Last days in Kyoto - Fushimi Inari

Another update from Japan :D I've had a lot of time right now so I'm posting two days in a row! Today its been terribly raining all day, so it was hard to motivate myself to get out of the hostel. I went and checked out the downtown, but I'm still a bit tired and theres the terrible rain and yeah, I didn't feel like wandering around in the rain for long. But I know the city is beautiful when the sun comes out! So... I'm waiting! :D

And tomorrow I finally move into my dorm! Once I finally have a place to live and am all set up I'll feel a lot more comfortable roaming around the city :D

So, since there isn't a whole lot of interesting stuff to report from today (seeing as my trip to downtown consisted of withdrawing money for moving in tomorrow, getting passport pictures taken for my foreigner registration card [in Japan you just go to a photobooth, except its a passport photobooth! Its amazing! Literally takes one minute!!!], went and talked to someone at the cellphone store [thinking about getting an I-phone since they have ridiculous deals on them right now... but not sure!], and then ate an amazingly amazinly tasty waffle... seriously,, best waffle of my life) so I'm going to talk about what I did on my last day in Kyoto!

[UPDATE: Since I started writing this blog, 2 other Kobe University Study Abroad students have come to the hostel I am staying in. There was already one here, so that means there is a total of FOUR Kobe University Study Abroad students staying here. And EVEN MORE COINCIDENTAL is that the one who JUST MOVED INTO MY ROOM is the other UW student also going to Kobe. This is just weird. Hahahaha the other Kobe students were smart and showed up TODAY and not two weeks ago like me :P Although I think I have an advantage over them now ;D Maybe? Not that it matters!]

Seeing as I had been in Kyoto for 5 days and the only sightseeing I had participated in was going to KitanoTenmangu Shrine, I figured I better see at least ONE more famous sight. And thinking back to my previous trip to Kyoto, and what was easy to access from my hostel, I decided to go to... Fushimi Inari!

Fushimi Inari is a good example of why Kyoto is a crazy place. From the main station of Kyoto, it takes at most 20 minutes and less than 2 dollars to access, without entrance fees, one of the most beautiful and mysterious places in Japan. Well, at least from what I've seen I give it that designation! :D But seriously, Fushimi Inari is an entire mountain covered in shrine. Its not just like a shrine on top of a mountain, it is an entire mountain covered in shrines. You could spend all day walking all over the mountain, wandering through the forest and exploring all the little shrines. You've all seen pictures of it, its famous for the massive numbers of orange torii gates, which end up forming tunnels there are so many of them stuck together.

That gate way up there (its quite a hike to the top I must say) is a torii gate. There are so many of them that:

It looks like this in places. (Both of these pictures are from when I went last year and therefore look sunny and bright, also surprising how much of a difference there is between pictures from the digital megazoom camera I used last year and the DSLR I use now)

Fushimi Inari is the head shrine of Inari, who is the Shinto god of business, so businesses donate these gates to the shrine, and as a result each one has a businesses name on it (you can't see it in the picture because they are written on the other side).

Unlike last year, when we went on a nice sunny day, this time I went in the RAIN! Yeah!! My last day in Kyoto was raining and looked like a Seattle day (seems like this whole week is Seattle days) but I decided to go anyway, seeing as it was my last day. And, in the end, going in the rain was actually good! I did get pretty wet and all, but the whole place got a totally different feeling in the rain. It wasn't just a crazy shrine mountain covered in twisting paths of shrines and torii gates, it was now a dark, wet, and scary shrine mountain!

I especially got that feeling at the top, where there were several people going to each shrine and praying,,, and,,,, I dont know if it was just their singsong voices or the specific sutras of Fushimi Inari or just that it was a scary rainy day, but it seemed pretty creepy wandering around a place that looks like this:


With the sound of chanting floating through the air. (Remember you can click on the pictures to make them bigger :D , Fushimi Inari is a pretty detailed place ;D)

But either way, it turned out great! Had a good hike, got some good pictures (although I mainly used my film camera so those won't show up for a while!), and got to see the amazing Fushimi Inari for a second time! Once I reached the top it even got sunny for me for a while :D

Wandering around this place though, I realized that ancient Japanese culture is about just as incomprehensible to me as like... going to an Egyptian shrine. Even with what I know about Japan, I have no idea what is written anywhere on the ancient shrines. I have no idea exactly why there are so many little shrines all over the place, or what the piles of mini torii gates are doing everywhere. But, it certainly feels comfortable and wellknown to me as a part of Japan, even though I don't understand it!

