"I'll Try and Forget Something Cumbersome"

Yet another Wednesday doing Wednesdayish things. More chocolates in class, though these were given as prizes for winning the Concentration-esque game (matching the picture with the kanji).

In Seb's lesson we looked at the Muromachi period. During this time Japan took off, in terms of the arts, breaking away from copying the Chinese style and developing its own. This included Noh plays and the "peak" of the Tea Ceremony. Unfortunately, this all came to an end when the Onin War begun: two rival factions battled in Kyoto. Since Kyoto was mainly wooded, it was totally burned and destroyed and some of the periods best books and art was lost. The Shogun at the time, however, didn't do anything: he just sat about drinking tea and planning the Silver Pavillion to rival his grandfather's Golden Pavillion.

Linden Hall this afternoon teaching the 1st years with Flick. We played a few games with them: the first involved them memorising 12 animal cards and then saying which ones have been removed. The next was harder (since they won't sit still): everyone was given a card which they placed on their heads. They then had to guess which card they had (without looking). This segued into 20 questions for those who couldn't work out what they were. Poor Momoko at one point had the whole class in her face making "moo" noises, but still didn't say cow. Afterwards she just casually said: "I knew it in Japanese, but not in English". We ended with a few rounds of hangman, with Louis spelling hexagon as "hekagon". Close enough!

By the way, the quote is from an email to Binks from one of her students.