Parfait Orgy

Some of you more faithful followers of my blog may remember this post featuring photographs of giant parfaits that cost upwards of $100 USD. The parfait place, as it is known, was a favorite hangout of Jess and company, and I had the great fortune of being able to participate in the consumption of a jumbo parfait with Jess, Andy, Althea, and 5 of their AKP friends.



It was truly a sight to behold.



I tried my best to take some artistic photographs before we all dug in.





TAKE NOTE: Japanese marachino cherries taste absolutely nothing like the marachino cherries I am used to. In fact, they taste awful. The fruit in the ice cream was all frozen by the time we got to it (or maybe it was never unfrozen...) but the strangest to eat was the frozen dango. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Andy and I ate the most. I think we were probably a valuable addition to the team. By the time we got to the bottom, it was mostly yogurt, and it had all turned the same gross beige color, and I felt pretty sick to my stomach. I pressed on as long as I could. They served us black coffee in tiny cups at the end which made me feel a little better. Lord knows I didn't have to add any sugar to it.

Overall, it was fun, but perhaps not an experience I would be eager to repeat, though you could probably convince me. I would definitely go for one of the 2-person ones they serve in pitchers.

嵐山

Okay, catching up on blogging time.

When Andy and I got back from Kobe in the middle of Golden Week, we headed up to Kyoto to hang out with Jess (who has since returned back to the glorious motherland of the United States). She took us to 嵐山 Arashiyama, which means STORM MOUNTAIN which is totally badass, and we took lots of pretty pictures because everything was so green.








Boats!



The temple to see at Arashiyama is 天竜寺 Tenryuuji or HEAVEN DRAGON TEMPLE. Apparently this part of Kyoto just has badass names. Jess had been here a bunch of times already but actually was not sick of it. I appreciated her willingness to go there again with us.


















This picture came out blurry, but this was 4-flavored soft serve for the price of 1! How could I resist such a bargain. From top to bottom: sakura (which actually tasted like Cinnamon Toast Crunch for reasons beyond all of us), hojicha (roasted green tea), green tea, and vanilla.

And for a touch of modernity:

Spring

So today the weather was beautiful, and I hear it's supposed to be nice all week, and thank god. Although strangely enough, warm weather made me miss Oberlin in the spring, because it's so lovely when everything is green and you can hang out on the grass and all that stuff. I register for classes next week. Oh, Oberlin.

But anyway, Japan. Here's a picture of the front of Kansai Gaidai:


The sign says, basically, "Congratulations, Freshmen!" or new students, or more literally, accepted students (the new school year starts in April in Japan). The big building in the middle is administration, the one on the left is the library, I'm not sure what the one on the right is, but behind it (you can't see it) is where the Center for International Education is, which is where I spend all my time. I just thought it made a nice shot.

Before our Takarazuka adventure, Jess and I ate tonkatsu at a restaurant on the 28th floor in Umeda. We had a lovely view of the Ferris wheel at the department store HEP, which I rode last week but did not publish pictures of in the blog, so we'll play a little catch-up.


Me and Ryoko




You board the Ferris wheel at the 8th floor or something, so you're really high up.




And here's the view from the tonkatsu restaurant.

Aside from the sun, the other thing that comes out in the springtime in Japan is sakura. Jess and I had our own version of 花見 (flower-viewing) in Takarazuka, which I will just commemorate with these photos.


Jess is alive, I promise!






First time I have ever used the macro setting on my camera.



Hopefully I can take some better shots before they all disappear, which I hear happens fast.

Takarazuka

(I never take enough pictures!)

Yesterday, Jess and I made the pilgrimage up to the town of Takarazuka, which is coincidentally where Osamu Tezuka is from (probably the greatest mangaka of all time, he created Astro Boy), and that's where the Tezuka Museum is as well. But that's not why I was there (although chances that Andy drags me back there for the Tezuka Museum: very high). I was there to see a musical version of Zorro put on by one of the famous takarazuka troupes.

