Nara: destinations and deer

               Nara was very convenient for a traveler like me.  There were a few major landmarks to see and about half of them were in walking distance of where I stayed, while the others were lined up in a way so as to make a train ride quick and easy.  Me and david saw temples, temples, shrines, temples, temples, a park, and the old imperial palace.  Everything in the region was built between the late 600s to the late 700s to my knowledge, so it was interesting to get to see all of the very old buildings.  The shrines and temples were extremely cool to see, with one of the temples being perhaps the oldest in the country, and another having a pagoda that was the second tallest in the country.

                Also, deer!  Unlike deer everywhere else I have seen, nara is known for its deer which while wild are not afraid of people and can often be seen walking or resting around the city and hording around people with deer snacks in the park.  That was really amazing and I think I got a few pictures of me petting some deer and also a video of some guy running away from deer because he didn't expect they would want the deer food he bought as much as he thought.

                There was something slightly disappointing about nara however, and I started to notice following my visit to the old imperial palace.  The palace was surrounded by pretty much nothing, and the building itself is not necessarily a recreation of the original palace, as too little was known about the original which was lost, other than the length and width as measured by information gathered from the grounds.  So the imperial palace building that we had seen was an educated guess at what it may have looked like, using data from the grounds as well as knowledge of architecture style of the time.

                According to some reading that I have done, the historical significance of nara was neglected until the later 1900s in japan, and nara hadn’t been as popular since the capital was moved to kyoto.  I felt there were too little people visiting the temples and shrines in nara, and  I thought that was unfortunate since it was a very interesting and beautiful place to visit.  It just seemed too quiet for such a historically significant city. 

                But because nara was a bit quiet, perhaps me and david stood out a bit more.  And the fact that we stuck out turned out to be one of the coolest parts of visiting nara.  Next post is on my interaction with people in japan!

Easier way to find my photos

I should have done this sooner, but I noticed that my post with my photos link had been viewed a lot, so I put the link to my photos on the side of the main page now.  I hope that helps!

A first look at nara - the hostel

After the train ride from Tokyo I took earlier, I ended up in Kyoto, the nation’s capital city.  But the final destination was nara, the nation’s first 'permanent' capital.  Of course permanent is a bad word to use, but that’s what I saw something else describe nara as.  Nara was used as the nation’s capital around the 700s, but not for very long before the capital ended up being relocated to Kyoto.  Nara isn’t as easy to get to by train as the other destinations I had been to before.  It’s on the end of a line, and the train used to get there seemed a bit older than some of the others we had used in the past – it made me think that nara isn’t a common destination.

                We ended up in nara a lot later in the day than expected, and I dragged my suitcase quite a way to the guest house – it seems that its wheels are about done for and I might need to get another. We missed the guesthouse  at first but some locals must have thought we looked a bit out of place so an old woman and a kid came up to us and told us basically that we were one street away from where we should be.  Oh well.

                The guest hose that we stayed in was one of the coolest places in nara for me.  Unlike all of the other hostels/guest houses that we will be staying in, the house was about 100 years old and built in traditional Japanese style instead of the modern Japanese houses which are just like any other house.  This house was all wood floors, some stone walls with a sort of sand finish, had bedrooms with mats of straw.  The bedrooms had sliding doors that went from ceiling to floor, wall to wall.  The doors themselves were made of a wooden structure and a sort of paper cover so that the doors would let light in even when closed.  These sort of sliding doors were also used in place of some of the walls of our private room, with the purpose being to help cool or warm the room by basically opening the room up to the outside.  But since these sliding doors are delicate they aren’t suited for bad weather or good for security so our private room also had a secondary wooden door that could slide in to place and lock so that the set of sliding doors that formed one of our walls could be reinforced against weather or people outside. 

It’s difficult to explain the house in text so I took a video of it all.  Unfortunately the internet connection in this new hostel is very slow and is preventing me from uploading that video just yet.  But I do have this.

 Also two things – we didn’t have a normal bed, but one which we used during the night and then folded up and put in the corner/away to save room, as is more traditional.  Also, no air conditioning in that place.  It was hot all the time and we had to make the best of the ability to open the room up and use a fan.

