Wow, there's nothing like packing to really send it home that I'm leaving in a few days.
Tsuki got here safely, and despite me worrying about her like crazy she got to Shinjuku on her own just fine. Since she got here, which was 11 days ago now, we've been running around like crazy. I've been doing my best to fill my entire semester of experiences into her two weeks. Unfortunately, I've been here long enough that everything feels ordinary and normal, so its hard to think of things that are new and exciting for her to see. We need to run to the 100 yen shop in Harajuku now before it closes, then after that the Big Box and then finally Mari's to meet up with Allison for some drinks, so I'll edit this post later with the rest of the updates from the past two weeks.
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And I'm back! It is now Friday the 23rd and I am waiting around in my room for the luggage pickup people to arrive. They said they would get here any time between 9am and noon, but its currently 11:30 and they still haven't gotten here. I really wish they would hurry up since Li and I need to get to Shinjuku to cancel our health insurance and then Tsuki and I are going to Kamakura to see the temples and shrines. It isn't a very nice day out, unfortunately, but its the last day we have so we need to do it now.
Anyways, as I said earlier Tsuki got here just fine. Despite my best efforts I could only keep her awake until 9pm that Sunday. I warned her that if she went to sleep that early she would wake up at 3am and not be able to go back to sleep. I stayed up until 10pm myself but I wanted to reset my sleep schedule to a reasonable time so I went to bed early as well. Lo and behold, at 3am I wake up and look over at Tsuki who is also wide awake, and she says to me "I hate it when you're right." We managed to sleep for a while more, but still got up pretty early. Our plans were to do hanami (cherry blossom viewing on the lawn while drinking sake and eating) that Monday, but unfortunately it was pretty rainy so instead I took her around Takadanobaba and we went shopping in Shinjuku. That night she got to meet Mari, which was quite entertaining. The next day I needed to finish my term paper for Japanese Corporate Structure, so Tsuki went to Harajuku and Shibuya with Kira, then at 4pm Li and I picked her up at the station and went to the Cat Cafe in 'baba. OMG the Cat Cafe was so awesome!! It was basically a room with a bunch of cats in it and various cat toys and cat climbing things and such. Being a cafe you are required to get a drink for each person, so I got some apple juice which wasn't that overpriced. It also costs 500Y for 30 minutes and then I think 100Y for every 10 minutes after that. We stayed for about 40 minutes and played with the kitties. Unfortunately, I think they got tired out from the couple that was there before we got there because they became less playful and more sleepy as time went on. Oh, and they had several Maine Coons there, which were so giant! I want one! If I ever get one I'll need to keep it trimmed though, b/c that long hair just doesn't do it for me.
Thursday I had my Japanese Corporate Structure final immediately followed by my Public Speaking final. Both were pretty easy, as expected. Oh, my term paper ended up being 18 pages double-spaced when the requirement was only 10 pages... >_> After my tests I took Tsuki to the Roppongi Hills building, which was pretty cool. I didn't like the observatory as much as Tokyo Tower though, since it seemed like it forced you in a certain direction a lot more and you were required to walk through several gift shops in the process. It was still a great view though, and we got to see the sunset from up there. We also got a professional picture taken by the people there which I decided to buy because I think its really cute.
Ok, the guy just got here to take our luggage, so its time for me to be off. I'll finish the rest of this later.
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And I'm back once again to finish this up. Friday was another fairly dreary day, so we decided to go to the Shibuya 109 for some shopping. While we were there we saw this absolutely beautiful dress that looks amazing on Tsuki, the only problem was that it was quite expensive. We really liked it, and I told her I would help her get it if she really wanted it since the Senior Ball is coming up soon. After several hours of roaming through the 109 we headed back to 'baba and met up with Li for Tsuki's first trip to the 270en place. This was our night to celebrate the end of classes, so we go fairly into it. After we had finished there we moved on to Mari's to meet up with Allison and thus continue our "celebration". Tsuki definitely liked the fact that she was within the legal drinking age (20).
Saturday was supposed to be our last trip to Akiba (we went two more times >_>), but it was still Tsuki's first and we took her around to several of the major shops. Unfortunately, she didn't enjoy it as much as we did since she was looking for different types of stuff than we were (i.e. not figures). One thing we all loved was the "Turkish Breakfast," meaning a breakfast of the meat-slab sandwich from the stand run by the Turkish guys who are in Akiba every day. This trip also marked Tsuki's first time in a Maid Cafe. We went to the 7th floor of @home cafe and as luck would have it there was a performance happening shortly after we arrived of two fairly famous girls who worked for @home. It was quite interesting seeing the two of them, and it was definitely a great first time for Tsuki. Also, I guess that since there was the performance it counted as two visits since when they gave Tsuki her card they already stamped off two visits instead of one. Oh, and Li and I got to feel awesome when we handed them our Silver cards XD. After our Akiba excursion we took Tsuki to Ikebukuro so that she could experience "Moo Moo Paradise" for herself. Our record for this time was 17 plates of meat between the four of us. We most definitely left Mo Mo Paradise in "Moo Moo Paradise" and Li very nearly went to "Moo Moo Heaven." Once we had finished our consumption and been ushered out into the night we spent about an hour or so waddling around Ikebukuro, which was interesting since it was my first time being there since watching Durarara - which takes place in Ikebukuro - so we ended up walking through a lot of areas that were in the show.
Sunday, which marked the one-week point until my time in Japan would come to a close, was the day I showed Tsuki around Harajuku and Yoyogi park. We were really hoping there would be people dressed up on the famous Yoyogi bridge in Harajuku, but unfortunately it seems it has become a little too famous and there were only a few of them, one of which was a gaijin. In Harajuku we spent a good amount of time shopping and I got myself two interesting button-up shirts and a very "Isaac-esque" vest. Tsuki bought herself some shoes and some gifts for her brothers as well. She also got Neko these white boots from Body Line that she had asked Tsuki to get, which I really hope she pays Tsuki back for since they were not cheap. After our shopping had finished (which in retrospect we should have done afterward) we went off to Yoyogi park for some sightseeing and relaxing. Tsuki really enjoyed the place, and I did as well. There must have been some archery competition earlier since there were people with Japanese longbows everywhere, and it was also Earth Day apparently, since there were some teepees set up and other such festivities. We weren't quite sure what the Japanese knew about Native Americans, but it was amusing nonetheless. Satisfied with our time in the park, we walked from Harajuku to Shibuya since we had decided that we wanted to get the dress. For a large portion of the distance between the two there were booths set up and live music all over the place. It would seem the Japanese really like their Earth Day. Anyways, we got to Shibuya and bought the dress and it is absolutely gorgeous. Having done this, we returned to my room thoroughly exhausted and spent the few remaining hours of the day relaxing.
Monday Tsuki and I slept in and finally went out to meet up with Allison and Li in the early afternoon. We hunted down boxes to ship all our stuff back home (which we found in a garbage pile and swiped before they could be picked up), got the correct EMS forms to attach to said boxes, and I studied with Allison for a while for my Conversational Japanese class the next day. Overall today was pretty uneventful. We went to the arcade in the Big Box for a little while and then went back to the room so I could study some more and get to bed early.
Tuesday was the day of my two most difficult finals. I wasn't terribly concerned about the Ethics final, since that class was fairly easy and the test was going to be very straightforward. I was definitely concerned about Japanese though, but fortunately I think I did an alright job on the test. Ethics was also unsurprising and I feel like I did well on that one. Tsuki did not accompany me to school today since we all made plans the previous day for her and Allison to meet up and do stuff and then for all four of us to rendevous in Akihabara after Li and I had finished our last tests of the day. The two of them went to the 100en shop in Harajuku, which has a very extensive selection. We met up at the station in Akiba and had a Turkish Lunch, then proceeded to go to whatever shops Tsuki wanted to go to. While going through the Animate, Li and I discovered the recently released Fate/Stay Night Tarot card CCG. It was about 4,000en for a box which contained 10 packs each with 5 cards, so Li and I split a box and later that night traded away our duplicates. Allison had to go to work at 6 or 7pm and Li started to not feel well, so the two of them went their separate ways while Tsuki and I went to the maid cafe again so that we could get a picture of the two of us with a maid. This time we went to the 4th floor, which is my personal favorite. I'm not really sure why, I guess I just like the atmosphere and the outfits more (even though they're almost identical >_>). After we had finished our business with the maid cafes Tsuki and I wandered around Akiba a little bit more and then finally headed back to 'baba. We relaxed for the rest of the night and ended up watching I Am Legend in Japanese, which was quite interesting lol.
Wednesday was quite a long day, but for good reasons. Tsuki and I slept in and then spent a bit of time packing before my last final exam of the semester: International Marketing. I was not at all concerned about this test because I knew no matter what I did we would all do poorly on it anyways because of how horridly incompetent Professor Billore is. Apparently everyone else in the class felt the same way I did, since no one else studied for the test at all either. This exam marked the point where her incompetence sunk so low that it started just being funny. For our final exam, she handed out the test and then left the room, only to return twice over the course of the exam for no more than 30 seconds each time. Very important to note is that there was no one proctoring this test. We were all completely appalled at how irresponsible she was being, and after about 5 minutes we realized she wasn't coming back and just started openly helping the people around us, some even pulling up Wikipedia on their iPhones. I was the 2nd person to leave, and as I did so I announced to the class as I left "and with this steaming pile of bullshit I am done with college" which was met with applause from most of the class. That made me happy haha. After I handed in my test I picked up Tsuki from the computer lab where she was waiting for me and the two of us went back to 'baba to get ready for the night's festivities. Our plan was to meet up for dinner with Allison and Li at 9pm, and by the time we got back to my room it was about 6:30pm, so we decided to take those two hours and start packing. This ended up being a very good decision. At 8pm the four of us met up in Ikebukuro for one last trip to Mo Mo Paradise, which we made a point of eating casually this time instead of trying to eat their entire inventory of meat. By the time we finished and left it was about 11pm, and thus marked the beginning of the real festivities. You see, since Li and I had both finished our last finals that day we wanted to celebrate, so therefore all four of us went out for all night karaoke (11pm-5am) in Ikebukuro. This was quite the experience, and my voice was completely shot by the end of the night (singing Hard Rock Hallelujah in that growling voice didn't help >_>). The highlight of the night was when Li and I sang Cruel Angel Thesis (the OP from Evangelion), which Allison told us she would slaughter us if we sang, and then when we finished we heard the room next to us singing it as well XD! Tsuki ended up passing out around 2:30am and Allison made it until 3:30-ish, leaving Li and I as the only ones left standing. Also, Ikebukuro at 5am is very interesting. As the 3rd busiest place in the country it was still almost completely abandoned at this hour, which even Allison was very surprised about. It was really eerie actually, to be walking through those major streets and only seeing a handful of people the entire time. Definitely not something you see very often at all in Tokyo, and certainly not in Ikebukuro. By the time we got back to my room it was about 6:30am, and Tsuki and I passed right out and didn't get up until about 12:30-1pm.
That brings us to today, the 22nd, which is Thursday. We spent almost the entirety of today packing. I mentioned earlier that it was a good thing that we started packing yesterday, since it took us all day to get everything together and ready to be picked up tomorrow morning. Which reminds me, one thing we did today was call to get our luggage picked up and delivered to the airport on Friday so that it would be waiting for us on Sunday and we wouldn't need to go through the huge hassle of lugging it around all over Odaiba or finding someplace to stash it until we left on Sunday. We barely made it with the space we had. It ended up taking three boxes instead of the two I had planned, but that was still better than a 3rd suitcase which would have cost an additional $225. I was also able to balance out all our luggage fairly evenly, which would hopefully be under 50lbs each or else we would need to pay $100 for every one above that. With all of our stuff our bags were bursting at the seams, and its amazing that we actually managed to get it all in there. Though, we did end up giving a lot of stuff to Allison. Unfortunately I couldn't keep my awesome umbrella, so I needed to leave it in the custody of Allison T_T. Our bags were scheduled to be picked up Friday morning from 9am-12pm, and after that we still had a great deal of things to take care of, such as a few random errands, shipping out our boxes, canceling our health insurance, and getting our Narita Express tickets for Sunday. We ended the night with a trip to Mari's, and then prepared ourselves for our last day in my room at the Weekly Mansion Takadanobaba in Tokyo.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Day 92 - April 8
So today did NOT start out well. Though, while starting off poorly it also started off strangely.
Apparently I had left my phone on vibrate last night, and this cell phone doesn't vibrate with the painfully loud noise that my US cell phone vibrates with, so I slept through my alarm at 8am and didn't get up until 11:15am. I had my last Japanese class at 10:20... Fortunately, all we were doing was the remaining two skits (which we did ours on Tuesday) and exam review, though I do wish I hadn't missed the review...
So on to the strange part about waking up this morning. My biological clock does weird things. Once, I went to sleep at 12:15am and got up at 1:30am feeling as if it were 7:30 (when I was supposed to get up), stopped my alarm (which wasn't going off), took a shower, and then out in the common room realized it was more than 5 hours before I was supposed to get up. I think that happened sometime last semester.
This morning I was having a dream about something or other, when I get a text message from Tsuki (in the dream). I take out my phone and look at it, and the message says, "It is time for you to wake up." As soon as I see that I instantly wake up. Of course, I know instantly from the look of the room that I definitely missed my alarm, and a quick glance at the clock tells me just how badly. I had 45 minutes until my next class started and I still needed to eat something, gather my stuff, and make the 50 minute trip to school.
I managed to get to school at about 12:20, so I wasn't too late to my 2nd class. After that things were pretty normal. I had my 1-on-1 debate in Public Speaking today, which went alright. Our topic was "violent video games make children more violent" and I was on the Affirmative side. I could write a dissertation on the Negative side, so this was extremely difficult for me and I felt dirty afterward. At least I was able to get through the whole thing using mostly-intelligent arguments and not once invoking the name of Jack Thompson and the circus he brought with him everywhere (until he finally got disbarred, HA!).
After Public Speaking I was officially done with classes for this semester. OK, not really, I still have International Marketing tomorrow and on Monday, but no one is going to go Monday anyways. So today was my REAL last day of classes. As if to celebrate that for me, there was an event in Akihabara that we noticed last Friday was going to be happening today. It turns out that this was a celebration at Club SEGA for Little Busters! selling over 100,000 copies. I think. There were too many kanji. Anyways, over half of the 2nd floor of the new Club SEGA building was full of Little Busters! stuff in UFO catchers. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot that interested me. There were a lot of goods for Kud and that Tsundere-looking blonde girl from the EX expansion, and I'm not a rabid fan of either of them. I did like, and manage to win, a Rin Natsume microfiber towel and a Rin Natsume tumbler, which I am rather pleased with.
Once I felt satisfied with that Club SEGA I decided to go roam Akiba for a bit. Remember, this was my first time in Akiba without someone else there to attempt to stop me. THIS IS A BAD IDEA. Quite surprisingly, however, I managed to exhibit a very high degree of self-control and prevented myself from buying anything despite going into several stores and other arcades. *proud*
The remainder of the night was the usual: Gundam Kizuna at the arcade next to the 'baba station, win something easy from the UFO catchers there, and then head back to my room. Since then I've been talking to Tsuki and writing this. Now I think I'll eat dinner while watching Lucky Star and actually go to bed early (before 2am, hopefully at 1am). I really want to get my normal sleep time down to midnight before Tsuki gets here so that I won't end up wasting the mornings sleeping while she's here.
Which reminds me, in LESS THAN 3 DAYS Tsuki will be here!!! I'm really looking forward to it ^_^.
Apparently I had left my phone on vibrate last night, and this cell phone doesn't vibrate with the painfully loud noise that my US cell phone vibrates with, so I slept through my alarm at 8am and didn't get up until 11:15am. I had my last Japanese class at 10:20... Fortunately, all we were doing was the remaining two skits (which we did ours on Tuesday) and exam review, though I do wish I hadn't missed the review...
So on to the strange part about waking up this morning. My biological clock does weird things. Once, I went to sleep at 12:15am and got up at 1:30am feeling as if it were 7:30 (when I was supposed to get up), stopped my alarm (which wasn't going off), took a shower, and then out in the common room realized it was more than 5 hours before I was supposed to get up. I think that happened sometime last semester.
This morning I was having a dream about something or other, when I get a text message from Tsuki (in the dream). I take out my phone and look at it, and the message says, "It is time for you to wake up." As soon as I see that I instantly wake up. Of course, I know instantly from the look of the room that I definitely missed my alarm, and a quick glance at the clock tells me just how badly. I had 45 minutes until my next class started and I still needed to eat something, gather my stuff, and make the 50 minute trip to school.
I managed to get to school at about 12:20, so I wasn't too late to my 2nd class. After that things were pretty normal. I had my 1-on-1 debate in Public Speaking today, which went alright. Our topic was "violent video games make children more violent" and I was on the Affirmative side. I could write a dissertation on the Negative side, so this was extremely difficult for me and I felt dirty afterward. At least I was able to get through the whole thing using mostly-intelligent arguments and not once invoking the name of Jack Thompson and the circus he brought with him everywhere (until he finally got disbarred, HA!).
After Public Speaking I was officially done with classes for this semester. OK, not really, I still have International Marketing tomorrow and on Monday, but no one is going to go Monday anyways. So today was my REAL last day of classes. As if to celebrate that for me, there was an event in Akihabara that we noticed last Friday was going to be happening today. It turns out that this was a celebration at Club SEGA for Little Busters! selling over 100,000 copies. I think. There were too many kanji. Anyways, over half of the 2nd floor of the new Club SEGA building was full of Little Busters! stuff in UFO catchers. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot that interested me. There were a lot of goods for Kud and that Tsundere-looking blonde girl from the EX expansion, and I'm not a rabid fan of either of them. I did like, and manage to win, a Rin Natsume microfiber towel and a Rin Natsume tumbler, which I am rather pleased with.
Once I felt satisfied with that Club SEGA I decided to go roam Akiba for a bit. Remember, this was my first time in Akiba without someone else there to attempt to stop me. THIS IS A BAD IDEA. Quite surprisingly, however, I managed to exhibit a very high degree of self-control and prevented myself from buying anything despite going into several stores and other arcades. *proud*
The remainder of the night was the usual: Gundam Kizuna at the arcade next to the 'baba station, win something easy from the UFO catchers there, and then head back to my room. Since then I've been talking to Tsuki and writing this. Now I think I'll eat dinner while watching Lucky Star and actually go to bed early (before 2am, hopefully at 1am). I really want to get my normal sleep time down to midnight before Tsuki gets here so that I won't end up wasting the mornings sleeping while she's here.
