Following the Old Track - Part2

 As I mentioned in part1, I also took some classes for cosmetics. I learned to make perfume and some make-up items. I made my sister some cream that had medical effect on her skin trouble. It was a lot of fun to learn. Many people might think herbs are boring and making things with herbs is quite difficult, but it’s not difficult at all. Even making soaps and candles are pretty easy, which I enjoyed the most. I used to make soaps for the different types of skin with dried herbs as lavender, chamomile and rosemary. Maybe making candles sounds a bit different from aromatherapy, but I really liked it. My favorite part was making cake candles that look just like real cakes. We actually used real baking tools for making them, and I whipped melted paraffin wax to make it look like whipped cream. Doesn’t it sound interesting? Some people couldn’t really notice that they were actually candles when they saw them for the first time. Those were good special gifts. Also it’s a great chance that you can bring your creativity and improve your hand-making skills.

These two cake candles were made with paraffin wax and jelly wax(type of candle) only except the wicks.

To make the chocolate syrup of the top one, I mixed up the 2 types of waxs. 

This is the progress of making soaps.

There are rose, lavender, chamomile and rosemary soaps.

Sometimes I gave the things I made to my friends and family as gifts.

The best thing of homemade soaps is that you can change the oils

for a specific type of skin when you make them.

 As the last experience of my ex-college life, I’d like to talk about volunteering. As I mentioned at first, those classes were based on the therapy through medical care with aroma oils. Massaging, even smelling the fragrance essential oils help people with its medical power. I was interested in volunteering, so I used to go to a hospice ward to take care of the patients. It wasn’t easy to take care of the people who were facing their death. Basically I gave them relaxing massage since they had trouble sleeping all the time. Most of the patients had a common symptom like swollen hands and legs (as edema), so I tried to make them calm with lavender oil massage. Many patients talked to me during the therapy sessions, some of my patients told me they could sleep better and relax. It was very hard for me that I couldn’t see them few weeks later, but I felt like I learned more than aromatherapy. I can tell it was a good experience.

 I’m still not sure if many people think aromatherapy is an interesting topic to talk about, but I hope more people will become more interested in aromatherapy and enjoy those activities. As my experience, this is about therapy, herbs, massaging, making cosmetics and soaps, even candles. You might find at least one of them sounds pretty fun to learn for you.

Following the Old Track - Part1

 Today, I’d like to write about one of my past experiences to take a break. A few of the bloggers here might know that I’m from Korea. When I was in Korea before I came to Japan, I had just finished my two-year-course college. I specialized in Aromatherapy, and it’s the topic that I like to talk about. It might be too long and you’d get sick of reading it, so I’m going to separate this posting into 2 parts. Part 1 is basically about the background of my major and herb growing class, and the part 2 is about making cosmetics/soaps/candles classes and volunteering.

First of all, now I can tell you that I’m really interested in aromatherapy, but at first I didn’t want to choose the major because I was not interested in herbs or aromatherapy at all. For a specific reason, I couldn’t enter an art university where I wanted to go and I needed to make a choice that time. After I started learning it at school, my mind had changed. Anyway, the thing that made me interested in was the classes for making things with aroma oils and herbs. I found the mystery of plants, for example, the healing power of herbs and the beauty of nature during the course.

Lavender is the most useful herb in Aromatherapy especially for relaxing.

Since its essential oil is safer than other oils to use, children can have treatment with lavender oil.

Only about over 100 students were in my major. I think it was because not many people in Korea know about aromatherapy, and it might be hard to find that kind of study especially at University. The popularity for students was pretty low, but I found a lot of interesting classes. They were basically about chemistry that can be separated into essential oils and medical science. I didn’t really like the course of medical science for some reason except the massage class, but the herb classes were very interesting.

 In the campus of my ex-college, there was a small herb farm, and I took the herb growing class there. I had a very good time, and I found out that I’m a talented farmer. It was a joy that taking some of my lavenders and make dried herbs for my place, but my favorite herb was rosemary. I loved the smell and taking care of it, so I made a small rosemary garden which was the most beautiful part of the farm (in my opinion). I also used the rosemary that I grew for cooking, especially with meat dishes. If you want to remove the smell of fish or pork, you should add some fresh rosemary in it. Well, but it’s not only rosemary that makes a big difference in your cooking life. There are various herbs that you can use for food. Herbs are useful to add flavor too.

The upper left corner of the herb farm in my ex-college.

There were 3 parts of 'Rosemary Garden' (it's still growing).

 In the part 2, you’ll see different activities as making soaps and candles in class.