               We ended up having a couples room I think, but it wasn’t a big deal.  It’s not like hostels are supposed to be private.  There was also a very old looking bathroom and living room.  It was a very cool place and  I thought whoever decided to give the old house new life did a good thing.

                Speaking of old houses. There were a lot in nara.  Either old or made to look old, some of the houses looked worn out but they still looked very nice just because of that old style of architecture.  I’d also assume even an old worn out house would still be expensive.

                Moving on to what we saw in the area!

Internet

In a new city now, Osaka, but Internet is an issue so I'm not sure when I will get the opportunity to write more. Nara was fun but short. Saw many traditional buildings and met a few Japanese people. I will write about it more when I can! Also yes, posting from a Krispy Kreme

Meanwhile in America

     I got news today that my pet cat squeeker is at a vet right now due to not eating anything in a while.  Tests are being done and she is being looked after by the vet.  I don't think we know if anything is wrong with squeeker yet, but it's horrible that I can't be in america to help out or at least be around for my pet.

      I have more that I will write about my trip in the coming days, but right now I am also worried for my cat.
   
     Let's all hope that squeeker is all right and can come back home soon!

Finishing up tokyo, heading to nara

Me and david wanted to see a few more things before we left.  First up was a life-sized gundam (giant, like, 6 story human piloted robot from a show of the same name).  This gundam was constructed years ago and to our knowledge had been torn down when whatever reason that it was put up was over.  Only I had just found out by chance that day that it had been re-assembled at some new classy shopping area on a man-made island in Tokyo.  So, david said we absolutely needed to go and I really saw no reason to go somewhere else for that day.  It was located at a fancy shopping mall that specialized in basically American shops.  Like American eagle and banana republic and so on.  Expensive American clothes mall.  That and the gundam café with life sized robot stationed on one side of the mall.  Kind of doesn’t fit in.  Anyway we got tons of pictures of that, and coincidentally happened to come only a minute before it started to move, which it does only 3 times a day for a few minutes each time.  So we were very lucky over all.  After, we bought stuff in the souvineer shop “gundam café” and sat down on the mall steps and took a break since it was raining.  David took that opportunity to say how awesome it was that we took over a year to study Japanese, work our asses off, travel halfway around the world and take another hard program all in Japanese all leading up to the moment where we get to see a giant robot in real life.  So, I guess it was pretty awesome after all.  I certainly had fun, and bought lots of stuff, and took lots of pictures.  At the very least, my friends sure will be jealous.

                The next day we wanted to go to the ghibli museum.  Ghibli is basically the only anime company that americans know.  It’s the studio that makes every anime film that makes it to theaters in America.  It’s more internationally recognized than other anime studios due to the style and plot just being more to the tastes of an international audience.  Oh, and it only does movies, not shows, to my knowledge.  So, because of that success it’s sort of like the Disney of anime or something along those lines, and it has a little museum somewhat outside of Tokyo.  Apparently it’s really hard to get to since it’s normally sold out on weekends.  I thought we might be able to go to a gift shop or something without needing a ticket, so I took that chance and walked over to it to find out that was impossible after all. There are little shops for this company all around the country so I will just have to look in more local locations for those sorts of souvenirs.  So, we took a long walk back to the train station and wasted like 3 hours overall.  But the walk was nice because I passed many kinds of houses and took a bunch of pictures of these houses so you all could get an idea of what a Japanese house looks like.  They are pretty uniform in dimension, being tall rather than wide, and all having not fences so much as solid stone walls.  You might also see how little parking space there is.  Japanese must be ridiculously good at parking cars.  I don’t think I could manage to park in the spaces that they have to.

                I forgot to say earlier but on the same day we went to go see the large robot we did go to see sky tree – the tallest building in the country, and Tokyo tower – a previously super tall structure.  They were right around the area and we did that our hostel was at, so we basically just followed the large structure in the sky until we were there.