Which reminds me, in LESS THAN 3 DAYS Tsuki will be here!!! I'm really looking forward to it ^_^.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Day 88 - April 4
Hooray, I'm caught up!
On Friday, Allison was bored and wanted to do something so after Anime Club I met her and Li in Akihabara and we went out to a maid cafe. This time we went to the Kimono themed version of @home cafe, which marks my third visit to an @home cafe and only two more until I level up! While I certainly liked the Kimono theme and the atmosphere was a lot more laid back so it was a nice change of pace, I think I like the standard maid cafe more. Its more moe XD. We didn't get out until about 9:30 I think, so most of the places in Akiba were closing up at that point when we realized we were all pretty hungry. Li and I were, as usual, indecisive so Allison decided upon going to the Royal Host. While the name implies that it might be a Butler cafe or host club, the truth is not even close. RH is just another chain of 24 hour diners/restaurants very similar to Denny's but with a little more focus on Japanese-ish food. I say 'ish' because most everything was deep-fried anyways. The food was alright, not terribly great, but it served its purpose. We made it back to 'baba not long before last train, but fortunately Allison had enough time to catch the train leading back to wherever it is she lives.
Yesterday, Saturday, I had plans with Li, Kira, and Allison to go out to Mo Mo Paradise for all you can eat sukiyaki. I feel like I've talked about Mo Mo Paradise, but a quick glance back to my previous posts and it doesn't seem that I have. If I'm repeating myself, then I apologize. Sometime in the past month (before Kyoto) Li and I went to a restaurant in Ikebukuro called Mo Mo Paradise, which is supposed to stand for "Moo Moo Paradise" since they specialize in sukiyaki tabehoudai and shabu shabu tabehoudai (tabehoudai = all you can eat). When we went before it was only the two of us, and by the time our 90 minutes was up we had each consumed six plates of meat and at least two bowls of rice. The two of us could barely walk by the time we left, and were barely able to maintain consciousness for the two stops back to 'baba. Thus, I decided that "Moo Moo Paradise" was a state of being (which we were in at the time) and coined the phrase, "You go to Mo Mo Paradise and leave in Moo Moo Paradise."
This time we had four people instead of just two, so Li and I were hoping we would be able to pace ourselves better and do more than six plates each. Unfortunately, the girls didn't help much and we only ended with 15 plates consumed with around 5-6 for Li and I each. Still though, it was a good time. During dinner Allison added on the concept of "Moo Moo Heaven," which is where you go when you die from "Moo Moo Paradise."
After eating the girls decided they wanted to walk off the food by looking around Ikebukuro a bit. Li and I disagreed, but didn't have enough energy to oppose them. We passed several arcades with UFO catchers and the girls had to physically restrain me from entering. Our goal was to make it to the Animate store before it closed, which we managed to do with around 5 minutes to spare. The spirit of consumption consumed me once more and gave me the strength to cover all 6 floors within the time allotted. I saw things in there which made me very sad, but also very happy that I didn't have enough money to procure at the time. Once we were kicked out of Animate we made our way back towards the station, but this time they let me go into the arcades and check out the UFO catchers. While there were some things that were appealing, nothing really demanded my attention. Li and I stopped to play a few rounds of Melty Blood on the really nice cabinets they had in this one arcade, and I finally realized why none of my combos were working: I wasn't returning the stick all the way to neutral >_<. Unfortunately I didn't figure it out until our last game, so Li and his button-mashing repeatedly beat me down.
We had planned with Allison to go out to Mari's once we got back, but Kira needed to get home to her host family so we parted ways at the station. Mari's was fun, and as usual our "only one drink" turned into several. Since we were all having a good time and didn't want to leave just yet, Allison decided she would stay with one of us (it ended up being Li) instead of leaving early to make the last train. I didn't really notice it until we left (and apparently neither did she) but Allison got totally smashed. Li and I could both see her throwing up as inevitable, which by his account the next morning we were correct about. Overall it was a really good time and I can't wait to take Tsuki there when she gets here.
Today I was supposed to be getting work done but failed miserably. At least I beat Infinite Space and watched all of Durarara, and now that I'm done updating my blog there isn't anything to get in the way of me being productive!
On Friday, Allison was bored and wanted to do something so after Anime Club I met her and Li in Akihabara and we went out to a maid cafe. This time we went to the Kimono themed version of @home cafe, which marks my third visit to an @home cafe and only two more until I level up! While I certainly liked the Kimono theme and the atmosphere was a lot more laid back so it was a nice change of pace, I think I like the standard maid cafe more. Its more moe XD. We didn't get out until about 9:30 I think, so most of the places in Akiba were closing up at that point when we realized we were all pretty hungry. Li and I were, as usual, indecisive so Allison decided upon going to the Royal Host. While the name implies that it might be a Butler cafe or host club, the truth is not even close. RH is just another chain of 24 hour diners/restaurants very similar to Denny's but with a little more focus on Japanese-ish food. I say 'ish' because most everything was deep-fried anyways. The food was alright, not terribly great, but it served its purpose. We made it back to 'baba not long before last train, but fortunately Allison had enough time to catch the train leading back to wherever it is she lives.
Yesterday, Saturday, I had plans with Li, Kira, and Allison to go out to Mo Mo Paradise for all you can eat sukiyaki. I feel like I've talked about Mo Mo Paradise, but a quick glance back to my previous posts and it doesn't seem that I have. If I'm repeating myself, then I apologize. Sometime in the past month (before Kyoto) Li and I went to a restaurant in Ikebukuro called Mo Mo Paradise, which is supposed to stand for "Moo Moo Paradise" since they specialize in sukiyaki tabehoudai and shabu shabu tabehoudai (tabehoudai = all you can eat). When we went before it was only the two of us, and by the time our 90 minutes was up we had each consumed six plates of meat and at least two bowls of rice. The two of us could barely walk by the time we left, and were barely able to maintain consciousness for the two stops back to 'baba. Thus, I decided that "Moo Moo Paradise" was a state of being (which we were in at the time) and coined the phrase, "You go to Mo Mo Paradise and leave in Moo Moo Paradise."
This time we had four people instead of just two, so Li and I were hoping we would be able to pace ourselves better and do more than six plates each. Unfortunately, the girls didn't help much and we only ended with 15 plates consumed with around 5-6 for Li and I each. Still though, it was a good time. During dinner Allison added on the concept of "Moo Moo Heaven," which is where you go when you die from "Moo Moo Paradise."
After eating the girls decided they wanted to walk off the food by looking around Ikebukuro a bit. Li and I disagreed, but didn't have enough energy to oppose them. We passed several arcades with UFO catchers and the girls had to physically restrain me from entering. Our goal was to make it to the Animate store before it closed, which we managed to do with around 5 minutes to spare. The spirit of consumption consumed me once more and gave me the strength to cover all 6 floors within the time allotted. I saw things in there which made me very sad, but also very happy that I didn't have enough money to procure at the time. Once we were kicked out of Animate we made our way back towards the station, but this time they let me go into the arcades and check out the UFO catchers. While there were some things that were appealing, nothing really demanded my attention. Li and I stopped to play a few rounds of Melty Blood on the really nice cabinets they had in this one arcade, and I finally realized why none of my combos were working: I wasn't returning the stick all the way to neutral >_<. Unfortunately I didn't figure it out until our last game, so Li and his button-mashing repeatedly beat me down.
We had planned with Allison to go out to Mari's once we got back, but Kira needed to get home to her host family so we parted ways at the station. Mari's was fun, and as usual our "only one drink" turned into several. Since we were all having a good time and didn't want to leave just yet, Allison decided she would stay with one of us (it ended up being Li) instead of leaving early to make the last train. I didn't really notice it until we left (and apparently neither did she) but Allison got totally smashed. Li and I could both see her throwing up as inevitable, which by his account the next morning we were correct about. Overall it was a really good time and I can't wait to take Tsuki there when she gets here.
Today I was supposed to be getting work done but failed miserably. At least I beat Infinite Space and watched all of Durarara, and now that I'm done updating my blog there isn't anything to get in the way of me being productive!
Day 83 - March 30
I've almost caught up with the updates!
So today, Tuesday, was the school-sponsored baseball game trip. Well, it wasn't so much a school trip, more like the school subsidized the cost of the tickets so we could go to the game for 1/2 price. The baseball game was between the Yokohama Bay Stars and the Tokyo Giants. Since the game was in Yokohama, we were rooting for the home team.
I must say, I don't think I'll ever be able to go to an American baseball game again. I have never experienced a sporting event with so much energy in my life before this game. It was only one of the first games of the season, or even pre-season (I don't know about these things), but everyone in the (packed) stadium was acting like it was the finals in the World Series. I took some video footage with my camera to show how insane this was, but I doubt it was able to capture the energy in that stadium.
Since Temple bought the tickets all the Temple students were clustered together to create our own gaijin section. I do believe the two guys behind Li and I were drunk by the time we got there. They were good guys, but a little too extroverted in their drunkenness. Sitting smack in the center of the Bay Stars territory, they were rooting for the Giants just b/c they shouldn't have been. They were funny enough baka-gaijin so that most of the people around just laughed at them, but there were still some who you could tell did not like it. In between innings they would put the jumbo-tron camera on different parts of the stadium for different themes. Once or twice it was a "Dance Contest" so of course the more rambunctious of the two got out into the aisle and started dancing like crazy, at one point very nearly stripping.
Another amazing thing about Japanese baseball games is the food service. Aside from the beer girls (of which there are enough of so that one walks past every several seconds) there are also girls selling popcorn, soba, udon, and other assorted foods. Not the kind of things you would see at an American baseball game haha. Of course, the area under the stadium was just like an American one; chock full of food shops and gift shops. Possibly my favorite thing for sale here was the can of self-heating sake. I screwed it up on the one that I bought so I had to drink it at room temperature, but I figured it out afterward. Still though, that is pretty freaking awesome. I also bought a 2010 Opening Series Bay Stars baseball hat which was 3,500Y. Very expensive, but I think it was worth it as a souvenir.
As for the game itself, it was deadlocked at 0 until about the 4th inning when the Giants got a home run with no one on base. In the 6th inning the Bay stars got 3 runs, but then at the top of the 7th the Giants managed to get another two runs. They were both tied at 3 and it looked like they would go into extra innings until the top of the 9th when the Giants barely managed to get one run in, thus putting the Bay Stars a run behind. Now, I'm not entirely sure, but I thought that when there are two outs and a runner reaches home before the batter gets tagged out at first the run still counts. Well, this is exactly what happened to the Bay Stars. It was the bottom of the 9th and they had men on 3rd and 2nd with two outs. The batter hits a line drive between 1st and 2nd, 3rd makes it home right before they tagged the batter out at first. The crowd was going insane by this point and Li and I both cheered even harder when this happened because we both thought that was how the rules worked, but apparently not since the stadium went fairly quiet moments later.
The two drunk guys had been cheering on the Giants the whole time and asked a friend how to say "we won" once the game was over. As everyone was gathering their things these two were standing on their chairs (as they had done often throughout the game) cheering "we won" in Japanese. Most people ignored them, a few drunk guys were laughing at them, and a couple young guys several rows down yelled out "go home fuckers!" as they left their seats. I was very embarrassed for us since this was just taking it too far. Those guys also took several pictures with the beer girls and were trying to talk to them. The lesser drunk one knew some Japanese while the more drunk one knew absolutely none. As one of them walked away after serving them he was calling out "kawaii" to her, which sounded a lot more like "kowai" to me. The former means cute and the latter means scary; there's kind of a difference.
Despite the fact that we lost, this was an amazing experience and I am extremely happy that I decided to do it. If I ever go to another American baseball game any time in the near future I will be very disappointed lol.
So today, Tuesday, was the school-sponsored baseball game trip. Well, it wasn't so much a school trip, more like the school subsidized the cost of the tickets so we could go to the game for 1/2 price. The baseball game was between the Yokohama Bay Stars and the Tokyo Giants. Since the game was in Yokohama, we were rooting for the home team.
I must say, I don't think I'll ever be able to go to an American baseball game again. I have never experienced a sporting event with so much energy in my life before this game. It was only one of the first games of the season, or even pre-season (I don't know about these things), but everyone in the (packed) stadium was acting like it was the finals in the World Series. I took some video footage with my camera to show how insane this was, but I doubt it was able to capture the energy in that stadium.
Since Temple bought the tickets all the Temple students were clustered together to create our own gaijin section. I do believe the two guys behind Li and I were drunk by the time we got there. They were good guys, but a little too extroverted in their drunkenness. Sitting smack in the center of the Bay Stars territory, they were rooting for the Giants just b/c they shouldn't have been. They were funny enough baka-gaijin so that most of the people around just laughed at them, but there were still some who you could tell did not like it. In between innings they would put the jumbo-tron camera on different parts of the stadium for different themes. Once or twice it was a "Dance Contest" so of course the more rambunctious of the two got out into the aisle and started dancing like crazy, at one point very nearly stripping.
Another amazing thing about Japanese baseball games is the food service. Aside from the beer girls (of which there are enough of so that one walks past every several seconds) there are also girls selling popcorn, soba, udon, and other assorted foods. Not the kind of things you would see at an American baseball game haha. Of course, the area under the stadium was just like an American one; chock full of food shops and gift shops. Possibly my favorite thing for sale here was the can of self-heating sake. I screwed it up on the one that I bought so I had to drink it at room temperature, but I figured it out afterward. Still though, that is pretty freaking awesome. I also bought a 2010 Opening Series Bay Stars baseball hat which was 3,500Y. Very expensive, but I think it was worth it as a souvenir.
As for the game itself, it was deadlocked at 0 until about the 4th inning when the Giants got a home run with no one on base. In the 6th inning the Bay stars got 3 runs, but then at the top of the 7th the Giants managed to get another two runs. They were both tied at 3 and it looked like they would go into extra innings until the top of the 9th when the Giants barely managed to get one run in, thus putting the Bay Stars a run behind. Now, I'm not entirely sure, but I thought that when there are two outs and a runner reaches home before the batter gets tagged out at first the run still counts. Well, this is exactly what happened to the Bay Stars. It was the bottom of the 9th and they had men on 3rd and 2nd with two outs. The batter hits a line drive between 1st and 2nd, 3rd makes it home right before they tagged the batter out at first. The crowd was going insane by this point and Li and I both cheered even harder when this happened because we both thought that was how the rules worked, but apparently not since the stadium went fairly quiet moments later.
The two drunk guys had been cheering on the Giants the whole time and asked a friend how to say "we won" once the game was over. As everyone was gathering their things these two were standing on their chairs (as they had done often throughout the game) cheering "we won" in Japanese. Most people ignored them, a few drunk guys were laughing at them, and a couple young guys several rows down yelled out "go home fuckers!" as they left their seats. I was very embarrassed for us since this was just taking it too far. Those guys also took several pictures with the beer girls and were trying to talk to them. The lesser drunk one knew some Japanese while the more drunk one knew absolutely none. As one of them walked away after serving them he was calling out "kawaii" to her, which sounded a lot more like "kowai" to me. The former means cute and the latter means scary; there's kind of a difference.
Despite the fact that we lost, this was an amazing experience and I am extremely happy that I decided to do it. If I ever go to another American baseball game any time in the near future I will be very disappointed lol.
Day 82 - March 29
Today, Monday, we had our big International Marketing presentation. I don't think I've mentioned on here how incompetent the professor is in that class, and also how terrible she has managed to make it. This is very disappointing to me because I really like marketing and this was the class I was looking forward to the most. Our professor is an Indian woman who's research focuses on Japanese banks and does not have a degree in marketing, has never worked in marketing, and I don't think even has a degree in business at all. Most of the time a good professor can get by with only one of those three, but she has none of them and its painfully obvious.
Here is what our 1 hour class that meets three days a week consists of: she puts up a powerpoint on the projector, says, "please have a look at this slide," or "here is a slide, please read it," and then proceeds to stand there silently for a couple minutes until she thinks we've finished reading it. Then, she will ask, "so what does this all mean?" Silence from the class as she stands there looking around while we all think, "I don't know, maybe we would know if you actually TAUGHT us instead of just having us read off slides." Now, instead of responding to this awkward silence with instruction, she simply asks another question, usually along the lines of, "well, how do you think this might affect the [shipping] company?" Once again, awkward silence as no one in the class knows how to respond. From here, she will attempt to evade the situation by saying some very general statements that are usually just paraphrased from the current slide, and then she will move along to the next slide and repeat the process. This is why, even though there is mandatory attendance imposed by the school, on average only 12 people show up for class out of the 30 students actually taking it.
When it comes to group presentations, a half-competent professor would at least have some idea how to treat the situation fairly. Since there are five groups in the class, we are spending the last five days of classes doing one presentation a day with commentary after each one. Now, since the first group gets screwed and the last group gets an extra two weeks to work on the project, not to mention gets to see where everyone else before them has failed, even a half-assed professor would take measures to make that more fair. Usually, this comes in the form of randomizing when the groups present and giving preferential grades to the ones who went earlier. Well, Professor Billore is horribly incompetent, so she just said, "group one presents first and group five presents last," and when asked if she would be giving preferential treatment to the earlier groups, she responded with, "oh (surprised), I guess maybe I could think about that." The class heaves a sigh of frustration, especially my group since we are group one. To top it all off, our topic was how Japanese Banks have handled expanding abroad. Remember how this is her research topic? Remember how incompetent she is and how our group is going first? She tore us to shreds in the commentary. Many of my responses to her (obviously biased) critiques subtly pointed out how inappropriate her comments were, which she didn't seem to notice but most of the class did. Its pretty much unanimously agreed that she is the worst excuse for a professor that any of us have ever had. If I had the time I would talk to the Dean about her, but I dislike the situation so much that I just can't wait to get away from it.
As an aside, I have seen two other groups present at the time I am writing this, and she gave them very constructive feedback in a very nice way; the complete opposite of what she did to us.
Here is what our 1 hour class that meets three days a week consists of: she puts up a powerpoint on the projector, says, "please have a look at this slide," or "here is a slide, please read it," and then proceeds to stand there silently for a couple minutes until she thinks we've finished reading it. Then, she will ask, "so what does this all mean?" Silence from the class as she stands there looking around while we all think, "I don't know, maybe we would know if you actually TAUGHT us instead of just having us read off slides." Now, instead of responding to this awkward silence with instruction, she simply asks another question, usually along the lines of, "well, how do you think this might affect the [shipping] company?" Once again, awkward silence as no one in the class knows how to respond. From here, she will attempt to evade the situation by saying some very general statements that are usually just paraphrased from the current slide, and then she will move along to the next slide and repeat the process. This is why, even though there is mandatory attendance imposed by the school, on average only 12 people show up for class out of the 30 students actually taking it.
