Girl about town

Today I went with Mirabelle's aunt to two exhibitions. The first was a 'hana matsuri', or in other words, a flower show. The flowers on show were in one hired room in a shrine, and designed according to ikebana: a Japanese style of flower arranging. I have studied this in a miniscule way and so could recognise the traditional style ones and learned that in the 'freestyle' form, the way I had learned wasn't used. Some of them were breathtaking; they made me happy :-) We were treated very well too, by the kimono-clad ladies on the front desk, (friends of the aunt), and had to sign our names with a paint brush into a rather posh visitors book.

Next we went to an art exhibition in Sanjo, of a neighbour of the aunt. In fact he is a Buddhist priest. He had his (black, with dashes of colour) pictures on display and his self-composed music playing. We enjoyed hanging out with his wife and drinking more matcha. We then went for a nice lunch, looked in some shops (when I was eyeing up wedding rings!), and then got a taxi home. I then fell asleep in her house as her daughter also lay on the floor watching another little girl (cousin) as she played. I felt both privileged to be in such company and also fairly natural after now 2 years of being here.