                Finally, on the last day of our Tokyo trip, we headed out to a shrine – the meiji shrine, made in honor of the emperor and era of the same name that was a restoration period of japan in the early 1900s.  So, pretty important shrine.  It had a park surrounding it which was cool since it was completely shaded, and the shrine itself was quite large.  When we were there we of course took tons of pictures again, but I also came up with the idea to leave proof that we were there and to thank our teachers who helped us get to where we are.  There are small pieces of wood that you can write on and hang up with many others for the purpose of praying or thanking others.  I have pictures of all of this.  I bought one and wrote on it something like “We hope for the health, time, and strength needed to continue studying Japanese, and hope to return to japan again some day. [in Japanese] thank you very much sakamoto sensei and nakagawa sensei (our Japanese teachers in America who wrote letters that allowed us to be accepted into the program)”  and then signed our names in Japanese, dated it, and hung it up.  So now it is there for everyone to see, for proof that we have been there and to give proper thanks to our teachers for helping us to get here.  We took pictures so that we can show our teachers when we get back.  It was the highlight of that day I think.

                We got back early after that, and packed everything up, and now here I am, the day after, on a train to head to the next region – Japan’s previous, ancient capital called Nara.  There will be lots of old and beautiful areas to see most likely.  And I will take pictures of it all.

What else was there to tokyo?

We had planned to go to an aquarium, the national history museum of Tokyo, shibuya which is the fashion district of Tokyo… and that’s about it.

                The aquarium was as expected for the most part, since I already went to an aquarium with my host family only a few weeks ago.  The only thing that was really cool about it over the other aquarium were the squid that I saw.  They kind of danced in formation for the guests.  It was really nice to watch and I thought the squid were interesting creatures.  Oh, there were also a lot of tuna on display.  I knew tuna were big fish, but I never really thought about how thick or.. fat they were.  Other than that though, yeah another aquarium.  Not too much to say.

                As for the national history museum, we knew that we needed to walk through a park to get there and so we did.  Except it turned out that the park was better than the museum, because starting with the park and ending somewhere in the city of the district we were in were cultural items that people could visit.  We went against the plan of going to the museum until later in the day, and instead traveled along the trail finding temples and shrines which we took many pictures of.  It was very beautiful and a good example of why having a plan could be bad, and exploring might be better.

                The history museum itself was for me a bit boring.  It just went on too long for my attention span.  I didn’t start taking pictures until the later half of the museum, but basically it was a bunch of artifacts like bowls or documents or weapons and armor.  Some of it was interesting, but things like bowls put me to sleep.  Regardless, it was the national history museum so I am glad I got to see it as it had a nice large collection that I wouldn’t see in other areas of the country I imagine.  I also got some souvenirs at the place.

                Oh yeah, and we went to shibuya, the fashion district.  And basically left right away.  After seeing akibahara, shibuya was sure boring.  It was like a clean version of new York city if everything was just clothes and shoes shopping.  Much less interesting that akihabara, as anime and technology are much preferred to clothes.

                And you know, after going to the technology and anime district I was thinking where are all the movie theaters around here?  There were posters all over the place for a movie adaptation of an anime series I watched back in 2008 in my florida tech dorm.  I thought, hey since I saw this before and I really enjoyed it, I can watch this movie even without subtitles because I already know the story.  So I invited david to come watch it with me, even though he had never seen it.  He looked up a review and explanation of the movie online so that he didn’t need to know what was being said either.  And then we tried to find a damn movie theater.  And boy that was hard.  Not only are there, to my knowledge, 0 movie theaters in the technology district of Tokyo (is this crazy?), this movie was only playing at basically 5 theaters in the Tokyo region, despite being advertised all over the anime district.  And most of these theaters had some kind of restriction or odd way to get in to one or was too far out of the way.  We were lucky to find just one that we could go to, only an hour before it started and I had to buy the tickets online, using my Japanese cell phone for confirmation, and then rush off by train to a place we had never been before.. and then find it from the train station without a map.  We ended up asking a police man for directions in the local ‘police box’, or very small police station mainly for asking directions or getting help.

                The movie theater was in a mall just as it would have been in America.  And that movie sure was good, and unusually long for a cartoon movie at 2.5 hours.  It was definitely worth it, we enjoyed it a lot, but it sure was ridiculously hard to get to a movie theater!  Or at least for the movie we wanted.

                Next up is the last few days of Tokyo leading up to today.

