Just the Beginning

2010-07-21T21:51:00.002-05:00

Well, after two years I am returning to the Land of the Rising Sun. But this time I'll be on the other side of the desk. I've been accepted by the JET Program to be an Assistant Language Teacher in Kagawa Prefecture that is located on the island of Shikoku.

As a result I am catching a flight on Saturday out to Tokyo where I will be attending an orientation for a couple of days before flying out to my prefecture.

This time around my primary communication will be through a vlog that I will be posting on YouTube. I will be continuing this vlog, but to get the full experience I highly recommend that you watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4OgGPvEqmY

New Direction

2009-09-13T10:24:00.003-05:00

Woohoo!!! I'm no longer unemployed!! ^^

Finally, after three months of searching and applying and hearing next to nothing, I've finally managed to secure a job. And I've found that it's amazing how much better I feel about myself and my situation now. As my dad says, nothing makes you appreciate a job more than unemployment.

I am now a Gallery Host at a nearby hotel (and a very nice hotel at that). Basically I am responsible for making/changing/canceling reservations, checking people in and out, greeting people at the door, fielding telephone calls/questions/complaints, giving tours, helping with the continental breakfast, preparing hot meals, and making Starbucks coffees and teas. I'm still training at the moment but I'll be on a regular shift by this upcoming weekend, which is exciting. And this is the first time that I've ever had to wear a uniform other than for band....

And to make things even better, autumn has come to Texas, or at least to Dallas. I love autumn; it's my favorite season in the year. It's just so colorful and moody.

Anyways, from now on I think that the direction I'll be taking in my blog will be focused on my ultimate career goal: creating a school.

Many of those who know me will know of my love of learning languages. And I've come to realize that foreign language education in the Texas public school system sucks. So, for many years now, my career goal has been to open sort of a dual language school. The students would learn everything they would learn in a normal public school (hopefully at a higher standard), but in at least two different languages.

So, from now on that is what the focus of my blogs will be: foreign language education. Welcome to my new beginning.

Leaving School

2009-07-07T15:48:00.004-05:00

Wow, it's almost been a year from my last post! That's kind of hard to believe...

Since I got back from Japan, my life has not been all flowers and sunshine, unfortunately. Especially since the start of my last semester at UT. Since last July I've lost several family members. In January, the night before the semester started, my then boyfriend came straight to my apartment from a three day trip with his parents to dump me. I had such a bad physical reaction to the whole ordeal that it left me nauseated for the rest of the week. Needless to say, I had a really hard time getting to sleep the night before the start of classes. Not only that but that same week Calyn's car got broken into TWICE within four days, just sitting outside of our apartment building. And I could not get into the last Japanese class (I thought) I had to take in order to graduate on time.

The next week I started taking medication for an infection that made me nauseated for the rest of the second week of school. And the professor finally added me to his class.

The classes I took last semester were Fundamentals of Acting (which was a blast), Readings in Pre-modern Japanese Stories (a whole bunch of translating), Main Current of American Culture to 1865 (cultural history), and Mexican American Modernism. I also joined the Texas Ballroom club which was so much fun! During the semester, my acting and ballroom classes as well as my roommates and friends were the only things keeping me afloat.

Two weeks after I was dumped my grandmother died; my last grandparent. I was a pallbearer at her funeral that weekend.

During that time my parents also gave me an ultimatum. If I put out five applications a week and made 10 contact in order to secure a job, they would think about letting me stay with them after I graduated. I know my parents were only trying to light a fire beneath my feet so I could have a job lined up, but that on top of classwork and all of the emotional baggage I was carrying around had me drowning.

Thankfully, things were starting to look up near the end of the semester. I was almost done with my classes, due to graduate soon, and my parents had taken back their ultimatum. On the flip side I hadn't found a job yet.

However, everything hit the fan during the last week of classes. I had turned in all of the paperwork for my coursework overseas in November. I was told that it would all get processed by Spring Break, but it didn't. I was told by my academic advisors that I had all of the credits I would need to graduate on time in May. They finally processed all of my credit the Friday before the last week of classes and I was psyched that I could apply to graduate since the deadline for that was the next Friday.

Well, Monday came around and I went up to campus to apply to graduate only to learn that I was missing one hour of upper-division Japanese credit.

one hour

My advisors scrambled around trying to find ways to correct the situation. They tried having some of the courses re-evaluated, they tried appealing to the Dean to waive the one hour requirement. But by Wednesday nothing had worked and I was really starting to worry. The next day I had three finals, acting at 8:00 AM, a four page translation of a Japanese story due at 9:30 AM, class at 2:00, and an eight page paper due in English at 3:30 that next afternoon. At 5:30 that Wednesday I had halfway finished the translation and I was a page and a half shy on my English paper, when I got a call from my academic advisor.

He told me that if I wanted to graduate on time, my last option was to take an upper-division Japanese final the next day for a class I had not taken at UT. At that point I broke down and called my parents in hysterics. In the end I elected to take the final (which cost $82) and gamble my graduation date on the off-chance that I could pass a final exam whose contents I did not know, nor would I have had the time to study for. The next day, I performed for my acting final and got good comments, ran to the library to finish up the translation for the Japanese class, which made me a bit late. And then I spent my lunch break finishing my English paper before going to class at 2:00, turned in my paper at 3:30 and went straight to the testing site, where I spent 2 hours trying to pass the Japanese final.

The next morning I woke up and found that by some miracle I had made a B on the Japanese final and that I would be able to graduate on time.

So I graduated, and am now back at home in Garland, still trying to find a job.

2008-08-18T12:37:00.002-05:00

It's hard to believe that it's August. I have been so incredibly busy for the past month that it feels like years have passed between my last post and this one. So let me give you guys an update.

Finals were torture. I had two term papers due (one four pages and one ten pages), 3 final presentations (2 of which had to be in Japanese), and 3 final exams (2 of which were in Japanese). Somehow I managed to get it all done without going TOO crazy. And then immediately after my last exam I went to pick up my dad at the airport. A couple of months earlier my dad decided that he wanted to come visit with me. So we arranged it where he would come visit me for my last week and a half in Japan and we would fly home together. But I'll elaborate more on that later.

We flew back home on August 1st from Tokyo and got home in one piece. Since then I've been trying to get over my jet-lag and get ready to move back down to Austin. We got home from the airport at 12:30 AM on 8/2 and, of course, I couldn't go to sleep until about 3:30 AM. And then I slept until 5:00 PM! So my sleep schedule has been pretty off lately. I caught up on all of my doctor appointments and yesterday I moved into my new apartment in Austin.

こんにちは！これから私は日本語でも書くつもりです。８月１日、テキサスのダラスに着きました。この間荷物を詰めていました。昨日、オーステンに引っ越しました。これからよろしくお願いします！

Meiji Shrine

2008-07-12T06:26:00.012-05:00

A couple of weekends ago I went with some friends into Tokyo. Unfortunately, due to the amount of school work I had, I was only able to visit one temple and a museum with them before I had to go back to the house. But here are pictures from the Meiji Shrine.

And there were a couple of couples getting married at said temple. The bride is the one all in white, and the groom is the one in the black and white traditional costume. Cool, huh?

And here are the pictures from the museum and on the way to the museum.

Sorry for taking forever to update. I only have 8 more days of school left with

Flower Festival

2008-06-26T22:24:00.017-05:00

My host-mom took us to a flower festival at a nearby park a couple of weekends ago. They had some really interesting plants on display as well as ikebana (flower arranging) and sado (tea ceremony) demonstrations.

Pretty interesting, huh? The tea was bitter, just like everybody says, but I thought it left a rather pleasant after-taste. Oh and the first picture is my host-mom's car.

Enchiladas

2008-06-24T20:56:00.005-05:00

So, the other day one of my friends had a get together and he made enchiladas for us. They aren't really the kind that I'm used to, but they made me happy nonetheless. Here are some pictures from the get together with my friends. We all pitched in and helped make tortillas and dice veggies and stuff like that.

I think he'll be throwing another one soon.

Home

2008-06-19T22:22:00.002-05:00

I think I have officially reached the stage of being homesick now. I've been here since September 11th of last year, with a little less than a month of a vacation back home in February. I think the main reason is that my schoolwork has reached an alltime high and I'm getting frantic. And I know for a fact that I'm not the only one.

So, one day in class when I found that I could not focus at all on what the teacher was saying, I decided to disctract myself with making a list of things that I've really come to miss since being here. And I thought I'd just share them with you.