When it comes to group presentations, a half-competent professor would at least have some idea how to treat the situation fairly. Since there are five groups in the class, we are spending the last five days of classes doing one presentation a day with commentary after each one. Now, since the first group gets screwed and the last group gets an extra two weeks to work on the project, not to mention gets to see where everyone else before them has failed, even a half-assed professor would take measures to make that more fair. Usually, this comes in the form of randomizing when the groups present and giving preferential grades to the ones who went earlier. Well, Professor Billore is horribly incompetent, so she just said, "group one presents first and group five presents last," and when asked if she would be giving preferential treatment to the earlier groups, she responded with, "oh (surprised), I guess maybe I could think about that." The class heaves a sigh of frustration, especially my group since we are group one. To top it all off, our topic was how Japanese Banks have handled expanding abroad. Remember how this is her research topic? Remember how incompetent she is and how our group is going first? She tore us to shreds in the commentary. Many of my responses to her (obviously biased) critiques subtly pointed out how inappropriate her comments were, which she didn't seem to notice but most of the class did. Its pretty much unanimously agreed that she is the worst excuse for a professor that any of us have ever had. If I had the time I would talk to the Dean about her, but I dislike the situation so much that I just can't wait to get away from it.
As an aside, I have seen two other groups present at the time I am writing this, and she gave them very constructive feedback in a very nice way; the complete opposite of what she did to us.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Day 81 - March 28
Today I went to Nakano Broadway entirely against my will. Nakano Broadway is a street/mall place that is like a cross between Harajuku and Akihabara, and it also has the highest concentration of non-current anime merch. in Japan. Akiba for the most part has everything that is new and currently popular, and then once they need to free up store space for newer items the old ones go to Nakano Broadway. This makes Nakano Bdwy. home to many gold mines of merchandise.
Now, as for how I got there against my will. You see, I had been spending this Sunday working on my International Marketing group presentation which we were going to be doing the next day and no one in my group had done the slightest bit of work for, despite having all semester. Kira starts talking to me on Facebook saying that she is bored out of her mind and wants to do something, like go to Nakano Bdwy. I respond that, "sorry, I'm too busy, etc., I can't go. That is, unless you want to do the project for me." "Sure," she says. Now, this is not the response I was expecting. No one ever says yes to that proposal, ever. Kira then proceeded to send me and Tom a skeleton presentation that only required us to add in the actual meat of our research. While it had not been explicitly agreed upon, I was pretty much obligated to go with her at this point. Not wanting to be dragged into the depths of hell alone, I convinced Li to give up procrastinating on his work and just come with me.
We got to Nakano Bdwy. around 6pm, and most of the stores close at 8pm (at least on Sunday), so we did our best to cover as much of the anime-related stores as possible in the allotted time. Thankfully I only had 14,000Y on me, so even if I lost control (which was inevitable, especially since the lack of merch at the Tokyo International Anime Fair yesterday) I wouldn't be hurt that badly. I don't remember exactly what I bought, but I do know that I've tried my best to delete my memories of that place since there were many more things that I wanted but didn't have the money for...
One thing I remember buying is something I'm very excited about: Shakugan no Shana car decal kit thing. I posted a pic on facebook from one of my Akihabara trips where a guy's car was covered in gigantic anime decals. Well... now I can be one of those guys XD. I'm totally going to be the koolest kid in skool. I was torn between the Shana set and the Little Busters set, but I decided against the little busters one since it was very brightly colored, had multiple stars, and was overall quite girly, while on the other hand the Shana one is very dark, has flames, and looks badass. Well, it looks badass to me, other people might not find an anime girl with long red hair and a flaming sword very badass but what do they know anyways?
I also remember that Li and I emptied a gatchapon machine which contained Negima figures. Fortunately there weren't a ton left in the machine when we started, but still... Of course I didn't end up getting the one I wanted the most and got several copies of the ones I wanted the least >_<. *sigh* looks like I have yet another set to finish hunting down...
As all the stores started closing we made our last few rounds as quickly as possible before heading back to the station. Oh, another reason why I try to forget that Nakano Bdwy. exists is because its only two stops away from 'baba on the Tozai line, which is significantly closer than the ~35 minute trip on the Yamanote to get to Akihabara. With those horrors behind us we returned to 'baba, performed our daily ritual of Gundam Kizuna, and then returned to the Weekly Mansion where Li could continue procrastinating and I could meet up with Tom to try and pound out the rest of this project.
Now, as for how I got there against my will. You see, I had been spending this Sunday working on my International Marketing group presentation which we were going to be doing the next day and no one in my group had done the slightest bit of work for, despite having all semester. Kira starts talking to me on Facebook saying that she is bored out of her mind and wants to do something, like go to Nakano Bdwy. I respond that, "sorry, I'm too busy, etc., I can't go. That is, unless you want to do the project for me." "Sure," she says. Now, this is not the response I was expecting. No one ever says yes to that proposal, ever. Kira then proceeded to send me and Tom a skeleton presentation that only required us to add in the actual meat of our research. While it had not been explicitly agreed upon, I was pretty much obligated to go with her at this point. Not wanting to be dragged into the depths of hell alone, I convinced Li to give up procrastinating on his work and just come with me.
We got to Nakano Bdwy. around 6pm, and most of the stores close at 8pm (at least on Sunday), so we did our best to cover as much of the anime-related stores as possible in the allotted time. Thankfully I only had 14,000Y on me, so even if I lost control (which was inevitable, especially since the lack of merch at the Tokyo International Anime Fair yesterday) I wouldn't be hurt that badly. I don't remember exactly what I bought, but I do know that I've tried my best to delete my memories of that place since there were many more things that I wanted but didn't have the money for...
One thing I remember buying is something I'm very excited about: Shakugan no Shana car decal kit thing. I posted a pic on facebook from one of my Akihabara trips where a guy's car was covered in gigantic anime decals. Well... now I can be one of those guys XD. I'm totally going to be the koolest kid in skool. I was torn between the Shana set and the Little Busters set, but I decided against the little busters one since it was very brightly colored, had multiple stars, and was overall quite girly, while on the other hand the Shana one is very dark, has flames, and looks badass. Well, it looks badass to me, other people might not find an anime girl with long red hair and a flaming sword very badass but what do they know anyways?
I also remember that Li and I emptied a gatchapon machine which contained Negima figures. Fortunately there weren't a ton left in the machine when we started, but still... Of course I didn't end up getting the one I wanted the most and got several copies of the ones I wanted the least >_<. *sigh* looks like I have yet another set to finish hunting down...
As all the stores started closing we made our last few rounds as quickly as possible before heading back to the station. Oh, another reason why I try to forget that Nakano Bdwy. exists is because its only two stops away from 'baba on the Tozai line, which is significantly closer than the ~35 minute trip on the Yamanote to get to Akihabara. With those horrors behind us we returned to 'baba, performed our daily ritual of Gundam Kizuna, and then returned to the Weekly Mansion where Li could continue procrastinating and I could meet up with Tom to try and pound out the rest of this project.
Day 80 - March 27
I've been taking way too long to get these updates written, so I hope I haven't forgotten anything >_<
Saturday was the Tokyo International Anime Fair, which Li and I had heard about a couple weeks prior and decided to attend. What made things even better was that it was being held in the Tokyo Big Sight, which is in Odaiba, and this was the weekend we had planned to reschedule our Odaiba onsen trip with Allison for. Unfortunately, Allison just got a new job as a waitress in a bar in Takadanobaba and had to work, so once again we had to call off our plans for the onsen.
This was my first time actually getting up close and personal with the Tokyo Big Sight, and I have to say, that is an awesome building. Well, the main building is, the rest of it is just a series of very large halls in normal-looking buildings. Sadly, the Fair was being held in one of those very large halls that was not part of the main building, but oh well I still got to walk through the place. It only cost us 1,000Y to get in for the day, but that is mostly since this isn't an anime convention, its more of an industry trade show. Practically no one cosplays for this aside from the 'booth babes' and the handful of gaijin wearing some horrid excuse for cosplay. People like that make me feel embarrassed for being a foreigner.
Overall the fair was pretty sweet. There was less stuff for sale there than I was expecting, but I did find a few things worth buying: an event-only Senjogahara fan, a Garden of Sinners day planner, and several little pencil board things of Fushigi Yuugi (these are gifts for Lisa). I was especially amazed about the last part, since that show came out a long time ago and they had a ton of different designs of these pencil board-ish things. Also, the main highlight of the fair for me: the debut of the new Rin figure from UBW!!! It was unpainted (being a prototype and all), but holy crap I will pay WHATEVER THEY ASK when that comes out. It is one of the highest quality figures I have ever seen in my life, and I will buy the sh-t out of that thing when it comes up for preorder. They also had the previously unannounced new Saber Alter figure debuting here, which was unpainted as well and looked absolutely amazing, but I am less interested in that than the new Saber figure (much less the Rin) coming out later this year.
Aside from that I can't really remember any specifically memorable things I saw at the fair, just lots of new stuff coming out soon. Also, they had a huge display for these new Black Rock Shooter figures, which looked awesome enough for me to become interested in looking into the show.
Once we had finished with the fair content we grabbed some food from the several food stands in the corner of the hall. Li got some French hot dog thing while I got two corn dogs, or as they're called here "American Dogs." There was this little open area behind the food stands where a lot of people were sitting to eat in their little groups since the tables in front of the stands were very full, but also possibly because it was out of the way and much quieter. We sat down in a little open spot somewhat close to one of the tall temporary walls they had set up to eat our food. While we were eating Li (who was facing the wall) started to exclaim something but was silenced by the EXTREMELY loud crash caused by a section of the temporary wall falling over and towards where everyone was sitting. The top of the wall came at most an inch away from slamming right into this sitting guy's spine. I myself was no more than 2 feet from the thing. Everyone in the immediate area just froze and looked around as if to say, "holy shit, that could have been really bad." Fortunately, the guy who had been sitting directly under it had gotten up and left a few minutes before, otherwise, that would have really bad. With this, we quickly finished eating and then got the heck out of there lol.
On our way back to the station we stopped by the arcade that has Gundam Kizuna for only 400Y per play. As usual we played 5 games in order to reap the maximum benefit of the discount (ie 5 for the price of 4), and then finally left for 'baba around 7pm. Since the all you can eat stakehouse doesn't exist in Odaiba anymore, we altered our plans and instead tried out Shakey's, a pizza place in 'baba that is directly under the 270Y bar. The pizza was quite good, and so far the only place in this entire country I've seen that has regular pepperoni pizza. I don't know what it is with these people and their apparent discrimination against pepperoni pizza, but I find it very upsetting. Shakey's isn't too expensive either; a little less than 2,000Y for a full pizza (about the size of a large in the US). I definitely think we'll be going back.
Saturday was the Tokyo International Anime Fair, which Li and I had heard about a couple weeks prior and decided to attend. What made things even better was that it was being held in the Tokyo Big Sight, which is in Odaiba, and this was the weekend we had planned to reschedule our Odaiba onsen trip with Allison for. Unfortunately, Allison just got a new job as a waitress in a bar in Takadanobaba and had to work, so once again we had to call off our plans for the onsen.
This was my first time actually getting up close and personal with the Tokyo Big Sight, and I have to say, that is an awesome building. Well, the main building is, the rest of it is just a series of very large halls in normal-looking buildings. Sadly, the Fair was being held in one of those very large halls that was not part of the main building, but oh well I still got to walk through the place. It only cost us 1,000Y to get in for the day, but that is mostly since this isn't an anime convention, its more of an industry trade show. Practically no one cosplays for this aside from the 'booth babes' and the handful of gaijin wearing some horrid excuse for cosplay. People like that make me feel embarrassed for being a foreigner.
Overall the fair was pretty sweet. There was less stuff for sale there than I was expecting, but I did find a few things worth buying: an event-only Senjogahara fan, a Garden of Sinners day planner, and several little pencil board things of Fushigi Yuugi (these are gifts for Lisa). I was especially amazed about the last part, since that show came out a long time ago and they had a ton of different designs of these pencil board-ish things. Also, the main highlight of the fair for me: the debut of the new Rin figure from UBW!!! It was unpainted (being a prototype and all), but holy crap I will pay WHATEVER THEY ASK when that comes out. It is one of the highest quality figures I have ever seen in my life, and I will buy the sh-t out of that thing when it comes up for preorder. They also had the previously unannounced new Saber Alter figure debuting here, which was unpainted as well and looked absolutely amazing, but I am less interested in that than the new Saber figure (much less the Rin) coming out later this year.
Aside from that I can't really remember any specifically memorable things I saw at the fair, just lots of new stuff coming out soon. Also, they had a huge display for these new Black Rock Shooter figures, which looked awesome enough for me to become interested in looking into the show.
Once we had finished with the fair content we grabbed some food from the several food stands in the corner of the hall. Li got some French hot dog thing while I got two corn dogs, or as they're called here "American Dogs." There was this little open area behind the food stands where a lot of people were sitting to eat in their little groups since the tables in front of the stands were very full, but also possibly because it was out of the way and much quieter. We sat down in a little open spot somewhat close to one of the tall temporary walls they had set up to eat our food. While we were eating Li (who was facing the wall) started to exclaim something but was silenced by the EXTREMELY loud crash caused by a section of the temporary wall falling over and towards where everyone was sitting. The top of the wall came at most an inch away from slamming right into this sitting guy's spine. I myself was no more than 2 feet from the thing. Everyone in the immediate area just froze and looked around as if to say, "holy shit, that could have been really bad." Fortunately, the guy who had been sitting directly under it had gotten up and left a few minutes before, otherwise, that would have really bad. With this, we quickly finished eating and then got the heck out of there lol.
On our way back to the station we stopped by the arcade that has Gundam Kizuna for only 400Y per play. As usual we played 5 games in order to reap the maximum benefit of the discount (ie 5 for the price of 4), and then finally left for 'baba around 7pm. Since the all you can eat stakehouse doesn't exist in Odaiba anymore, we altered our plans and instead tried out Shakey's, a pizza place in 'baba that is directly under the 270Y bar. The pizza was quite good, and so far the only place in this entire country I've seen that has regular pepperoni pizza. I don't know what it is with these people and their apparent discrimination against pepperoni pizza, but I find it very upsetting. Shakey's isn't too expensive either; a little less than 2,000Y for a full pizza (about the size of a large in the US). I definitely think we'll be going back.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Day 75 - March 22 - Kyoto Day 3
Torii, Yukata, and Sbarro!
So today was Monday, and our final day in Kyoto. It was technically another free day, but we had the option of going on another group trip to the Deer Park in Nara. While I did want to go walk around in the middle of a bunch of antlered animals that supposedly have randomly bad tempers (simply for the historical and novelty aspects), it feels like something I may have done before... Also, Li and I still had one more point of business that we had promised to take care of before leaving this city: finding and acquiring yukata.
Another major attraction of the area was the 1,000 Torii Shrine, which is a shrine that has - you guessed it - 1,000 torii. Its definitely one of the most famous places in Kyoto, and I'm sure just about everyone has seen at least one picture before of the hallways created by all those red gates. We had until 3pm to take care of our business and meet up with the group, so the plan was to go see the 1,000 Torii Shrine and then find and procure some yukata afterwards.
The entrance to the "shrine" (I use quotations because this place covered the entire mountain and consisted of tons of small and large shrines) was marked by a gigantic stone torii. Though not as impressive as Stonehenge, you still have to wonder how they managed to get stones that massive up that high without breaking them. Maybe it was cement actually, I'm not quite sure. Either way, it was still an impressive sight. The somewhat large temple at the base was very pretty, and while it did have some of the very bright accents customary to the Shinto religion this was one of the more reserved when it came to the main color.
As we made our way towards the beginning of the 1,000 torii pathway we noticed something amazing: a stand selling yukata!! Surely the gods smiled upon us today, since not only did we find them effortlessly, but they had a good selection of men's and women's at rather inexpensive prices. Men's were 2,000 yen and the obi was another 2,000 yen, while women's were only 1,500 yen and 1,000 yen for the obi. I'm not a fan of the plain solid patterns for the men's (though Li is), especially since they're usually worn by older men, so I ended up getting a nice dark blue yukata with a light blue diamond pattern with the occasional wheel that look sort of like the Imperial logo from Star Wars. I'm awful at matching colors, so I asked them what their recommendation was (these people didn't know any English btw) and they decided on a dark silver obi with light silver and white accents.
Since I hadn't seen any place that sells yukata in Tokyo, and if I did find one later there was little chance the deals would be this good, I decided to get Tsuki a yukata here instead of waiting for her. Unfortunately, this meant I needed to pick out something she would like, and women's yukata are significantly more colorful and have much more intricate designs. I thanked the gods once more when I texted her and she actually responded. After a series of text messages where I attempted to get her preference, she gave me the death sentence: "Just pick one that you think I'll like." Remember the part where I'm terrible with clothing and colors and such? Well, of course no matter what I chose it would be the wrong one. So what did I do? Beat the odds by buying two! Of course I also asked for their help with picking out an obi for each one of these as well. All told I spent about 10,000 yen on three yukata with an obi for each. Definitely not bad at all, since I was expecting to pay that much for two at best. With our purchases made we once again resumed our trek.
In order to fit 1,000 torii without scattering them randomly, it was necessary to line them all up into one massive pathway. Each torii ranges from 6" deep to around 1' 6", so line up 1,000 of them with uneven spacing and you get a VERY LONG pathway. Remember how I said earlier that this place took up an entire mountain? Well mountains involve climbing. Remember how yesterday we walked so much that our bodies could barely support ourselves by the end? I don't know if I care to ever see another torii again in my life. Yes, the hike was beautiful and some of the views were amazing, but dear god more climbing?! The only thing that saved me was my mobile energy supply: kitties. As you went along the path there would occasionally be a break for a small shrine or group of shrines, and higher up the mountain there were shrine cats living at these. Some of them were too involved with chasing each other around at the time to let me pet them, but a few of them readily accepted me. One of the first ones reminded me quite a bit of Roy, since as soon as I started petting him he absolutely loved it and did NOT want me to stop. Whenever I did, he would become quite vocal about it. I got several pictures of this cat and me petting him, but eventually we needed to move on and I had to leave the cat behind. Fortunately as I left a couple little kids were walking past and went "neko~~!" and ran up to pet him. Despite how much my body hated me for it, the 1,000 Torii Shrine was a very nice hike and definitely worth it. I think I took around 200-300 pictures of this area.