Akihabara, or my favorite place to waste money

    Our Tokyo adventure started with shopping.  It didn’t end with shopping, but there was a lot of shopping all throughout the week.  Basically only in akihabara.  Our roommates at first did not go to akihabara because they didn’t know what it was, and later when they did go they never wanted to again, because it was too overwhelming and strange for them apparently.

 Akihabara is a district of Tokyo that is unique to the world in what you can find there as far as I know. Lots of Tokyo is like a clean version of new York city.  Big buildings and lights everywhere especially at night time.  Except Akihabara is even more exciting.  It was originally the electronics district of Tokyo and grew over time as electronics did.  But Anime and technology must go well together, because as anime became more popular it took over the area.  It’s a dual purpose area of Tokyo.  It’s the only place in the world I know of where certain anime goods can be bought, and its also a place with a hell of a lot of computer stores.  It’s great.

                But it’s also a bit like a flea market or bazaar.  The anime stores are all over the place, sometimes with different stores inside of one tall building, but other times with a large store crammed inside of a small, but again tall building.  Some stores were a bit like catacombs in how you had to navigate them.  And many of the stores I only went up so many levels because top floors tended to be adult material.  Just right out in the open like that. 

                There were also many girls in costumes on the streets trying to get customers for themed cafes or I think even brothels.  The place is really extreme and like my roommate said, overwhelming.  I had trouble navigating the place the first time I went, where there were certain stores I was worried about entering.  But the more times I went back the more I learned that none of the stores are anything that I needed to worry about, but just mind my own business and ignore certain content / stay on the lower levels.  Bought lots of anime goods and video game goods in the non-tech stores.

                As for the technology stores.. it went a bit like this – I pointed out the first technology store saying we needed to go there / go back to there, and then did that with the second and third.. and gave up after that.  Because unlike a normal large city where you might have to keep track of what kind of store you wanted to go back to, there were just technology stores at every corner so there was no need to keep track of them.  And that’s great.  I bought a few tech items when I was there – ones that I could make use of on the trip and that wouldn’t waste a lot of luggage space.  Speaking of luggage space, I did get a new suitcase which the cost was split between me and my friend since we are sharing it for extra room on the trip.  It seems to me that Japan doesn’t have a lot of cloth suitcases, only the more expensive hard shell kind.  But we got a good deal, so it is nice to have one of those.

                Shopping was likely half of the trip to Tokyo, and lots of money was spent.  But I bought lots of great stuff.  Though, I also saw some nice areas of Tokyo which I will talk about next.

A first taste of tokyo

Sunday, only 2 days after graduation it was time for all students to leave.  Everyone was going back to their home countries except for me and david and maybe one or two other people.  Me and david instead took the local train out to a large train station to get on the bullet train and leave for Tokyo.  My host family saw me off and I carried my very heavy baggage on board the train and wrote my blog entries for the wedding and Disney sea on the trip.  It wasn’t goodbye for my host family since I gave them all my relevant contact information so I can talk to them any time.

                I didn’t really have a plan for Tokyo, or anywhere else.  I had taken care of transportation and housing plans far ahead of time and knew how much I could spend on food, but I never planned on what I would do when I got to a place.  On board the train however I read some guides that my host family had given me about Tokyo.  The English guide recommended a few places like museums that I thought I would go and see, but really most of my trip at Tokyo was just going to places I had known about ahead of time, as well as looking up highly recommended areas from the internet.

                Our  first hostel that me and david had stayed at was excellent.  For 30 dollars each night we got memory foam mattresses, a bathroom and shower shared with only 2 other people, air conditioning and a few power outlets.  There was also free internet.  The owners spoke both English and Japanese, and many of the guests spoke only English including our roommates.  It seemed to me like some of the people there should have learned more of the local language before coming.  It would help them and the people they try to talk with in the long run.  But so, since it seemed to be common that travelers did not speak Japanese, there were several occasions where I got to speak Japanese with people around town and they would complement me on my language skills.  The hostel owners also wanted to speak to me in Japanese, and would recommend to me good places to eat.