Fruit (fruit is so expensive here)
People opening doors for each other (if you're walking behind somebody and they go through a door, they don't bother to care if anybody's walking behind them, and more often than not the door is allowed to shut in your face)
Steak (it's so thin and expensive here)
Baked potatoes with fixings
Sauteed mushrooms
Pie (oh my goodness, they have no pie here, and I'm going crazy. Of course, it doesn't help that people don't usually own ovens. Their cake is great, but it's so light that I can eat a whole cake by myself in one sitting)
Walking around campus (at first, funnily enough, I missed walking around UT than I did home)
Reading English (I really really really regret the fact that I did not have enough room to bring a couple of novels with me, because finding English books here is like trying to find a four-leaf clover)
Going shopping at the mall at home (I miss walking around window shopping for clothes that FIT me, what can I say?)
Going to the theater (I miss movies, and there are so many movies that I wanted to see, but couldn't because I was over here, and the theater is ridiculously expensive here)
Smoothies (strawberry smoothies...mmmmm...)
Freedom (Hah, unexpected, huh? I don't want a curfew anymore, I don't want to have to curb my social life because I have no real space of my own)
Internet (yeah...I'm only allowed one hour a day at my homestay, and the school kicks you off after 3 hours so I can't get any decent research done for my term paper at one time)
Breakfast tacos (the sausage just isn't the same here....)
Pancakes, IHOP (sob, pancakes!)
Waffles
Frasier (I love that show)
Meeting up with friends (and when I say friends, I mean REAL friends, the ones that talk to me and listen to all my complaining, sorry for that, by the way, guys)
Pizza ( a nice greasy, cheese and mushroom pizza with a deep pan crust...oh, yeah, none of this chicken teriyaki, mayonnaise, corn, and seaweed stuff)
Shopping for furniture (not necessarily to buy)
Butter pecan ice cream (ice cream over here is expensive like no other)
Pecan pie (need I say more?)
Wide open spaces (oh, how rare they are in Tokyo)
Singing while I drive (I can't sing to myself here, the walls are so thin everybody would hear)
Going to the office and visiting with everyone (I miss going to lunch with you guys! I'll have to drop in on you guys when I get back)
The farm (I really miss going down there with the family to visit...well, more family. To think all of my second cousins are probably all big now)

I'm sure there's more, but the bell rang, and I didn't have time to finish. And now I return to research on English language education in Japan.

Learning

2008-06-15T19:53:00.002-05:00

So here are a couple of things that I've learned from my host-sisters.

In China, if you go to a restaurant it is considered rude to eat everything on the plate. I was very confused about this, but apparently what you don't eat, the people who work at the restaurant will eat once you've left. I found this out one night as we were eating dinner and watching a TV show about restaurants in China. My previous host-sister, Haru-chan, had held several jobs while living in Japan and apparently she had told my host-mom that she was so surprised when nobody left anything on the plates here.

And in Taiwan, women refrain from eating ice cream both the week before and the week of their menstrual cycle, because, apparently it prevents you from getting cramps. Maybe I should test out that theory...

2008-06-08T00:59:00.003-05:00

Sorry about the wait. I've been super busy with school work and mid-terms are still going on for me.

But I gotta say that I cannot wait to get back to the states. The atmosphere has been a bit sour in my home stay for the past week or so, and I cannot figure out why. At this point I am very much looking forward to getting into my new apartment in August and not having to answer to anybody.

If anybody is looking to study abroad here, please be aware of a few things about host-families. While the home-stay is the cheapest and probably the most convenient option for the program I'm in, it does have its drawbacks. For instance, most of the people I've spoken to who stay with host families have a curfew. Mine happens to be 10:00 pm, which is fine during the week, but if you want to go out and hang out with friends on the weekends it gets really cumbersome. I can't tell you how many times I've had to turn down invitations to go out and do something because of my curfew. And it's not that I don't understand why the curfew exists, my host-dad has to leave for work really early in the morning and they can't have me coming home and making a ton of noise really late. But it gets very annoying. I've been able to sleep over at friends' apartments sometimes, but it's not always possible.

And the showers. You can't keep the water running the whole time you're in the shower. And the part that really gets me is that they don't want you to stay in the shower for more than 30 minutes. But if you're like me, you tend to like to wash your face and brush your teeth and stuff during shower-time. And since my hair is thicker than most peoples' rinsing out shampoo and conditioner takes a lot of time. However, I have to say that if I had lived in an apartment I probably would not have been as likely to try bathing after a shower, which is a really nice perk in a home stay.

A friend of mine said that a person she knew had tried a home stay. He got to the house fine and his new host-parents handed him a booklet of rules that he was supposed to follow. He took one look at the booklet and walked back out the door. And most of the rules she mentioned, I found, were exactly like the ones I'm expected to follow. Fortunately my host-parents had had a little more tact about it.

And I don't know about anybody else's host-parents, but mine tend to treat me like a child, but that could very well be my own fault.

However, living with a host-family can be very very rewarding. And I think that my host-family has been particularly generous. But, honestly, I am very much looking forward to not having to answer to anybody and living the way I want to.

I miss you, Texas!

Sorry!

2008-05-24T06:40:00.002-05:00

Wow, I feel really bad about neglecting this site. Lately I've been ridiculously busy with school. However, I think I do have time for a good rant.

This past Monday I got a major culture shock. I had had to skip kendo practice that last half of the week before because of homework, so I had been really looking forward to going that Monday. Well, I went and at the beginning of practice, I was just about to do an exercise and I caught my toe on my hakama while I was moving forward....again.

But this time was much much worse. I couldn't even finish the exercise. It was so embarrassing. I hobbled off to the side and sat down, removed my armor and tried to swallow the tears that were coming. Of course the girls were pretty concerned and they brought me some ice. I had to sit out the whole practice, icing my toe, which very rapidly got swollen. There was a teacher there, as well. He's pretty young, though. From what I understand, he graduated from the school I go to a couple of years ago. He was kind enough to ask me how I was when he saw me sitting near the windows. When I lifted the ice to show him my toe (which was red because of the ice) he rummaged through his bag and gave me a couple of strips of this felt stuff with blue jelly on the underside to put between the ice and my foot. He even put them on for me, when he saw I blankly I was staring at them.

At any rate, practice went on as usual, but towards the end I had to think about how I was going to get down 2 flights of stairs, walk over to the next building and get up to the third floor where the locker room was. Because I was in some serious pain. I was sitting with my back to the windows, which were open because it gets hot when you're moving around a lot in all that armor. But even the wind coming from the open windows was making my leg spasm with the pain. And, of course, it didn't help that everybody was stomping, and with every shake, the pain flared up. The teacher asked me how I was going to get home, and offered me a ride as far as the nearest station. But, unfortunately, I had ridden my bike to school that day, and I was a bit reluctant to impose on him. At any rate, that meant I would have to cross the station, get on the bus, and then walk all the way to the house from the bus stop. It never seemed so far before, but I didn't think I'd be able to make it with that toe.

So when practice ended I sort of sat there, wondering what to do. Then my guy friend, Daisuke, came up to me and offered to help me up to the locker room. So he helped me up and helped me hobble to the dojo entrance. But as we were walking one of the guys yelled out "don't touch me!" in English. I know for a fact it wasn't a first-year because Daisuke is a second-year and therefore their superior, and I knew the second-years wouldn't do that to him. So, it was either a third- or fourth-year. And it made me inordinately angry. Daisuke was the only one who offered to help me and they were making fun of him for it. Sometimes I wonder how it is that they still have the mentality of a middle school student (no offense to middle school students).

Once we gain the entrance the second-year girls tell Daisuke that they'll help me from there. So Daisuke waited with me until the girls got ready to go and then I had to get up and put my flip-flops on. Unfortunately, I was only able to put one on. Then two girls got on either side of me and helped me hobble through to the stair landing just outside the dojo. There were a few of us, since they were obliged to carry my armor, so we were blocking the stairs for the most part. But the three of us had moved very awkwardly, and they were discussing how to get me down the stairs since the three of us couldn't get down there together. So one of the girls said something along the lines of "maybe somebody should carry her, maybe a guy..."

And that's when one of the fourth-year guys came up behind us, on his way back to the boys' locker room. He asked what was wrong. "What? She hurt her foot?" And then he brushed past one of the girls that was helping me and went right on down the stairs, not even bothering to apologize to the girl he had brushed aside.

I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped.

I don't think I have ever been so shabbily treated by a man...except that time that my ex yelled at me. And I had never had such an urge to spit on anybody as I did that night.

In the end the girls put me on the back of the thinnest girl in the club (which is saying something because this is Japan) and she ran with me down the stairs, over to the next building, into the elevator, and into the locker room. And I know for a fact that I weigh more then she does. Once I got changed (that was interesting) and back downstairs, one of the third-year girls brought me my bike. Thankfully once I got on my bike I was fine, since I don't really put pressure on my toe while I'm pedaling. But, unfortunately, that day I had chosen to wear a white skirt...and it started to rain while I was a quarter of the way home.

But apparently most Japanese guys are not very gentlemanly at all. They don't hold doors open for women here, or even, it seems, offer to assist someone who obviously cannot walk down stairs by themselves. And it's at times like those when I really just want to go home.

More Money

2008-05-14T23:10:00.000-05:00

So for my birthday I invited a few people to go eat sushi for lunch with me. After kendo practice we met up at a famous sushi chain restuarant (Kappa Sushi) and squeezed into a booth.

After we had finished eating we started talking about driver's licenses and such. (In Japan it costs about 3,000 US dollars to obtain a driver's license.) And then my Japanese friends asked to see the American money I had in my wallet. After I showed them one of my friends pulled out this REALLY REALLY old Japanese currency.

Awesome, huh?

Of course, when I went home later we went over to my host-aunt's house (okaasan was still in the hospital) and we had...guess...SUSHI and cake. But it was nice.