Oh and another great thing about Fushimi Inari is that it isn't crawling in tourists. Of course there weren't a lot when I went in the rain, but even when I went last year on a nice day it was pretty empty, especially at the top, the best part. The lower shrines are full of people, but it seems most people, especially foreign tourists, don't bother to climb to the top, instead you just see a lot of old Japanese people. So its a good quiet place to go :)

Picture time!

1300 years of shrine build-up results in this. Its like urban crowding, or being in a shrine grocery store or something.

And then there are areas like this, with wide paths and well separated shrines. Kind of like the upper-class shrine suburbs or something.

One unfortunate part of Fushimi Inari is that places to sit are sadly few. Especially in the rain xD unless you want to go to one of the awesome little mountain top restaurants. I cannot for the life of me figure out how you get store stocks to the top of a shrine-mountain, but they somehow do it .

Oh and another note, that orange is REAL. In the rain camera sensors interpret it really strongly, so I actually turned DOWN the saturation to the realistic level you see here. Its definitely quite the contrast between hundreds of years old stone shrines covered in moss and brightly colored torii gates (which are obviously not hundreds of years old with that color!)

Oh and also in my last few days in Kyoto, I went to a Japanese bar! My nunim Heson works part time at a Japanese bar, called an Izakaya, so I stopped there after her work! This place was super classy though, nothing like the traditional more bar-like izakayas, but it was quite fun! Extremely expensive, but fun! And tasty! And I drank my first alcoholic beverage since I turned 20 (legal drinking age here), omgosh! And while a macha cocktail was certainly tasty... I still think I'll skip on expensive alcohol from now on!!! Apparently usually going to an izakaya with a group of friends costs at minimum 3000 yen (about 33 dollars) per person,,, just for drinks and then you buy food on top of that... soooo yeah, I'm lucky it wasn't that kind of izakaya ;D And they had good food! I had jellyfish salad, a kind of fried potato thing, wasabi chicken (loving wasabi more and more every day :D) chicken... stomach? yeah stomach, and various other things, too many to remember oh no!

Before that I had made gyoza with Mizuho at her apartment though (speaking of which, making gyoza is a very fun and rewarding experience! :D.. not to mention tasty!) so I was really full! Izakaya and making gyoza in the same evening is tough! Lucky I could handle it. Mom and dad, don't you worry, I am eating well :D

And also the day after that (which was the day I went to Fushimi Inari, so going to the izakaya was the day before Fushimi) we had a mini drinking party at Mizuho's! Hahahaha the only reason I'm specifically talking about this is because, if you didn't know already, I never drink, and pretty much hate the flavor of all alcohol, so going to the izakaya and drinking at my friends house were new experiences! But, seeing as I don't like the flavor of alcohol, we brought out the heavy stuff,... Kahlua!! Hahaha.... I certainly like the flavor of that stuff, but I don't quite like the idea of a sweet coffee-like drink that will get you drunk if you drink too much of it.... hmmmm somehow that just seems kind of silly to me!! Seeing as I like my sweet drinks!
Oh but also we bought cream puffs (cream puffs in Japan are a really popular pastry, and soooo tasty), and also Mizuho had found some strange food earlier in the day and had me try it: chocolate korokke (korokke is usually like a fried patty of mashedish potato, but this was a fried patty of... chocolate :O ) along with yakisoba korokke (korokke filled with fried noodles!) and a chikuwa shuumai! (chikuwa is like a fishcake usually in kind of a tube shape, soooo good especially with cheese inserted into it, and shuumai is a chinese dumpling).

Anyway sorry too much food talk !! I'm going to actually go eat dinner now, rice with Wasabi Furikake! (Rice seasoning stuff :D ) Followed up by purin! (Japanese pudding, which is totally different than American pudding strangely, very good stuff :D).

Thanks for reading :D

Good Days in Kyoto part 2

Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto, went there with Mizuho and Junko because there was a giant food festival :D (Oh and also, a note. If you click on the pictures they get bigger, just in case you want to see them in more detail :D Keep forgetting to mention this!)