Where do you go for lunch today?

 Food is a common interest for everyone. Considering a menu for a meal might take over 10minutes to be decided for some people, or it might take less than 1minute for some people. In my case, it's absolutely not easy especially when I need to cook which is fine because I can have plenty of time to decide. Unfortunately, the most of students do not have enough time to concern about the menu on lunch time at school. Sometimes, even the cafeterias get too crowd to get in for many students, and that's why I usually eat Yamazaki bread for lunch at school which is too bad.

 If you're in a hurry on lunch break it might be not a good idea, but for someone who wants to have a "real lunch" or a "BIG lunch", or maybe like a "lunch set" with a cup of coffee/juice/tea and dessert, I recommend this restaurant, Crayon.

 

It shows the interior of Crayon, you can just relax and read the comic books they have.

 

I heard that sometimes some professors and students come and have a meal together on this 2^nd floor.

 Crayon is a family restaurant that is placed right in front of TIU. Mr.Watanabe and his wife opened Crayon 33years ago, and since that it became a famous restaurant for a Jumbo Katsu Curry. Jumbo Katsu Curry is a combination of huge Japanese fried meet and Curry. There are many people who are coming for this great volume of the menu. It’s especially popular for men, and Karaage set(fried chicken) for women.  The food takes about 10minutes to 15minutes to be served. If you consider the time of waiting for your turn to order, you can try to go to Crayon for lunch.

Chicken Jumbo Katsu is also popular. As you can see, it is huge.

 Mrs.Watanabe who is always in the kitchen said that they do not use any frozen food as vegetables and every type of meat they use for menu. Even the coffee jelly that she gave to me after lunch was homemade. Also, as I mentioned earlier, they’re offering lunch sets from 11am to 3pm. There are 3 different seasonal types of lunch, and including drinks for 500yen.

  In my opinion, the most interesting part about Crayon is the owners, Mr. and Mrs.Watanabe. They’re very friendly and even take care of students like their grandchildren. When I went to get lunch with my sister, they talked to us about Korea and it made me feel very comfortable just like when I’m with my family. I found out that traveling is their greatest hobby. They have been a lot of foreign countries and still, they’re planning for a trip abroad around the Gulf of Mexico by ship this summer on TIU’s summer break. “All the decorations inside and outside of Crayon are from the trips they went”, Mrs.Watanabe said.

Mr. and Mrs.Watanabe

These are the tennis racket they got in New York.

The big red flower’s petals actually can be separated from each other! The marionette hanging from the ceiling is from Las Vegas.

 I could only ask them a few questions, but if you want to know about more than I’d gotten, you should talk to them since it seems like they have a lot of fun stories from all over the world. So don’t hesitate to go grab some lunch at Crayon with your friend or even alone, look around and if you find any interesting thing inside just talk to them. They’ll give you more than a delicious lunch.

Not only for your study but experience.

 How would you say if someone asked you what is the most important facility in a campus to you? Some students might say, a great lecture hall that has good technology resources is the most important facility. It is true that is very important to have a good class environment, but as students who are going to take an academic education in college, where is the place that they can learn from something that is not included their class? How about, if you need information about something, where do you go in your campus? Some students would say computer room, but even though it’s easy to find information to use an internet website, it only shows you about what you type on it. Some students may have already noticed, that there’s no end of information at a Library.

 TIU library that is named Taizo Kaneko Memorial Library in 1st campus, presents a valuable experience to students who are looking forward to having new interests of various topics. It’s not only about literature or information as knowledge in your brain. “It houses more than 300,000 volumes of Japanese and foreign texts, as well as more than 2,400 titles of Japanese and foreign academic magazines and newspaper articles”, TIU website says. The students can also search books and audio/video material on the PCs at the library, and they can make a request for 2nd campus to bring you some specific material they have. It means there is much more than we can see in 1st campus that is available for us.

  It's the first section that you can see right after you get in the library. It shows the recent subject as you can see the books in this picture, those books are related to the nuclear power plant, radiation and earthquake.

 This is my favorite section for magazines. It's usually not easy to have a chance to read National Geographic Magazines to me. Even though these are a bit difficult to understand sometimes, I believe it's good to take a look at least!

 Students can also use the AV library anytime if they want to watch a movie or listen to music. The posters on the wall shows some interesting movies so you'd better give attention to this if you couldn't find out what you want to watch.

 You can make a request if the AV library doesn't have something you want. It's possible to watch DVDs in a video room that has a big screan, with your friends when you want to share it or discuss about it.