And not to forget our first Diwali in Japan!
I had been excited the first part of the week - because Diwali was coming near - and I love the festival! (Can one love a festival?) At first I was a bit dejected though - because, this is the first Diwali I will be spending away from my family. To think of crackers, my little nephew who would be visiting this weekend and all the other lovely things that come along with this festive occasion made me almost cry. It would be one quiet day, just like the others, meanwhile for me in Japan - while almost all of India would be celebrating with gay abandon one of the most joyous festivals in our history.
I decided that it would not be so for me. I would make it a beautiful occasion to remember - how? I didn't know that - because we missed out picking up crackers during Hanabi. Thilak and I would pass over the cracker section during then thinking of our budgets or that we would pick them up later - but it never happened - one fine day, we couldn't find crackers - no matter how hard we looked.
I could always light candles - and having 100 yen shops to buy some colourful candles was a plus. We discovered this store - a franchise of the Japan Agriculture Bank where they sold flowers very cheap - unlike the ones at Meglia or JUSCO. So I could use loads of flowers. What about the yummy delicacies that come along with each Diwali? I did some research about that online (and offline - with Mom :-)) and I discovered that if I had the right ingredients, I could make most of the sweets and kara stuff I so much wanted to enjoy.
Thanks to Mr. Shiyam Singh from whose Osaka store we pick up our kitchen's basic essentials from regularly, we had whatever we needed. Thilak and I spent the entire night before Diwali making halwa, burfi, chatpats, paniyaram and vadais. It was a proper feast!
On the day of Diwali, we shared the sweets with our neighbours, Motoko saan and Wang saan who have been very kind to me all these days. Some of the sweets also found their way to the staff of Indian Kitchen - an Indian restaurant where Thilak and I enjoy our monthly North Indian fares of kulchas and paneer butter masalas. We thought they would find it nice that fellow Indians remembered them. And of course, Milind and Dipali - a couple from Mumbai with whom we are friendly - our nearest Indian neighbours, too got a boxful.
We decorated the house with candles and flowers till it looked like a proper Indian festive home. We had an exciting time earlier this week shopping for Diwali clothes. It's tougher for me to find clothes that suit me than for Thilak due to the fact that Japanese women are very slender and small compared to Indian women. While in India, I would almost not be called plump. Here, I just cant find clothes that fit me :-). I'm too plump for all of them! We got a nice set for Thilak and were debating if I could really find appropriate clothes when we thought of going to a half Indian, half Nepali store called Silk Road at Matsuzakaya - it stocks up Indian like outfits as well. (one amazing thing about Toyota Shi is that we have plenty of shops to look for desi stuff). We were lucky to pick up this cute blue skirt which went well with a blue top I had picked up earlier. So I had new clothes for Diwali this time - thank God!
Our neighbours were happy to get the sweets (I am yet to receive comments on what they tasted like). And I almost forgot the main part - Thilak picked up a small aeroplane model for me. It looks, is and flies awesome. It is remote controlled and can stay up for as long as 8 minutes in the air. We are planning to test it soon - the Toyota Stadium is 15 minute walk from home - and they have lovely playing grounds where we can test fly our little plane on a day when there is less wind. Thilak knew I always wanted to be a pilot - so he thought of the plane as a small way to make part of my dream come true. Sweet,ne!
He also bought Othello - which happens to be our current favourite board game. The game itself is simple to learn. Playing it is a whole new ball game - where one has to be quite careful of the moves they make and also have a tab on the situation. We enjoyed it immensely when Motoko saan and Kanako chan played it with us - having the game at home now means, I can play it whenever I want :-). Thilak often finds me engrossed in a game where I simply pit white against black all by myself.
My Japanese learning this week has suffered seriously - from Sunday, all I thought about was Diwali, recipes and preparations. Tomorrow again will find me taking a trip to Nagoya. The only time I spent on Japanese was during my weekly lesson at the Toyota Shi International Association.