This kind of stuff. Kind of like the fairs we have in the US I guess. Except, in my 1.5 months I have spent in Japan in my entire life, I have gone to and seen infinitely more of these than fairs. They do these things usually on a monthly or so basis. And all of the food there is amazing and cheap, and often rare and hard to find in other places! Soooo fun :D

I'm a bit far behind on my blogging here because its been so busy in Kyoto, but I already had written up a post on my personal blog so I'm going to post it here too, let everyone see the true blogging of Andrew. I'm going to touch it up a bit, but even sooo.... I wrote this at 1 in the morning after a crazy long and tiring day ;D

(Posted September 27th)
Ahhhhhh happy happy happy :D :D :D :D :D

If I really think about it, I still feel like why the heck am I in Japan right now, why didn't I wait until like next week, but the last few days have been so damn excellent I can't complain at ALL :D
Oosaka was certainly fun I suppose, but since I have come to Kyoto it has just been nonstop good experiences >W<

But omgosh Kyoto. The key points here are my friends Heson (my nunim, a Korean super respectful term for "older sister" that I use as kind of a joke since we're almost the same age :P), Mizuho, and Junko, seeing as they are my three really close friends I've been seeing in Kyoto :D But omgosh!

I think I already covered on the blog my first day and a half in Kyoto, the first day consisting of wandering around alone trying to find my hostel, then talking to a random old guy at an okonimiyaki restaurant. The next day was severe confusion due to not having a cellphone, but finally managing to meet my nunim, and then having a great dinner of kushikatsu with Mizuho.

But things have gotten even better! Yesterday I met with Mizuho and Junko, and omgosh. Meeting with Mizuho before everything was smooth and I managed to get along fine in Japanese, but I was still wondering, ohhhh what about Junko (although I had no reason at all to think she wouldn't want to speak Japanese or anything haha) but everything was perfect :D Hahaha we all get along just as well in Japanese as in English, and its so refreshing to see that Mizuho and Junko don't change at all whether they are speaking English or Japnaese! I also really felt like I was starting to get the hang of things at that point because we were joking a lot and I managed to express a lot of surprisingly deep things!!! Whats funny though is that I can express myself better than I can understand other people xDDD.... although I wonder if that is just a general personality issue, I like talking... (post writing note, I'm getting better at the understanding other people part, must listen soooooo closely) Dx I manage to express myself with my relatively super limited vocabulary, but that means when people pull out the big guns I have no idea what they are saying! But I'm getting so much better at just understanding the idea of things even when I don't exactly understand what is being said, which is both good and bad. But hopefully that half understanding will evolve into a complete understanding with time.

With Mizuho and Junko! We made nabe (Japanese hot pot stew type thing) at Mizuho's apartment~ Nabe is interesting because you don't just make a big pot of soup and its done, instead you make a broth, and everyone sticks what they want in there, you cook it, and then eat it, and then do it again hahaha. Oh and the soup was like miso flavor! Sooooo yummy, would be a really good food in the winter of course :D

But omgosh, today was like the icing on the cake. I've only been here for like a week and half so saying 'OMGOSH JAPANESE CLIMAX" is so stupid, but today was omgosh. First off, today I volunteered! My nunim is involved with a group of people who accompany special needs kids on outings to fun places like the park or aquarium or whatever, and she invited me and some other friends, and while I was really worried about it, seeing as I already have a hard time understanding my close friends, being exposed to and working with a whole volunteer group and special needs children would be really difficult, or so I thought. But omgosh I had no reason to be scary. A good way to put it is, I felt so loved! I've felt like that every day since I came to Kyoto actually, but waaaa. When we walked into McDonalds to meet everyone, it was so funny because they all yelled "ANDORYUU" and then a childs voice comes around the corner "ANDORYU KITA???" and like omgosh, I was so surprised but at the same time like AWWW EVERYONE WANTED TO MEET ME. And then Ahhhh the volunteer people were soooo nice, really weird of course (compared to normal Japanese) but in an awesome awesome way. The leader, Meri, looked like a pirate. And oh my gosh his son, the one who yelled my name, is the cutest thing I have ever seen, GENTA . OMGOSH.. JAPANESE CHILDREN. SO CUTE. AND THIS ONE WAS LIKE OGMSHFSKD

FSDFSDFSD I WANT ONE??? Its really funny because he was seven, but I am used to being around children Theo and Beckett's size so it seemed like he was much younger. However, it was really crushing to realize that a 7 year old's Japanese was so much better than mine, but maaaaaa still soooo fun. After meeting the volunteers we met up with the kids and paired up. My partner was Tsukasa (whoahhhh so weird written in English!!) and he was really worried at first to be paired up with the strange tall foreigner but he quickly warmed up to me :D
We all went out to eat and then went to the park and rode trains together and it was all good stuff. But the main point of the day was, I felt soooo much like I belonged. Of course I was getting special treatment x2 as a new member of the group, and as a foreigner, but omgosh. Everyone treated me like I was one of the group, and especially the special needs kids don't react to me as much as a foreigner but just like everyone else. The members of the volunteer group, at first I was worried that as a foreigner I might be a liability being at a low level in Japanese and all, but I didn't feel like that at all.