                Speaking of food, that was a challenge.  I am tired of Japanese food at the moment since I had enough of it while at school.  So, I didn’t really know what to do for food while at Tokyo.  I ended up eating at : denny’s, a curry chain restaurant, mcdonalds, a convenience store, kfc, and a donut chain.  Denny’s in japan really has very little to do with American Denny’s.  American Denny’s menu I believe is just a random assortment of food that is convenient for family dining.  Well, that’s the same in japan.  Except that convenient family dining options are different in japan.  So while it had a lot of good food, the food was not like American Denny’s at all.  The only similarity was the look of the building.

                KFC and McDonalds were the same as in America.  Except that towards the end of the week McDonalds all around the region started doing this international food thing, where they are going to temporarily sell food from McDonalds in different countries.  So this week they had a French McDonalds burger.  And I had that and it was pretty good.  Later in the summer they are supposed to have Indian and Australian options.

                The donut chain was a lot like dunkin’ donuts.  They have crispy crème around here, but it wasn’t that.  It was just a place called mr donut.  And it was good and cheap.   Oh right, there was also a chain called Miami garden which served Italian food.  Of course Italian food is pretty normal in America so I went there a lot and it sure was tasty.  As was the curry chain.  In fact the curry chain is so good, convenient, and cheap, that I really wish they had some in America. 

                Anyway, enough about food.  Where did I go?  Next post is akihabara, the anime and technology district of Tokyo.

Last days of class

So school ended on Friday after a hard test, and we had a graduation ceremony.  The test was about 2 hours long and I studied far too much for it and probably did just fine.  After that we had a speaking test or ‘interview’ in which I didn’t study for at all and just walked in because I really didn’t care anymore – I’m done with school.  I was confident in my speaking ability since I talked in Japanese with my host family every day that I was there.  And as I thought, I did just fine and the teacher complimented me on how good I have become.  Only, after that I had to immediately rush home as fast as possible as I had not a minute to waste before the graduation ceremony.  I didn’t have any of my fancy clothes with me which I needed for this.

                So I had to take a train home, change, and get back all within like 40 minutes.  Luckily since my mother drove me back to school, I made it exactly on time to the minute.  After that we had the graduation ceremony which my host mother recorded so I have that.  It wasn’t anything unusual, just a normal ceremony.  If it is normal to go to a ceremony on the other side of the world for graduation from a foreign language program.

                I received my graduation certificate and headed to an after graduation party witjavascript:void(0);h my family.  Only, I couldn’t really do much at the party because I was feeling really nauseous.  When we got home later I told my host family that I probably just had too much coffee and mistook the can of regular coffee for espresso.  Only later on it turned out that it wasn’t just coffee, but that I had a very high temperature.  I was getting sick right before I had to leave.  I had a fever of about 103 for the day of graduation and the day after, but my very nice host family went out to the store and got some medicine for me to take.  I did end up taking the medicine which was unfortunate because before we even decided to get any I was telling them about how in America people take medicine for just about everything, too often.  And that I like sicknesses to just go away naturally.  But the fever did get too high for that.  Although from our talks it seems to me that japan takes medicine less often than America, which doesn’t surprise me since there are a lot of prescriptions that would be illegal to bring in to japan.  I had looked up such legality information before entering the country.

                So, the day of the graduation ceremony I didn’t do much because I wasn’t feeling very energetic.  The day after I was feeling well enough to do the suggested plan which was to go up to the top of a local mountain and see the night view.  Unfortunately the mountain was so foggy we could not see more than a few feet in front of the car on the drive up.  It was extremely dangerous.  So, since we couldn’t see anything when we got to the top we just left instead.  We ended up playing with fireworks for the night as a backup plan and that was fun.

A wedding

The next day after Disney sea was a wedding for my mother’s brother.  I was initially worried because I’d have to meet so many new people in Japanese, and also I thought it would be boring.  But in reality the wedding was awesome and I had an equally good time at the wedding as I did at Disney sea.

                When I came to japan I brought with me some dress pants and shirt, but it wasn’t at all fitting for a wedding.  Luckily my host father was roughly the same size as me and so with the family I was able to pick out some proper wedding clothes that fit me.