Spring

2008-05-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

So it is officially spring now. The trees are a gorgeous green, flowers are blooming everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE. Here are some random pictures that I've taken around the neighborhood and in and around the house.

A little random, I know, but I hope you enjoy them.

Kid's Day

2008-05-09T00:45:00.010-05:00

In Japan May 5th is a national holiday to celebrate children. Originally it only celebrated boys, but for some reason, despite the fact that girls also acquired their own holiday (March 3rd), they changed it from boy's day to kid's day. However, they still fly the carp flags to celebrate male children. On that day my host-dad took us to a nearby river where they had strung out a few long lines of these carp flags. Here are some pictures from the river:

And afterwards we all went back home to eat a big dinner.

And here are my host-sister and host-sister-in-law puzzling over my Japanese homework.

Thanks to those of you who have continued to look at this blog!

Nomikai

2008-05-07T19:29:00.005-05:00

Here are some of the pictures I took during the Kendo camp. They're all of the nomikai (which basically is a drinking party).

She's throwing up a peace sign, I promise!

The videos are taking a bit, so I'll do those in another post.

Kendo Camp

2008-04-29T23:17:00.002-05:00

Kendo camp...ugh.

Kendo camp started last Wednesday at the start of practice (6:00 pm). So it was a very long day for me. I got up at 6:15 like usual to get to school on time. I had school during the day and then I had practice from 6:00 until about 8:00. After practice we had to quickly get changed and head down to the gym showers. THAT was an interesting experience. They stuck me with the fourth-year girls to shower. The shower room only had 3 actual shower heads in stalls, but nobody actually claimed a stall, since there were 4 of us. (I assumed that all of the other fourth-year girls live close enough to shower at their own homes.) So we were all switching back and fourth between showers, kind of like musical...showers.

After showering (we had to hurry since all of the other girls had to shower after us), we went back up to the locker rooms to eat dinner. Dinner consisted of a bento, as all of our meals did, ordered from some bento company. After eating we headed down to the school bus stop to meet up with everyone so we could go into Machida to go bowling. Keep in mind that we took the 10 pm bus on a Wednesday. We get to Machida, go to the bowling place (forgot the name of it already) and go up to the 7th floor where we get the entire room to ourselves. Of course there are probably more than 50 of us, so...it was a bit crowded.

But let me explain a little bit about the groups. We had 5 girls and 5 boys in our group. Shibata-senpai (male, 4th year, captain), Mina (female, 4th year), me, Ai (female, 3rd year), Yuki (male 4/3 year?), San-chan (male, 2nd year), Mei (female, 2nd year), Tomi (female, 1st year), Shu-chan (male, 1st year), and this other male freshman that I cannot remember the name of at the moment. Each group would do different activities together every night. Of course the first night EVERYBODY went bowling, and they actually split us up and mish-mashed the groups together to bowl.

So during the first game I was bowling with people who weren't in my group. Among these people was the enigmatic Masuda-senpai. And everybody turned out to be incredible bowlers; it was rather embarrassing. I kept getting gutterball after gutterball. But I ended up not being last, so it was all good.

After 3 games of bowling it was about 2:00 am on Thursday, and the other guys were talking about going to karaoke after returning the bowling shoes. Luckily Mina was returning to school to do some homework, so we went back together and I slept for about 3 hours until I had to get up at 6:00 am to get ready for kendo practice at 7:00. I think I was one of the very few who actually slept at all. Consequently kendo practice didn't go quite as well as it usually does.

Then I had school during the day. I think most people slept through their classes after practice. But, of course, I can't really do that since I'm here to...study abroad. So I spent all day studying and doing homework. Then we had practice again at 6:00 in the evening, so we did that. Afterwards, my group didn't have to rush through to the showers since we were going to an onsen after dinner. We ate dinner in the locker rooms and then headed down to the room where the boys were supposed to sleep. Other groups went about their separate ways, and we combined with another group and played cards in the room until the boys arrived to drive us to the onsen. We played card games and then we played bingo. I won first prize, too. ^^ I got a Tommy Hilfiger duffle bag.

Afterwards I had my second trip to an onsen. This one didn't quite have the prestige of the Dogo onsen, but it was pretty nice. And it's been getting easier and easier to deal with the...communal nakedness, if you will. I guess it helps that nobody else really thinks about it.

After a wonderful time in the onsen, we returned to campus and I think I helped people put together a Lilo & Stitch jigsaw puzzle. Then I slept for about 2 hours until practice at 7:00 that morning. And I actually got hit in the throat during that practice. Consequently that school day was torcher. Fortunately it was a Friday, and I only had two classes. Unfortunately, though, I was unable to sleep during the day. And then we had another practice that night at 6:00.

And that night my group combined with Masuda-senpai's group for nomikai, which is basically sitting around, drinking alcohol, eating snacks, playing games, and talking. Of course we also had a few comical impressions performed once the alcohol had been out for a while. I'd post the videos on here, but I'm a little bit afraid to ask the performer for permission....

Then the next morning we had practice at 9:00 am and then it was over. Wow, it's already been almost a week since it ended and I'm still recovering from it.

2008-04-25T00:02:00.007-05:00

Sorry I haven't been updating in a while. Things have been super busy with school and the kendo camp. I've had about 5 hours of sleep in the past two days, so I'm very grateful for the weekend so I don't have to kill myself to do my homework. But I'll write about some of that stuff a bit later. I wanted to give you guys a special treat! ^^ My travel companion from my tour of southern Japan had started to make little comic strips of our adventures together while we were on the last leg of our journey. I asked her to scan them for me so I could post them on here. They're really funny!

*These were not drawn by me! (unfortunately)

I'll post more the day after tomorrow. Enjoy!

Okaasan II

2008-04-20T03:37:00.002-05:00

Alright, my host-mom came home yesterday. YAY! And I was a bit too harsh on my host-dad, he did do some cleaning since we were getting our new host-student on Thursday. She got here just fine, although I think, since we ate dinner at our host-aunt's house with a total of 8 people, that she was a bit overwhelmed. And my host-mom came back home yesterday, looking as healthy as ever. Apparently they couldn't find anything wrong with her. But we're making her take it easy, and I think it's driving her a bit crazy.

At any rate, I had a horrible first day of school this past Tuesday. I thought it was Monday and on Mondays I don't have to be at school until third period. Unfortunately on Tuesdays, I have a speaking and core Japanese class first and second period. Perfect, right? I miss the most important class I'm taking on the first day of school! Ugh. So I had to e-mail the teachers and apologize and ask for work and stuff. One of them still hasn't gotten back to me. But five of my classes this semester are only in Japanese. The teachers only use Japanese. We're not allowed to talk to each other in English. The homework instructions and SYLLABUS are all in Japanese. Not to mention the textbooks, which are also all in Japanese.

It's actually really great, since that's kind of the reason I came to Japan. But after all day of that sort of thing, I get extremely tired. Kendo is a nice outlet, though, even though nobody speaks English to me in there. But I had 10 PAGES of Japanese homework after missing the first day of my core class. Thankfully a lot of the classes I'm taking are only once or twice a week, or I would die.

Coming up this week is a Kendo camp sort of thing. We'll all be sleeping (separated by gender of course) in the building that our locker rooms are in for 3 days. I don't really know a lot about it, but we have practice at 7:30 in the morning, I think is what somebody told me. And I have a HUGE bruise on my elbow from the armor. Since the armor I wear is new, it's pretty stiff, and so the stomach armor is kind of a bit wide-spread. So every time I would bring my arms down or give someone a faito punch, my elbow would hit the armor. It's a lot better now, but I have to squeeze the armor together while somebody else ties it in order for it not to be so in the way.

Anyway, I better get back to all of my homework.

Okaasan

2008-04-14T20:58:00.002-05:00

So, I asked my host-dad the other day and he said that my host-mom is fine, but she's staying at the hospital until at least this coming Thursday. That seems like an awfully long time to me. And then he said that they were running tests on her. But when he first said it I freaked out because in Japanese the word for these medical tests sounds like a Japanized way of saying "cancer." So I still don't know what's really going on.

But the house is slowly falling into decay in her absence. My host-dad apparently does not have the ability or the inclination to do housework of almost any kind. Most of the rooms are fine, maybe gathering some dust and debris on the floor, but the kitchen looks rather like a disaster zone. He doesn't really wash the dishes and newspapers are everywhere. Not to mention the packaged snacks that my host-mom usually put out for tea time. The laundry is piling up in the washing machine, and I seriously doubt that he squeegees the floor when he's finished showering.

And he can't cook, either, it seems. So we've been having lunch and dinners next door at his older sister's house. The food is good, but, honestly, not nearly as good as my host-mom's. And they absolutely STUFFED us on my birthday. They threw me a small birthday party. I had gone out with friends for sushi for lunch and when I got home we went next door to have...sushi...and cake. Lots of it. And then they talked and talked and talked. And most of it I couldn't understand. And they sang the happy birthday song to me...which was a bit awkward, because a couple of them didn't really know the words all that well (the ENGLISH happy birthday song).