After we left the shrine area we stopped at the conbini across the street from it to get some food before hopping on the train back to Kyoto station. As we stood outside the conbini eating our assorted forms of chicken, we noticed that at the other end of the storefront there was a stray dog. We could tell he was a very nice dog, since he was currently staring down this couple a few feet from him who were also eating. Eventually, despite our efforts to avoid him noticing us, he caught on to the scent of our chicken and turned to face us. He didn't run up to us and beg or even walk up, oh no, he just stood there, staring at us with his most pathetic stare he could muster. As we avoided eye contact he would take a couple short steps closer. This repeated for about 10 minutes until he was finally a few feet from us and he was looking at us so pathetically it was almost unbearable. It was physically painful for me to avoid acknowledging this dog and his helpless stare. Finally, we decided to 'accidentally' drop a bunch of crackers. Thankfully, a delivery truck soon pulled up and the dog seemed to know this person since he actually trotted over to it and followed the guy behind the store. We took our chance and ran to the train.
Back at Kyoto station we still had about an hour to spare, so we wandered around a bit looking for an arcade since we had not played Gundam since Friday night. Here is where we finally decided that (aside from its historical aspects and geisha) Kyoto sucks. Not only does the city shut down by 10pm on a SATURDAY NIGHT, but they don't have any arcades. In Tokyo there is an arcade about every 50 feet, and usually a pachinko parlor right next to it. Here, they only had the pachinko parlors and no arcades. The only one we saw this entire trip was the one near our hotel. So, we ventured back to that arcade once more, played some fighting games, and then returned to Kyoto station to meet up with everyone.
Things were pretty uneventful after this. We got on the shinkansen and as per our agreement I got the window seat this time and Li got the aisle seat. I was able to stay awake for a little while to watch as Kyoto faded away and we very quickly entered farmlands, but shortly afterward fatigue grabbed hold of me and pulled me down to sleep (which once again happened to most everyone else as well). Once I had finished my nap I spent the rest of the time playing my DS until we got to Shinagawa. It was around 5:30pm or so when we arrived, and we had two plans left for the day. First, the grand opening of the Sbarro in Shibuya, and second, playing lots of Gundam to make up for the days we couldn't (plus there was an event going on).
We met up with Allison in Shibuya and went to the Sbarro. Their menu was surprisingly like a Sbarro in the US, with one of the only major differences being the crazy types of pizza they had. I still haven't figured out what it is with Japan and it's random pizzas. It was quite funny watching the confused Japanese patrons not knowing how to order (since the setup was very different from how things normally are here), while us gaijin just walked up and handled it like pros :P. Unfortunately they did not have any pepperoni pizza (what is with this country and its hatred for pepperoni pizza?!?!) so instead I got a ham and cheeze stromboli, which was quite good though a little heavy on the ham.
After we had filled our bellies with quite good food we ventured back to Baba and the Big Box for some excessive amounts of Gundam. I think we played about 8 games before we called it quits. We had some good ones and some terrible ones, but ultimately it was a good time.
Well, thus ends the great Kyoto Saga of my time here in Japan. It had its ups and downs, but I am really glad I decided to go on this trip, it was well worth it.
So today was Monday, and our final day in Kyoto. It was technically another free day, but we had the option of going on another group trip to the Deer Park in Nara. While I did want to go walk around in the middle of a bunch of antlered animals that supposedly have randomly bad tempers (simply for the historical and novelty aspects), it feels like something I may have done before... Also, Li and I still had one more point of business that we had promised to take care of before leaving this city: finding and acquiring yukata.
Another major attraction of the area was the 1,000 Torii Shrine, which is a shrine that has - you guessed it - 1,000 torii. Its definitely one of the most famous places in Kyoto, and I'm sure just about everyone has seen at least one picture before of the hallways created by all those red gates. We had until 3pm to take care of our business and meet up with the group, so the plan was to go see the 1,000 Torii Shrine and then find and procure some yukata afterwards.
The entrance to the "shrine" (I use quotations because this place covered the entire mountain and consisted of tons of small and large shrines) was marked by a gigantic stone torii. Though not as impressive as Stonehenge, you still have to wonder how they managed to get stones that massive up that high without breaking them. Maybe it was cement actually, I'm not quite sure. Either way, it was still an impressive sight. The somewhat large temple at the base was very pretty, and while it did have some of the very bright accents customary to the Shinto religion this was one of the more reserved when it came to the main color.
As we made our way towards the beginning of the 1,000 torii pathway we noticed something amazing: a stand selling yukata!! Surely the gods smiled upon us today, since not only did we find them effortlessly, but they had a good selection of men's and women's at rather inexpensive prices. Men's were 2,000 yen and the obi was another 2,000 yen, while women's were only 1,500 yen and 1,000 yen for the obi. I'm not a fan of the plain solid patterns for the men's (though Li is), especially since they're usually worn by older men, so I ended up getting a nice dark blue yukata with a light blue diamond pattern with the occasional wheel that look sort of like the Imperial logo from Star Wars. I'm awful at matching colors, so I asked them what their recommendation was (these people didn't know any English btw) and they decided on a dark silver obi with light silver and white accents.
Since I hadn't seen any place that sells yukata in Tokyo, and if I did find one later there was little chance the deals would be this good, I decided to get Tsuki a yukata here instead of waiting for her. Unfortunately, this meant I needed to pick out something she would like, and women's yukata are significantly more colorful and have much more intricate designs. I thanked the gods once more when I texted her and she actually responded. After a series of text messages where I attempted to get her preference, she gave me the death sentence: "Just pick one that you think I'll like." Remember the part where I'm terrible with clothing and colors and such? Well, of course no matter what I chose it would be the wrong one. So what did I do? Beat the odds by buying two! Of course I also asked for their help with picking out an obi for each one of these as well. All told I spent about 10,000 yen on three yukata with an obi for each. Definitely not bad at all, since I was expecting to pay that much for two at best. With our purchases made we once again resumed our trek.
In order to fit 1,000 torii without scattering them randomly, it was necessary to line them all up into one massive pathway. Each torii ranges from 6" deep to around 1' 6", so line up 1,000 of them with uneven spacing and you get a VERY LONG pathway. Remember how I said earlier that this place took up an entire mountain? Well mountains involve climbing. Remember how yesterday we walked so much that our bodies could barely support ourselves by the end? I don't know if I care to ever see another torii again in my life. Yes, the hike was beautiful and some of the views were amazing, but dear god more climbing?! The only thing that saved me was my mobile energy supply: kitties. As you went along the path there would occasionally be a break for a small shrine or group of shrines, and higher up the mountain there were shrine cats living at these. Some of them were too involved with chasing each other around at the time to let me pet them, but a few of them readily accepted me. One of the first ones reminded me quite a bit of Roy, since as soon as I started petting him he absolutely loved it and did NOT want me to stop. Whenever I did, he would become quite vocal about it. I got several pictures of this cat and me petting him, but eventually we needed to move on and I had to leave the cat behind. Fortunately as I left a couple little kids were walking past and went "neko~~!" and ran up to pet him. Despite how much my body hated me for it, the 1,000 Torii Shrine was a very nice hike and definitely worth it. I think I took around 200-300 pictures of this area.
After we left the shrine area we stopped at the conbini across the street from it to get some food before hopping on the train back to Kyoto station. As we stood outside the conbini eating our assorted forms of chicken, we noticed that at the other end of the storefront there was a stray dog. We could tell he was a very nice dog, since he was currently staring down this couple a few feet from him who were also eating. Eventually, despite our efforts to avoid him noticing us, he caught on to the scent of our chicken and turned to face us. He didn't run up to us and beg or even walk up, oh no, he just stood there, staring at us with his most pathetic stare he could muster. As we avoided eye contact he would take a couple short steps closer. This repeated for about 10 minutes until he was finally a few feet from us and he was looking at us so pathetically it was almost unbearable. It was physically painful for me to avoid acknowledging this dog and his helpless stare. Finally, we decided to 'accidentally' drop a bunch of crackers. Thankfully, a delivery truck soon pulled up and the dog seemed to know this person since he actually trotted over to it and followed the guy behind the store. We took our chance and ran to the train.
Back at Kyoto station we still had about an hour to spare, so we wandered around a bit looking for an arcade since we had not played Gundam since Friday night. Here is where we finally decided that (aside from its historical aspects and geisha) Kyoto sucks. Not only does the city shut down by 10pm on a SATURDAY NIGHT, but they don't have any arcades. In Tokyo there is an arcade about every 50 feet, and usually a pachinko parlor right next to it. Here, they only had the pachinko parlors and no arcades. The only one we saw this entire trip was the one near our hotel. So, we ventured back to that arcade once more, played some fighting games, and then returned to Kyoto station to meet up with everyone.
Things were pretty uneventful after this. We got on the shinkansen and as per our agreement I got the window seat this time and Li got the aisle seat. I was able to stay awake for a little while to watch as Kyoto faded away and we very quickly entered farmlands, but shortly afterward fatigue grabbed hold of me and pulled me down to sleep (which once again happened to most everyone else as well). Once I had finished my nap I spent the rest of the time playing my DS until we got to Shinagawa. It was around 5:30pm or so when we arrived, and we had two plans left for the day. First, the grand opening of the Sbarro in Shibuya, and second, playing lots of Gundam to make up for the days we couldn't (plus there was an event going on).
We met up with Allison in Shibuya and went to the Sbarro. Their menu was surprisingly like a Sbarro in the US, with one of the only major differences being the crazy types of pizza they had. I still haven't figured out what it is with Japan and it's random pizzas. It was quite funny watching the confused Japanese patrons not knowing how to order (since the setup was very different from how things normally are here), while us gaijin just walked up and handled it like pros :P. Unfortunately they did not have any pepperoni pizza (what is with this country and its hatred for pepperoni pizza?!?!) so instead I got a ham and cheeze stromboli, which was quite good though a little heavy on the ham.
After we had filled our bellies with quite good food we ventured back to Baba and the Big Box for some excessive amounts of Gundam. I think we played about 8 games before we called it quits. We had some good ones and some terrible ones, but ultimately it was a good time.
Well, thus ends the great Kyoto Saga of my time here in Japan. It had its ups and downs, but I am really glad I decided to go on this trip, it was well worth it.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Day 74 - March 21 - Kyoto Day 2
Kobe! (and Osaka)
This was the 2nd day of our school trip to Kyoto, and our designated free day. Li and I had plans for this day for quite some time, and for a very specific purpose. You see, the visual novel Fate/Stay Night (of which Li and I are rabid fans, evident from my previous posts) used many places in Kobe in reference photos for its background images. Now, these locations have already been found by other fans before, but finding them yourself and getting your own photos of the places has become somewhat of a pilgrimage, which only a few have been able to complete. I found a site (in Japanese) where these two Japanese guys completed The Pilgrimage(TM) and posted their pictures and directions, so using those directions and street view on Google Maps I found and marked down all the reference photo locations I could find (which was pretty much all of them). Unfortunately, only about 2/3 of them were in Kobe, with three of those too far into the outskirts to make it to in time. This still left us with a good 8 or so locations in the Kobe area. Thus, with our breakfast eaten we ventured to the nearby Kyoto station and hopped on the express for our one hour ride to Kobe.
The station that marked the physical center of the area containing The Pilgrimage(TM) was Sannomiya Station, the main station of Kobe. Kobe is an interesting city. Much like Fuyuki City from F/SN it has a distinct Western area that overlooks the city, which originated from a small Western settlement due to Kobe being in the Osaka Bay area. It is also not a very tall city (one skyscraper), and even though it is fairly dense like most other Japanese cities, it had a much more 'authentic' feel to it. Its difficult to describe, but the place just felt very homey. I have to say, out of all the cities I've been to that weren't Tokyo, I could see myself enjoying living in Kobe the most.
Our first stop, closest to the station, was the Hotel Monterey Kobe for the church courtyard, church basement altar, and Kotomine's room. Unfortunately, being a very high class hotel, having an absolutely beautiful atmosphere, and it also being spring, there were two weddings taking place here today. Fortunately, I was able to get my pictures of the courtyard, but the rest of the hotel was unavailable to me at each of my several attempts throughout the day.
Stop number two was one of the ones I was looking forward to the most: Rin's house. This was an interesting one to find on Google street view, since it actually isn't anyone's house anymore; it is a museum of the old Western houses in that area and two sides of the building are part of a small park. The walk up to the house (and I mean up, have I mentioned Kobe is very hilly?) was very interesting. There was a quick, yet almost unnoticeable transition from the Japanese area to the Western area. This area consists of most of the hillside, which is pretty steep at points, and overlooks a great deal of Kobe and the bay. It was quite an amazing sight, and right in the middle of it you couldn't tell if you were still in Japan or in some town in Italy. My favorite part about that was how, even though it was a bit of a tourist attraction, it wasn't a major one and acted as if it wasn't one at all. We soon reached the small park with Rin's house, and apparently the park had just finished some renovations since there seemed to be a little event going on. The street performer was amazing, and was flipping around and balancing a small tea kettle with a little stick that he was holding with his mouth. I took a video of it, which I'll post up on facebook or something (hopefully) soon. Rin's house itself was very beautiful. We didn't go inside, but the outside was good enough on its own.
Nearby was our third stop of the day: the road leading up to the Western houses (which is actually right in the middle of it, not leading up to it). It was very upsetting for me that I missed my perfect shot when there was absolutely no one on the hill (highly unlikely given its length) and only got a picture with my point-and-shoot. At least I got one though. I did still wait there for a while taking pictures with both cameras intermittently and got some really good shots, but none without a single person on the hill like when I first got there >_<.
Also not very far away was our fourth stop: the road going up the hill to the church (except there wasn't a church there :P) This was another shot that was easy to find but difficult to take. You see, this road has a moderate amount of traffic, and less than 100 yards behind me was a major intersection, meaning during a red light traffic would get backed up far enough that I couldn't get the shot. Did I mention that in order to get the shot I needed to stand in the middle of the street? This meant that during a green light I would need to get out of the way as well, thus making it quite difficult to get the picture. It was pretty hilarious seeing all the people walking past on the sidewalk stare at me like, "wth is that gaijin doing?" Definitely one of the highlights of my day haha.
With this our stops north of the station were completed, and so we began the long walk (a few miles) down to the bay where we would find our next four stops. South of the station there lies a pretty big park and one of the most interesting ones I've seen. I took a lot of pictures of this place, with its multiple statues and inscribed monoliths, but most importantly the fountains. By far the best fountain-type thing I've ever seen was in this park. At first it doesn't look very interesting: a big obsidian block with water flowing out the top and falling off all four sides into a small pool a few feet below it. Then you notice the walkway going underground a little ways away. Curiosity grips you and you venture into the depths. At the end of the path you find yourself directly underneath the fountain, with the entire ceiling made of glass. The perimeter of the room seemed to be a memorial (as most parks are), but the ceiling was absolutely amazing. I took a couple photos of this and a video of me walking around inside the room as well. At the southern end of this very long park there was a huge clearing with a massive fountain. This fountain wasn't anything super-special - just the usual alternating water jets - but it was still pretty cool.
Finally we reached the bridge that connected the residential part of Fuyuki to the downtown part (which actually just connected to a port island). Now, as we were walking along the bridge we realized just how extremely windy it was today, and how cold that wind could make you. At this point I was really regretting not wearing my jacket and the cold was slowing my hands, but "I can still fight!" :P The bridge itself has two of our shots: one going and one coming, however they are both taken from the same walkway, which of course we were on the opposite side from. Not a big deal though, since we could just take the other walkway on the way back. The important part was what lied at the end of the bridge: the park. When we first got to the park I was a bit worried, since there seemed to be a motorcyclist (not biker-gang) gathering going on. It wasn't huge, but it was in the park and there were about 20 or so of them. Fortunately, once I found the exact spots for the two shots in this area I saw that they were just off the edge of the picture. For one of them I needed to stand on the edge of this moderately large fountain in such a way that I was dangerously close to falling in. Remember that extreme wind? That didn't make it any easier. After quite a long while and many many pictures I felt satisfied with what I had for those two spots and started heading back over the bridge.
Li had left me some time before because the wind and cold were too much for him and was waiting in the Port Terminal building on the other end of the bridge. The wind was coming from the South East-ish direction and the bridge runs East-West, so on our first crossing (which was on the North side of the bridge) we didn't feel the full effects of the wind. Well, I had a good half hour of intimate time with that wind on the South side while I fought to get the two shots I needed. I was lucky in that no one was there to block my shots, since no one in their right mind would cross on the South side when the North side was just as easily accessible. The wind here was some of the strongest I have ever seen in my life. I had to frequently actively work to not get knocked down by how strong it was, and on several occasions the gusts would be strong enough to actually lift up the little stones scattered about the walkway high enough to hit me in the face, and hard enough to make it really hurt. These two shots truly were a battle, but even after getting pummeled with gravel I said, "this is nothing!" :P (Ok, thats enough of those silly parodies).
By the time I finished with the bridge photos the sun was already starting to get lower in the sky. I hurried to meet up with Li, who had apparently found a small cosplay convention thing going on in part of the Port Terminal called CosOne. You had to pay to get in and it looked to be more of a modeling/photo shoot thing, so he just looked longingly through the opening in the curtains. There weren't many people there, I would say 20 or so. Their cosplay was quite good though, so after we left we decided to be super-creepy otaku and get some 'clandestine' photos. By 'clandestine' I mean we were about 150 yards away and noticed a bunch of them out on a walkway in plain sight, so I rested my camera on the railing and zoomed in almost to the max to take some photos. We were extremely conspicuous, and they definitely noticed us haha. I still got my pics though, so that's all that matters :P
With this we had one stop left for The Pilgrimage(TM), or rather what we could get done of it in the time we had, and so we hopped on the train at Sannomiya and went two stops away to Mikage station. The final photo we needed was of the intersection near Shirou's house. To get this picture was the ultimate challenge, since not even the pair of Japanese guys who found it knew where it was. Their directions said that they heard it was in this area so they took a bus and got off near here, then they wandered around for a few hours, got lost, and eventually found the place. Unfortunately, they were so lost that they had no clue where it was, just that it was somewhere near where they got off the bus. Following what little directions they had I was able to find the place on Google Maps using satellite view and street view, but when I went to save the location from street view I clicked the wrong button and completely lost the location. I spent quite a while finding it again and managed to save it correctly on my maps. To my dismay, when we followed my maps and got to the location we found that it was actually not the right place and I hadn't actually found the same place that I lost the first time, just something very similar. We roamed the area for the next couple hours until the sun set trying to find this place, and even found ourselves at one of the highest points in the city (this area was at the base/side of a very large hill and had a road that branched off and went almost up to the top and then looped back to connect to the other side of the neighborhood). By the time we reached the top of this hill it went from a walk to more of a climb. In the beginning a sign said it was around a 20 degree incline, but it must have been at least 40 by the time we got to the top because it got much steeper long after that sign. The view was amazing from the top, and we noticed that we were just about matched with the roof of the one skyscraper in the area. Then we wanted to cry as we realized that building was around 40 stories and we started from the same elevation. We wanted to cry even harder when I looked to our left and noticed that a half-mile away there were small apartment buildings who's bases were higher up the mountain than we were. Seriously, the people from Kobe must be mountain goats or something. I would die if I had to hike up that every day. The walk of shame back to the station was disheartening, but also beautiful since the city started lighting up. Then, we noticed that from our elevation we could see a place that might be what we were looking for. As if possessed, my tired and broken body took off running in that direction leaving Li behind and confused. I spent close to an hour roaming the area once more and at a much faster pace, and I even included a wholly different area south of the train tracks that we did not suspect our destination to be in. Finally, I accepted my defeat and walked back to the station in shame. Fortunately, Li had been spending his time in the conbini across the street from the station and had not abandoned me. Once we had reunited, we said goodbye to the wonderful yet harsh city of Kobe and made our way to Osaka for some normal sight seeing before going back to Kyoto.
