よし

Okay, this is my LAST blog post. It's about Kyoto! And Nara!

My two-day-one-night trip up to this part of Japan started out in Nara, the neighboring city that was capital of Japan even before Kyoto was.


It looked like this!


This is me with a group of english-studing students who struck up a conversation with me at random!


Deer were pretty much everywhere. You could get food to feed them, and they had had all fear of humans de-evolved out of them.

But enough chitchat! This building is more or less the reason I came to Nara at all. Specifically, its contents:


BUDDHA!
Even bigger than the one at Kamakura! Unfortunately, my camera has been malfunctioning sometimes in low-light areas and it's basically impossible to convey how huge that thing is in photograph form, so I'm going to have to move on to KYOTO now.


This is the entrance to the Ginkakuji (銀閣寺), which I found to be far and above the most gorgeous place I went to in Kyoto, and thus in all of Japan.



It's so pretty!


PRETTY.


It's not going to stop being pretty, nor will the pictures stop coming.


As a side note, inside that pavilion is the actual Ginkakuji building itself. It was under repair at the time I saw it.

But who cares, when the gardens around it look like this?


Afdjkfweopeklgwe.
OKAY that's not nearly all of my Ginkakuji pictures but I'm moving on.

This is The Philosopher's Way (哲学の道), a road by a river that some famous dude or other liked to walk down. It's admittedly quite pleasant. I met a wandering artist there!

Aqueduct!

And now we have moved onto the KYOTO NIGHTLIFE, just in canse you forgot that Kyoto is an actual city, not just a collection of gorgeous temples and gardens. Like I tend to.

Here is... something! Temple related? I honestly don't know what it is!

Seriously, somebody who knwos Japanese culture better than me? What are these things?

So ends DAY ONE of my magical Kyoto adventure.
Day TWO begins with...

ENGRISH.
I swear this exact phrase appeared on Engrish.com at some point, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

Behold the most powerful ice cream sundae in the universe. The cost there - 10,000 yen - is roughly $95.

This is the quality courtyard surrounding Nijo Castle (二条城). Lots of gravel, and lots of quality.



And people used to just live here! It's crazy.

Some nice Rock Garden action going on here, yes.

Next is the Ginkakuji's sister temple: Kinkakuji (金閣寺). It is on a LAKE.
And unalike the Ginkakuji...

I could actually see this one!

Ain't it pretty?


And like all things in Kyoto, it was surrounded by amazing garden.




This thing was kind of interesting. Apparently you're supposed to try and toss spare change and get it into the bowl in the middle. I lost 3 yen trying, to no avail.

Next and last on the major Kyoto site list is Ryoanji (竜安寺). It has many nice sites.

But most famously...

The Zen Garden!
I do not comprehend the meaning behind these rocks, but I am told they are highly meaningful. Honestly, even not understanding it, it was interesting to ponder.


And here is me with my temporary traveling partner Bak, from Korea.


IN CONCLUSION Kyoto is awesome and I would go back in a heartbeat.

But that's not all I did since my last blog post!

I also went to Yokohama.
Pictures begin now!


See that boat? It's not actually a boat anymore. It's a maritime museum. Awesome.

Now entering!

While inside, I learned many things about life on a boat. However...

I did not learn the meaning of this sign by the anchor.

Seriously, what was up with that sign. It's not a cat.

But anyways, what Yokohama is really famous for is:

Chinatown!

Good heavens there were a lot of people here.

This poster... there is nothing I can say that would add to the inherent awesome of it.

China!



And finally, Yokohama Stadium and the adjacent park:


And that's it! I'm done posting pictures.

I am leaving Japan July 31st, 4:30 PM and arriving in America nine hours later, on July 31st, 9:30 AM. Airplanes are capable of time travel.

This has been a fantastic trip, but I don't think I'm going to write a big dramatic conclusion here. I may post again once I'm back in the states with some more sweeping general observations.

If not, thanks for reading!

子供たちはかわいい！

Brief, photo-free post this time. Next one will make up for it, trust me.

My primary activity of note (aside from my 22nd birthday last weekend WOO) these last few weeks has been my Field Work class finally starting in earnest. I have gone to two elementary schools to talk to impressionable youths, and talked with a group of Junior High students once. My last school visit is next week.

The school visits have been really fun! The first was a group of 1st-3rd grade students, which me and maybe 12 other exchange students hung out with as a group. We told them our names and where we were from, and then we taught them how to play Rock Paper Scissors in English, Korean, Chinese, and Italian.

My favorite moment from that trip was a young boy who quietly sat down with the class, looking at us (who were all furiously foreign-looking and also holding flags of our home countries) kind of vaguely, and after the teacher had been explaining why we were here for a good minute, he suddenly shouted out 「ウオ、外国人！？」 ("WHOA, foreigners?").