Omgosh and Genta said the most wonderful thing to me. What he said was basically "If I look at you I think you are an American, but if I talk to you you seem like a Japanese person!" This was before I (think I) disappointed him with my amazing non-understanding of grade school riddles, but it was just like AWW THANK YOU GENTA YOU MADE MY DAY OMGOD.

Meri and Genta, crazy awesome father and son

After that we were alll suppppper tired and dying from all the walking and chasing kids and stuff and oh yeah I WOKE UP AT 7 WITHOUT AN ALARM CLOCK (cuz I don't have one) AND I JUST WOKE UP FROM SHEER WILL POWER IT WAS AMAZING! so I was super tired, but anyway afterward we met up with more volunteer camp people, Takuya senpai and actually Yuuta came to the volunteer event and also Yea Seul, and we all had an awesome dinner of okonomiyaki and wandered around Oosaka and went to one of those awesome city parks that is like a hill and when you stand on the top at night you can see the city all around you but there are crickets and some crazy old people playing the ocarina or something so it sounds super awesome and its all suzushii (aaa,,, suzushii... means... forgetting English... cool and breezy)

But it got better! Heson nunim lives in Kyoto, so we came back together but we were super tired so she was worried about riding her bike 45 minutes home so we thought we better go get some donuts at misado (mister donuts) to wake up (which coincidently heson loves so much that she has tried every single one of their flavors haha), and we ended up waking up more and sitting on the beautiful awesome stairs of Kyoto Station and eating donuts (that stairwell, OMGOSH you must see the giant stairwell thingy of Kyoto Eki!!! I have tried to take a picture, but I am not equipped for architecture pictures!!) but anyway, I'm sure a lot of it has to do with that I'm so used to talking to Heson, but I basically managed to do an entire conversation mostly completely fluently. As in totally fluid! Of course there were times where I was like "I don't know this word, whats this thing?" and I was of course just being fluent in my I-have-the-vocabulary-of-a-4-year-old level Japanese, but still, it was like yabai (damn!). Since I came to Kyoto 4 days ago my Japanese level has skyrocketed. I suppose my actual knowledge of vocab has not changed a lot, but I have gotten infinitely more fluent, and we were even talking about like deeeeep things that would be tough enough in English and I was just like WOWOWWW I'M DOING IT, I'M LIVING THE DREAM :D

(it also just feeeels sooooooooo good to speak in that natural manner when random Japanese people are around, and you know they totally are like "I bet that dude can't speak Japanese and they are speaking English" and then BAM we're all laughing about donatsu (donuts) or something)

Anyway, that ends my crazy post. Follow up with my last days of Kyoto later :)

Now I am in Kobe, staying at a cozy little hostel. Today I was just wiped out from all the fun in Kyoto, so after the train ride here, I have just been chilling out all day, did some shopping at the supermarket (Japanese supermarkets are going to be tough to get used to... must learn how to read nutritional labels in Japanese!) today I ate rice with kimchi, some store made chicken skewers (I didn't know what the different types were, but I should have thought about it a bit more because one skewer was just chicken skin with sauce and another was chicken.... something.... I didn't like those ones. Anyway, lots to think about at the store!

Tomorrow I explore Kobe a bit and the day after tomorrow I will finally move into my dorm! Cannot wait to have my own room and space 0___0;;;

And one more photo for good measure :D

This was at the Sumiyoshi Taisha that I went to in Oosaka, they had the doors open to a really awesome looking shrine building,this is looking in through the doors and you can see light shining in further back in the room. Really wanted to enter, but sadly I had no idea if the sign on the door was telling me to take my shoes off before entering or that no one was allowed in. But no one else was entering so I didn't want to test my luck.

Thanks for reading!

