A morning adventure

Snow on Iwate yesterday morning- I forgot to post this earlier!

Andy and I had a few errands to run this morning. We’re trying to get a little Christmas shopping done before we leave and I really want a sakiori weaving tool that is much, much cheaper to buy in Japan. We biked over to the weaving studio a few km away to order the tool I want. After leaving the weaving studio, we stopped by a couple of the nambu tetsu (ironware) studios in town. Morioka has been famous for its ironware for centuries. An iron artist’s husband pointed us to a nambu tetsu exhibit going on at the Morioka Central Community Hall, so we biked back up to Route 4 (where we started) to see the exhibit. When we got there we discovered a beautiful garden outside the community hall. It’s quite close to our apartment and simply lovely! We saw the ironware exhibit, then stopped by the Baeren Brewery for some beer tasting on the way home, and then headed to our neighborhood ramen shop for lunch. It might be drizzling and cold out, but it was a fun morning adventure!

Nambu tetsu! This artist actually spent a semester teaching metalwork at Earlham

Nambu tetsu at the exhibit

 

Meanwhile…The FIK kids were pretty excited about Goiaty visiting school this morning. Apparently Catie couldn’t keep her eyes or hands off him. This complicated the TV station’s attempts to film the class with Goiaty behind them. Oh well!

We were told that the kids will be on TV 2 times a day for 2 weeks beginning Nov 25^th. After a little research, Goiaty appears to be the mascot for the Iwate Asahi TV station. Here’s a little video showing what he looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyT5k3G2WR4