The second trip was a bit more educationally intensive, as it was a 6th grade class and we were separated one exchange student per class. I taught them numbers zero through ten, along with plus, minus, times, divided by, and equals. I also told them a bit about Washington and answered some questions, most of them about either Baseball or Pokemon.

The Junior High students were somewhat less enthusiastic, especially the boys. It was pretty evident that they didn't want to be there, nor did they care about learning English. Ah, well, they're in Junior High. What can you expect?


I apologize for the lack of amazing photography in this post, but tomorrow morning I am setting out for the former capital city of KYOTO, and staying there for 2 days and 1 night. You'll get your pictures after that.

Cheers!

古池や・かわず飛び込む・水の音

See, this is exactly why I don't keep a blog normally. I just start updating it less and less.

Partially because I'm not going to cool places as much, I guess? They're expensive! Really, the only major spot left on my list right now is Kyoto.

Destination for this weekend was Shibuya and Harajuku. I went to see crazy surreal Japanese fashionistas, but I think the rain scared them all away. Instead, I saw Meiji Shrine!

Photos time.


The path to the shrine was flanked by dangerous levels of NATURE.


Nature all over the place! Also, tourists.
I hear there are over 200 species of trees on and around the shrine complex.


Look! Some shrine, at last.


And here's the entrance to the shrine itself.


Inside the courtyard: a large tree!


And a wedding! There was totally a wedding going on in the shrine. I dunno, I wouldn't like to get married in front of gawking foreigner tourists like myself.


Here is some of the traditional shriney stuff.


Gorgeous architecture and pretty trees, the usual.


It depresses me a little that I'm almost starting to get jaded to this stuff. Same with earthquakes.


GROUP SHOT
In no particular order: Me, my friend Janna, and Janna's friends Stephanie and Aaron. With a bit of backtracking and some common sense, you should be able to figure out who is who. I interacted with a stranger in Japanese to get this photo taken!


Hey look, some more nature.


Janna is having a bright idea.


I would like this picture a lot more were it not for the traffic sign there. It's a lot brighter on film.


This is a museum!


Inside was portraits of every emperor in Japan, and a really awesome document chronicling the imperial family back into the age of myth, but I'll be damned if I could read it and they didn't allow photos inside.

That's enough Meiji. Time to head to Shibuya!


There was an Earth Day market! Was Earth Day last sunday? It's one of those holidays I can never keep track of.


This was my last adventure of the trip: The NHK Broadcasting Center! NHK, as I may or may not have mentioned before, is one of the huge megalithic TV broadcasting corporations in Japan, and they have a lot of cool stuff. I saw some of it!


In the front room there were loads of children waiting to get their picture taken with a MAGICAL ANIMAL MASCOT.

Unfortunately, the rest of the cool stuff was no-photo. I was a few feet away from some comedy variety show as it was airing LIVE on TV, which was pretty sweet.

Also, there was a 3D movie theater demonstration - with no glasses. You look at the screen, and it is 3D. Holy crap!

[Tech geek block BEGIN]
I have a pretty good idea of the trick they used here, even if I don't have the faintest idea how the underlying technology works. Basically, they took two camera recordings, spaced about as far apart as human eyes. Then, they had the screen projecting both at once, but you could only see one of the two images at a time, depending on what angle you were from the screen somehow. The trick: Which image you can see alternates every few inches. So, if you position your head right, a different image is hitting each eye. Hella cool.
[Tech geek block END]


Here is a picture of a statue.

OKAY that about wraps up that adventure. I am managing to survive my classes, spending more money than I'd like, and making a lot of friends. Today I learned how to make Japanese style Curry Rice!

Don't expect another post soon, I guess. I'll just keep going at this pace.


P.S. Regarding the title of this post: It is a bona fide Haiku that I was taught by my host father! It goes like this:

古池や
かわず飛び込む
水の音

Furu ikeya
Kawazu Tobikomu
Mizu no Oto

An old pond
A frog jumps in
The sound of water

It represents TRANQUILITY, see.

東京タワーがまだ倒れなかった

A number of places were visited in this past week and a half!

First was the Akihabara district of downtown Tokyo. Some know Akiba as one of the best places in Japan to buy electronics, like cameras or computers. Others know it as the Mecca of the geek universe.

I can't really describe Akihabara very well in a blog. It's kind of a surreal place. One of the first things I saw upon entering was a man in a business suit, with a horse head mask. Nobody seemed to find this out of places. There were a LOT of girls dressed as maids. The ones that weren't serving tea to people in insanely overpriced cafes were handing out pamphlets and coupons. I don't have any pictures, since most of the interesting stuff was 1) probably more interesting to me than it would be to most of you, and 2) indoors, where you aren't allowed to take pictures of it.