If you are not familiar with takarazuka, it is an all-female troupe that performs gaudy, sparkly musicals for the benefit of their legions of obsessed fans, who are mostly middle and high school aged girls and housewives. The subtext here is incredible, but I don't really feel like going into it right now.

Ever since I learned about takarazuka when doing my independent research project over Winter Term my freshman year on Japanese queer identities, I've been pretty fascinated by it. It's highly competitive, and of course like any other mode of entertainment, once you get too old, you're out, and it's time for the next wave to come in. We watched a documentary on it once in Wert's Modern Japanese History class, and that said that former otokoyaku (the women who specialize in the male roles) are supposed to make really good wives, because they understand a male perspective.

Before Zorro, we were treated to a dance performance centering around wind and woodblock prints, and Japanese things, which is kind of rare for takarazuka (although I did see some posters for some Japanese-looking plays coming up). Mostly they tend to stick to very Western themes. They're big on historical romances. But I was thoroughly impressed with the technical elements of this performance, they clearly have quite a LOT of money to spend. I think my favorite was when a giant circle in the middle of the enormous stage began to rotate, with dancers frozen in male-female couples wearing nice hats, while the main male-female couple (in their nice kimono) wove between them and the lanterns. It was like they were on a lake, it was very stunning.

Zorro was pretty fabulous but needed more sparkles. The costumes were very nice though, I liked those a lot. I can't say too much for the music--the chorus to one of the main songs was, Viva Zorro 今から, and in case you don't speak Spanish and Japanese, that means, "Long live Zorro, starting now!" which just doesn't sound that great, let me tell you. But it was still really enjoyable, and there was lots of dancing, and when there were sparkles, oh, there were sparkles. After the story had clearly ended, they segued into Jazz Zorro, where every main character got to do one last huge dance number in more modern-looking outfits with a more abstract feel.

So I mean, I would go again. I'm really sad that we missed the Phoenix Wright one, I don't think anything in the world will be able to make up for that loss. But I'm glad I got to go. And you know, it was all in Japanese, but I understood the most important parts (though I did get lost when the fancy Spaniards were talking). Hooray listening comprehension?

The Lock-Up

The night before Andy left for Shikoku, we went up to Kyoto to hang out with Jess. After hanging out in the fanciest McDonald's I've ever seen and doing purikura (which are golden, I wish I could show them to you), we met up with some of her friends and went to dinner at The Lock-Up, which is a prison/dungeon-themed restaurant. They put you in a cell where you sit on the floor around a low table (Japanese-style!) with one blaring light hanging above you. Every hour and a half, I suppose (you're there for 2), they turn off the overhead lights and turn on the blacklights, and paintings of scary faces and handprints appear on the walls and monsters come around and terrorize you. I'm a total wimp, so my screaming was greatly enjoyed by the rest of the party (and I was the closest one to the door), but it was all in good fun. We ate a lot of food and drank a lot of delicious drinks. I always love hanging out with Jess and Andy together, as they're some of my lulziest, closest friends, and we always have a good time. She told us all about her spring break in Australia, which sounded like a much-needed break from Japan for her. I was quite pleased with the whole excursion.

２月１７日

I have taken pictures that showcase about 1/3 of my daily commute (from my host family's house to the train station) but I don't feel like doing that entry today so you'll have to wait. They're up on Facebook though if you're curious.

This past weekend had some deceptively nice weather, but now it has taken a turn for the cold. Today it even snowed just a tiny bit, for some fleeting minutes and it didn't stay on the ground, of course. I was a little upset by this.

But more importantly, on Sunday I went to Kyoto to play with Jess! After a somewhat confusing time trying to meet up in the underground passageway, we ate yakisoba and takoyaki at Mr.Young Men in Shijo and did a lot of talking in English. We poked around Shijo, and I made some purchases (which I should probably photograph when I get them all set up...) and later in the evening went to "the parfait place" which had these incredible displays in the window:





I think Jess told me you have a time limit of an hour and a half and can have as many as 10 people working on it. Someday I wish to participate in the consumption of one of these. The ones we ate were more modestly sized, but still delicious.