But when I came back home last night after kendo, the house was all dark, which was odd. I've never come home to a dark house. Besides he had left a couple of hours before I had so that he could go visit my host-mom in the hospital. Well, I walk inside and Hachi RUNS for the door. Haha, she had spent the whole day inside. So I go around the house turning on lights and closing the gates over the glass doors and windows. I ate my McDonald's (the shrimp burger is actually REALLY good!) and then did the dishes that had accumulated in the sink. He told me this morning that he'd probably be late again tonight, so I think I'll do some sweeping and vacuuming.

And when he came home, he asked if his sister had come over (because the gates had been closed) and he seemed surprised when I told him that I'd closed them.

...I AM an adult, you know. I think I can manage to walk around the outside of the house and close metal gates without being asked...

And Hachi, I can tell, really misses her. She was unusually friendly when she came back in after I let her out.

2008-04-11T08:06:00.006-05:00

Well, things have been rather odd lately. My host-mom is currently in the hospital. She had some sort of episode during tea time this morning, which was rather scary. I'll let you know what happens whenever I find something out.

But here are some pictures me and my host-sister-in-law took when we went with my host-mom to her international school's elementary school kids' performance of Beauty and the Beast.

Those costumes are insane! Japanese mothers really go all out for these kinds of things it seems. I'll post some of the videos next time.

Sakura Festival

2008-04-07T06:46:00.007-05:00

This past Sunday my host-mom, host-aunt, host-sister, host-sister-in-law, and myself went to the Sagamihara Sakura Festival. Thankfully it took place just before all of this rain came, so we were able to see a lot of blossoms. There are a couple of streets in this city that are just lined with cherry trees. It's really quite beautiful. I actually pass one of them on my way to and from school. Not to mention my school's campus is pretty much surrounded by cherry trees. For the past two weeks the streets and sidewalks have been littered with cherry blossom petals. It's a bit ridiculous, almost. I've seen piles of them against curbs.

But at this festival there was a parade with all sorts of dancing and then they had a Taiko exhibition. And during the parade the wind picked up and cherry blossom petals went fluttering all over the place. In fact I took a video where it almost looks like it's snowing, but it's actually just sakura petals.

And here is that video I was talking about:

Kendo 2

2008-04-05T20:08:00.008-05:00

Alright, here are some pictures from the blossom viewing and my new armor!

Cool, huh? It's really really hard, and I think I sprained my toe the other day...

Kendo

2008-04-04T00:55:00.002-05:00

Since the trip I haven't actually been doing too much. However the cherry blossoms are in bloom now. Apparently I picked the perfect place to stay in Japan for viewing cherry blossoms. The school that I go to is pretty much surrounded by cherry trees. And now they're blowing away, so the sidewalks and streets are littered with petals.

Kendo started up again as well. But now I'm wearing armor! One of the girls asked me if it was my armor "debut," which is pretty much true. And the first time I wore the armor it took me half of the practice to suit up properly and I worked up a sweat for the first time! In fact my skin turned blue because of the dye on my keikogi. And today I turned even bluer because I practiced almost the whole time! It's quite different with the armor on. It gets quite heavy when you're tired and really hot. And your depth perception kind of goes out of the window with the grill in front of your face.

But the teacher actually GAVE me a pair of wrist guards, for free! I was so surprised! Especially since he had called me "ano gaijin" (that foreigner over there) only a couple of months ago. And he told my tutor (Haruka) that my kendo had become "kirei" (pretty/clean). All in all, it was a very rewarding day and I was ridiculously happy.

And this past Tuesday the club went out for blossom viewing. Really, though, it's just an excuse to drink alcohol. They had set up tarps on the ground underneath some cherry trees near our school and we were provided with beer, cocktails, sports drinks, tea, water, and various snacks. After the toasts (the teachers were there, too) the girls got on one tarp, the boys on another, and the freshmen and teachers in the middle. We girls played a couple of drinking games, where if you messed up you had to (quickly) drink a cup of beer. Thankfully I was pretty good at the games (even though they were in Japanese) and I wasn't forced to drink anything.

And some of the guys in the club actually talked to me. But, of course, it was because they were drunk. But I was so surprised! The next day one of them actually smiled and waved at me, in the DOJO no less! Where there were other kendo people to see! I was so surprised. And, when I'd managed to get my helmet on, another guy gave me a few light taps on the head.

But today was the second day of practice for me in the armor. And I got really tired really quickly, much to my embarrassment. And I fell as well. My big toe caught on the hem of my hakama and so, I fell. I think I bent the toe backwards, though, because it's a bit painful to walk. And I also had my first fighting practice! Before I'd only done drills, but during the jigeiko part of the practice you actually have mini-matches with people. I'd never done it before, so it was quite an experience. I got a lot of hits in, but I suspect my opponent (Haruka) was giving them to me.

I'll have to post pictures of my in half armor another time. My host-parents only allow me to use the internet for one hour, and loading images takes a while.

Nagoya

2008-04-02T02:40:00.018-05:00

Our last stop on the trip was Nagoya, sort of a half-way point between Matsuyama and Tokyo. Originally Nagoya was going to be my first stop, and then Osaka and then Matsuyama and then back to Tokyo. But thankfully my host-mom suggested Nagoya as the last stop so that we wouldn't be traveling so far in one night like I wanted to.

So while we waited for the night bus to take us from Matsuyama to Nagoya, I suddenly realized that I did not have my coat (the black one). I remembered having it in Matsuyama, though, and realized I'd left it on the bus. Another legacy from the nasty 13th. So I e-mailed a lady at my school's Center for International Studies (CIS) on my cell phone (I love Japanese cell phones!), and she e-mailed me back within the hour saying that she'd found it! I was so relieved! Unfortunately, it was left at the bus depot and we were just about to get onto the night bus so I couldn't simply take a taxi and go get it. But the lady that was helping me got them to mail it back to my host-parents' house for me. What a stroke of luck! (I'll brag on the people in CIS in another entry, because they are awesome.)

Well, we got on the bus (a double decker) and we were in the very front on the top part, so we got lots of leg room. If you must take a night bus, I highly recommend taking one by the JR bus company. It may be a bit more expensive, but their buses actually have toilets on them and they don't try to bake you while you sleep. It was still really difficult to sleep, though. Eventually your bottom falls asleep and that's never fun. But we got to Nagoya in the wee hours of the morning. This kind of stunk for me since I had no coat and it was windy, but I managed. We found a McDonalds and ate breakfast before thinking about what we could do between then (6:00 AM) and when we could check into our hotel (3:00 PM) We put our bags in a locker at Nagoya station and then went off to see things that my friend had wanted to see.

Since she really likes bridges we went to the bridge that leads to the Nagoya aquarium. It was pretty neat, actually. And after that we went to a shopping center and just sat around until it was almost 3:00. Eventually we went back to Nagoya station and got our bags and checked into the hotel. We were pretty beat since we hadn't slept much the night before and we had been walking all day. So we showered, ordered pizza (which was ridiculously expensive) and my friend did her laundry.

The next day we got up, checked out, put our luggage in another locker and went to our first stop for the day, Nagoya castle. This one is really popular, and not NEARLY as nice an experience as Nijo castle was. It was very crowded, and the building didn't have any AC, of course, and they had set up the inside like a museum with exhibits and stuff. And most of the paintings were copies. It was sort of a disappointment, but we got most of our souvenirs, since we didn't want the food to go bad before we got back. If you buy souvenirs for a Japanese person, get them food. That's what they do. As I've said before, Japanese people love food, and every region has it's specialties.

And inside the castle grounds they had a tea house that was set up like a showroom. It had tons of paper dolls dressed up for a parade.

Our second stop was the Nagoya Noh Theater. It actually wasn't all that interesting, unfortunately, and we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum. We didn't actually see a show (I'm sure we would have fallen asleep), but they were showing a pre-recorded one in the museum. After that we made our way over to the Atsuta Shrine where the Imperial Sword is supposed to be kept. This shrine, apparently is often used for marriage ceremonies. And they had roosters walking around! It was kind of interesting.

Afterwards we met up with one of my best friend's from my home college and her parents. We ate at Denny's and then walked around near the station before we had to catch our night bus back to Tokyo.

What did you guys think of the trip? Was there anything in particular you had questions about? Let me know, and I'll see if I can answer them!

Matsuyama

2008-03-30T23:36:00.009-05:00

Well, after the horrid 13th, we, thankfully, had a nice relaxing slow paced day planned in Matsuyama. We got up not quite as early, took our time in the shower, which was nice. Then we gathered up our stuff and checked-out of the hostel. We stored our stuff in lockers and then looked for breakfast. Unfortunately, while we were looking at a restaurant this man came up to us and started speaking to us in English. Pretty good English, too. And he was telling us that the restaurant we were looking at was really good, especially their croquettes.

And then he started asking us all the usual questions, where were we from, where are we studying, blah blah blah. And then he wanted to show us around the little shopping street we were on. My friend, of course, was being polite and letting him lead us around, but then he started trying to give us gifts from a little souvenir store. Up to that point I'd only been mildly uncomfortable about being led around a place we're not familiar with by a complete stranger. But when he started telling us to pick something, that's when I decided it was time to ditch him.