Osaka:
Our goal in Osaka was to go see Osaka Castle all lit up at night. It took us a little while to figure out the Osaka train system, which is not easily deciphered. We finally got to the station closest to the castle around 9pm I think, and in order to get to the place we needed to go through the park, cross one of two bridges that go over the moat, then walk around to the gateway through the inner walls, until we finally reached the area immediately surrounding the castle. I can definitely see why this place was such a stronghold; I know I wouldn't want to be the guy trying to assault the place. Unless I had trebuchets. Trebuchets make everything better. So anyways, very shortly after arriving in the park a wild cat ran across our path, so I exclaimed "kitty!" and ran off after it while Li sighed and continued towards the castle. What, I'm having a huge cat deficiency, don't judge me >_>. The cat was hiding under a very low tree, so it took me about 15 minutes to slowly make my way up to it until I was within range of petting it. By this point, it didn't seem overly wary of me, but it was hard to judge its disposition. I tried petting it and it loved it, which made my day :D. After petting it for a while I resumed heading towards the castle, when a few minutes later I saw another wild cat sitting on a ledge nearby. I slowly walked up to this one, who was a little more talkative than the one before, and slowly reached out my hand towards it. I made the mistake of reaching out the same hand I had used to pet the other cat, so after sniffing my hand for a moment it let out this quick annoyed-sounding meow and ran off. On the way to the castle I saw several other cats, though these wouldn't let me close to them. The walls on this place were gigantic. I wish I could have gotten pictures of them, but it was dark and the lighting was terrible. I did get several pictures of the castle itself though, which looked really cool since they had spotlights positioned perfectly to light up every inch of it. The white walls of the castle with the black trim and roofs look really awesome, especially when it is contrasting with the night sky around it.
Finally, with our time running out, we made our way back to the station to head back to Kyoto. There must have been something going on, since food stands were everywhere on our side of the station. At this point Li and I realized we were starving, so we grabbed some soba, wolfed it down, and then continued to the train. With a little more understanding of how the system worked (and with fewer train choices) we fairly easily made our way back to the main station. This time, instead of taking the express back to Kyoto (which was packed) we decided on taking the local train back since our bodies were tired and broken from a very long day. Instead of a very uncomfortable 30 minutes standing on the express, we had a nice time sitting and sleeping on the local line for a little over an hour.
Back in Kyoto, it was about 11:15 and the hotel locked up at 12:30. The baths also closed at 12:30, and we desperately wanted one, so we hurried back and grabbed some kara'age from one of the many Lawsons around. When we passed the only arcade we had seen in all of Kyoto, we decided to head in for 15 minutes to play some fighting games before walking the remaining block to the hotel. This was actually my first time playing BlazBlue, and I must say I quite enjoy it. We also played a couple rounds of Fate/Unlimited Codes, which I have on my PSP but the buttons on the arcade machine weren't labeled so I had no idea how to do the few combos I could remember.
When we got to the hotel we quickly got ready for the bath and then soaked all of our pain away. No scotch, snacks, and TV for us tonight; we collapsed into our futons almost immediately upon returning to the room.
Tomorrow: Yukata & the 1,000 Torii Shrine
This was the 2nd day of our school trip to Kyoto, and our designated free day. Li and I had plans for this day for quite some time, and for a very specific purpose. You see, the visual novel Fate/Stay Night (of which Li and I are rabid fans, evident from my previous posts) used many places in Kobe in reference photos for its background images. Now, these locations have already been found by other fans before, but finding them yourself and getting your own photos of the places has become somewhat of a pilgrimage, which only a few have been able to complete. I found a site (in Japanese) where these two Japanese guys completed The Pilgrimage(TM) and posted their pictures and directions, so using those directions and street view on Google Maps I found and marked down all the reference photo locations I could find (which was pretty much all of them). Unfortunately, only about 2/3 of them were in Kobe, with three of those too far into the outskirts to make it to in time. This still left us with a good 8 or so locations in the Kobe area. Thus, with our breakfast eaten we ventured to the nearby Kyoto station and hopped on the express for our one hour ride to Kobe.
The station that marked the physical center of the area containing The Pilgrimage(TM) was Sannomiya Station, the main station of Kobe. Kobe is an interesting city. Much like Fuyuki City from F/SN it has a distinct Western area that overlooks the city, which originated from a small Western settlement due to Kobe being in the Osaka Bay area. It is also not a very tall city (one skyscraper), and even though it is fairly dense like most other Japanese cities, it had a much more 'authentic' feel to it. Its difficult to describe, but the place just felt very homey. I have to say, out of all the cities I've been to that weren't Tokyo, I could see myself enjoying living in Kobe the most.
Our first stop, closest to the station, was the Hotel Monterey Kobe for the church courtyard, church basement altar, and Kotomine's room. Unfortunately, being a very high class hotel, having an absolutely beautiful atmosphere, and it also being spring, there were two weddings taking place here today. Fortunately, I was able to get my pictures of the courtyard, but the rest of the hotel was unavailable to me at each of my several attempts throughout the day.
Stop number two was one of the ones I was looking forward to the most: Rin's house. This was an interesting one to find on Google street view, since it actually isn't anyone's house anymore; it is a museum of the old Western houses in that area and two sides of the building are part of a small park. The walk up to the house (and I mean up, have I mentioned Kobe is very hilly?) was very interesting. There was a quick, yet almost unnoticeable transition from the Japanese area to the Western area. This area consists of most of the hillside, which is pretty steep at points, and overlooks a great deal of Kobe and the bay. It was quite an amazing sight, and right in the middle of it you couldn't tell if you were still in Japan or in some town in Italy. My favorite part about that was how, even though it was a bit of a tourist attraction, it wasn't a major one and acted as if it wasn't one at all. We soon reached the small park with Rin's house, and apparently the park had just finished some renovations since there seemed to be a little event going on. The street performer was amazing, and was flipping around and balancing a small tea kettle with a little stick that he was holding with his mouth. I took a video of it, which I'll post up on facebook or something (hopefully) soon. Rin's house itself was very beautiful. We didn't go inside, but the outside was good enough on its own.
Nearby was our third stop of the day: the road leading up to the Western houses (which is actually right in the middle of it, not leading up to it). It was very upsetting for me that I missed my perfect shot when there was absolutely no one on the hill (highly unlikely given its length) and only got a picture with my point-and-shoot. At least I got one though. I did still wait there for a while taking pictures with both cameras intermittently and got some really good shots, but none without a single person on the hill like when I first got there >_<.
Also not very far away was our fourth stop: the road going up the hill to the church (except there wasn't a church there :P) This was another shot that was easy to find but difficult to take. You see, this road has a moderate amount of traffic, and less than 100 yards behind me was a major intersection, meaning during a red light traffic would get backed up far enough that I couldn't get the shot. Did I mention that in order to get the shot I needed to stand in the middle of the street? This meant that during a green light I would need to get out of the way as well, thus making it quite difficult to get the picture. It was pretty hilarious seeing all the people walking past on the sidewalk stare at me like, "wth is that gaijin doing?" Definitely one of the highlights of my day haha.
With this our stops north of the station were completed, and so we began the long walk (a few miles) down to the bay where we would find our next four stops. South of the station there lies a pretty big park and one of the most interesting ones I've seen. I took a lot of pictures of this place, with its multiple statues and inscribed monoliths, but most importantly the fountains. By far the best fountain-type thing I've ever seen was in this park. At first it doesn't look very interesting: a big obsidian block with water flowing out the top and falling off all four sides into a small pool a few feet below it. Then you notice the walkway going underground a little ways away. Curiosity grips you and you venture into the depths. At the end of the path you find yourself directly underneath the fountain, with the entire ceiling made of glass. The perimeter of the room seemed to be a memorial (as most parks are), but the ceiling was absolutely amazing. I took a couple photos of this and a video of me walking around inside the room as well. At the southern end of this very long park there was a huge clearing with a massive fountain. This fountain wasn't anything super-special - just the usual alternating water jets - but it was still pretty cool.
Finally we reached the bridge that connected the residential part of Fuyuki to the downtown part (which actually just connected to a port island). Now, as we were walking along the bridge we realized just how extremely windy it was today, and how cold that wind could make you. At this point I was really regretting not wearing my jacket and the cold was slowing my hands, but "I can still fight!" :P The bridge itself has two of our shots: one going and one coming, however they are both taken from the same walkway, which of course we were on the opposite side from. Not a big deal though, since we could just take the other walkway on the way back. The important part was what lied at the end of the bridge: the park. When we first got to the park I was a bit worried, since there seemed to be a motorcyclist (not biker-gang) gathering going on. It wasn't huge, but it was in the park and there were about 20 or so of them. Fortunately, once I found the exact spots for the two shots in this area I saw that they were just off the edge of the picture. For one of them I needed to stand on the edge of this moderately large fountain in such a way that I was dangerously close to falling in. Remember that extreme wind? That didn't make it any easier. After quite a long while and many many pictures I felt satisfied with what I had for those two spots and started heading back over the bridge.
Li had left me some time before because the wind and cold were too much for him and was waiting in the Port Terminal building on the other end of the bridge. The wind was coming from the South East-ish direction and the bridge runs East-West, so on our first crossing (which was on the North side of the bridge) we didn't feel the full effects of the wind. Well, I had a good half hour of intimate time with that wind on the South side while I fought to get the two shots I needed. I was lucky in that no one was there to block my shots, since no one in their right mind would cross on the South side when the North side was just as easily accessible. The wind here was some of the strongest I have ever seen in my life. I had to frequently actively work to not get knocked down by how strong it was, and on several occasions the gusts would be strong enough to actually lift up the little stones scattered about the walkway high enough to hit me in the face, and hard enough to make it really hurt. These two shots truly were a battle, but even after getting pummeled with gravel I said, "this is nothing!" :P (Ok, thats enough of those silly parodies).
By the time I finished with the bridge photos the sun was already starting to get lower in the sky. I hurried to meet up with Li, who had apparently found a small cosplay convention thing going on in part of the Port Terminal called CosOne. You had to pay to get in and it looked to be more of a modeling/photo shoot thing, so he just looked longingly through the opening in the curtains. There weren't many people there, I would say 20 or so. Their cosplay was quite good though, so after we left we decided to be super-creepy otaku and get some 'clandestine' photos. By 'clandestine' I mean we were about 150 yards away and noticed a bunch of them out on a walkway in plain sight, so I rested my camera on the railing and zoomed in almost to the max to take some photos. We were extremely conspicuous, and they definitely noticed us haha. I still got my pics though, so that's all that matters :P
With this we had one stop left for The Pilgrimage(TM), or rather what we could get done of it in the time we had, and so we hopped on the train at Sannomiya and went two stops away to Mikage station. The final photo we needed was of the intersection near Shirou's house. To get this picture was the ultimate challenge, since not even the pair of Japanese guys who found it knew where it was. Their directions said that they heard it was in this area so they took a bus and got off near here, then they wandered around for a few hours, got lost, and eventually found the place. Unfortunately, they were so lost that they had no clue where it was, just that it was somewhere near where they got off the bus. Following what little directions they had I was able to find the place on Google Maps using satellite view and street view, but when I went to save the location from street view I clicked the wrong button and completely lost the location. I spent quite a while finding it again and managed to save it correctly on my maps. To my dismay, when we followed my maps and got to the location we found that it was actually not the right place and I hadn't actually found the same place that I lost the first time, just something very similar. We roamed the area for the next couple hours until the sun set trying to find this place, and even found ourselves at one of the highest points in the city (this area was at the base/side of a very large hill and had a road that branched off and went almost up to the top and then looped back to connect to the other side of the neighborhood). By the time we reached the top of this hill it went from a walk to more of a climb. In the beginning a sign said it was around a 20 degree incline, but it must have been at least 40 by the time we got to the top because it got much steeper long after that sign. The view was amazing from the top, and we noticed that we were just about matched with the roof of the one skyscraper in the area. Then we wanted to cry as we realized that building was around 40 stories and we started from the same elevation. We wanted to cry even harder when I looked to our left and noticed that a half-mile away there were small apartment buildings who's bases were higher up the mountain than we were. Seriously, the people from Kobe must be mountain goats or something. I would die if I had to hike up that every day. The walk of shame back to the station was disheartening, but also beautiful since the city started lighting up. Then, we noticed that from our elevation we could see a place that might be what we were looking for. As if possessed, my tired and broken body took off running in that direction leaving Li behind and confused. I spent close to an hour roaming the area once more and at a much faster pace, and I even included a wholly different area south of the train tracks that we did not suspect our destination to be in. Finally, I accepted my defeat and walked back to the station in shame. Fortunately, Li had been spending his time in the conbini across the street from the station and had not abandoned me. Once we had reunited, we said goodbye to the wonderful yet harsh city of Kobe and made our way to Osaka for some normal sight seeing before going back to Kyoto.
Osaka:
Our goal in Osaka was to go see Osaka Castle all lit up at night. It took us a little while to figure out the Osaka train system, which is not easily deciphered. We finally got to the station closest to the castle around 9pm I think, and in order to get to the place we needed to go through the park, cross one of two bridges that go over the moat, then walk around to the gateway through the inner walls, until we finally reached the area immediately surrounding the castle. I can definitely see why this place was such a stronghold; I know I wouldn't want to be the guy trying to assault the place. Unless I had trebuchets. Trebuchets make everything better. So anyways, very shortly after arriving in the park a wild cat ran across our path, so I exclaimed "kitty!" and ran off after it while Li sighed and continued towards the castle. What, I'm having a huge cat deficiency, don't judge me >_>. The cat was hiding under a very low tree, so it took me about 15 minutes to slowly make my way up to it until I was within range of petting it. By this point, it didn't seem overly wary of me, but it was hard to judge its disposition. I tried petting it and it loved it, which made my day :D. After petting it for a while I resumed heading towards the castle, when a few minutes later I saw another wild cat sitting on a ledge nearby. I slowly walked up to this one, who was a little more talkative than the one before, and slowly reached out my hand towards it. I made the mistake of reaching out the same hand I had used to pet the other cat, so after sniffing my hand for a moment it let out this quick annoyed-sounding meow and ran off. On the way to the castle I saw several other cats, though these wouldn't let me close to them. The walls on this place were gigantic. I wish I could have gotten pictures of them, but it was dark and the lighting was terrible. I did get several pictures of the castle itself though, which looked really cool since they had spotlights positioned perfectly to light up every inch of it. The white walls of the castle with the black trim and roofs look really awesome, especially when it is contrasting with the night sky around it.
Finally, with our time running out, we made our way back to the station to head back to Kyoto. There must have been something going on, since food stands were everywhere on our side of the station. At this point Li and I realized we were starving, so we grabbed some soba, wolfed it down, and then continued to the train. With a little more understanding of how the system worked (and with fewer train choices) we fairly easily made our way back to the main station. This time, instead of taking the express back to Kyoto (which was packed) we decided on taking the local train back since our bodies were tired and broken from a very long day. Instead of a very uncomfortable 30 minutes standing on the express, we had a nice time sitting and sleeping on the local line for a little over an hour.
Back in Kyoto, it was about 11:15 and the hotel locked up at 12:30. The baths also closed at 12:30, and we desperately wanted one, so we hurried back and grabbed some kara'age from one of the many Lawsons around. When we passed the only arcade we had seen in all of Kyoto, we decided to head in for 15 minutes to play some fighting games before walking the remaining block to the hotel. This was actually my first time playing BlazBlue, and I must say I quite enjoy it. We also played a couple rounds of Fate/Unlimited Codes, which I have on my PSP but the buttons on the arcade machine weren't labeled so I had no idea how to do the few combos I could remember.
When we got to the hotel we quickly got ready for the bath and then soaked all of our pain away. No scotch, snacks, and TV for us tonight; we collapsed into our futons almost immediately upon returning to the room.
Tomorrow: Yukata & the 1,000 Torii Shrine
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Day 73 - March 20 - Kyoto Day 1
Kyoto!
So these three days were the school trip to Kyoto. Saturday morning through Monday evening (we had Monday and Tuesday off). I had to get up at 5:30am Saturday morning, which was excruciating and people are not meant to exist at that hour of the day. We all met up in the Shinagawa station at 7:30am and moved to the platform for our 8am-ish train. No normal train of course. We took the shinkansen (bullet train), which was awesome. The interior is basically the same as an airplane, except the leg room is MASSIVE. Seriously, it almost felt like too much legroom. Li and I sat on the side of the train where you can see Mt. Fuji, which was really cool. The area south of Tokyo is quite hilly and very beautiful. At several times I found myself wondering, "there are still so many people living out here, but what do they do?" Quite a distance out of the city the population density was low enough to where there were quite a few open fields, but still high enough to warrant the occasional apartment building. Mostly it was just a sea of houses though. What could all those people possibly do though?
The shinkansen travels very quickly (they call it a bullet train for a reason) and can go from Tokyo to Kyoto in about two hours. Check it out on a map; its no small distance. It goes so fast that the train actually needs to make fairly banked turns; enough that it was plainly noticeable inside the car. Anyways, I was absolutely exhausted from only getting 3 1/2 hours of sleep the night before - I don't quite remember why - so I spent the majority of the train ride sleeping. I was not alone it seems, since only a handful of the 40-something students stayed awake.