Oishiibashi

The current hostel I am staying at, "J-Hoppers Kyoto," is located on an intersection called "Ooishibashi." This basically translates to something like "BIG ROCK BRIDGE" or something, but when reading the directions to the hostel written in English, they wrote out the name of the intersection in a very neutral way, "oishibashi," which has no indicator of whether the name is actually "ooishibashi," or whether is is "oishiibashi," which is what I initially thought! This has a completely different meaning, basically "YUMMY BRIDGE." Which I was looking forward to, staying in an area that is literally named YUMMY promises good food right?

Well, this is not actually Oishiibashi, but its been living up to that name anyway. Two amazing dinners in a row since I came here.

And tonight, I ate something so amazing I just have to write about it tonight.

Kushikatsu! Which basically means fried things on sticks. Katsu is a really popular food in Japan, and usually consists of breaded and fried chicken or pork, but kushikatsu is a special version usually only available in Oosaka (but for some reason I ended up eating it in Kyoto :P) where pretty much anything you can think of is put on a stick and then fried up. The shop we went to, SamaSama, had like 30 or 40 options! :D

I went with my wonderful friend Mizuho, who is actually one of the first Japanese friends I met way back at community college :D Its funny because we already travelled in Kyoto together once, and then here we are here again!

We ate a good array of different types of kushikatsu, everything from lotus root to apple :D My favorite was the simple onion, but everything was amazing, not only because it was fried and on a stick, but also because they cooked everything perfect and we were given a huge container of amazing katsu sauce :D :D :D mmmmmmm

And there is just something about the people working at the restaurants here, but they are so nice! These kind of restaurants have the cook right behind the counter, so you can talk to them easily, and I think we surprised the cook because I was speaking in Japanese the whole time, and we ended up talking to her a bit. And when we left, the cook chased after us with hot cans of coffee! :D So nice!!

I also met my wonderful nunim again today! Unfortunately we had a snafu where I read where to meet wrong, and the true difficulty of not having a cellphone arose. Luckily, with the help of a payphone everything worked out :D I need to get a cellphone soon!

Overall such a good day though :D Just hanging out with good friends like this is so much better than frequenting all the tourist places in Kyoto, although at some point I might as well take advantage of being here and see some of them that I haven't been to before! Hard to stomach being around all the tourists though :P Kyoto is so touristy, and no matter where you go you are guarenteed to see some (often very lost looking) foreign tourists wandering around.

I must admit I've spent my share of time being lost too though, but I'm really enjoying getting to know the cities of Japan. Last time I was here I just followed my friends around and didn't understand where I was going at all, but I'm steadily figuring out how things work here this time :D. And I feel like I got a fairly good understanding of how Oosaka works as well! Next up is Kobe :D

Motorcyclist+ pedestrian crossing? Bicyclists certainly make crossing scary at times, but this is just too much!

Also, I am watching the Lion King in Japanese right now, forgot how totally amazing that movie is! Watching movies dubbed into Japanese is all kinds of fun :D especially deciphering the translated lyrics of the songs, hahaha.

Anyway, time to get some sleep, watching Lion King was fun but watching it to the end was kind of a bad idea, now I'm up way too late!

Week 1

Looks like the first week of Japan is almost over! I came here on the 17th and here its the night of the 23rd, time is flying (as expected). I've been taking things slow though, unlike my previous trip to Japan. Its a totally different feeling to be living here for a year versus being limited to only a month. Especially since everything that I'm visiting here will be only a 600 yen ticket and an hour train ride from Kobe. I'd rather take things slow anyway though, there is a lot to appreciate in Japan beyond just rushing around seeing all the sights.

I just came back from an amazing okonomiyaki restaurant near my hostel. Okonomiyaki is basically a pancake shaped jumble of yummy things, usually consisting of some flour and egg and whatnot like a pancake here, but then also filled with things like meat, cabbage, ginger, basically whatever the cook wants to put in. Some are plain, but you can order really crazy things, like the one I had today was completely packed with stuff, everything from bacon to scallops (I think, haha). And even better than this amazing food was that the old man next to me at the bar seating started talking to me and we had a good conversation, a lot of which I didn't quite understand, but talking to older Japanese people is always fun!

Been having a lot of good experiences by just taking things slow and doing "nothing." For example, hanging out at my hostel in Oosaka is not exactly the point of going to a big city like Oosaka, but getting to know the residents was really fun, and an especially cool point was that one of my roommates was a rakugo-ka. Rakugo is a traditional Japanese storytelling artform. Basically a rakugo-ka goes up on the stage, and all by his lonesome, with just a handkerchief and fan, enacts a complex story. Most of the story is dialogue, and while they are generally humorous, there is often some kind of lesson to be learned from each story. Of course, to be good at this, a rakugo-ka must also be good at communication in general, and Tendo-san (my roommate) definitely fit the bill.

