And the most unique part of the meal was eating candied grasshoppers! They actually tasted nice--crunchy and quite sweet.
I went to a kabuki performance, which is a type of traditional Japanese play. The musical accompaniment for that play was three instruments: the shamisen, a three-stringed banjo; the kokyu, the three-stringed bowed instrument that I am learning; and a shakuhachi, or a bamboo flute. The play was amazing and told the stories of triplet samurais who loved each other very much but served different kings who were at war with each other.
The activity that was the most fun this week was visiting the Yasaka Shrine at midnight on December 31 to welcome the New Year. Over a thousand people were waiting in line to pray at the temple in the new year. Since I was not going to pray, I could skip the line and enter the temple complex. There were many food stalls, people buying good luck charms, people writing their wishes for the future and burning them to send the messages to the gods, etc.
I have recently been very interested in famous and inspirational people, and how they became that way. Therefore, I have been reading autobiographies, to learn their stories from their own mouths. This week, I have been reading Michelle Obama's autobiography, Becoming. It is really inspirational to learn about how she went from a poor neighborhood in Chicago to becoming an accomplished lawyer and the First Lady of the United States!