                At the wedding building, in the lounge, I went through a few different introductions and idle chat which went well despite being in Japanese.  I got to meet my host mother’s mother, father, and sister among other people which I remember less of.  Both my mother’s mother, and the mother from the other family were the only ones wearing traditional black Japanese yukatas for the wedding.  No other girls wore those.  They are more formal than regular dresses.  Guys can wear something similar too but all the guys wore suits.  I’m not sure if it was a cultural thing that only the two mothers could wear those for a wedding or if it was just decided to be that way.  But I did end up getting a picture with my mother’s mother in that outfit, so you can see that online.

                The wedding shocked me because it was not only a Christian wedding, but that the priest was a white guy who spoke English half of the ceremony.  The whole process I assume was just as it would have been in an American wedding, but I wouldn’t know since I have never been to a wedding before.  I got pictures of most of it anyway.

                After the ceremony which didn’t take very long, we got to go into a larger room to have an after-wedding dinner.  Various kinds of food, most of it I liked and some of it I traded for other stuff.  I got to sit between my host father and my mother’s mother.  So I got to talk to my mother’s mother who was a very nice woman and I have to say that my host mother’s family is super nice.  I had a lot more fun than I expected to in getting along with the family as well as viewing the wedding process.  It was a very modern wedding in my opinion.

                So modern that there were some surprises.  Throughout the whole process there were various people with large cameras and video cameras crouching and moving around taking various shots.  At the end of the dinner, which maybe the whole day was only a few hours, the wedding place had made more or less a music video of the whole thing with photos taken from that same day.  I am pictured like 3 times in that video which was nice.  Also, they gave everyone at the wedding  a paper that had a user name and password to pick up all the photos and videos from their website after they have been properly edited.  I liked those modern touches to the wedding.

                Also, the mother’s brother who was getting married works in the computer industry.  Something to do with windows servers and android.  I don’t remember whether it was administration and security or programming.  But his best man who is also in the industry talked with me for a little bit and gave me his business card for his company of which he is the president, and told me to look them up on facebook.  So, that was really cool, and I already added him.  It’s like I’m already making connections through attending weddings.

                I had a lot more fun at the wedding than I thought I would, and I’m glad that I went as that was one of the highlights of the trip and I would have really missed out if I didn’t go.  I made sure to congratulate the newlyweds as well, and thanked everyone for letting me come, as I was the only one who didn’t have much to do with the whole thing.

                Everyone should really get a look at the images I uploaded.  It was a really nice looking wedding.  Also a cool thing to see in the pictures and videos is this sort of staircase of glasses.  The husband and wife poured some sort of blue glowing liquid in and everyone got to watch it travel down the glasses, and then they poured in another thing of liquid which as it traveled down created different colors I guess based on amount of whatever was in a certain glass at the time.  It ended up as a glowing rainbow of cool.

                I could write a lot more but I think I will let the pictures do the rest.  When the wedding company pictures are put online I will see if I can get some of those too.

Disney sea!

Last time I posted I had said that I would be going to Tokyo for the weekend.  I had been very busy with the last week of school, since I had to study for a final exam.  That wasn’t very fun, but first let me talk a bit about my awesome weekend.

                Friday, immediately after class was over I headed to my host families house and made sure that I had everything packed to go on an airplane from kobe to Tokyo.  The travel time by plane was only about 1 hour.  However, they planned to leave the house like 1 hour before the plane leaves.  I was a little worried that we wouldn’t make it in time.  It seemed crazy.  We got to the airport 30 minutes before the plane was supposed to leave.  But according to my family that’s an ok thing to do, that you can make it to the plane in time like that.

                Getting on a plane in japan is better than in America.  Security is very reasonable and reminds me of American airports in the 90’s, to the point where you can keep your shoes and belt on as you go through the metal detector archway, and that step felt much quicker to me.  After that, there’s a place that prints out a sort of receipt for you – not a boarding pass.  But on the back of this receipt there are coupons for various stores like in my case mcdonalds.  Getting on the plan required scanning your printed boarding pass except that as opposed to America, you do it yourself.

                Onboard the plane, even though we were only going from one place in japan to the next, we took a plane newer and about the same size as the one I took from America to japan.  Also onboard, the music stations offered were interesting because as far as I know, American airlines unlike this Japanese airline do not have kids music stations. 