But really everyone at my last hostel was amazing friendly and communicative like Tendo-san. As I said earlier there were a lot of long term residents at the Peace House Showa, and luckily I had a chance to get to know almost all of them a bit. On the last night especially we had a giant potluck party, so fun and I finally got to eat some home made food since I came here :D

Speaking of food, I've noticed a very strange thing about Japan. Unlike America, pretty much anywhere you eat here you are going to get good food for a good price. There are of course places like Dennys and whatnot that aren't very good, but they are ridiculously cheap (2-3 dollars for a meal) and if you can shell out 6-10 dollars for a meal, you are almost guarenteed something good. I find it especially weird that restaurants in department stores and train stations and those kind of places are actually GOOD. When you think of mall food in the US, good is not the word that comes to mind... but going to a mall or department store in Japan is one easy way to find good food.

Today I came to Kyoto from Oosaka and its simultaneously a good change of pace and kind of a letdown. The emptiness of Kyoto is incredibly refreshing, being able to look out the hostel window at a fairly busy street and see no-one at all is nice. But on the other hand, my hostel feels like it belongs in the more busy and crazy climate of Oosaka, while my homely Oosaka hostel feels like it belongs in this more peaceful setting!

Oosaka got especially busy the last few days, as there was a special holiday long weekend, called "silver week." Japanese holidays are weird... its nice that everyone gets time off (because most Japanese people don't really get any time off at all otherwise), but everyone has holidays at the same time like silver week, and that means that going anywhere for your holiday just becomes crowded and uncomfortable. I'm really wondering if Oosaka is actually more manageable and I just was there at the worst possible time? Yesterday I got to the point where the only place I could find to escape the crowds was an abandoned theme park called "Festival Gate." Strangely enough it was totally open and a couple people were using it as a thouroughfare, so I went in and finally found some solace!

In addition to solace, there were also a lot of gritty broken escalators, which I love taking pictures of :D

In my quest for solace I also saw this huge murder of crows perched on the Oosaka City Art Museum. Its hard to see, but in the lower right corner is an old Japanese guy who somehow by waving an umbrella was disturbing the crows enough to make them fly off in giant clouds, which he then proceeded to take pictures of~

My dad asked me about bikes in Japan the other day, and I don't feel like I gave a clear enough answer so I will talk about bikes a bit. Before I came back I kind of forgot how many damn bikes there are here. Its like there are just as many bikes as there are people. Every shopping center is flooded with bikes outside, and as you can see from the picture the bikes even make it inside, this one was sitting outside an awesome okonomiyaki restaurant I went to, "Okonomiyaki Dan" hahaha. Also, all bikes in Japan MUST have squeaky breaks and a little annoying bell. Its a requirement, I swear. Bikes ride all over the sidewalks everywhere, and I'm at that weird point where I recognize their sounds but am not quite used to them, so every time I hear a bike bell or squeak (basically every 30 seconds) I frantically check my surroundings, because bike riders here like to sneak up on you and then squeak their brakes at the last second and freak you out.

I feel like this shot was about 5 seconds off of perfection. My friends were walking ahead of me on the stairs and by the time I realized what an amazing shot was ahead of me they had already gotten in the frame, but also at that point the woman on the stairs was at the perfect point for the composition... sadly this stairwell is at a crazy far-off station that we only went to because my friend forgot her cellphone on the train and we had to go all the way to the end of the line to pick it up, otherwise I think I would go back here and try to get the perfect shot here :D

Oh and one more thing (this blog is getting really random, my apologies, but I have a lot to talk about over these last few days!), my birthday was absolutely wonderful. I was really worried about it actually because a bunch of my friends from my volunteer camp in Japan last year were all coming to Kyoto from far off places for my birthday, and I wasn't feeling that confident about my Japanese at the time, but when we all got together I finally felt a lot more comfortable speaking Japanese and got to have a full fun day of eating, karaoke-ing, bowling, and trying pachinko (for free even!) :D . And my wonderful nunim (Korean respectful term for older sister) even made me an amazing matcha green tea mousse cake! I felt really loved on my birthday :D .

Anyway, my brain is currently out of juice, and this post is getting more and more random, and its time to get to bed! Thanks for reading :D

Welcome to Japan!