Today was the guided tour day, so immediately upon arrival in Kyoto we all board a tour bus and load our larger luggage into the bottom. I only brought my messenger bag and my backpack, so I kept them with me up top. On the way to our first destination, which was Arashiyama, we were given some bento boxes to eat on the bus for lunch. They were alright, significantly better than the ones on the camping trip. Once we got to Arashiyama, we all got off the bus and started walking as a group to our various tour destinations in the area. Our first stop was the Tenryuji Temple, which was very pretty and had some beautiful gardens. I took quite a few pictures of this place. Oh, that reminds me, I picked up a memory card for the good camera so I was dual-wielding cameras for almost the entire trip. The bigger/better one had enough space for ~1600 images while my little point-and-shoot had enough for ~700. I think I took around 1800 pictures over the whole trip, with just this one temple taking up around 200 of them. The gardens here were really beautiful. I love the temples in this country, the good ones give me a similar feeling to the 'real' castles of Scotland that I loved.
Our next stop was on the way back towards the bus (kind of), at Nomiya Shrine. As with all Shinto shrines, this place was very red. I don't remember what it was a shrine to, but it wasn't that big actually. There was no main building or structure to go inside, just a few little shrines off the side of this shaded back road. The walk there was interesting. Very shortly after leaving the main road we completely left civilization and were in the middle of a forest and/or bamboo thicket, with only a few houses scattered fairly far apart. As I mentioned before, the road was very shaded due to the trees, and the entrance to this shrine was very unimposing. It was a very simple entrance, with very small and simple shrines on a path inside. The area around the path was immaculate and very beautiful. I really hope the pictures do it justice.
For our third and final destination (in Arashiyama), we went to the Monkey Park across the very large river that ran through the area. The full name of the place is actually Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama, but everyone just called it the Monkey Park. I was unaware of this until we started ascending, but apparently the actual observation area is at the top of the mountain - which was very tall - and we were at the bottom. After a painful and occasionally rather steep hike up this mountain (which was actually a pretty beautiful hike, except it was extremely hot) we made it to the observatory, and the monkeys. Oh my, there were monkeys everywhere. There was actually a 'rest area' house-thing at the observatory, and in the 'rest room' the top half of the walls were only an interlocked fence leading directly outside. Well, monkeys love to climb things and you can also feed them from inside this room (absolutely not outside of it though), so there were a good dozen monkeys just chillin' on the fence. It was pretty cool to watch while catching my breath and cooling down. Once I stepped outside and took a moment to look around I realized what an amazing view there was. The edge of the observation area was pretty much a cliff face, so there were no trees blocking the view of the entire city. There was also a secondary observation area a little higher up the hill which had an even better view. I took a lot of pictures at this park, and I mean a lot. At least 200 between both cameras. So anyways, it was pretty awesome watching the monkeys frolic about, urinate on the roof and almost hit someone under the edge (they knew what they were doing), and try to catch the Koi in the little pond. Right before I left to head back down they had feeding time. Now I know why they say you must absolutely not even hint that you have food on you outside the rest area, because those monkeys went INSANE. Fortunately, I have a video of it because there is no way images could catch how crazy this was.
Anyways, we were told before entering the park that we could leave whenever we wanted and do whatever in the area, just as long as we met up at 15:00. With about 30 minutes left until the deadline, Li and I began trying to complete our first objective for this trip: find and procure some yukata. We saw a shop that had some on our way to the Monkey Park, so we went back there. They had an alright selection, but the only ones that were affordable were pretty bland looking, so we opted to continue the search later. I then took some really nice pictures of the bridge and river, and the two of us got to the bus only a few minutes after the deadline.
Our 2nd to last tour destination was Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion. Since we were running pretty late and the grounds around the building weren't very interesting we decided to make this a very short stop, around 20 minutes I think it was. The Golden Pavilion is, as the name suggests, golden. The sun was already getting lower so the light reflecting off the building looked really cool, and of course I took a plethora of pictures.
We all then walked very briskly to our final destination, the Ryoanji Temple. The brisk walk was required because they stop letting people in at 1700, it was currently 1640, and it takes about 20 minutes to walk there. Fortunately, we managed to get there with about 5 minutes to spare, which gave us about 35 minutes to view the place. Unlike the Kinkakuji, the grounds around the Ryoanji Temple were very beautiful and certainly more appealing than the inside, which only offered a rock garden. It was a very large and very pretty rock garden, but the big lake and the trees around it outside were more appealing to me. Following in my trend, I took a great many pictures here.
Finally, we gathered back up and hopped on the bus, which took us to our lodgings for the weekend: Japanese-style Hotel Wakamiya. Here is their English website: http://www.kyoto-wakamiya.net/
This place was pretty cool, and not very far from Kyoto Station. The rooms were definitely traditional; tatami floors, a small table with cushions around it, and futons in the closet. A nice perk to the place is they push the table out of the way and set up your futons for you, then put them away in the morning after you leave.
We had the rest of the night to ourselves, but pretty much everyone went to the light-up event in Kiyumizudera, just in different groups. For those who don't know, the temple here is the one with the famous stage where people make a leap of faith/courage/suicide. Its very high up and the area blow isn't very forgiving, otherwise I would have tried. They say about 8 people do it a year, but there is only a 10% or so death rate. If you jump its pretty much guaranteed that you'll break both your legs though, and only that if you're lucky. Also at this temple were two very large and very heavy staffs with the rings at the top. They are held upright in this wooden rack, but are left so that you can still try to lift them. By the way, they are both solid metal, the smaller being about 1 1/2" in diameter and around 6' tall, the other having a rectangular shaft about 3" across and about 8' tall. Li said that the legend states that if you can lift these then you have the makings of a dragon-slayer (or something along those lines). I could easily lift the smaller one with one hand, but I couldn't get the larger one even a millimeter off the ground. Out of all the people I watched who tried, I don't think a single one was able to. This temple is also home to the famous lucky fountain/waterfall thing with three streams that come out from over the little roof and fall down into a small pool at the bottom. From left to right (when you are on the platform) they are: good fortune in love, good fortune in career, and good fortune in health. They have long ladles that you use to reach out and collect some water from the stream before moving on to the next. You are only allowed to drink from the streams once per year, and only from two of the three streams, otherwise you are too greedy and none of it will come true. Li didn't join us since he went last semester, but a couple other people and I waited in the (rather long) line to drink from the streams. I chose career first and then health second, since I don't need to rely on fortune for my relationship. Damnit, I need to find a job >_<. Hopefully this fortune helps me somehow. Oh, and Li got pics of me up there, which turned out well.
By the time we finished drinking from the streams the area was closing down, so we departed for our remaining two destinations for the night: Geishas in Gion (an area of Kyoto fairly close to Kiyumizudera) and an all-you-can-eat sukiyaki place that Li found online, which was fairly close to Gion as well. Unfortunately for us, our luck plunged like a rock at this point. Half-way to Gion it started raining lightly, and by the time we got there it was heavy enough that there was zero chance of any Geishas being out on the back streets. Well, technically it would be Maiko (Geisha in training) that would be out on the street, but close enough. We were saddened by this, but our ever-increasing hunger quickly dampened that. The side streets in the area were confusing, since there were more of them than on the map, so we ended up needing to stop at a Koban (Police box) to ask for directions. Fortunately the girl who was with us (I can't remember her name >_<) spoke better Japanese than the rest of us, so we were able to get through it fairly painlessly. Also, it turned out we were only about 100yds away from our destination when we asked, of course. Well, much like the roads in the area the building this place was in was also very confusing. We could not find any way that led up to this place, which was on the 5th floor, as the main staircase only went up to the 2nd. Down a back hallway we spotted an elevator, so we hopped in that and hit 5. Nothing. 4. Nothing. Hmm, maybe the elevator is just weird. 3. Ok, its moving! We get out at 3 and find ourselves in what looks to be a back stairwell, but that was fine with us since it still went up. The 4th floor was some hair salon or something, which seemed to be closed. This was pretty understandable for 10pm on a Saturday night. What was rather disconcerting was the boxes on the staircase going further up to the 5th floor. Of course, the door was locked with no sign visible to explain what was going on. Finally, we asked one of the guys who worked at the restaurant on the 2nd floor what was going on, and eventually we found out that for SOME reason that place was closed for the next few weeks, but he didn't know why. One would think that they would post something on their massive 5ft sign at ground level stating such, but no. Disheartened, we started wandering the back streets in search of some open restaurant.
Thus began my dislike for the way Kyoto operates. After about 20 minutes of wandering around and being greeted by dark storefronts, we came to the conclusion that even on one of biggest festivals of the year, where everyone is out in that area at night, AND on a Saturday night no less, Kyoto shuts down at 10pm. The hotel locks its doors at 12:30am, and it was currently around 11pm, so we just said "screw it" and went to McDonalds. That night was a disappointment, at least until we got back to the hotel and got into the bath, then everything just melted away. Also, since it was close to the time when they close the baths Li and I were the only ones in at the time. Once all our frustrations were melted away by the bath, we very quickly regressed into making VERY homoerotic innuendos and saying things that, if you were to only hear without the visual context, you would think something wholly different was happening. For example: we each sat at a washing station in the corner of the room so that we were perpendicular to each other. Li would dump the bucket of cold water on himself and a good amount would make it over to me, to which I would respond with a yelp of "oh god, YES. Oh I love it when you do that." True, the cold water felt extremely nice after getting out of the quite hot bath, however this dialogue could have been grossly misinterpreted. Things only went downhill from here.
To end the night, Li and I sat at the table in our room, each drinking some of the scotch we had brought with us while eating a portion of the mass-quantities of snacks we also brought with us, all while watching one of the many very odd Japanese game shows. Oh, and of course we were each wearing a yukata that was supplied with the room. God damn those things are comfortable. So yea, sakura-flavored Kit-Kats are absolutely wonderful. They taste of spring!
Coming up next: Kyoto Day 2: Kobe! -or- The Pilgrimage Continues!
Also, in case you don't know what a yukata is and are too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia (shame on you) I shall try to explain. A yukata is basically a thin light-weight kimono, but without the ungodly intricate designs and the beautifully designed (and also gigantic) obi (belts). They can still have very intricate designs, but nothing even remotely close to those crazy kimonos that are more like a painting than clothing. Also, the primary purposes of yukata are for comfort and also a casual form of a kimono, which is VERY formal. Its like wearing a suit that is also wearing a suit.
Here is a better explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukata
So these three days were the school trip to Kyoto. Saturday morning through Monday evening (we had Monday and Tuesday off). I had to get up at 5:30am Saturday morning, which was excruciating and people are not meant to exist at that hour of the day. We all met up in the Shinagawa station at 7:30am and moved to the platform for our 8am-ish train. No normal train of course. We took the shinkansen (bullet train), which was awesome. The interior is basically the same as an airplane, except the leg room is MASSIVE. Seriously, it almost felt like too much legroom. Li and I sat on the side of the train where you can see Mt. Fuji, which was really cool. The area south of Tokyo is quite hilly and very beautiful. At several times I found myself wondering, "there are still so many people living out here, but what do they do?" Quite a distance out of the city the population density was low enough to where there were quite a few open fields, but still high enough to warrant the occasional apartment building. Mostly it was just a sea of houses though. What could all those people possibly do though?
The shinkansen travels very quickly (they call it a bullet train for a reason) and can go from Tokyo to Kyoto in about two hours. Check it out on a map; its no small distance. It goes so fast that the train actually needs to make fairly banked turns; enough that it was plainly noticeable inside the car. Anyways, I was absolutely exhausted from only getting 3 1/2 hours of sleep the night before - I don't quite remember why - so I spent the majority of the train ride sleeping. I was not alone it seems, since only a handful of the 40-something students stayed awake.
Today was the guided tour day, so immediately upon arrival in Kyoto we all board a tour bus and load our larger luggage into the bottom. I only brought my messenger bag and my backpack, so I kept them with me up top. On the way to our first destination, which was Arashiyama, we were given some bento boxes to eat on the bus for lunch. They were alright, significantly better than the ones on the camping trip. Once we got to Arashiyama, we all got off the bus and started walking as a group to our various tour destinations in the area. Our first stop was the Tenryuji Temple, which was very pretty and had some beautiful gardens. I took quite a few pictures of this place. Oh, that reminds me, I picked up a memory card for the good camera so I was dual-wielding cameras for almost the entire trip. The bigger/better one had enough space for ~1600 images while my little point-and-shoot had enough for ~700. I think I took around 1800 pictures over the whole trip, with just this one temple taking up around 200 of them. The gardens here were really beautiful. I love the temples in this country, the good ones give me a similar feeling to the 'real' castles of Scotland that I loved.
Our next stop was on the way back towards the bus (kind of), at Nomiya Shrine. As with all Shinto shrines, this place was very red. I don't remember what it was a shrine to, but it wasn't that big actually. There was no main building or structure to go inside, just a few little shrines off the side of this shaded back road. The walk there was interesting. Very shortly after leaving the main road we completely left civilization and were in the middle of a forest and/or bamboo thicket, with only a few houses scattered fairly far apart. As I mentioned before, the road was very shaded due to the trees, and the entrance to this shrine was very unimposing. It was a very simple entrance, with very small and simple shrines on a path inside. The area around the path was immaculate and very beautiful. I really hope the pictures do it justice.
For our third and final destination (in Arashiyama), we went to the Monkey Park across the very large river that ran through the area. The full name of the place is actually Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama, but everyone just called it the Monkey Park. I was unaware of this until we started ascending, but apparently the actual observation area is at the top of the mountain - which was very tall - and we were at the bottom. After a painful and occasionally rather steep hike up this mountain (which was actually a pretty beautiful hike, except it was extremely hot) we made it to the observatory, and the monkeys. Oh my, there were monkeys everywhere. There was actually a 'rest area' house-thing at the observatory, and in the 'rest room' the top half of the walls were only an interlocked fence leading directly outside. Well, monkeys love to climb things and you can also feed them from inside this room (absolutely not outside of it though), so there were a good dozen monkeys just chillin' on the fence. It was pretty cool to watch while catching my breath and cooling down. Once I stepped outside and took a moment to look around I realized what an amazing view there was. The edge of the observation area was pretty much a cliff face, so there were no trees blocking the view of the entire city. There was also a secondary observation area a little higher up the hill which had an even better view. I took a lot of pictures at this park, and I mean a lot. At least 200 between both cameras. So anyways, it was pretty awesome watching the monkeys frolic about, urinate on the roof and almost hit someone under the edge (they knew what they were doing), and try to catch the Koi in the little pond. Right before I left to head back down they had feeding time. Now I know why they say you must absolutely not even hint that you have food on you outside the rest area, because those monkeys went INSANE. Fortunately, I have a video of it because there is no way images could catch how crazy this was.
Anyways, we were told before entering the park that we could leave whenever we wanted and do whatever in the area, just as long as we met up at 15:00. With about 30 minutes left until the deadline, Li and I began trying to complete our first objective for this trip: find and procure some yukata. We saw a shop that had some on our way to the Monkey Park, so we went back there. They had an alright selection, but the only ones that were affordable were pretty bland looking, so we opted to continue the search later. I then took some really nice pictures of the bridge and river, and the two of us got to the bus only a few minutes after the deadline.
Our 2nd to last tour destination was Kinkakuji, the Golden Pavilion. Since we were running pretty late and the grounds around the building weren't very interesting we decided to make this a very short stop, around 20 minutes I think it was. The Golden Pavilion is, as the name suggests, golden. The sun was already getting lower so the light reflecting off the building looked really cool, and of course I took a plethora of pictures.
We all then walked very briskly to our final destination, the Ryoanji Temple. The brisk walk was required because they stop letting people in at 1700, it was currently 1640, and it takes about 20 minutes to walk there. Fortunately, we managed to get there with about 5 minutes to spare, which gave us about 35 minutes to view the place. Unlike the Kinkakuji, the grounds around the Ryoanji Temple were very beautiful and certainly more appealing than the inside, which only offered a rock garden. It was a very large and very pretty rock garden, but the big lake and the trees around it outside were more appealing to me. Following in my trend, I took a great many pictures here.
Finally, we gathered back up and hopped on the bus, which took us to our lodgings for the weekend: Japanese-style Hotel Wakamiya. Here is their English website: http://www.kyoto-wakamiya.net/
This place was pretty cool, and not very far from Kyoto Station. The rooms were definitely traditional; tatami floors, a small table with cushions around it, and futons in the closet. A nice perk to the place is they push the table out of the way and set up your futons for you, then put them away in the morning after you leave.
We had the rest of the night to ourselves, but pretty much everyone went to the light-up event in Kiyumizudera, just in different groups. For those who don't know, the temple here is the one with the famous stage where people make a leap of faith/courage/suicide. Its very high up and the area blow isn't very forgiving, otherwise I would have tried. They say about 8 people do it a year, but there is only a 10% or so death rate. If you jump its pretty much guaranteed that you'll break both your legs though, and only that if you're lucky. Also at this temple were two very large and very heavy staffs with the rings at the top. They are held upright in this wooden rack, but are left so that you can still try to lift them. By the way, they are both solid metal, the smaller being about 1 1/2" in diameter and around 6' tall, the other having a rectangular shaft about 3" across and about 8' tall. Li said that the legend states that if you can lift these then you have the makings of a dragon-slayer (or something along those lines). I could easily lift the smaller one with one hand, but I couldn't get the larger one even a millimeter off the ground. Out of all the people I watched who tried, I don't think a single one was able to. This temple is also home to the famous lucky fountain/waterfall thing with three streams that come out from over the little roof and fall down into a small pool at the bottom. From left to right (when you are on the platform) they are: good fortune in love, good fortune in career, and good fortune in health. They have long ladles that you use to reach out and collect some water from the stream before moving on to the next. You are only allowed to drink from the streams once per year, and only from two of the three streams, otherwise you are too greedy and none of it will come true. Li didn't join us since he went last semester, but a couple other people and I waited in the (rather long) line to drink from the streams. I chose career first and then health second, since I don't need to rely on fortune for my relationship. Damnit, I need to find a job >_<. Hopefully this fortune helps me somehow. Oh, and Li got pics of me up there, which turned out well.