I know that sounds mean, but, still. I'm a really cynical person, and I guess I just didn't like the fact that he was intruding on the schedule I'd so carefully made before actually leaving on this trip. At any rate, I was hungry and I was going to put an end to this. So I gave a dramatic gasp and widened my eyes and said that I'd left something at the hotel. So I grabbed my travel companion and ran.

So we ducked out of that street and hurried to the Dogo Onsen, where we KNEW he couldn't follow us. We payed our 1,200 yen and went inside. We were shown upstairs to a room where there were baskets with yukatas laying on the floor. We were told to change and then leave our clothes in the baskets. So we looked around, because there were also men in the room, and we saw this other older woman get up and go toward a door, so we followed her. We entered a long narrow room and she turned around and asked us if we spoke English. That was the second time that day that we met somebody who could speak perfect English.

We were SO happy that she spoke English because neither of us had been in an onsen (hotspring) before, and we weren't too sure about what to do. So she guided us through it. We were so lucky! So we changed into our yukatas and put our clothes back in the baskets. Then we followed the lady into the more private onsen (the one we payed 1,200 yen for). It was down stairs and we came into a locker room. We were supposed to take off our yukatas, put them in the lockers, and bring the little towels into the bath with us.

And that's really how it went. We took off our yukatas (a bit embarrassing) and went into the adjoining room that had the little showers and onsen. We showered, and slipped into the hot water. And it felt SOOO GOOD! We stayed in there for a couple of minutes, then got back out and showered again as the lady had instructed. Then we got back in and chatted with the lady and another college student who was in there with us. Of course we were in the lady's bath, so we didn't have to worry about that sort of thing.

Once we started feeling dizzy, though, we got out and toweled off, put our yukatas back on and went back up to that room to cool off a bit. The ladies that were waiting on the room gave us sweet senbei cookies and (for some odd reason) hot green tea. We waited for awhile and then went down to the cheaper onsen where the locals like to bathe. It was quite an experience, let me tell you. Most of the were really really old ladies who looked like they could barely walk by themselves, yet there they were hopping into this huge tub of really really hot water. After about 10 minutes we were dizzy again so we got back out and went back upstairs.

It was so amazing! I was wiping my arm dry when I noticed that it was still wet. So I wiped it again and sweat immediately beaded up! It was crazy, I don't think I've ever sweat that much before. Not to mention we both looked as if we had really bad sunburns.

And then we got to take a tour of the rooms and bath that are kept exclusively for the Imperial Family! Unfortunately I completely forgot that I had my camera with me, or I would have taken pictures. Sorry! But we also got to go into the private room where the man who wrote Botchan (Natsume Souseki) used to spend a lot of time.

And here's the Dogo Park. We stopped here to eat lunch since it was nearby.

Next is Nagoya.

Naruto and the 13th

2008-03-29T02:40:00.010-05:00

So, yeah, the dreaded 13th. We woke up ridiculously early so that we could check out and catch our highway bus to Tokushima to see the Naruto whirlpools. Well, we made the bus, which was nice. We slept for most of the way there and I woke up when the bus passed through Naruto. Now if we had simply known that this bus would stop in Naruto, we might not have had the bad luck that we did that day. But, unfortunately, we weren't aware of that, so we went straight through Naruto and got off at Tokushima.

Well, we got to the Tokushima station alright (since it was right across the street from where the bus dropped us off). And we were so surprised! We went in, bought our tickets, but then looked around and couldn't figure out how to get on the platform. We could see the area that LOOKED like a place to go through, but there were no machines to take your ticket. Instead this lady was standing in a little booth in the middle of that area. We couldn't believe it! She stamped your ticket and let you through! Of course, we'd never been off of the main island before, and Tokushima is on Shikoku.

Well, we got on the train and it took us FOREVER to get to Naruto station. When we finally got there it was 10:45 and the schedule I'd written out said that we were supposed to catch the 10:54 train back to Tokushima station to catch our next bus there. While I was deliberating, my traveling companion said that we should just go ahead, go see the whirlpools really quick, hurry back and catch the next train back to Tokushima. And being the idiot that I am I didn't even bother to check the train schedule before I agreed.

We went outside to check out how to get to Naruto. We saw the bus schedule and figured the bus would be too slow. So, against our better judgement, we took a taxi out to the bridge. The taxi driver was really nice. When we got to the bridge he told us that he'd wait for us. So we ran inside, paid our 500 yen to get out onto the bridge and ran out over the bridge to get a view of the whirlpools.

Well, luck, like I said, wasn't with us that day and they had blocked off the part of the bridge where you could actually see the whirlpools. Sadly enough, we got a better view of them from the bus on the way to Tokushima(see first group of pictures). So we hurried back to the taxi, quite disappointed, and went back to Naruto station. Taxis are so expensive.

We got back into the station, bought our tickets to get back to Tokushima only to see that nobody was taking tickets. We look around and it just didn't hit us. All the signs were there: the station only had two tracks, it was the end of the line, and no trains were there. There were only 2 ticket machines and one lady working the station. We decided to check the time table (finally) and discovered to our horror that the next train wasn't going to leave Naruto station until 2 hours later.

...wow...

So we asked the lady at the ticket counter if there was some other way to get back to Tokushima station besides a taxi. She looked at us with that look that just screams "You idiots" and told us that there was a bus. She told us how to get to the bus stop and, thankfully, refunded our tickets for us. We went to the bus stop and waited. The bus was a bit late, so we were very tense, hoping against hope that we would get to the station in time.

Well, the bus definitely got us to Tokushima station earlier than the train would have, but we were still 20 minutes late. So we missed our bus to Matsuyama. We went into the bus company office and the lady told us that there was another bus that was going to leave at 3:50 and that we should just get on that one. So we had a couple of hours to just loaf around. So we got some lunch and then headed to a nearby bank since I was running low on cash.

We got to the bank and I gave them some traveler's cheques to exchange into yen. The man who took it from me (the bank manager, I assumed) held it up to the light and looked at it like he'd never seen anything like it in his life. Then he casually walked around and asked random worker if they knew what it was. This made me inordinately angry.

Manager: What is this? I've never seen anything like this before. She's telling me that it's money. And she wants money for it...

Me: It's...a t-r-a-v-e-l-e-r's c-h-e-q-u-e. You know, those things that can be used ANYwhere? You have a sign up that tells me what the exchange rate is for them. See? T-r-a-v-e-l-e-r's c-h-e-q-u-e.

Manager: She wants money for it. (to random worker) Do you know what this is?

Worker: Oh, goodness. What is that? I'm not sure...let me make a phone call...

So, by about that time I'm about ready to either hit something or cry. Since neither would have been very dignified I did my best not to do either. They finally gave me my yen, though. I was glad we weren't in a rush. We waited some more and then about 30 minutes before the next bus was supposed to depart we decided to go ahead and go up to the bus stop and check to make sure we could really get on the next bus since the lady in the office hadn't seemed to sure of herself.

We get up there and my travel buddy took the tickets up to the little booth and I waited nearby with our bags. After a while I decided to see what was up and so I walk up to where my friend is and the lady in the booth is chewing her out for missing the bus, so she snatched the ticket that my friend was holding and went to go change it. By that time I was at the window and she looked at me and my friend told her that she had another ticket and the lady chewed her out for not telling her there was another ticket.

Oh boy.

I'm pretty sure I shot her a death glare. It was then that I decided it probably wouldn't be a good idea to try to speak to the lady so I went back to the waiting area with our bags. My friend came back and we waited some more. We got really good at that by the end of the trip.

Well, we got on the bus and got to Matsuyama just fine. We got on the tram and rode it to the Dogo Onsen area, where our youth hostel was supposed to be. We got off of the tram and got dinner and asked the convenience store clerk where the hostel was. But he didn't know. Gr.

So we ask various other people and they all give us bogus directions before we finally just stop in a hotel and ask directions. The guy was really nice, he gave us a map and showed us where to go. And, of course, it was up this HUGE hill! So we drag our luggage up this hill and find the youth hostel. By this time it's dark, we're tired, hungry, and just ready to sleep. But the old ladies who were running the place weren't very organized and it took them a good half hour to check us in.

What a day, let me tell you. Here's some pictures of the youth hostel we stayed at in Matsuyama.

Next is the Dogo Onsen and Dogo Park.

Nara

2008-03-27T02:13:00.010-05:00

Then the next day we decided to do laundry. And we were so happy that the youth hostel had dryers. But, of course, they didn't work very well. When I came back after an hour, my clothes were really warm, but they were still wet. Not moist, wet. So I took them back to my room and hung them up as you can see in my previous photos. So that day I had no jeans to wear, so I went in pajama pants, as you will be able to see in some of the following pictures. However, my travel companion's clothing never actually dried until we got to the hotel in Nagoya about 3 days later.

But we left at about noon, so that we could finish our laundry, which...never actually happened. But anyway, we had to transfer to a private railway to get there, and the station was so confusing! Not NEARLY as user-friendly as the JR-line stations.

And then we walked from the station to Todai-ji which is HUGE. On the way we bought some senbei for the deer and fed them. Both of us got bitten when we didn't feed them more.

Then we made the short walk to the Kasuga shrine. It was so beautiful!

It was rather amazing how there was this HUGE green park-like area that makes up most of the city.

Next on the list is Naruto and the dreaded 13th.

