash. We were all attacked numerous time by our out-of-control takos. So eventually we gave up. But we had a lot of fun trying to get them to work.

So we went back to my house and enjoyed some roll cake, cake rolled up with cream in the middle, and tea. Then it was time for homework.


Well that is all for this weekend. Tomorrow it is back to school, but on Tuesday it is a holiday so it is off to Otaru for the day!! I am really looking forward to this and I am sure I will have a lot to blog about when I get back.

Stephen