                Other than that there wasn’t much more remarkable about the plane flight.  Except that my host family paid for it entirely which was extremely nice of them.   It was in the evening when we arrived so we just checked in at the hotel and spent the night there.

                I thought that the next day was for the wedding and that the day after at Disney sea would be to make up for me having to go to a wedding, but it turned out that Saturday, the first day, was the Disney sea day.

                Disney sea was an amazing place.  It wasn’t overly Disney themed like Tokyo Disney probably would have been, but it was more of an epcot or universal studios sort of place where they had amazing scenery and attractions that may or may not have been Disney films, but weren’t all from cartoons.  Although they did have some Aladdin content and were adding a toy story area only a few days after we left.

                We didn’t do the tower of terror since everyone except for the father hate that sort of thing, but we did do a 3d Aladdin movie theatre, 20,000 leagues under the sea ride, and an Indiana jones ride.  There was also some people mover ride focusing on the adventures of some character named Sindbad.  It was like a mix between pirates of the carribean and it’s a small world.  We went to a proper broadway style theatre and saw 30-40’s style jazz band music by perhaps the only non-asian, English speaking people in the park.  We also took a gondola ride which was fun, in the European area of the park.

                In the park there was some fun food to try as well.  Every area had a different flavor of popcorn.  What I saw was pepper popcorn, strawberry popcorn, and curry popcorn.  Unfortunately I did not get to try the curry popcorn.

                We saw basically every attraction in the park that wasn’t scary and also not the water attraction since it was a cold day out already.  I bought some souvenirs there and had a great time.  I took a lot of pictures that you can view online now.

Sunday's food and fancy buildings

Last post I mentioned about what I did just a few days ago on saturday.  Sunday was an exciting day too, just like most weekends have been around here.

My family mentioned going to a steakhouse on sunday in the past week, so when my family asked me what I thought was for brunch that's what I answered with.  Only instead they had prepared waffles since I pointed out at a shop that the waffles looked good.  The mother had gotten some thick fluffy cream to put on the waffles, which isn't something that I usually had with waffles so I thought it was a fancy touch to that.

But afterwards a few hours later we did go to the steakhouse as planned.  And it was quite the restaurant.  We sat down in front of a flat top grill where the chefs performed tricks and had conversations with us while they made our food.  Notable things on the menu were jellyfish, squid, and the somewhat famous kobe beef.  Jellyfish is interesting.  It's a bit hard to chew but it doesnt taste like much and there isnt much to see.  Squid is even harder to chew.  Kobe beef on the other hand is the opposite of a normal steak.  It is very easy to eat, but tastes as good or better than a normal steak.  Very expensive but very tasty.  Combining the nice looking building, chefs juggling and flipping things around while cooking and other treats, and the awesome food itself, it was quite the steakhouse.  Maybe the best that I have been to.  Also, when we were done with the dinner, the chefs brought out funny hats for us to pick out to have a group photo with.  I have the picture in physical form so I guess I will upload it when I get to a scanner.  So, the steakhouse was awesome and I didn't even pay for it.  My host family is very nice.

After that we went up a very tall and steep hill by foot to a special part of town that's an old western-styled housing area.  Apparently over decades really rich japanese who wanted to live in a lavish fashion or visiting rich foreigners had built up an area of the town that had all sorts of western houses, from american white fenced houses to old Victorian housing.  We went inside a victorian house converted into a museum, which was designated as one of the top 100 houses in this area of japan.  It was apparently home to various important foreigners, like barons and ambassadors.  There was lots of china inside, along with various antiques including a one man sleigh.  which was really unique and cool.

Apparently people still live in that area of town, although some houses are left for historical purposes or converted into a store.  Oh also, inside the victorian house, the other half of it was an art museum.  So, I got pictures of all of the paintings.  I wasn't sure of if they were there for a reason other than just being an art museum.

Speaking of art, I believe my online collection of pictures right now includes a statue we saw in this city.  Which was.. a statue of butts and groins stacked on top of each other.  What even is that.  Why


Anyway,  that's about it for that sunday.  A very good day, lots of fun stuff was seen and many pictures were taken.  Now, I'd like to write about what happened the week after, which would be yesterday and today.  But I'd also like to go to sleep.  So, next time I do write, I will write about my trip to tokyo.  What did I see?  I saw tokyo disney sea, and attended a wedding.  Both were really fun and I have lots of pictures.  I'll write again soon!

