On the Road Again

Well, I will be starting my journey home tomorrow morning my time, and not a bit too soon it seems.

Lately I've been having a really awful time about it. I've gotten sick from stress and nerves once in the past month and last night I got really sick, but I think it was a combination of nerves and ice cream.

Also, this one freshman girl in the kendo club has taken a disliking to me and she's been encouraging the other freshman girls to ostracize me. But she's only outright rude when the upper class men (my friends) are not around. I was just a bit surprised, since for the the first 4 months that I was here everybody had been really nice to me.

And I have been having a lot of problems lately in my relationship, and he broke up with me last night...after I got sick, of course, though he didn't know that.

And it seems like nobody wanted to meet up with me when I come down to Austin or Dallas, which is rather depressing...(except for Tim E. and Calyn <3 )

But I really wanted to thank Calyn for being there for me all this time and supporting me, and making sure I kept things in perspective. I really do appreciate it, more than I can say. You truly have been my beacon in the darkness and I'm so glad that you are behind me. I only hope that I can be such a good friend in return!

And to all of the friends that I have made in the exchange program, thank you for your support as well, I don't know what I would have done without you guys!

And thanks again to everybody who has taken the time to look at my blog, and especially to those of you who look at it regularly It really does give me a boost when I see that people are visiting the site.

At any rate, I'm really looking forward to going home and having Mexican food and sleeping in a house with central heating. This morning I woke up and it was below 40 degrees Fahrenheit!

So it looks like I'm going to be starting a new beginning, once again as a single ^^

Japan and Food

If there has been one thing that I've noticed in the time that I've been here in Japan, it's that Japanese people LOVE their food. And food is pretty much everywhere. And every region here in Japan has some sort of food that is unique to that area. When I first got here my host-mom gave me a map of Sagamihara city and on the back of the map was a list with pictures of food that is unique to Sagamihara.

And when you turn on the TV, you can find food on just about any TV show. In the morning there's the news and they feature food from different stores. In the evenings they have game shows where they always somehow manage to incorporate food into the program. For example the other night all of these celebrities were divided up into teams and they had to go into a room and pick a different type of food to go into a smoothie. Nobody knew what the others had picked and it usually turned out gross, but they had to drink it anyway. And travel shows are the same, food is an important part of deciding where to go apparently.

And Japanese people seem to just eat a ton of food! And it's just not fair that they stay as thin as most of them do. Here are some pictures of what I get for dinner sometimes:



Sorry for some of the gross pictures. Do you see the crab that we got from that tour? The first two pictures are of sukiyaki. They use a raw egg for that, so I wouldn't suggest trying it in America. The next four images are from one meal. The crab was just fascinating. The next three are from a sushi restaurant and, yes, that is a shrimp staring at you from my bowl of miso soup. The next two pictures are from when it was warmer, my host-dad grilled these fish out in the backyard. The little bones were a nightmare, though. The next picture is the famous tempura, yummy! The last picture is of yakisoba, which is uber-delicious and the one before it is of some kind of cake they had at this Italian restaurant we have near the university.

Asakusa and Shibuya

Over the Christmas break my boyfriend's brother came to visit in Japan, like I've probably mentioned before. Well, while he was here my boyfriend wanted to take him around Tokyo, and they asked me if I wanted to go with them one day, so I decided to go. That day we went to Sensoji in Asakusa (a Buddhist temple) and we accidentally missed our train stop on the way back home and ended up in Shibuya, so we decided to make an impromptu visit to the famous intersection outside of the train station before we headed back.

Here are pictures of Sensoji. It was very very commercialized. It was actually rather ridiculous.

This is the main entrance gate. Afterwards there is this long avenue just lined with tourist trap shops. It's really rather gaudy. A Shinto shrine would never be like that.



This is a pagoda next to the main temple.



In front of the main temple, like all Buddhist temples, there is this little stand thing. You're supposed to swish the smoke over your head with your hand to make you smarter.



And here is the actual inside of the temple. You're supposed to go inside and throw your money offering into the slot thingy and then clap twice and pray.



