The scalp

Coming to Kaisai Gaidai, one of the things that impressed me so much is that we can take courses about traditional Japanese arts culture. Not only learning it from the book but experience it by our hands. There are ceramic and sumie(Japanese style painting) courses offered to exchange student. By really participate in it, we can also learn about the cultures and attitude of Japan which was integrated with the arts activities. Now I choose ceramic to introduce the Japanese culture hide inside it.

One of the characteristic of ceramic was concentration. Walking in the ceramic lab, it is very funny that you probably can only see the scalps of students and our teacher in a very quite environment.

No one speaking and everyone are only focusing on their work. Ceramic is a difficult work. There are many steps for making a bowl. And every step can be messed up easily. For example, in this picture, I made a hole on the bottom of the bowl.

From the beginning of this class until now, I think I have been broken more than 20 pieces. And the number will increase, I believed. You can frequently hear the screaming from students, or from me that we have spent 5 hours for one bowl but in the last step, we break it. “Ah~~~~~~~~~~!!!!!!!” “I know that sound. Don’t mind. ” We know the feeling of destroying our own pieces which we have put great effort on it. In order not to make any mistake, we are focusing. Everyone looks like having mental sickness. Every little thing can make them nervous.

Japanese arts need great concentration. All the exchange students are experiencing this environment by participating in it. It is a awesome experience for us.