By the time we finished drinking from the streams the area was closing down, so we departed for our remaining two destinations for the night: Geishas in Gion (an area of Kyoto fairly close to Kiyumizudera) and an all-you-can-eat sukiyaki place that Li found online, which was fairly close to Gion as well. Unfortunately for us, our luck plunged like a rock at this point. Half-way to Gion it started raining lightly, and by the time we got there it was heavy enough that there was zero chance of any Geishas being out on the back streets. Well, technically it would be Maiko (Geisha in training) that would be out on the street, but close enough. We were saddened by this, but our ever-increasing hunger quickly dampened that. The side streets in the area were confusing, since there were more of them than on the map, so we ended up needing to stop at a Koban (Police box) to ask for directions. Fortunately the girl who was with us (I can't remember her name >_<) spoke better Japanese than the rest of us, so we were able to get through it fairly painlessly. Also, it turned out we were only about 100yds away from our destination when we asked, of course. Well, much like the roads in the area the building this place was in was also very confusing. We could not find any way that led up to this place, which was on the 5th floor, as the main staircase only went up to the 2nd. Down a back hallway we spotted an elevator, so we hopped in that and hit 5. Nothing. 4. Nothing. Hmm, maybe the elevator is just weird. 3. Ok, its moving! We get out at 3 and find ourselves in what looks to be a back stairwell, but that was fine with us since it still went up. The 4th floor was some hair salon or something, which seemed to be closed. This was pretty understandable for 10pm on a Saturday night. What was rather disconcerting was the boxes on the staircase going further up to the 5th floor. Of course, the door was locked with no sign visible to explain what was going on. Finally, we asked one of the guys who worked at the restaurant on the 2nd floor what was going on, and eventually we found out that for SOME reason that place was closed for the next few weeks, but he didn't know why. One would think that they would post something on their massive 5ft sign at ground level stating such, but no. Disheartened, we started wandering the back streets in search of some open restaurant.
Thus began my dislike for the way Kyoto operates. After about 20 minutes of wandering around and being greeted by dark storefronts, we came to the conclusion that even on one of biggest festivals of the year, where everyone is out in that area at night, AND on a Saturday night no less, Kyoto shuts down at 10pm. The hotel locks its doors at 12:30am, and it was currently around 11pm, so we just said "screw it" and went to McDonalds. That night was a disappointment, at least until we got back to the hotel and got into the bath, then everything just melted away. Also, since it was close to the time when they close the baths Li and I were the only ones in at the time. Once all our frustrations were melted away by the bath, we very quickly regressed into making VERY homoerotic innuendos and saying things that, if you were to only hear without the visual context, you would think something wholly different was happening. For example: we each sat at a washing station in the corner of the room so that we were perpendicular to each other. Li would dump the bucket of cold water on himself and a good amount would make it over to me, to which I would respond with a yelp of "oh god, YES. Oh I love it when you do that." True, the cold water felt extremely nice after getting out of the quite hot bath, however this dialogue could have been grossly misinterpreted. Things only went downhill from here.
To end the night, Li and I sat at the table in our room, each drinking some of the scotch we had brought with us while eating a portion of the mass-quantities of snacks we also brought with us, all while watching one of the many very odd Japanese game shows. Oh, and of course we were each wearing a yukata that was supplied with the room. God damn those things are comfortable. So yea, sakura-flavored Kit-Kats are absolutely wonderful. They taste of spring!
Coming up next: Kyoto Day 2: Kobe! -or- The Pilgrimage Continues!
Also, in case you don't know what a yukata is and are too lazy to look it up on Wikipedia (shame on you) I shall try to explain. A yukata is basically a thin light-weight kimono, but without the ungodly intricate designs and the beautifully designed (and also gigantic) obi (belts). They can still have very intricate designs, but nothing even remotely close to those crazy kimonos that are more like a painting than clothing. Also, the primary purposes of yukata are for comfort and also a casual form of a kimono, which is VERY formal. Its like wearing a suit that is also wearing a suit.
Here is a better explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukata
Friday, March 5, 2010
Day 56 - March 3
Today was the school trip to Kamakura. Unfortunately, I was still extremely sleep deprived since Friday night I got very little sleep since I needed to be up at 6am, Saturday night was the camping trip and I got 4 1/2 hours of sleep, Sunday night I had to catch up on assignments and got 6 hours (not too bad), then Monday night I got 4 hours because I had a big assignment due on Tuesday. What made all that even more fun was the fact that the bus left from school at 8am this time, which means we needed to be there at 7:45am, which means I needed to get up at 5:45am DX.
Kamakura is an old town North(?) of Tokyo full of temples and shrines. It took us about an hour and a half to get there by bus, but supposedly it is just as easy to get there by train. I think I'll be taking Tsuki there while she's here, so that is useful information. We arrived at our first destination, the Kencho-ji temple, a little before 10am. This place was absolutely beautiful. The huge old wooden buildings and the immaculate grounds... just amazing. Once we got inside the main building the Buddhist monk who was going to be guiding us today met up with us and brought us all to the main meditation room. Here we all set out our little mats, shown how to set it up, then shown how to get into the lotus position, or half-lotus if you can't do the full one. After he instructed us on what to do and how to do it for a little while, the time finally came to start meditating. This was a very large room, and many of the rather large doors going directly outside where it was rather cold were wide open, thus making the very large room rather cold as well. Interestingly enough, after a short time meditating I couldn't feel the cold anymore. The monk stopped us around 15-20 minutes in and taught us about "the stick." It is usually portrayed that the head monk walks along the line of people meditating and hits the ones who are doing it wrong with this big stick. He told us that it is actually a willing thing, where the person meditating feels like their mind is straying and they need something to help them focus. They change their hand position to give the sign, he comes up, the both bow to each other, the person bends over their knees and arches their back, he hits them two times on each side, between the shoulder-blade and the spine, then they bow to each other again and the person resumes meditating. So basically its just a way of calling in an external force to help you concentrate. We then went on for another 15-20 minute meditation session, this time with him pacing with the stick. I only called him over once, but some people called him over a few times. He hits pretty hard, but it really does help. Anyways, we did a total of four sessions, which added up to around 80 minutes of meditating. Each time we had a break I immediately started feeling very cold again, but during the meditation it all went away. Also, after stretching enough I was able to get myself into the full lotus position by the third session, but I didn't want to do it because it was still hard enough to be distracting.
After the "Zazen Experience" we were guided to the dining hall and given a typical meal that the monks at the temple eat. This meal was very simple and, obviously, vegetarian. He instructed us on the etiquette of the whole process, which of course there was a whole process for, and then we got down to eating. Silently. That was one of the main rules, you do not talk during the meal. The food was alright, a couple of the things they gave us I just couldn't handle. There was this one thing that looked like little pieces of mulch (and possibly was) that was actually pretty good.
Once lunch was finished we were given about 30 minutes to wander the area freely before we had to move on to our next destination. Fortunately, I remembered my camera this time (unlike the camping trip, which I only had my cell phone camera for >_<), so I got a lot of pictures. I also picked up a couple little gifts for people back home. I'm not sure who those people are yet though...
Our next destination was about a 5 minute drive away: the Tsurugaokahachimangu Shrine. Yea, thats a mouthful. This place was a very large Shinto shrine with a lot of open space and big bright red buildings with bright yellow/gold accents. It was beautiful for a while, but then it just kind of started feeling gaudy. It didn't help that this place was obviously a tourist attraction. So, once we were given our two hour free time Li and I inquired about a shrine that was part of our Fate/Stay Night Pilgrimage that we heard was in the area. Apparently, it was back up the road past our previous stop, though they didn't know how far. They said if we left right then we might be able to make it back in time. Disheartened, Li and I spent about 45 minutes wandering around the Shinto shrine and taking pictures, then we started getting bored. So, we figured that if we were able to make it to the Meigetsuin shrine, an unknown distance away, in 25 minutes each way, that would leave us with about 5 minutes to see the place and get the pictures of the staircase for our Pilgrimage.
I'm very glad we did this, since the area between our starting point and ending point was the Japan I'd been longing to see. This wasn't Tokyo anymore, this was the real Japan, or pretty close to it. In our whole walk we didn't see a single other foreigner. Its hard to describe the atmosphere other than it being not Tokyo, but it was really nice. I took around 300 pictures during this trip, so there is plenty to see of the area. At 20 minutes into our walk (we had passed the first temple around 7 minutes in) we finally saw a sign that said Meigetsuin 300m ->. It ended up taking us almost exactly 25 minutes to get there, which means we had 5 minutes to completely absorb this place. Well, that didn't happen lol. This place is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and none of the plants were even in bloom yet! I can't describe it well, but it felt so... sacred. Where the other places were still sacred, it had diminished from the amount of tourists. In this place, there were maybe two other people who didn't work there. It felt a lot like the situation with the castles in Scotland. I loved the old ones that were maintained to keep them frozen in time, not restore them and turn them into fake tourist attractions like the Edinburgh Castle. This place wasn't falling apart - it was very well maintained - but it just felt like sacred ground, much like those old castle ruins.
Once we realized we had about 19 minutes to get back before the bus left, we came back to our senses and started getting out of there. Of course we took a barrage of photos of that staircase. On the way back I wanted to take pictures of so many things, but we just didn't have the time, so I ended up doing my best to take them while walking. For the most part they came out pretty good. Some I had to take blind (i.e. over my head facing the opposite direction, while walking), but even most of those came out well. It would seem the gods of that shrine had blessed us or something, because even with stopping at a vending machine to grab a few drinks we still made it back to the bus with 4 minutes to spare, and we never once ran or even jogged. Even more fortunately, we were not the last ones; there were still two girls who got on the bus about 3 minutes after we did.
Our final destination of the day was about a 20 minute drive away: the Great Buddha. This massive bronze Buddha was made some X amount of long times ago, to the point where the building that was built over it was destroyed and it was left out in the elements. Even the foundation was destroyed at one point, yet the statue still remained undamaged. They said this thing was big, and they weren't kidding. This statue was MASSIVE. I'm a horrible judge of feet, but if I had to guess I would say it was 50ft tall. Just look at the pictures on facebook, you'll be able to see how gigantic it is. I think his ear is as tall as I am. I got a lot of pictures of the statue, and shortly before we left I noticed that you could actually go inside the statue. I can now say that I have been inside Buddha! It was quite interesting, the whole thing is completely hollow. I didn't have time to read the sign inside telling how it was made, but I have a picture of it so I could read it later. As we headed back to the bus we got the one last thing we needed to make this a super-awesome-fantastic day: Sakura-flavored Ice Cream. How can an ice cream taste like a flower? It just does. I don't think I've had any ice cream that even remotely rivals that in taste and pure awesomeness in my entire life.
Finally, we got on the bus at 4pm and drove back to school. We took a different route this time, driving down the coastline so we could see the ocean, which was pretty cool. Come to think of it, the ocean was on our right, so we couldn't have been North of Tokyo. Oh well. Awesome trip though, and I definitely want to go back with Tsuki. I especially want to see the Meigetsuin in full-bloom and give it and the surrounding area the amount of time they deserve.
After we got back, Li and I had our daily Gundam, I stopped by the bank, then we each got back to our rooms at about 8pm I think. I then commenced writing up a Japanese assignment and creating the presentation/making notes/practicing for my 10 minute speech in Public Speaking tomorrow. So once again, I was only able to get about 4 1/2 hours of sleep. At least it was a good day.
Kamakura is an old town North(?) of Tokyo full of temples and shrines. It took us about an hour and a half to get there by bus, but supposedly it is just as easy to get there by train. I think I'll be taking Tsuki there while she's here, so that is useful information. We arrived at our first destination, the Kencho-ji temple, a little before 10am. This place was absolutely beautiful. The huge old wooden buildings and the immaculate grounds... just amazing. Once we got inside the main building the Buddhist monk who was going to be guiding us today met up with us and brought us all to the main meditation room. Here we all set out our little mats, shown how to set it up, then shown how to get into the lotus position, or half-lotus if you can't do the full one. After he instructed us on what to do and how to do it for a little while, the time finally came to start meditating. This was a very large room, and many of the rather large doors going directly outside where it was rather cold were wide open, thus making the very large room rather cold as well. Interestingly enough, after a short time meditating I couldn't feel the cold anymore. The monk stopped us around 15-20 minutes in and taught us about "the stick." It is usually portrayed that the head monk walks along the line of people meditating and hits the ones who are doing it wrong with this big stick. He told us that it is actually a willing thing, where the person meditating feels like their mind is straying and they need something to help them focus. They change their hand position to give the sign, he comes up, the both bow to each other, the person bends over their knees and arches their back, he hits them two times on each side, between the shoulder-blade and the spine, then they bow to each other again and the person resumes meditating. So basically its just a way of calling in an external force to help you concentrate. We then went on for another 15-20 minute meditation session, this time with him pacing with the stick. I only called him over once, but some people called him over a few times. He hits pretty hard, but it really does help. Anyways, we did a total of four sessions, which added up to around 80 minutes of meditating. Each time we had a break I immediately started feeling very cold again, but during the meditation it all went away. Also, after stretching enough I was able to get myself into the full lotus position by the third session, but I didn't want to do it because it was still hard enough to be distracting.
After the "Zazen Experience" we were guided to the dining hall and given a typical meal that the monks at the temple eat. This meal was very simple and, obviously, vegetarian. He instructed us on the etiquette of the whole process, which of course there was a whole process for, and then we got down to eating. Silently. That was one of the main rules, you do not talk during the meal. The food was alright, a couple of the things they gave us I just couldn't handle. There was this one thing that looked like little pieces of mulch (and possibly was) that was actually pretty good.
Once lunch was finished we were given about 30 minutes to wander the area freely before we had to move on to our next destination. Fortunately, I remembered my camera this time (unlike the camping trip, which I only had my cell phone camera for >_<), so I got a lot of pictures. I also picked up a couple little gifts for people back home. I'm not sure who those people are yet though...
Our next destination was about a 5 minute drive away: the Tsurugaokahachimangu Shrine. Yea, thats a mouthful. This place was a very large Shinto shrine with a lot of open space and big bright red buildings with bright yellow/gold accents. It was beautiful for a while, but then it just kind of started feeling gaudy. It didn't help that this place was obviously a tourist attraction. So, once we were given our two hour free time Li and I inquired about a shrine that was part of our Fate/Stay Night Pilgrimage that we heard was in the area. Apparently, it was back up the road past our previous stop, though they didn't know how far. They said if we left right then we might be able to make it back in time. Disheartened, Li and I spent about 45 minutes wandering around the Shinto shrine and taking pictures, then we started getting bored. So, we figured that if we were able to make it to the Meigetsuin shrine, an unknown distance away, in 25 minutes each way, that would leave us with about 5 minutes to see the place and get the pictures of the staircase for our Pilgrimage.
I'm very glad we did this, since the area between our starting point and ending point was the Japan I'd been longing to see. This wasn't Tokyo anymore, this was the real Japan, or pretty close to it. In our whole walk we didn't see a single other foreigner. Its hard to describe the atmosphere other than it being not Tokyo, but it was really nice. I took around 300 pictures during this trip, so there is plenty to see of the area. At 20 minutes into our walk (we had passed the first temple around 7 minutes in) we finally saw a sign that said Meigetsuin 300m ->. It ended up taking us almost exactly 25 minutes to get there, which means we had 5 minutes to completely absorb this place. Well, that didn't happen lol. This place is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and none of the plants were even in bloom yet! I can't describe it well, but it felt so... sacred. Where the other places were still sacred, it had diminished from the amount of tourists. In this place, there were maybe two other people who didn't work there. It felt a lot like the situation with the castles in Scotland. I loved the old ones that were maintained to keep them frozen in time, not restore them and turn them into fake tourist attractions like the Edinburgh Castle. This place wasn't falling apart - it was very well maintained - but it just felt like sacred ground, much like those old castle ruins.
Once we realized we had about 19 minutes to get back before the bus left, we came back to our senses and started getting out of there. Of course we took a barrage of photos of that staircase. On the way back I wanted to take pictures of so many things, but we just didn't have the time, so I ended up doing my best to take them while walking. For the most part they came out pretty good. Some I had to take blind (i.e. over my head facing the opposite direction, while walking), but even most of those came out well. It would seem the gods of that shrine had blessed us or something, because even with stopping at a vending machine to grab a few drinks we still made it back to the bus with 4 minutes to spare, and we never once ran or even jogged. Even more fortunately, we were not the last ones; there were still two girls who got on the bus about 3 minutes after we did.
Our final destination of the day was about a 20 minute drive away: the Great Buddha. This massive bronze Buddha was made some X amount of long times ago, to the point where the building that was built over it was destroyed and it was left out in the elements. Even the foundation was destroyed at one point, yet the statue still remained undamaged. They said this thing was big, and they weren't kidding. This statue was MASSIVE. I'm a horrible judge of feet, but if I had to guess I would say it was 50ft tall. Just look at the pictures on facebook, you'll be able to see how gigantic it is. I think his ear is as tall as I am. I got a lot of pictures of the statue, and shortly before we left I noticed that you could actually go inside the statue. I can now say that I have been inside Buddha! It was quite interesting, the whole thing is completely hollow. I didn't have time to read the sign inside telling how it was made, but I have a picture of it so I could read it later. As we headed back to the bus we got the one last thing we needed to make this a super-awesome-fantastic day: Sakura-flavored Ice Cream. How can an ice cream taste like a flower? It just does. I don't think I've had any ice cream that even remotely rivals that in taste and pure awesomeness in my entire life.
Finally, we got on the bus at 4pm and drove back to school. We took a different route this time, driving down the coastline so we could see the ocean, which was pretty cool. Come to think of it, the ocean was on our right, so we couldn't have been North of Tokyo. Oh well. Awesome trip though, and I definitely want to go back with Tsuki. I especially want to see the Meigetsuin in full-bloom and give it and the surrounding area the amount of time they deserve.
After we got back, Li and I had our daily Gundam, I stopped by the bank, then we each got back to our rooms at about 8pm I think. I then commenced writing up a Japanese assignment and creating the presentation/making notes/practicing for my 10 minute speech in Public Speaking tomorrow. So once again, I was only able to get about 4 1/2 hours of sleep. At least it was a good day.
Day 52-53 - Feb 27-28
This weekend was the Culture Exchange Camping trip; a two day weekend trip to get out of Tokyo and exchange some culture with native Japanese students at TUJ. The trip took place in a campground park kind of place (similar to Onanda Park for those who know it) in Ibaraki. We had to be at the school at 8am to depart, which means I needed to get up at 6am. Human beings are not meant to be alive at that hour of the day. Li and I grumbled our way to the back of the bus, reclined our seats, and did our best to pass out. On the way there, this girl came back and introduced herself to us and this other girl who was nearby. Interestingly enough, her name is McKenna. After a little while we got talking about our heritage, and it turns out she is Scottish as well. Apparently her practically white hair is naturally very red. She also said that her family is very proud of its heritage, possibly too much, which I found interesting. Eventually she got called back up by her friend (maybe bf? I still can't figure it out) and I resumed my passing out.