Our class is the lowest grade and we learn the basics. I like this class a lot - mostly, because I meet other English speaking women at the class who are like me without friends in this country. Also, the group is a lively one - Pathama saan from Thailand, Jing saan from Korea, Ady saan from Phillipines (Romblon), Nyu Ten Ten saan from China, Chigdem from Turkey, Gilbert and Michiko saan from Brazil - they are a jolly lot who enjoy learning and making mistakes equally. Kato saan, Ishigawa saan and Nakunaga saan currently handle our group - and they are patient, cheerful ladies with sunny smiles who seem to enjoy teaching us.
This week, we had Miku chan, Kei chan, Genki kun (sensible first name if you ask me - someone asks the little boy, 'O namae wa? O genki deska?' He will have the same answer to both - 'Genki desu.' :-)) and Yuki kun to interview us. We were to practise our little Japanese skills on them. We even played the card game where we have to identify and grab the card with a letter from the alphabet on it. I was grouped with Hyashi saan (Brazilian), Kei saan and Nyu Ten Ten saan. Nyu Ten Ten saan won hands down (literally) - she was so fast, the other 3 of us just kept repeating 'Ten Ten saan, hyaayi ne!'.
I actually made friends with her - in India, I would have thought twice about making friends with Chinese - especially when we don't understand each other. Or even Japanese for that matter , actually! (LOL!!) I made friends with her by conversing with her in Japanese - that's what was special for me. I also learnt some Chinese from her. For 'Sugoi ne!' you can say 'Li bung chi!'. Tell 'Hello' to someone in Chinese with 'Ni hou!'. Or stump someone with 'Shishe' - Chinese for 'Arigato'. Cool, eh? I thought she was really sweet anyway.
The interview was swell - the children asked us all sorts of questions. Like what surprised us in Japan - 'jishin' won hands down. 'Jishin' (as was explained to the uninitiated like me) is Japanese for earthquake. An Indian ex-colleague who was in Higashimatsuyama for sometime was a bit rattled to experience the tremors. There have been at least a couple of times where I have been startled to find the floor moving under me.
Another Indian friend on orkut once reported that when he was in office, and the tremors rocked his office building, he stood up to see what his Japanese colleagues would do (in order to determine how serious the situation was and if he should run out if it was bad ;-)).He found all the Japanese people also standing up and staring at him curiously. Puzzled and a bit embarrassed, the guy thought they would make fun of him later if he showed his nervousness, he sat back down at his seat. All the people around him also returned to their seats. Later that day, when all of them were talking about the earthquake, he praised the Japanese for their calm and poise during the tremors. That's when he got to know that when they had all seen him go back to his work (apparently) without any fear, they decided to not leave their seats as they would have normally done, given the circumstances! (I found this story quite funny, really!).
The children asked us if learning Japanese was difficult - they got a unanimous 'Yes!' in different languages to boot for that! It was fun, this week's class.
And of course - to finish this post - we went to a soccer match at the Toyota Stadium today with Satish. Satish is a friend of Thilak who visits home once in a while. We got free tickets to go to the Nagoya Grampus 8 vs. Jubilo Iwata match today. It was really a pretty good excuse to go inside a Japanese football stadium and get a feel of a Japanese soccer game (I learnt the basics of the game in a half hour tutorial last night from Thilak). I enjoyed it immensely.
For the first time, I heard Japanese crowds making a racket (high time I did!) and generally enjoying themselves. I was rooting for the Nagoya Reds - who did have a good defense and were more aggressive than the Shizouka team. Both teams are professional soccer teams and probably this match was part of some league series I guess. The stadium also happens to be the home ground of the Nagoya team. Thilak also told me that the goal keeper for Jubilo Iwata, Kawaguchi saan, happens to be the goal keeper for the Japanese national team (he played quite well actually). T
his was my second football match ever - and I enjoyed the thrill of watching and waiting for 2 teams to score goals. Neither team did - which was a little disappointing. But the grandeur of the stadium, the roaring crowds, the team chants, waving flags and the thrill of being in a football stadium was amazing - an experience to remember overall :-)!
No comments:
Post a Comment