Yossha~ I am in Japan, and seeing as I have been here for almost 3 days now, I better get this blog started!

Just to catch up on the last couple days, before coming to Japan was an exercise in procrastination, culminating in packing so late I was left with just 3 hours of sleep before taking off to the Vancouver Airport, not to mention finally finding somewhere to stay after I arrived only the night before I left~

The flight here was amazingly short, you would be surprised how fast ten hours goes by when you are entertained by such gems as "The Terminator" and "XMEN WOLVERINES LEGACY" (or whatever it is called) in Japanese, along with watching the same episode of the same hilarious Japanese comedy show over and over :D . Thanks to all this wonderful entertainment, I managed to go almost the entire flight without sleeping、and after finally arriving I was ready to sleep! ... however, as I'm coming to realize, when one does not want to pay the exorbitant money for fancy hotels and instead resorts to hostels, getting from the airport/train station/bus terminal/whatever is never easy ;D.

This hostel in particular was a rather long trip, being located in deep in an old neighborhood of winding tight streets. The Peace House Showa, as it is called, is one of the many old houses here, and is a three story old style house with killer stairwells, two tiny tiny bathrooms, and a wonderful array of traditional tatami mat floored rooms~ This is a strange place, in a good way, because half of the people here are residents of Japan who live here full time, and all of them are ultra friendly and make this place really seem like staying at someones house, rather than being in any normal hostel. The host, Yumi-san, is particularly friendly, and you can really tell she is running this whole deal because she loves meeting new people~

However, the area around the hostel is rather, hmm, exemplary of why people call Oosaka Japan's "dirty city," "scary city," etc. Walking home today I spied a rat?weasel?ferret? running across the street, and I know which street to take home from the supermarket because it is the one with all the homeless people. In addition, things in Oosaka are dirty. Really all of Japan has this sort of dirt, which is different from dirty places in America. Dirt here looks like it has been building up for thousands of years, to the point where it seems like it belongs, almost like everything here has been purposefully grunged up for some kind of movie set. There are very few places here that don't have this "grunge." The other aspect of Oosaka (which again applies to many places in Japan) is the smell. Probably due to the heat and maybe because people just don't care as much, Oosaka is full of flavorful (I mean that in both the good way and the bad way) smells. However, I don't particularly have a problem with any of these. Pungent smells, while not particularly pleasant, certainly wake you up and make you feel alive, and the dirt and grime is just a part of Japan, as a photographer I actually appreciate that sort of worn and grungy aesthetic. The rising number of homeless in Japan is a wholly different issue though, and one that I want to look into more later.

Oosaka is a good place for exploring though. Today I visited the oldest shrine in Japan, Sumiyoshi taisha, and a huge temple near my hostel called Shitennoji. Between visiting those two peaceful beautiful places I visited one of the busiest downtown areas of Oosaka, Dotonbori, which was a real example of the different between tiny little Seattle with and Oosaka. Oosaka is a city of around 17 million people, which makes it the 2nd biggest city in Japan, and means it has more than 20 times as many people as Seattle. So, needless to say, I am a bit overwhelmed by the number of people here. I'm really looking forward to being in relatively tiny Kobe >.< . Oh and around Dotonbori, there is a street called Shinsaibashi, an outdoor shopping street/mall that is 4.6 kilometers long. I walked maybe half a kilometer before I couldn't handle the crush of people anymore! This is really showing me I can't handle this kind of city though, wow. !! But I will survive! Tomorrow I will go to Kyoto and meet all my friends from the volunteer camp I attended last summer in Gifu! And I finally found somewhere to stay tomorrow night, which has been an issue as it was looking like everything in all of the Kansai region was full (turns out this is a major vacation weekend in Japan), but the wonderful host of where I am staying now offered to let me stay tomorrow even though it’s going to be pretty darn full. So it looks like I will be staying here for another 3 days, and then I have a reservation at a hostel in Kyoto until the 28, and then I will go to Kobe 29th and 30th and look around before the big move in >W< lang="EN-US">

The 4.6 kilometers of shopping at Shinsaibashi~ You can't even see the end xD

Gate to a small shrine within Sumiyoshi Taisha, its really common in Japan for little items like these bags to be all over parts of shrines. Usually what you see are omekuji (fortunes) or pieces of wood with peoples wishes written on them, I've never seen these bags before~

Street to Shitennoji, lined on both sides by graveyards, yet strangely enough a bit further down the street one of the graveyards ends and there is instead a preschool and a highschool!