On the train ride home, I was filled with love for Jess and our mutual friends from Oberlin. I came to the conclusion that adventures are meaningless if you can't share them with the people you love the most. I really missed her a lot last semester.

Oh yeah, and I took some pictures of the area surrounding Kansai Gaidai from the 4th story. You can see a little bit of the campus, and the beautiful clouds in the sky on this cold, cold day.

そうなんや

I posted all of my pictures to facebook, just in case you didn't see and you do facebook.

I have moved in with my host family, the 森田 (Morita) family. I feel right at home sitting on my laptop in their common room, which has 2 laptops, a desktop, and a TV (as my mother would say, everyone is on their screens). Kansai Gaidai had warned us about the possibility of our host families not having the Internet, so I was relieved when it was so easy for me to get hooked up.

But first, some catching up...

The other day, I went out with my other speaking partner Ai and her friend Yoshiko. We went to a Japanese McDonald's, and the two of them searched on their cell phones for the daily coupons and then showed them to the cashier to get a couple yen off on whatever it was they ordered. We talked about movies, and they were impressed by my Japanese. I encouraged them to try out their English since I felt bad for speaking only in Japanese. But you know, it felt like a pretty good position to be in.

The next day was the tour to Kyoto, where a million Japanese Kansai Gaidai students showed up to take a million international students around Kyoto. It was entirely up to us where to go, which was unclear to the international students. I went with some guys I met on the bus ride from the airport and our Japanese counterparts, 3 girls named Haruka, Mami, and Nana. Haruka is from Kyoto so she knew her way around. We tried to go to some shrines but they were mostly closed. We ended up at this famous dessert shop that Haruka had always wanted to try but had never been able to get into because the line was always so long. It was the mecca of green tea-flavored sweets. This picture is a little blurry but you get the idea...



Afterwards we did some プリクラ which is always a favorite of mine. But then the best part of the day came because I was reunited with Jess.



We met up in a Shakey's, which was all you can eat, and actually pretty good. I won't even bother to go into detail about our meeting (I'm sure you can see the ecstasy written on my face), because surely almost anyone who knows me knows how much I love Jess. But if you don't, Jess is my BFF from Oberlin and we met in Japanese 101 our freshman year. She's studying in Kyoto this year and I hadn't seen her since I took her to the airport in late August (she came to visit me in LA) to fly away to Japan. I spent a lonely semester without her in Oberlin. But now we are reunited. Except she's going to Tokyo for her break, haha. But we'll be reunited for Valentine's Day, I'm sure. Last year, she gave me a pear and a note that said "We make a great PEAR" so I'm not sure how she's going to top that. Maybe by making me homemade chocolates like the rest of the girls in Japan. Maybe I'll do a post about Japanese Valentine's Day when the time comes. But I digress...

And then, on Saturday, I met my host family and moved in with them in 守口市 (Moriguchi City) about a half-hour train ride from the Kansai Gaidai stop (and then plus a little, for walking to and from each station). They're a big family; parents, 3 kids around my age, and a grandmother (おばあちゃん）. My host dad Hiro "studied" abroad in San Diego when he was in college (I say "studied" because he told me that he went to Mexico every weekend and got drunk) and it clearly impacted his life very much. He said they've hosted 30+ students for 15 or so years, since their oldest (Kazuma, who's 21 and works as a sushi chef at a popular local restaurant in addition to attending a university of economics [I can feel my grasp of English grammar slipping]) was very little. So, his English is very good and he's very eager to talk to me in English all the time. I try and pipe in with my Japanese, and while they tell me I'm very good, listening to their daily conversation and the television reminds me that I've still got a ways to go.

Today was very cold, and that was a little sad. I was video chatting with Andy today (!) and said that it wasn't quite long underwear weather, but then when I went outside I realized I was wrong. It's not cold enough to snow, and it won't snow, but it's close.

Tomorrow I start class, and we'll see if I can live up to where I placed and all this general praise. I placed into speaking level 6 and reading/writing level 5, both out of 7. I've been hesitant to brag about it too much since I might be completely out of my league. I have 2 or 3 weeks to prove myself. We'll see what happens. 頑張ります。