Kyoto - Day 2

2008-03-25T02:43:00.026-05:00

Well, here we are at Kyoto, day 2. Unfortunately we didn't get a whole lot done on our first day in Kyoto. Originally we were only going to spend one day there, but thankfully one of my friends suggested two days since there are so many things to see there. And she was so right. It seemed like there was a shrine or temple on just about every block. It was a bit ridiculous.

So we woke up an hour later than the morning before and caught one of the express trains (finally! the RIGHT train!) and we got to Kyoto at about the same time, which is really sad. Our first stop was Nijo-jo (or Nijo castle). This castle was built in 1603 and was the used by the first Tokugawa Shogun (Ieyasu). This was an awesome place! Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures inside of the castle because they're trying to preserve the original paintings on the doors and such. So we enter the castle and we have to take our shoes off. When we finally get into the main part of it the wooden floors creaked. They're called nightingale floors, and they were made to creak so that they would know when there was an intruder. It was very interesting. If you ever go to Kyoto, I highly recommend this place. The gardens are beautiful and if you go early enough (like right when it opens) you can beat the major crowds. I definitely forgot that I was in the middle of Kyoto City in those gardens.

Our next stop was back at the Nishijin Textile Center. This time we were going to try our hand at traditional weaving. It was pretty easy, and rather quick, but it was definitely interesting. Afterwards we got to see a kimono fashion show on the same runway that we had been on the day before.

The next stop was Kinkaku-ji, or the Golden Pavilion. Unfortunately we went around noon so it was packed to the gills. But the surrounding area was gorgeous. You could forget that you were in a city in that place, just like the palace gardens. However, there wasn't a whole lot to the place besides the actual golden pavilion.

Then we took a lunch break. Went to a conbini and got ourselves onigiri and then caught a bus out to this river we'd seen the day before to eat our lunch. It was such a nice day! And a whole bunch of young people were out there. There was kind of a peninsula (of concrete) that extended into the river, and a whole bunch of people were eating on it. We chose to sit on the side of the river, but it was nice to see everyone having fun. Somebody was playing the drums, too.

After that we went to a lesser known shrine named Sanjusangendo. I had decided to go there instead of a more well known shrine because they both had beautiful gardens, but this one would be less crowded. And it was. It was very nice. We had almost the whole place to ourselves.

Then we went to another temple called Tojo-ji. This one had a five story pagoda, but it we didn't actually go into the grounds because it was a bit expensive. So we walked around the outside gardens, which were really nice. The buildings were HUGE, though.

Then we went back to Osaka to the youth hostel. Next is our day trip to Nara.

Kyoto - Day 1

2008-03-22T07:01:00.018-05:00

It turns out that I can't upload videos that are more than 100 MB and the one I took of the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living is about 506 MB...so, I'm still trying to figure out a way to break it down. If you know a way, let me know.

So I'll just go ahead and proceed with our first day trip to Kyoto.

On the 10th we woke up really early, showered and went on our way to the train station. (For some reason all of the places we stayed at asked us to leave our keys at the front desk when we left the building.) We caught the loop-line to Osaka station and then we got on a local train from Osaka to Kyoto. Big mistake #1. I had called the Nishijin Textile Center a week beforehand to make reservations for us at 9:00 am. Since we caught the local train (the one that stops at every station along the way) we didn't get to Kyoto station until 9:00 am. Then we still had to get a bus pass and get on a bus.

If anybody wants to go to Kyoto, I highly recommend this bus pass. I got wind of it by mistake, and thank goodness I did, too. We saved SO much money with it. For 500 yen you can ride any of the flat-rate fare buses all day, with the bus pass, that is. It was quite nice. We would have payed about 5 times more if we hadn't gotten that bus pass.

Anyway, luck was with us and there was a number 9 bus waiting when we got there and it took off as soon as we got on. We didn't get to the Nishijin Textile Center until 9:35 am, unfortunately. But the ladies were really nice about it and they went ahead and took us to the room where they have all of the kimonos and gave us various garments and instructions.

My travel companion chose to wear a maiko kimono. For those of you who don't know, a maiko is a female entertainer. They don't actually call them geisha here, like we do in America, because a geisha is actually a male entertainer. The performers we know as geisha are actually called geiko here. I chose to wear a regular kimono, since I could wear it outside for the day.

Here are our pictures:

And after we'd gotten dressed and all of these pictures taken, we took the bus down south to Fushimi Inari Taisha. This is the shrine where they filmed Chiyo running through the tori gates in Memoirs of a Geisha. It's a shrine devoted to kitsune, or foxes. Foxes, here, are a symbol of a good harvest.

And we didn't have much time after I got changed out of the kimono, so we just walked around and had dinner in the Gion district. The temple shown below is right next door to Gion and maiko often perform dances at this shrine for festivals. The other pictures are of sunset in Gion and of Kyoto tower.

Hope you guys are enjoying these posts!

Osaka II

2008-03-18T17:05:00.005-05:00

Osaka was definitely an interesting place.

We took an overnight bus from Shinjuku Station in Tokyo to Osaka Station. It was actually rather unpleasant. If anybody out there ever decides to do that, don't use the Orion company. The seats are crowded, like regular tour buses, and they turn the heat way up. I suppose they were trying to get us to sleep, but it was really rather uncomfortable. My travel companion mentioned once that she felt like she was being baked.

Well, we arrived at Osaka Station at about 7:00 AM and tried to find the JR Line. We became EXPERTS at train stations during this trip. In Osaka there is a train that basically makes a big circle through the city. So we had arrived at 7:00 AM and we couldn't check into the youth hostel until 10. And we were sooo tired. We had gotten on the train and when our stop came up we decided to just sit on the train. We figured, "hey, this train goes in a circle, let's just sit here for a couple of hours." Sadly enough the train was more relaxing than the night bus we took. Eventually we had to get off, though, because the train was ending its circuit. So we got on another one and rode on it until we got hungry.

After that we FINALLY got off at our stop and could not find our youth hostel because the directions we were given were worthless. Thankfully we had exited the station at the correct exit, though. We went into a police box to ask for directions, but nobody was there...it was kind of unsettling. We waited awhile but nobody came, so we left and decided to just look around this strip of hotels we could see on the other side of the tracks. It turns out that it was, indeed, over there. But unfortunately it was kind of a seedy part of town. Lots of homeless people were lounging around. Thankfully none of them decided to talk to us, probably because they thought we couldn't speak Japanese. Sometimes being a foreigner here has it's advantages. The crazy people usually don't try to talk to you.

Well, we still had some time to kill, so we back-tracked to this convenience store ("konbini" in Japanese, just a shortened form on "convenience") and looked around for breakfast. Most restaurants here only serve Japanese breakfasts that usually consist of salad, miso soup and other assorted Japanese foods. We wanted something slightly familiar so we chose konbini food, since they usually sell bread and yogurt and whatnot. We got our breakfast and headed back over to the hostel. When we got there it was still 5 minutes to 10, but we decided to just go ahead and try then.

We checked in, and went up to our rooms. The man behind the desk actually mixed up our names. So for four days I was Jennifer, and my companion was Stephanie. We really didn't think it was worth it to correct him, especially since he was so nice. Well, the rooms as you can see from my first Osaka entry, were quite small. But we had them to ourselves so it was ok. The bathrooms, however, were a completely different story.

Every floor (5 floors) had community bathrooms. Unfortunately, they were not separated by gender. So in every one of these bathrooms there were at least 4 urinals. I can't tell you how many times I walked in on somebody using one of those. It was quite embarrassing. And in the entire building there was only 1 western toilet. I think I almost died right then. The rest of the toilets were the Japanese style (basically a porcelain hole in the ground). And then there was only one shower room for the whole building. And the shower room was only open from 6:00-10:00 and 16:00-22:00. And if you wanted to take a shower and you were a girl you had to let the front desk know so they could stick a sign up on the door that said "Ladies are showering, please wait a moment."

And our rooms had no air conditioning. Thankfully, though they provided us with bed warmers which are the loveliest things in the world. And we had a TV as well, so at least we could check the weather. We stayed at this hostel for 4 nights. We made day trips to Kyoto and Nara during that time and we left at around 6:00 AM on the morning of the 13th which proved to be a horrific day, but more on that later.

Our first day in Osaka we spent at a Plum Festival at the Tenmangu shrine and at the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living.

The Plum Festival was lovely. Lots of white and pink plum trees in bloom all around as you can see in the photos I've posted. However, we came to this building where people were going inside and we stood in front of it for a bit wondering what was going on inside. Then this random stranger came up to us and gave us two tickets that were apparently for getting inside the building we were standing in front of. She said that she didn't want to see it, so she was giving them to us. We were quite grateful and so after she left we immediately went into the building. Inside they had a special exhibition of plum blossoms. All of the pictures that you see of blossoms inside are from that exhibition. And not only did they have blossoms, they had ancient artwork of Japanese people appreciating plum blossoms. It was quite interesting.

And then we went to the museum. Usually, I'm not too keen on museums, but this one had seemed pretty interesting. Inside of the museum they had built a real-size reproduction of an Osaka neighborhood from the 1830s. (I have a video that I took when we walked through the neighborhood, but it's rather large, so I'll post it next time.) And then they also had a bunch of miniature neighborhoods in another room from the 20th century.

