Nov. 14th

The last two days Braden and I have learned alot. We learned how iron used to be made, and how tofu is currently made! We went on a field trip with 9 other International Students to Unnan City, famous for its Tatara Iron Forge museum. On Friday we went to the forge and watched as workers heated it up and filled it with iron-rich sand and charcoal. We slept in cozy little cabins that night. The girls shared one cabin and the boys shared another. I didn't have Braden with me to keep me warm :P (Thankfully the cabins had heaters). The next morning we went back to the forge and they used a crane to lift the forge off of the fire, and then they used rakes and shovels to move away all the hot coals and reveal the large, rough lump of iron left behind. It was pretty cool. One of the ladies there told us that this forge is one of the few old forges left in Japan, and that Hayao Miyazaki and his team of animators came here to make sketches and gather reference material for the movie Princess Mononoke. The Iron Town in the movie is apparently based on the historic town of Yoshida, which also used to be an Iron Town, but is now a museum in Unnan. This lady also told us that, back then, the forge still had the old bellows that were man-powered. But when they decided to actually start holding iron-making demonstrations they replaced the man-powered bellows with mechanical ones, and they installed a large fan and ventilation system where the chimney used to be (all for safety reasons I'm sure). After leaving the forge, we went to a kitchen where tofu was made and made our own tofu. It was delicious :). First we used a grinder to grind up the beans, then we put the resulting paste into a big huge pot of bowling water. We boiled it for a bit, then scooped the mixture into a bag that caught the big chunks and let the liquid soy milk through. Then we added something to the soy milk to make parts of it solidify. Next we scooped it into a small crate that had some cheesecloth like fabric in it. The water all came out through the cloth and the solid bits of tofu stayed behind and stuck to eachother in a big block. Then the tofu was removed from the crate and put into a large sink of water where it was cut, then put into plastic containers. Then we ate a big delicious lunch, which included tofu of course :). We even got to take some tofu home with us. Braden and I ate some for dinner last night, and we'll probably eat the rest tonight. Anyway, it was lots of fun, even though I had a nagging cough for a lot of it. I sucked on cough drops almost constantly during the whole trip cause I didn't bring any masks and I didn't want my coughing to bother anyone :P. I'm getting pretty sick of cough drops though. I really want to buy some peppermints now and suck on them for a change.