Next on the list was the heart of downtown Tokyo, this last weekend. The first place I went was a park right on the edge of the Imperial Palace grounds - as close as I could legally get to the palace itself.


That wall marks the edge of where the castle ended back in the Edo period, I think. Now it encompasses the kosher-to-go-into park area!



There was some kind of event going on. Lots of kids on bicycles. Don't know the details on that one, it didn't seem to be a race.


There was an endless expanse of perfect picnic spots! I wish I had brought lunch.


Awesome tree!


I wasn't the only tourist here, naturally. There's one of the few visible buildings on the actual Palace grounds.





Here's another one! Nijubashi bridge, the main entrance the grounds. I hear it's open one day out of the year!


This guy is Kusunoki Masahige, famous samurai from the 14th century. Fought for Emperor Go-Daigo to wrest Japan away from the Kamakura shogunate, then died in a hopeless battle of drama and samurai glory. He got a statue for it, and is also something like the patron saint of kamikaze pilots!



And now we have moved on to my next destination of this outing: Hibiya Park. Ain't it pretty?

However, not all was simple pretty trees in Hibiya park today. Something much more unexpected was going on:


OKTOBERFEST.
In Tokyo. I'm just as surprised as you are! I thought Oktoberfest was in October!

Not wanting to miss out on this opportunity, I had the pure, traditional Oktoberfest lunch of a massive frankfurter and a healthy serving of yakisoba. Just like the Germans do, right? Right?

Here it is from a distance, behind the classy clock sculpture. Bye, Oktoberfest!


Next on the list: NHK Broadcasting Museum!
NHK is a bit broadcasting company in Japan. Kind of like their equivalent of NBC or something.

The route I took to get there was kind of interesting, though. Lots of meandering catwalks through dense forest.
There are a lot of trees in downtown Tokyo.


Seriously, I felt like I was playing Myst.


Here we go! Old-timey stuff!


Giant animal mascots!


A cool room where you could play with cameras and stuff!


Bush and Kerry!

And next to the Museum was... wait for it...


Another shrine!
These things are friggin' everywhere!


It had these scary guys in it. They are probably Gods or something, but all I know for sure is that they mean business.

BUSINESS. Jesus. Look at that guy.

And with that, we have come to the last and possibly most iconic site of this particular adventure:

Tokyo Tower!


It's tall! Taller than the Eiffel Tower, just barely.


There is a gorgeous park near the base!


And once again, I find myself taking a plethora of photos from a really tall building. There are a lot of graveyards in Tokyo!

And a lot of trees!









Aaand that's enough pictures from me for today. To round it off, here's a video I took to try and convey Tokyo Tower's tallness:



In the week between these two trips downtown, I had JAPANESE MIDTERMS. Good gravy the last one was hard, but I pulled about an 85% on it, so that's pretty good. Especially considering that when I get back to the States, it just comes in as Pass or Fail.

I'm not sure what my next trip will be. I might not go anywhere CraaAAaazy this weekend, I've been doing that a lot lately. Two weeks from Saturday is the first real meet of my Field Work class - I'll be visiting an elementary school class along with some other exchange students, to do such exciting things as teaching them the names of colors in English.

Off I go!

遅れてしまいましたごめんなさい

Sorry for the delays! I have no excuse, really, I just keep forgetting.

Anyways, my last big Japan Event was going to Shinjuku last weekend. Shinjuku is deep in the heart of downtown Tokyo, filled with large buildings and things that look cool. Here are some of them!



Here's a planty thing that was outside the station!

The following pictures were all taken in one spot! I'd collage them together but I'm too lazy.



Now, my primary destination here is a building that acts as both City Hall and a Badass Observatory from which you can see all of Tokyo.

This is the building that I thought was it, but was totally wrong. I had lunch there.


This is a building that looks interesting but is clearly under construction. My host parents didn't know anything about it.


Aha! Here it is.


The plaza/park thing near it is awesome.


Japan has the best trees ever. Seriously. They're just so green.



Plaza under the building! It's pretty snazzy. Kind of italian.


It even has statues that are not at all Japanesey.


Anyone know who these two are? Can't be Adam and Eve because they have clothes. Something about the apple of Eris, maybe?


And then I went into the building, and I saw Tokyo!


And... it's really big.


Like, huge.


It just keeps going. In every direction.


Some sort of free market thing goin' on down there.


God, it's so big.


I'm just gonna start letting the pictures speak for themselves.







OKAY Back on the ground now.
Other things that exist in Shinjuku:

Astrological clock that I can't read!


Hilariously overblown sign for a karaoke joint!


Really busy shopping district!


Oh man. I saw this in a row of movie posters. I didn't know what it was, but I decided immediately that it didn't matter - I was going to assume for my own entertainment that it was a Japanese heavy-metal rock opera rendition of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

The best part? I was right.