Afterwards we walked around and window-shopped and then went to a really small restaurant near our hostel for dinner. Since we were in Osaka we wanted to eat what Osaka is famous for, okonomiyaki, which is known as the Japanese pancake. But it's not like American pancakes, that's for sure. They put cabbage in the batter...and then they fry it with all sorts of sea food or meat. (We both had shrimp) and then they put tons of sauces and fish flakes on top. Usually you cook it yourself. But we went into a really small restaurant. We sort of felt like intruders because the owner (a lady) seemed to be very familiar her customers...all three of them. They were having conversations that only friends could have, which is probably what they were. But she made our okonomiyaki for us and we watched some sumo on TV.

Then we went back to the hostel, since we hadn't slept well on the bus the previous night, and went to sleep.

To be continued...

Update

2008-03-16T19:18:00.002-05:00

Ok, I've returned to my host-parents' house now. I've updated the Osaka entry two times now. I want to add the pictures in chronological order, so I'm waiting for my travel partner to post her pictures on Facebook so that I can post them on here as well. Please be patient! Until then...

Osaka

2008-03-09T04:35:00.058-05:00

So I'm in Osaka at the moment. I left on a night bus with my friend Jennifer the night before last from Shinjuku. The bus ride was kinda...yeah.... We didn't get much sleep at all that night and we've been walking around all day since then, so we are dead tired. But I wanted to upload my pictures from yesterday so that I would have plenty of space for the rest of our trip.

Here are pictures from the Tenma Tenjin Plum Festival at the Tenmangu Shrine in Osaka.

Here are pictures from the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living.

And here are just some random pictures from around Osaka as well as the youth hostel we stayed in while we were there.

What do you think?

Unfortunately I wasn't able to upload all of my pictures from today due to time contraints. So just be patient, I'll get them up eventually. And I know that some of them are sideways, but I couldn't save them to the computer I'm using, so I'll fix them when I get back. Sorry!

I know, I know...

2008-03-07T17:55:00.023-06:00

I've been slacking, I'm sorry. Lately I've been studying for my Japanese placement test for the new semester which starts in April, and I've been planning a trip as well.

But here are some pictures from Girl's Day which was March 3.

The way it works is when a daughter is born into a household the new mother's mother buys a Hina doll set which is actually quite expensive and ridiculously detailed. And every year on 3/3 the dolls are displayed in a particular way. And family member leave offerings at the foot of the display.

This set of dolls, however, was given to my host-parents by my host-mom's parents when they got married. It's supposed to mean that they will stay married for a long time (until they're old).

As to my trip I'm actually leaving this evening! I'm taking a night bus from Tokyo to Osaka tonight. In Osaka I'm going to the Tenma Tenjin Plum Festival, the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living, and maybe the 48 Waterfalls of Takihata. The next day I'm taking a day trip to Kyoto where I will be dressed in a kimono and try my hand at weaving and then I'll go visit the Golden Pavilion, Yasaka Shrine, Gion district, Sanjusangendo, and the Fushimi Inari Shrine. The next day I'll be taking another day trip to Kyoto, but I don't really know what I'll be doing yet. Then the next day I'm taking another daytrip to Nara where I'll visit the Todaiji and Kasuga Shrine. The next day I'm taking a bus to Naruto to see the whirlpools and then I'm taking another bus to Matsuyama. The next morning I'm gonna relax in the Dogo Onsen and then take a night bus to Nagoya where one of my friends is living. That following day we'll hang out. Then the next day I'm going to go see Nagoya Castle, Nagoya Noh Theater, and the Atsuta Shrine. And then I'm taking another night bus back to Tokyo. Hopefully I'll be able to update while I'm traveling, but if not, I will have tons of pictures for when I get back!

Autumn Walk

2008-02-29T05:56:00.004-06:00

Well, it's almost spring over here in Japan. The first spring wind blew in today and it was really nice outside! My laundry actually dried in one day! And I didn't have to wear my coat outside. But I realized this morning that I haven't put up pictures from a walk I did through my neighborhood in autumn.

Hopefully I'll be able to put up pictures of spring soon, too!

Vending Machines

2008-02-26T17:36:00.003-06:00

One thing I've noticed about Japan is that vending machines are everywhere. And most of them sell either drinks (hot and cold) or cigarettes. However I HAVE found a couple of more interesting ones.

By the way, someone asked me how much cigarettes are. They generally run at around 310 yen though they can be more expensive depending on what kind and brand you want.

And here we have a beer machine as well as an EGG machine. Weird, huh?

And NO! I have NOT found the vending machine that sells used panties. That's really gross and I seriously doubt it exists.

International Tea Time

2008-02-24T17:22:00.003-06:00

The day after I arrived in Japan, my host-mom's friends came over for a visit after lunch. And since we have tea time between lunch and dinner I was obliged to make an appearance, which was kind of nerve-wracking because I could not for the life of me remember their names.

So instead of the usual rice crackers and cookies for tea time, we had international tea time! One of the ladies brought over these traditional spring Japanese sweets.

It was daifuku stuffed with anko, which is basically sweet red bean paste wrapped in a rice cake. And on top of it was a cherry blossom! And it was salted...ick. They told me that it was supposed to contrast with the sweetness and that it was really good. Usually I don't really like anko or mochi all that much, but this one was pretty good. However, the cherry blossom was icky. It was really, really salty and kinda gross. But the rest of it was delicious.

Then the other lady had brought some sweets back from Egypt with her.

Apparently she'd just gotten back from a trip there. It was really good, too! It was some kind of sweet outside with nuts on the inside.

And then my host-mom pulled out a Thai sweet.

While I was back in Texas my host-parents had gone to Thailand to visit one of their old home-stay students. My host-mom said it was a bit like cotton candy. It looks like thin pieces of frayed rope, but it did melt in your mouth like cotton candy! ^^ Very tasty!

And then we also had strawberries and pineapple. All in all, a very sweet tea time.

And then I noticed that morning that the tree outside of the den was no longer bare! The way the sunlight was shining through them I thought it might have been snow, but it had blossomed. Apparently it's a plum tree.

Beautiful, huh?

Back in Japan

2008-02-22T23:26:00.006-06:00

I'm back! I didn't realize just how much I missed my home away from home until I got back, which is kind of weird, don't you think? My host-dad picked me up from the bus stop and my host-mom had dinner ready when we got to the house. The front door was open when we arrived and my host-mom took out my slippers for me and welcomed me back home. And the house smelled just as it had when I first came here. And my host-brother and his wife were visiting which is always fun. We had sashimi as a celebration of my return. I think the only one not happy to see me was Hachi.

And my flights were ok, thankfully I had an aisle seat on the long one. I breezed through customs and managed to make my way to the bus stop at Sagami-ono all by myself. Here are some pictures from last night's dinner.

Oh and my host-parents converted that little room between my room and the backyard into a little sitting room for me. It's quite cozy!

And Back Once More

2008-02-20T21:34:00.002-06:00

Hey, Everybody! Well, I'm off to good ol' Japan again in the morning.

I had a wonderful, if a bit too short, time at home. It was nice to see old friends and family again. And just to clarify about that shrimp head in the miso soup...we don't actually eat the head. It's just used for flavoring, we drink the soup around it. The crab was also used for flavoring the rice, though we did eat the leg meat.

And I'm hoping to travel a bit during my Spring Break. I'm planning on going to Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Matsuyama and Hakone. Any suggestions on what you guys want to see? Now that I don't have classes I'll be able to spend more time taking pictures, so let me know!

Back Home

2008-02-16T20:55:00.003-06:00

It's so good to be back home.

Thursday, January 31st was the longest day of my life...literally. I got up early, prepared what was left to do so I could leave, ate breakfast and got ready to go. My host parents both drove me to the bus station and I even got hugs from both of them, which is a first. Although, it might have had to do with me getting dumped, too. But anyway, my host mom waited with me until the bus came and we parted ways. The bus left Sagamiono station at 10:00 AM and I arrived at Narita Airport at about 12:15 PM. Unfortunately I get slightly carsick, and my stomach hadn't fully recovered from the sickness I'd had two days before. Fortunately I didn't toss my cookies, which I am always grateful for.

Anyway, I got to the airport and checked in my bags, got my boarding pass and sat around the airport, since my flight wasn't supposed to depart until 5:50 PM. I guess security had gotten a bit suspicious of me because two uniformed men came over and asked to see my passport in halting English. Then they saw my alien registration card and asked me if I could speak Japanese. And so they thought they had gotten a break and proceeded to pepper me with questions about where I was going to school and how I liked Japan and how long I was going to be there and so on. Finally they left me alone and I decided to go ahead and go through security and customs. By the way, you cannot take beef jerky out of Japan, just so you know.

And then I sat around some more waiting for my plane to arrive. I actually ran into one of my Japanese classmates. My flight was to LA and his was to San Francisco I think. Anyway, I did not get an aisle seat this time, unfortunately. And I wasn't on a double-decker plane, either. There were three seats on the right side of the plane, an aisle, five seats, another aisle, and three more seats, I think. I was next to the aisle seat in the group of five. The guy who had the misfortune to be in the exact middle was a very talkative, Russian-born hippie. It was quite interesting. My plane ride TO Japan had been very boring and nobody talked to me. On THIS particular trip I talked to both of the people sitting next to me. The person on the aisle was this really nice Japanese lady who was curious about what I thought of Japan, of course. But her English was really exceptional. She had no accent whatsoever. It was rather difficult to believe that she'd grown up in Japan.