Trying my hand at street shooting? The symbol on the lanterns is actually called a manji and represents peace and happiness and all kinds of great stuff, its not a swastika!!!

The crowds of Dotonbori~ I was hoping to convey the huge rush of people here but it didn't work out~

Shitennoji temple, this is like the main several level tower~

One of the tiny cramped dirty streets on the way to Peace House Showa~ I love these streets! :D Notice the car coming down this ridiculously small road ;) Cars go almost anywhere here! I saw someone backing his car into a garage on this very street even~

On the way back from Tennoji Station to the Peace House Showa, the walk from the station to the hostel is a really busy place!

Thank you FEDEX :D

So, I got a couple exciting things in the mail the last few days. One of which is the new computer I'm typing this on :D As you can see from the following picture, it is very small (seriously lame picture, I think every single person who has ever purchased a netbook has taken this same comparison picture with their big laptop,,, sorry, just look at the Pocky or something :D)
Anyway, this little guy is supposed to be my backup since my main laptop started dying and I needed something new and reliable for classes. But then as soon as I ordered this new laptop, the old "dying" laptop decided to be alright. It still has some problems, but now that I go and buy another computer to replace it, it stopped dying, hahaha. So now I have two computers... hahaha.

And another exciting thing came in the mail, FILM :D YES. I finally have a good stock of film now, 10 rolls of Agfa Pro 200 :D . I'm using the first roll now, excited to see what it turns out like! All of the film is expired hahahahaha so there may be some exciting results :D

Oh and I want to post some REAL pictures that I have taken recently, but I have been using only film recently and haven't gotten to scanning all my pictures... I will soon! Maybe this weekend, while I try to research, write two essays, and study for my Japanese test... there must be some time for scanning film, right? xDDD

Anyway, sorry for this probably boring post!! I'll get some photography up soon ;D

Third Post (I will become more creative next time, I swear)

End of the weekend! Twas a good one.
Actually the first two days weren't so hot. One day was a crushing reminder of my low skill level in Japanese (which was actually really fun other than the whole crushing part) and the second one I did *nothing*... oops planning failure. I did manage to take photographs for 5 hours which actually didn't really turn out any good photographs, but I found some interesting places on my campus. And watched "ただ、君を愛している" (Tada, Kimi wo Aishiteiru) again, one of my favorite movies. Its a heart breaking photographer love story,,, perfect :D

BUT, today was more exciting. I went to a SOCCER GAME. Which is a very strange thing to do for me, as I'm not generally into sports (other than the Olympics and World Cup, or anything where my favorite countries are competing). But my friend had tickets and invited me! And despite the game ending in a tie (lots of boo-ing) and me not really understanding what was going on in the game, it was a lot of fun! Took a lot of pictures, tried out my telephoto lens ;) .

Here are just two shots:

They shot crazy shiny _____ (I forgot the word,,,, its the same as "LITTLE BITS OF COLORED PAPER") onto the field, and it drifted down in an awesome cloud of shinyness. (This one is hard to see unless you view it large)

Saw a lot of this during the game (guy laying on the ground)... this was actually less than 30 seconds into the game xDDD (notice the shiny bits all over the field x3)

And I of course have a lot more pictures but I don't feel like uploading them all now so thats all for now :D. But also, afterwards we went to the wonderful Uwajimaya (a Japanese grocery store) and I was unable to escape the lure of Japanese candy. So I picked up these adorable candies. I particularly like the name "LUCKY STICK" and the プリン (pudding)'s face, 笑. Oh and I randomly put a box of film in the picture too,,, another box I like haha.

Meiji "LUCKY STICK", Glico Pocky Mouth Melting Winter Flavor, Kabaya Pudding Chocolate, and Ilford HP5 Plus 400 (guess which one doesn't fit in the picture)

Oh and one more random picture I really like.

This is my good buddy Rui. Notice his studiousness, he is carrying a law textbook under his arm, which he carries everywhere, every day (although never reads)

Took this in the library with my big telephoto lens, which does not work in a dark place like the library, but with judicious editing I ended up with something I find pretty interesting in a lomo way :D.

Anyway, time to finish up homework and start the new week. Its rather scary, I only have 5 weeks left at my university, and then I won't be back for about 13 months xDD.... strange feeling.

Thanks for reading! :D