Anyways, the next quality bit was Shinjuku Gyoen, a giant Japanese style garden. It took be a healthy amount of time, but I did manage to go all the way around it. Here are pictures:


















OKAY I'm spent. More later; I'm going to Akihabara in about an hour.

北海道

SO YES, I was supposed to post about this what, a week ago? Sorry for the delay.

Hokkaido was entertaining, in a strange sort of way. I apologize, but I didn't take a great deal of pictures - this trip was more for meeting with friends than for fantastic sightseeing. I spend the majority of the weekend in a very small town called Esashi. Here are some pictures of it:



A nice park right near where I was staying. We were planning to set off fireworks here, but various circumstances involving rain and illness led to that being impossible.


Esashi is a port town! Hence the anchorclock statue of quality. I do have some pictures of the sea, but it's not a particularly photogenic coastline.


I really like this sign. Its message is displayed succinctly and unmistakably - keep going and your car will forever plunge into the briny depths.
The only problem is that as of taking this picture, the sea is behind me...


There were some buddha statues here, which someone had put little pink cloaks on, for no discernible reason. Bizarre? Very yes!

And who doesn't like shrines and temples? I hope you're not getting tired of them, because I'm not gonna stop posting pictures of them!








I always, always want to ring the bell.


This last one is of particular note for being right next to a preschool.

Speaking of schools, this monstrosity is right outside the local elementary school:


Jesus Christ.

Anyways, more significantly of note in recent exciting activites was a Mikoshi parade that came to Machida last weekend. I went to check it out with my American friend, Janna. It was huge, it was loud, it was beautiful, and I have pictures!



That's it, the green and gold thing! Each one was being carried by about 20-50 people; I believe there were fourteen in all.
This picture in particular strikes me as very Japan, with the traditional shinto shrine in the foreground and the perky anime mascot on the sign in the background. Collision of the old and the new.






Demons! Good heavens. They're not very easy to see in this video, but there were definitely some demons in the parade.
In the background is my shoutout to Seattle.


There! A better shot of a scheming demon in action. There's no knowing what mischief they were up to.







Good heavens, I took a lot of pictures. This isn't even half of them!



Here's one that wasn't being carried around. And hey, it's Janna!

INTERMISSION

Here's me and Janna getting our picture taken with an inexplicable giant bunny outside a local arcade. I think it was somehow affiliated with the arcade? I don't really know. I'm pretty sure that costume has no eyeholes, and the person in it is either very small or very uncomfortable.

Anyways, back to the mikoshi!


More demons!


This was near the end of the event, when they stopped and did some dancing and whatnot. This kind of thing is kind of hard to capture in still photos... so I won't try to!


Holy crap! I can post videos. My camera does not seem to have captured sound, for which I apologize.
Here's another one, of the procession in general:



And now back to your regularly scheduled photos!

Here's a small one being carried by young people!


Here's one being violently shaken from side to side! I understand this is traditional, and also dangerous.
I tried, I TRIED to catch this on video, but they were always done by the time I could get my camera into video mode.


Here's the biggest one!


Here's one being carried only by women!


Aaaand done. I'm exhausted, and I have class tomorrow, so I'm ending this post!

鎌倉ですよ

Long time no post! You have my apologies.

There is a row of dogwood trees in Machida that are from Washington state! Apparently we traded them for some Sakura a while back.
They are blooming! Here's some pictures:









But that's not the important part of today's post. No, the important part is this past weekend, when I went to Kamakura, the former de facto capital of Japan, as it held the Shogunate during the aptly named Kamakura Period.

More importantly, I took pictures of it!
I know at least one of you wanted more pictures of temples, so I'll give you that and more.
First stop: Enoshima!
Here are some pictures of the Koyurugi Shrine, which isn't particularly big or famous but I found it so I'm gonna show you it:








Across the street was a beautiful Japanese graveyard.






And that's enough of Enoshima! The next destination was Kamakura itself, where BUDDHA LIVES.

Okay, so he doesn't LIVE there, but he's still really tall.


This tree is important because apparently it was planted by the Crown Prince of Thailand, Vajiralongkorn, in 1987. I just put it here as an excuse to type out that name.

Anyways, Buddha!


HE'S TALL


Seriously, check out how tall he is! Look at the guy in the corner there!


I also got to go inside the buddha, but that didn't come out on pictures very well, so you'll have to take my word for it that it was awesome.

Next stop is Tsuruoka Hachimanguu, a very famous temple.
One the way was an awesome path/garden/lane divider thing, going down the middle of the street:





And here's the temple itself:






Tragically, this is about where my camera ran out of batteries, so no pictures of Kenchouji temple for you.

Anyways, I may be a bit prolonged on my next post, as I am going to HOKKAIDO.
I leave on Friday, and come back the following Tuesday. It's Golden Week, so I can do that!

I will post many pictures and talk about many adventures when I return.