Then they have little shops inside the temple that sell omamori, or charms. This was their selection. They sell charms for fertility, to get a wish, for studying, and so on.



And then you're supposed to go over to a little stall where they sell fortunes. You put in 100 yen in the slot and then you grab a long metal box and shake it. There are thin wooden sticks inside with numbers on them. You shake the box and get one out of the tiny hole at the top of the box. You read the number and go to the drawer with that number on it. You open up the drawer and take the paper out. And that is your fortune. Mine was alright.



And then we walked around outside of the temple and we found a kabuki theater. These are some handprints of Kabuki actors and pictures on the outside of the theater. And a shop near the theater.



And here are the pictures of the intersection at Shibuya.



The pictures of Asakusa are courtesy of my boyfriend's brother. Unfortunately my camera card was too full to take pictures at the time.

Yamanashi-ken Tour

Hello again everybody! Final exams are thankfully over now. And I am pleased to say that I'm reasonably sure I did well on all of them. I will be returning to America on the 31st of this month, but I will continue to update while I'm home. I will be home for three weeks before I return to Japan and hopefully travel while school is out.

But anyways, in December I went with nine other people on a tour of parts of Yamanashi-ken, which is the prefecture where Mt. Fuji is located I believe. The group included my host-parents, my host-mom's parents, my host-parent's son and his wife, my host-parent's daughter, Haru-chan, myself, and my boyfriend. We all met up outside of the Hachiouji station because that was where the bus was going to be.

Our first stop was a brewery. What a way to start the day, eh? They took us into a room where I think they were doing something with the rice. Unfortunately the whole tour was in Japanese, so I was unable to understand most of it. My host-parent's son and his wife did their best to help us out though, since their English is very good. After we left the room they took us to the liquoer store right next door where we were given samples of different alcohols. It was very interesting. They also had these large balls of what appeared to be evergreen hanging around with little wooden roofs over them. My host-parent's son (Yukihiro) and his wife (Kyoko) told us that they are used as a natural timer. When the entire ball is wilted and brown, then the sake is ready to drink. Also outside of the brewery was the largest Taiko drum in the world. Apparently it was in the Guiness Book of World Records.

Our second stop was a bathroom. The rest stops here are totally different from the ones in America. Here there are food stalls set up everywhere and the bathrooms are really high-tech.

Our third stop was a cafeteria. I think the tour company owned the place because it was HUGE! Before we ate though, we took a picture in front of a statue of this really famous samurai whose name I have now forgotten. He was from the area of Yamanashi-ken that we were touring. Then we had lunch and then we went around looking at the temples in the area.

After that we went to this place called Herb Garden. Basically they grow herbs and really weird flowers and sell natural products. We took a tour of the greenhouses, but once again the tour was in Japanese, so I just kind of went off and did my own thing. After that they took us into the store where they sold stuff like wine, bath salts, lotions, etc. Most of the stuff was pretty expensive, of course.

Then we went to this Kimchi place. Kimchi is a really popular spicy Korean dish here. Another tour in Japanese that I could not understand. Didn't really get a whole lot out of it. And another place to buy stuff.

Our sixth stop was a jewelry place. Once again, there was a tour in Japanese that I did not understand. So I just went around looking at all of the stones. And they took us to another store. I think these types of tours are just so people can buy stuff. It was amazing how much cash flowed out of those people's pockets!

And our last stop was at this onsen-type place. It was up in the mountains which was really cool. There was this man-made stream that had the onsen-hot water in it and everybody stuck their legs in. Unfortunately it started to rain while we were there, but everybody just got out their umbrellas and enjoyed the onsen. After that we had udon, which is a favorite winter dish in Japan. I really don't care for it that much, but maybe that's just because I get it for dinner a lot. And, of course, after that there was a gift shop to go to.

By that time it was dark, and we went back to Hachioji station. And after the tour everybody got a box with a huge salmon and a huge crab in it. So, for the past month or so we've been having salmon. And it was really salty, too. But it was a fun experience.