After taking my time with breakfast, I headed to school, despite the rain, to meet up with Nate and learn some programming. Yes, I am learning programming. Yes, it is extremely fun and rewarding. Yes, I feel like I owe Nate something huge because he's patiently teaching me stuff. So far, I made some colorful circles and stuff. It's amazing how something that looks so simple can give one such a sense of accomplishment. I know I was just doing some super basic stuff, but still! It felt awesome. I can't wait until my brain can actually get a full grasp on the basic concepts so that I can cram more programming-related stuff in there.
Since I had free time today, of course I went to the arcade as well. For the first time, I did not play BlazBlue, but I decided to try out another game instead. I settled down with Arcana Heart, which is another fighting game with nice aesthetics. It was fun, but I had no idea what I was doing. I still have no idea what I was doing. I'm going to look up the basic gameplay right after writing this entry, and maybe my arcade experience will make a bit more sense. I know the game involved some characters and some elemental monsters. That's about all I could glean from playing.
Both my host mom and host brother, Miwa and Hiro, respectively, do tea ceremony (sado), one of Japan's well-known tradition arts. They have lessons every Wednesday, but since their schedules are different, they usually go at different times. Usually Miwa goes in the early afternoon, and Hiro goes in the evening, after school. Lesson times are open anytime between 10am-5pm, I think. However, because of the typhoon, Hiro's school got canceled as well, and he and Miwa were able to go at the same time. Since my classes had been canceled and I had a pretty free afternoon, they invited me to go along with them and watch their sado lesson.
I was with Nate at the time, so we both went to watch. I was nervous about inadvertently being extremely rude, so I was glad someone else was there to be nervous as well. Hiro went through his lesson first, and it was interesting to watch someone who's usually so energetic and bubbly perform a quiet and deliberate ritual. He's been taking lessons for three years now, and he seemed very comfortable with the whole process. I was amazed, however, because even after three years, he still got corrected plenty by the teacher. I never thought that where you place your feet on the floor or hands on the water pot could be such a crucial thing.
Speaking of the teacher, he is ninety-five years old and extremely healthy. I think such a meditative ritual as tea ceremony must do worlds for one's mental clarity. Unfortunately, I could barely understand him when he talked to me because he spoke with a pretty extreme Kyoto dialect. I'm also not particularly skilled with Japanese, so that might have been it too... Anyway, Nate and I had to leave after Hiro's lesson because we had plans, and I felt bad that I was missing Miwa's turn. However, she said it worked out fine because she gets nervous easily while Hiro doesn't. It was better that we watched Hiro go through his lesson smoothly, and since we were leaving, Miwa said she could relax a bit. I think she was just being polite, but I really did feel a little less bad about leaving. I was definitely glad I went to witness the lesson though. All in all, the tea was delicious, the sweets that accompanied the tea were delicious, and the experience was quite enjoyable.
Afterwards, we met up with Adam, who had been doing nothing at home all day, and we just walked around the city for a while. We returned to the arcade for a short bit, and I watched Nate and Adam partner through a fun-looking taiko (Japanese drum) game. We returned to our respective houses after that. I ate dinner. Now I'm here. Yay! Typhoons are awesome.
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