Alright, now that Christmas is over I have a bit of a break until New Years when things will start to liven up again. Christmas is very different over here, I've noticed. Some people still put lights up on their houses, even though Christianity is a very minor religion here. It seems like this country really really likes commercialism, and Christmas is perfect for commercialism. On the news show I watch in the mornings they've been talking about gifts to give your loved one, and where to go eat, and what kind of ridiculously expensive cake you should buy. Christmas here is a couple's holiday, and you're supposed to go out to eat, but I just stayed in.

Anyway, my host-parents took me, Haru-chan and my boyfriend to this illumination thing at a nearby park. Illuminations are pretty big here, too. I'll put up pictures of that in my next post because they were on my old camera.

But now I'd like to show you pictures of traditional Japanese things. Here are some pictures of the kyudo club. Kyudo is Japanese archery. And the bow is SUPER long:



And here are some pictures of a traditional Japanese concert that my host-mom took me to:


Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Apparently the girl in the first five pictures practicing kyudo is Japan's number one university kyudo player. Kind of impressive, actually. Kyudo is SO SLOW! They take forever to aim and stuff.


These are a couple of videos of kyudo. When everyone has run out of arrows, they send someone down to the targets to get them out and they have a call system so that they can make sure not to accidentally hit someone with an arrow.

And here is a short clip of the traditional Japanese concert. The long table-looking things are called koto and they are kind of complicated. Then the guitar-looking things are called shamisen and the man on the side played the shakuhachi, which is a wooden Japanese flute.

Sorry Sorry Sorry!

I know, I know! I haven't been updating lately, I apologize. I've been pretty busy trying to get out New Years cards (that's what the Japanese do instead of Christmas cards) and getting everything done for classes. However, the winter break is almost here, so I have a little bit of down time now.

So here are some pictures from around the area where I live and my route to school:

And here are some train station pictures:


And here are some pictures from around the school, mostly of my Japanese class:

And that's that. I'll be coming up with more pictures tomorrow!

Pictures

I know I haven't been posting many pictures lately. I've been having trouble transferring pictures from my camera to my computer.

But here are some pictures of my host-family's front garden. It's actually a really common thing to have mostly rocks in your garden here. It's actually pretty rare to see any sort of stretch of grass in this area that I live in. Most of the gardens are very well tended and consist of mainly bushes, flowers, trees, and either huge rocks or gravel or both.


And here are some pictures of flowers I've seen on my way to and from school. These are from a couple of months ago, when it was still warm.


My host parents also took me to a lake a while ago called Sagamiko. I believe the "ko" is the word for lake. It was really pretty but really quite boring.



I'll try to get more pictures of other people's gardens as the seasons progress.

And here is a video I took from the car as we were on our way back home from Sagamiko.