And I didn't get a chance to sleep too much, either. The economy seats are so narrow and kind of uncomfortable. My hippie neighbor told me that every time he woke up I was in a different position. So I cat-napped for about an hour before they started serving breakfast.

So, my plane departed from Narita Airport at 5:50 PM on Thursday, January 31st and it arrived in L.A. at 10:35 AM on Thursday, January 31st. Ugh.

So I went through customs at LAX. That place is kind of a maze. Okay, it isn't kind of a maze, it IS a maze. And the first guy I had to talk to told me that I lived in Japan. Then the second guy I had to talk to said I lived in the U.S. Ugh. Make up your minds!

And so I had to sit and hang out until my plane was scheduled to depart for DFW at 2:30. Unfortunately high head winds in Dallas delayed us for about an hour. We finally took off and I arrived in Dallas sometime, I can't remember now. My parents picked me up and we went home where I proceeded to hand out gifts. And then I couldn't get to sleep. Figures, huh? I'd been up for over 35 hours before I finally forced myself to just lay in bed until I fell asleep. And I didn't wake up until 1:30 the next afternoon! That was a first for me...I'd never slept past 11 before.

And I went down to Austin to look for an apartment with one of my future roommates. That was pretty fun. I didn't realize how hard it was to find a decent apartment. The first one we went to turned out to be section 8 housing. And the second one turned out to have income restrictions. It was rather frustrating.

But I'll be leaving for Japan again on the 21st of this month. Sorry for the lack of updating. It's amazing how much time I have not had to relax since I got home. Oh! And it turns out that I've lost 5 pounds since being in Japan! I can wear smalls now, which is rather nice because it means my waist has slimmed down. Everybody I met with seemed to think that I had gotten skinny. But I think I've definitely been able to come to terms with being dumped, which is great. In a way, my ex had impeccable timing. A change in scenery was exactly what I needed. ^^

On the Road Again

2008-01-30T04:27:00.001-06:00

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

2008-01-26T21:08:00.001-06:00

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

2008-01-25T18:23:00.000-06:00

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

2008-01-23T20:16:00.000-06:00

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.

Illumination

2008-01-15T22:10:00.000-06:00

Here in Japan, around Christmas time Illuminations are very important. Our university had an illumination, I saw them all of the time on TV and my host-parents took us and my boyfriend out to one at a local park. It was super super cold, but the lights were really cool. Here are some of the pictures:

Thankfully it was a clear night and you could see the moon and stars really well. Unfortunately I was using my old camera at the time and it ran out of batteries pretty early on in the trip.

Seijin Shiki

2008-01-14T22:59:00.000-06:00

Well, yesterday, the 14th, was a national holiday called Seijin shiki. Every year on this day people who turned 20 in the previous year after March (and those who turn 20 before April this year) gather to celebrate their coming of age. Usually women wear kimono and men wear a western suit. Apparently the cities hold assemblies in their town halls and have all sorts of guest speakers come and give speeches on growing up.

But since I wouldn't have understood most of what they were saying, my host-parents dressed Haru-chan and I in kimono and we took pictures. Here are some of the pictures:

My host-mom told us that this was a really easy way to wear the kimono. We didn't have any bottom layers underneath the silk. What happened was my host-mom gave us each a slip to put on and then she would come back into the room and she would dress us. The first thing she did was to fold a thick towel in two and wrap it around my waist because you're supposed to look, well, flat when you wear the kimono. So she put the towel on and then she put the cheating collar (instead of an under-robe) and tied some strings together and then started putting all sorts of belts around my waist.

Next I slipped the kimono on. My host-mom gathered the kimono around my waist until the hemline was around my ankles and then she tied a belt around the kimono so that the extra fabric hung around my waist. Then she made the extra fabric neat and tied another belt around it. Next came the obi, the big belt around the middle. She took some sort of pillow looking thing and put part of the obi through the hole in the bottom of it and stuck it, sort of like a chair back, against my back and tied it there. Then she started wrapping the obi around me, which was quite entertaining. She braced her foot against the outside of mine and yanked hard. It was so funny, I almost fell over every time! Then she did some complicated stuff with the obi and that was that. It was sort of like wearing a corset. But it was definantly a fun experience. Taking it off was much easier even though I had to have her help me with the obi.

But real silk kimonos are so expensive, though! The one I was wearing was around USD $6,000. And the obi alone was worth USD $2,000. The obi that Haru-chan was wearing was USD $5,000! If only I had that kind of money to spend on kimono....

Matsuri (Festival)

2008-01-09T21:36:00.000-06:00

Well, one day last year my host-family took Haru-chan and I to a lights festival nearby. It was sort of interesting. They had a really long part of a street blocked off and they had really huge floats with lights on them with dancers and taiko drum floats inbetween them. It was really crowded and we kept losing each other, which was kind of bad. Luckily I had gotten my cell phone just that afternoon, so if we had gotten lost they could have e-mailed or called me.

What do you think?

Okane (Money)

2008-01-07T23:45:00.000-06:00

So money is pretty different here in Japan. I mean, obviously they don't use the U.S. dollar here, but in other ways. For instance, most stores and restaurants only take cash, which is kind of inconvenient. Thankfully the crime rate is pretty low where I am. Apparently the only thing we really have to worry about in this area is grade schoolers shoplifting. Some stores do accept credit cards, but you have to really search for them. Major department stores and most grocery stores do accept them, but not all. Not to mention the Japanese don't have checks or checking accounts.

However it is pretty cool that you can pay your insurance bills at any convenience store.

So here are the coins and bills that I use everyday now:

Here is the front and back (respectively) of the 1 yen coin. Today it's roughly worth 0.009 U.S. dollars, in other words, less than a penny.

And here is the front and back of the 5 yen coin. Both the 1 and 5 yen coins cannot be used at most vending machines, which is really quite annoying because they start to pile up after awhile.

Here is the front and back of the 10 yen coin. This is the smallest coin that most vending machines accept.

And the front and back of the 50 yen coin.

And the front and back of the 100 yen coin, which is worth a little bit less than 1 U.S. dollar.

And the front and back of the 500 yen coin. This is sooo convenient!

And we'll start with the bills. This is the front and back of the 1,000 yen bill, the smallest bill that they have.

Here is the front and back of the 2,000 yen bill. This bill is actually really rare and they're not in print anymore. I don't think you can use these at vending machines....

And here is the front and back of the modern 5,000 yen bill.

And this is the front and back of an older 5,000 yen bill, another rare bill that's not in print anymore, I believe.

And this is the front and back of the 10,000 yen bill.

Sort of interesting, isn't it? Luckily the Japanese use Roman numerals, even though the number kanji aren't too difficult.

New Years

2008-01-04T20:19:00.000-06:00

Once again, sorry about waiting so long until posting. My Chinese host-sister was chatting on our host-parents computer to her family in China and somehow screwed up the computer. So our host-parents don't want us to use their computer anymore. It's rather inconvenient.

At any rate Happy New Years to everybody!! New Years is really huge over here in Japan. Everybody buys these New Year's post cards called nengajou and they send them to their friends, family, and customers if they own a business, as well as coworkers and bosses. And these are special postcards. Each one has a special stamp on it that tells the post office people that the card is not to be delivered until the first of January.

And on New Years many people gather at the many shrines and temples throughout Japan to pray in the New Year when it strikes midnight. My host-family, however, likes to stay at home away from the crowds. So my host-mom made a big New Years Eve dinner and invited some people over. So it was me, my host-parents, my host-aunt and -uncle, my host-brother and his wife, and my boyfriend and his older brother who was visiting from America.

It was really interesting. Most of the food that they eat has some sort of meaning to it. For example, my host-dad made this traditional Japanese food called Toshikoshi soba. Basically it's really long noodles that are supposed to give you long life if you eat them on New Years. And then my host-mom put out bowls of edamame beans which are supposed to mean "work hard!" And she also made this taro root paste thing for the soba noodles that's really sticky and it's supposed to mean "never give up." I had everything except for the taro root paste, which looked rather unappetizing.

And we ate the dinner in a traditional Japanese room that we hardly ever use. And it had all sorts of cool stuff in it. Of course it was really cold so we had two heaters in the room going on full blast as well as the heated rug that we were sitting on. Hachi, the cat, really likes warm places, so by the end of the meal she was napping under the table, which is the low sort of table that you sit on the floor for.

They also had these interesting music boxes. Apparently if a woman has a child, the woman's parents send her a music box depending on the gender of the child. But I think it's just for New Years. So, my host-mom had a son and a daughter. The music box for the boy-child has arrows in it and the music box for the girl-child has the paddles for the traditional Japanese badminton game that people usually play at New Years.

And when you turn the knobs at the bottom of the boxes, a New Years song comes out. Really cool.

Well, I won't have access to the internet until the 8th, so until then...Matane!