The place we stayed at in Ibaraki was only heated in some places. Namely, the rooms, the gym, and the kitchen. There was also a few super-space heaters in this big meeting room, which is where we went upon arrival. We spent several minutes waiting there all sitting around in front of this white board that was mostly blank. Several people made the analogy to Battle Royale. Fortunately, when the guy showed up he wasn't wheeling in a couple dozen bags of weapons/supplies. We were told the rules of the place, and then told which rooms we were going to be in. There were 6 people per room, and I was rooming with Li, Winston, Sean, Tony (McKenna's friend), and Takuya (native). The rooms were set up with bunk beds, but not normal bunk beds. These were each the size of one tatami mat and in fact had a tatami mat in each one. Basically, we needed to set our beds up like a traditional futon on the ground, except in a bunk (the bunk part made it rather difficult).
Once our rooms were set up, we all met in the kitchen and were each given a bento for lunch. The bento was pretty bad, which was unanimously agreed upon. Afterward we were broken up into different groups for a scavenger hunt type of thing. I was with McKenna, two native girls who's names I can't remember, and another guy who's name I do know but is escaping me at the moment. We were given a copy of a hand-drawn map of the area around the building, which had a couple dozen small circles drawn scattered around the area. At each circle was a sign with a number and a katakana. We were to randomly place the numbers 1-25 in this grid at the bottom of the map. Basically we were playing a cross between bingo and a scavenger hunt. We were given two-ish hours to find them all. Our group stayed together for a little while, and then ended up getting separated along the way. I wandered deep down into this ravine, eventually realizing that I had definitely gone too far (probably a mile and a half away) when I got to a bamboo grove at the base of the ravine. Not wanting to scramble my way up the somewhat steep and rather muddy path (it had rained most of the morning), since I had already fallen once and gotten mud all over my nice white hoodie, I recalled a similar situation in Hawaii. So, I broke off a good walking-stick size bamboo stalk and hiked my way back up. The area was really pretty and I rather enjoyed my hikes through it. At a few points I caught up with other members of my group and we exchanged info on the signs we had seen, eventually getting it to the person with the clipboard and the map. When they called us all back in we were pretty well exhausted. They must have anticipated this, since they actually made a small banner with two long poles holding it up that said "GOAL." Nearly every single person who came up to that area did a slow-motion run through the goal, and most did this without seeing anyone else do it. My group was tied for 2nd place, but we had the moral victory since all the other groups were texting each other, and we did it the natural way.
Once the hike had finished we had two hours of free time, so just about everyone went to the gym (since we were so exhausted lol). We got a really nice size game of dodgeball going, and I actually did really well in the beginning. As I got more tired though, my ability to catch balls thrown at me diminished. I only got hit once though; in all the rounds we played the only reason I got out was because I failed to catch a ball.
After dodgeball we got back with our hiking groups and were brought outside and told how to make our dinner: Curry Rice. We broke the jobs up amongst the members of our groups, and I was fortunate enough to get the job of building and then maintaining the fire, which also included keeping track of what we had cooking on the grill above it. The whole cooking process took us about two hours, leaving us rather starving by the time we got to eat. I was quite surprised, the curry rice was really good. They made it really spicy though, so by the time I got half way through the curry part I couldn't take any more. Also, half-way was a lot since somehow we ended up with a lot more than everyone else, as our servings were - in some cases - overflowing from our plates. Once we had finished eating we commenced cleaning, which brought me back to building/tending to the fire since we were heating the bowls which were filled with water to help them clean more easily.
Since the sun had set and our dinner event was complete, it was time for the bonfire. The people at the camp had set up a real nice bonfire for us, with the wood itself being around 4 feet high which made the flames around 10'. Nahomi (the advisor/supervisor lady, who is awesome btw) brought the fixin's for smores. With the fire as massive as it was though, most of the people had trouble getting close enough to cook their marshmallows. Even with a stick half as long as theirs I had no problem walking right up to it and sticking my 'mallow right in the flames, I guess because I have a high pain tolerance for heat or something. After I had consumed my third smore and didn't want anymore I started helping some of the girls who were having trouble with theirs. Oh, and did I mention in a previous post that Li and I bought flasks? Mine is red plaid and Li's is beige. We had each filled ours with the most appropriate fluid: scotch. Unfortunately, I discovered that mine actually had a small leak in it. This wasn't a problem as long as it was sealed, but as soon as I opened the cap it started dripping out the bottom. I need to fix that sometime soon, since I'll need it for Fuji. Anyways, as the fire died down we were all chatting etc., and I had the idea that I wanted to jump over it. The bonfire was within a ring of stones about 6 feet in diameter. Within the ring the ground was recessed about 6 inches to make a mini-fire pit. I knew that I could easily cover the distance, but my main concern was the height since I'm terrible at vertical jumping. After contemplating it for a while, Tony (who is about 6'5") jumped over it since no one else was. He barely made the distance though; another couple inches back and he would have fallen back into the fire or at the very least hurt his ankle badly. Of course, this just could not stand. So I waited a little longer for this one log that had since fallen so that it stuck straight up in the middle to get brittle enough that I could break it. Once I had done so, off I went. I easily covered the distance, making it about a foot farther than the opposite side of the ring, but it seems it was a good idea for me to wait since I cleared the top by barely a couple inches. McKenna was going to record it, but wasn't paying attention, so at her request I immediately turned around and did it again. I'm currently trying to get that video from her since I have found her on facebook.
Around 8:30pm we all got back to our rooms and were told that the lights in the halls would be shut off at 10pm, and we had until 9:30 to get our baths. Knowing that everyone was going to rush to the bath, Li and I instead made our beds and waited until 9:15 to get to the bath. This was a good decision, since it was completely empty and we had the whole place to ourselves. I'm quite surprised; I was not expecting to enjoy this public bath system as much as I do. I really really like it, and its probably one of the biggest things I'm going to miss about this country. Its very hard to explain to someone who hasn't done it. Its just a wonderful experience.
At about 10pm we got kicked out of the bath and made our way through the dark halls back to our room, where we found out that just about everyone was hanging out in a lounge farther down the hall. Li and I joined the party, and hung out there until about 2am, even though we needed to be up at 6:30. Rebecca Mock (who lives down the hall from me here) taught me Egyptian Rat Screw, which was quite enjoyable and reminded me of Set at the points where I would fail to slap the cards fast enough. Also, I got talking to this guy name Yuuki. Apparently Yuuki isn't a TUJ student, and was invited somehow to come along on the trip. He is actually a student at the Tokyo Science University, and even though he is studying there he wants to someday become a novelist or a writer for video games. You can see how this very quickly became relevant to my interests. Anyways, we stayed up talking with him about books, movies, and video games for many hours on end. When we finally went to bed we exchanged cell phone numbers, and I have sent him a few messages since then we've exchanged emails as well so we can keep in touch.
6:30am hurt, a lot. We had to clean up our rooms and fold up our beds, and then get our belongings and bring them down to the big meeting room. After leaving them there, we all moved on to the kitchen to consume breakfast. I don't really remember what it entailed, but it was alright. Certainly better than the bento from yesterday. Once we had finished breakfast we had until 11:30am for free time, so off to the nearest couch I went. I woke up at about 9:30 and went to the gym where most people were, apparently. Oh, and during breakfast it was sleeting rather badly. Around 10am it had shifted to snow, and was coming down even harder. During the time in the gym I played table tennis against this native Japanese girl, who was pretty good, then this native Japanese guy, who was very good, then against Li, who was about as good as me but couldn't serve as well. Our saving grace from the cold was Nahomi, who decided that instead of have everyone go outside and freeze while we made our lunch of Yakisoba, only the student helpers would be forced to go, along with any students who wanted to. Naturally, Li and I did not want to. I realized an opportunity and busted out my poi for the first time in a very long time. After a while I was finally able to master the 9-beat weave! My transitions have also gotten better.
Around 12:30 we were told food was ready, but we needed to go outside to eat it. Myself and about 4 other people, one of whom was Li, decided that it wasn't worth it and we would rather huddle around the heater in the big meeting room. Pretty much all of us took a nap, and awoke at 1:30pm when everyone came back inside for the final event of our trip: candle making. Apparently candle making really meant painting these odd cone-shaped candles, then dipping them in boiling wax to seal the paint. We all spent the next hour and a half painting our candles and such. I made mine a flame, with red at the tip, then fading to orange, then to yellow for the majority of it, then blue, then I ran out of time and couldn't figure out how to make clear on a slightly-pink candle so I just made it grey. Holy crap some people are extremely talented. Anyways, we got a big group photo out in front of the building and then hopped on the bus and went home. We returned at about 5pm, Li and I went for our daily Gundam, grabbed some groceries, and finally settled into our rooms at about 7:30pm.
All in all it was a pretty eventful trip. Oh, and apparently the reason it was so rainy/cold was because there was a Tsunami on the way and it was pushing cold wet air ahead of it. Somewhat fortunately it was going to hit only Hokkaido, but I kind of wanted to go see it since they said there would be 10' waves. Oh well, maybe there will be another before I leave.
PS: I forgot to mention two things.
1.) During breakfast one thing we had was called Kinpira Gobo, which was actually quite good.
2.) The native Japanese students were playing this card game Saturday night called Daihinmin. Turns out its almost exactly like the game "Presidents and Assholes" here, except there is an Uno element in the form of a reverse card.
The place we stayed at in Ibaraki was only heated in some places. Namely, the rooms, the gym, and the kitchen. There was also a few super-space heaters in this big meeting room, which is where we went upon arrival. We spent several minutes waiting there all sitting around in front of this white board that was mostly blank. Several people made the analogy to Battle Royale. Fortunately, when the guy showed up he wasn't wheeling in a couple dozen bags of weapons/supplies. We were told the rules of the place, and then told which rooms we were going to be in. There were 6 people per room, and I was rooming with Li, Winston, Sean, Tony (McKenna's friend), and Takuya (native). The rooms were set up with bunk beds, but not normal bunk beds. These were each the size of one tatami mat and in fact had a tatami mat in each one. Basically, we needed to set our beds up like a traditional futon on the ground, except in a bunk (the bunk part made it rather difficult).
Once our rooms were set up, we all met in the kitchen and were each given a bento for lunch. The bento was pretty bad, which was unanimously agreed upon. Afterward we were broken up into different groups for a scavenger hunt type of thing. I was with McKenna, two native girls who's names I can't remember, and another guy who's name I do know but is escaping me at the moment. We were given a copy of a hand-drawn map of the area around the building, which had a couple dozen small circles drawn scattered around the area. At each circle was a sign with a number and a katakana. We were to randomly place the numbers 1-25 in this grid at the bottom of the map. Basically we were playing a cross between bingo and a scavenger hunt. We were given two-ish hours to find them all. Our group stayed together for a little while, and then ended up getting separated along the way. I wandered deep down into this ravine, eventually realizing that I had definitely gone too far (probably a mile and a half away) when I got to a bamboo grove at the base of the ravine. Not wanting to scramble my way up the somewhat steep and rather muddy path (it had rained most of the morning), since I had already fallen once and gotten mud all over my nice white hoodie, I recalled a similar situation in Hawaii. So, I broke off a good walking-stick size bamboo stalk and hiked my way back up. The area was really pretty and I rather enjoyed my hikes through it. At a few points I caught up with other members of my group and we exchanged info on the signs we had seen, eventually getting it to the person with the clipboard and the map. When they called us all back in we were pretty well exhausted. They must have anticipated this, since they actually made a small banner with two long poles holding it up that said "GOAL." Nearly every single person who came up to that area did a slow-motion run through the goal, and most did this without seeing anyone else do it. My group was tied for 2nd place, but we had the moral victory since all the other groups were texting each other, and we did it the natural way.
Once the hike had finished we had two hours of free time, so just about everyone went to the gym (since we were so exhausted lol). We got a really nice size game of dodgeball going, and I actually did really well in the beginning. As I got more tired though, my ability to catch balls thrown at me diminished. I only got hit once though; in all the rounds we played the only reason I got out was because I failed to catch a ball.
After dodgeball we got back with our hiking groups and were brought outside and told how to make our dinner: Curry Rice. We broke the jobs up amongst the members of our groups, and I was fortunate enough to get the job of building and then maintaining the fire, which also included keeping track of what we had cooking on the grill above it. The whole cooking process took us about two hours, leaving us rather starving by the time we got to eat. I was quite surprised, the curry rice was really good. They made it really spicy though, so by the time I got half way through the curry part I couldn't take any more. Also, half-way was a lot since somehow we ended up with a lot more than everyone else, as our servings were - in some cases - overflowing from our plates. Once we had finished eating we commenced cleaning, which brought me back to building/tending to the fire since we were heating the bowls which were filled with water to help them clean more easily.
Since the sun had set and our dinner event was complete, it was time for the bonfire. The people at the camp had set up a real nice bonfire for us, with the wood itself being around 4 feet high which made the flames around 10'. Nahomi (the advisor/supervisor lady, who is awesome btw) brought the fixin's for smores. With the fire as massive as it was though, most of the people had trouble getting close enough to cook their marshmallows. Even with a stick half as long as theirs I had no problem walking right up to it and sticking my 'mallow right in the flames, I guess because I have a high pain tolerance for heat or something. After I had consumed my third smore and didn't want anymore I started helping some of the girls who were having trouble with theirs. Oh, and did I mention in a previous post that Li and I bought flasks? Mine is red plaid and Li's is beige. We had each filled ours with the most appropriate fluid: scotch. Unfortunately, I discovered that mine actually had a small leak in it. This wasn't a problem as long as it was sealed, but as soon as I opened the cap it started dripping out the bottom. I need to fix that sometime soon, since I'll need it for Fuji. Anyways, as the fire died down we were all chatting etc., and I had the idea that I wanted to jump over it. The bonfire was within a ring of stones about 6 feet in diameter. Within the ring the ground was recessed about 6 inches to make a mini-fire pit. I knew that I could easily cover the distance, but my main concern was the height since I'm terrible at vertical jumping. After contemplating it for a while, Tony (who is about 6'5") jumped over it since no one else was. He barely made the distance though; another couple inches back and he would have fallen back into the fire or at the very least hurt his ankle badly. Of course, this just could not stand. So I waited a little longer for this one log that had since fallen so that it stuck straight up in the middle to get brittle enough that I could break it. Once I had done so, off I went. I easily covered the distance, making it about a foot farther than the opposite side of the ring, but it seems it was a good idea for me to wait since I cleared the top by barely a couple inches. McKenna was going to record it, but wasn't paying attention, so at her request I immediately turned around and did it again. I'm currently trying to get that video from her since I have found her on facebook.
Around 8:30pm we all got back to our rooms and were told that the lights in the halls would be shut off at 10pm, and we had until 9:30 to get our baths. Knowing that everyone was going to rush to the bath, Li and I instead made our beds and waited until 9:15 to get to the bath. This was a good decision, since it was completely empty and we had the whole place to ourselves. I'm quite surprised; I was not expecting to enjoy this public bath system as much as I do. I really really like it, and its probably one of the biggest things I'm going to miss about this country. Its very hard to explain to someone who hasn't done it. Its just a wonderful experience.
At about 10pm we got kicked out of the bath and made our way through the dark halls back to our room, where we found out that just about everyone was hanging out in a lounge farther down the hall. Li and I joined the party, and hung out there until about 2am, even though we needed to be up at 6:30. Rebecca Mock (who lives down the hall from me here) taught me Egyptian Rat Screw, which was quite enjoyable and reminded me of Set at the points where I would fail to slap the cards fast enough. Also, I got talking to this guy name Yuuki. Apparently Yuuki isn't a TUJ student, and was invited somehow to come along on the trip. He is actually a student at the Tokyo Science University, and even though he is studying there he wants to someday become a novelist or a writer for video games. You can see how this very quickly became relevant to my interests. Anyways, we stayed up talking with him about books, movies, and video games for many hours on end. When we finally went to bed we exchanged cell phone numbers, and I have sent him a few messages since then we've exchanged emails as well so we can keep in touch.
6:30am hurt, a lot. We had to clean up our rooms and fold up our beds, and then get our belongings and bring them down to the big meeting room. After leaving them there, we all moved on to the kitchen to consume breakfast. I don't really remember what it entailed, but it was alright. Certainly better than the bento from yesterday. Once we had finished breakfast we had until 11:30am for free time, so off to the nearest couch I went. I woke up at about 9:30 and went to the gym where most people were, apparently. Oh, and during breakfast it was sleeting rather badly. Around 10am it had shifted to snow, and was coming down even harder. During the time in the gym I played table tennis against this native Japanese girl, who was pretty good, then this native Japanese guy, who was very good, then against Li, who was about as good as me but couldn't serve as well. Our saving grace from the cold was Nahomi, who decided that instead of have everyone go outside and freeze while we made our lunch of Yakisoba, only the student helpers would be forced to go, along with any students who wanted to. Naturally, Li and I did not want to. I realized an opportunity and busted out my poi for the first time in a very long time. After a while I was finally able to master the 9-beat weave! My transitions have also gotten better.
Around 12:30 we were told food was ready, but we needed to go outside to eat it. Myself and about 4 other people, one of whom was Li, decided that it wasn't worth it and we would rather huddle around the heater in the big meeting room. Pretty much all of us took a nap, and awoke at 1:30pm when everyone came back inside for the final event of our trip: candle making. Apparently candle making really meant painting these odd cone-shaped candles, then dipping them in boiling wax to seal the paint. We all spent the next hour and a half painting our candles and such. I made mine a flame, with red at the tip, then fading to orange, then to yellow for the majority of it, then blue, then I ran out of time and couldn't figure out how to make clear on a slightly-pink candle so I just made it grey. Holy crap some people are extremely talented. Anyways, we got a big group photo out in front of the building and then hopped on the bus and went home. We returned at about 5pm, Li and I went for our daily Gundam, grabbed some groceries, and finally settled into our rooms at about 7:30pm.
All in all it was a pretty eventful trip. Oh, and apparently the reason it was so rainy/cold was because there was a Tsunami on the way and it was pushing cold wet air ahead of it. Somewhat fortunately it was going to hit only Hokkaido, but I kind of wanted to go see it since they said there would be 10' waves. Oh well, maybe there will be another before I leave.
PS: I forgot to mention two things.
1.) During breakfast one thing we had was called Kinpira Gobo, which was actually quite good.
2.) The native Japanese students were playing this card game Saturday night called Daihinmin. Turns out its almost exactly like the game "Presidents and Assholes" here, except there is an Uno element in the form of a reverse card.
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