Last Saturday at Kyoto

So I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my dropbox that I linked earlier.  Hopefully everyone can see those just fine.  Some of those pictures were from what I did on saturday, the others from sunday.

Last saturday was the last of the 2 school trips I was going on.  This one was to the capital city Kyoto.  Except, we didn't go to the center of kyoto but to the outskirts instead for whatever reason.  I don't get why they would do that.

Anyway, what we did get to see was cool.  We took a train as usual, but very far out all the way to another province which was about an hour ride.  The school group was going to then take a scenic train up the mountains, and get a boat ride back.

To get to the scenic train we needed to cross through a forest.  Except it wasn't a normal forest but instead a bamboo forest.  I didn't take pictures of it but instead took one very long video of the whole walk through the forest.  Very tall trees with no branches except at the very top.  Gives a really cool appearance.  And of course a forest was welcome since it was a very hot day.  Japanese fanta grape soda was also welcome once I reached the train station.

So, next was the scenic train in which I took a lot of pictures which you will notice as the ones with bars through them, since trains arent the best place for pictures.  But I did get some views from above the river that I later took a boat ride down.  And it was pretty nice looking.

The boat ride itself was interesting.  It was a 1 paddle boat but rowing like 20 people.  The rower sat toward us students and had to row crew-style.  Then, someone way at the front of the boat was designated as the big pole guy.  That is, his job was to take a long bamboo pole and stick it in to the bottom of the river or against rocks in order to steer the boat.  And then there was one last guy in the back who controlled a rudder to steer the boat even more.  So, it was some sort of traditional boat.

The river itself was really nice, and so were the mountains above as you can probably see from the pictures I took.  The boat people spoke entirely in japanese but that was okay, since we could understand them for the most part.  They were really nice and did some tricks on the water when they weren't busy - like the long-pole-guy threw the pole down into the water a few times and then caught it as it jumped back out of the water a few feet away while the boat was moving.

The most shocking thing of the day though was the boat merchant.  I don't think I got a video or picture of it which is really sad, but basically there was a boat about the size of the one that we were on, except with 3 people on board manning registers and portable stoves.  It was a little mobile food stop.  They cooked and served everything standing up on not much more than a row boat.  It was really cool.

Oh, also, me and my classmates are all polite as we should be to everyone we see in the country, and so we had thanked the people on the boat for the ride, only to find out that in the region we were in, the normal standard japanese word for thank you isn't used in that region.  That's one thing that's different from america - japan has dialects that vary by region in the way that UK and US english do.  Certain words have different meanings or aren't used.  It's probably not a big deal to adjust to it, but there are these regional differences in language.  Apparently textbook japanese isn't any specific dialect but an average of them all to find what's most normal.  Luckily my host mother says she speaks textbook japanese as a result of having been relocated so much as a kid since her father was a businessperson.

After all of that, the class trip was over but I went farther into the city with my friends and visited an extra large temple as well as some souvenir shops.  You can see pictures of the temple as well.  I went to go home at 5:30pm which is just before dinner time but unfortunately I didn't get back until 7pm, but I had bought a prepaid cellphone so I was able to call my host family and tell them the situation!  What a relief.  And then with my family we went out to dinner and I had something that you would describe as breaded chicken, over an omelet, over rice.  Japanese food can be both awesome and terrible, but fried food and eggs are things they do well.  Luckily I had both.


Well, that's it for saturday.  I did some more stuff sunday which I will write about hopefully tomorrow.  But right now I think I'll sleep instead, since it is after midnight here.

Moved my images to dropbox

I've got over 600 images now, and it's like above the limit that picasa gave me, so I moved everything to my dropbox.
No comment system on my dropbox, though.  But you can also see my videos I think.
Here's the link, tell me if it doesn't work for any reason


Also, I went to kyoto (japan's capital city) and went to a fancy restaurant and saw a western style fancy old region of the city I live in, all over the weekend.  Tomorrow I will try to write about it all, but you should be able to see the images by following the link above!