川越 Kawagoe

Last weekend, I went to the historic city of Kawagoe to the north. I was accompanied by my host mom and sister, Nagashima-san from the co-op, and the genkiest おじいちゃん old man tour guide ever, who speaks English and was only too happy to explain everything to me in the tiniest details. He was cute, but set far too high expectations for the day, as we tired out pretty quick and had to call it quits early. I took a lot of pretty photos though, have a look.


This is a special thing you walk through in a figure-8 for good luck.



The gardens of Kitain Temple.


533 Buddhist monk statues. These were awesome, every one is different. I took a lot of pictures of these which are on Facebook.


SWEET POTATO LUNCH. I WAS VERY PLEASED.


This was an eel うなぎ restaurant which had a lovely pond of koi and a little bridge. The tour guide said, "There's normally an eel in here... but I don't see it so maybe they ate it."

Anyway, we walked all over, went to the museum, ran into one of the other guys doing the same internship I am since he is living in Kawagoe, ate a lot of sweet potato-related goods (my favorite was dual sweet potato/taro soft serve, DELICIOUS). I was for real tired at the end of the day, but we saw a lot of cool things so overall it was a good experience, and I am always happy to make somebody who wants to speak English with me happy.

天橋立 Amanohashidate

I am going back to the Motherland tomorrow!!! But before I talk about that I have to catch up a little bit.

Last Thursday, I took a bus from Osaka to Amanohashidate, which is one of the three famous sights of Japan (along with Miyajima).



The bus ride was a lot better than my previous experience busing to and from Tokyo on the night bus, and they even played a movie so I could practice my listening comprehension skills! I now confess I am mildly curious about what Madagascar (you know, the Dreamworks one about zoo animals) is like in English.

The walk to the youth hostel was through the little town, which was absolutely adorable, and then across the land bridge (which is what the town is famous for, because when viewed from a distance and upside down it looks like a bridge to heaven).







The hostel we stayed at was up a hill. Unlike all the other hostels I'd been to in Japan, which were international hostels, this one was a Japanese one, so that was different. The couple running the place were friendly and joked with me about Japanese people being too concerned about the swine flu.



I rented one of their bikes and we flew down the hill. We took a dip in the water, because I really wanted to. It wasn't as cold as it would have been if it were in Los Angeles.

The next day, before busing back to Osaka, we headed up the hill to get our view of the bridge to heaven.



You're supposed to look at it between your legs.



And then it looks like a bridge to heaven.



Like this.

There was a giant group of old Japanese tourists who went up with us. Andy said, "This happens to me all the time." I think old people sustain the Japanese tourist industry.

We took the chair lift down, which was awesome.



We didn't have that much time there, but I really needed the getaway. It was lovely to see all the greenery, and the water. I'm glad I got to get out of Osaka one more time before I leave.

Birthday Pt II: Hirakata Park and Toriki

The day of my actual birthday was really wonderful. I woke up late/early (late because class started at 11 instead of 9, early because I woke up before my alarm) and opened the tiny package my family had sent me. It contained a singing card with robots on it that sang Domo Arigatou Mr. Roboto which made me simultaneously crack up and want to cry at the same time. I can't wait to see them all so very soon. I was also relieved because the rain had stopped, and they don't run roller coasters in the rain.

After my one class that day, I met up with Andy and we went to Hirakata Park, which is a local theme park only one train stop away from Kansai Gaidai. You can see it from the train, and it always looks closed because nobody is ever there, so I thought it might be worth checking out. There were indeed very few people there, and we went on the good rides twice. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I only took pictures of the Ferris wheel, because it is giant and rainbow.




I like to interpret "circus" as a direct object here.





That night, we went to Toriki for dinner, which is where all the cool kids from Kansai Gaidai go to drink but for some reason I had never been there. It is a yakitori chain where everything costs 280 yen. Ai, Asami, and Mai came, and also fellow Californian Andrew, and we ate a lot of food and drank a little bit. I had invited a ton of people who ended up not being able to come, but in the end it was fine, since it would have been difficult to manage a big group of people. Afterward we had ice cream at 31 (which is what the Japanese call Baskin-Robbins/31 Flavors, and I am afraid I will never be able to switch back--actually they call it saati-wan). Throughout the day, I received many lovely e-mail and Facebook greetings, and felt very lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life. And now I am 21, at long last! What a strange feeling that is.

Birthday Pt I: Peruvian Food

So I have finals on Monday and Tuesday, but I desperately need a break from studying, so it's blogging time!

So I really need to blog about all of my birthday celebrations, because there were a lot... so let's see...

The first one was last Monday night, when I went out with Ryoko, Koppun, Kana, and Mahoko to a Peruvian restaurant in Umeda that Koppun had found. None of us had any idea what Peruvian food would entail, but I guessed that it would probably be delicious, and it really was. We had a lot of good conversation and a LOT of good food... we photographed it all diligently (the Japanese girls I hang out with are pretty big on photographing food, and I can't really disagree with this habit). I'm not going to post all of them though, just the best ones. We ordered a course so there was a lot of food.


Delicious birthday Peru cake!


I think this was potato with black mint sauce, and some egg, served on top of sea shells.


God this soup was SO GOOD, I ate most of it even though it was for all 5 of us. It was chicken and spicy and MM DECLICIOUS


This was our little assorted dessert plate. That's wine jelly, and a kind of rice dessert cake, and the same cake I got in honor of my birthday.


Sweet stuff you put in your coffee.

Maybe my favorite part of the decor was the slide projector (NOT a digital one) projecting pictures of Peru on the wall by our table. It gave it a really rustic effect.



The whole evening was a blast, and my pictures are kind of dark because my flash makes everything look like crap, but you can have them anyway.


(Koppun,) Kana, Me, Mahoko


Ryoko, Koppun

And of course what is Peru without alpacas:




On my actual birthday, they decorated my mail box at school with green sparkly things and made me a bunch of green paper cranes (they know I like green). Ryoko and Koppun gave me some stickers and little things from Tokyu Hands, a fabulous department store that literally has everything. We spent a lot of time in the stationery department once. They also printed out some pics of our various adventures and put them in a nice, brown envelope. I was really surprised, and touched. It reminded me of high school when my friends used to decorate my locker on my birthday. I hope they have the chance to study abroad and make nice friends who will do nice things for them on their birthdays. ♥

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.

Adventures in Osaka

Andy and I had some crazy times in Osaka during Golden Week. It was interesting to suddenly turn into a tourist after living here since late January. But that did mean that I got to take Andy to my favorite spots, and discover some new ones.

On our most action-packed day, we went to check out the Osamu Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka (which I made a post about over here). Tezuka is the creator of Astro Boy, etc, aka one of the most influential manga-ka ever. The museum was really cute, and inspiring. It reminded me how when I was in 1st and 2nd grade, the thing I wanted the most in this world was to be a cartoonist.


That's Astro Boy's hand and footprints, btw. He's a small dude.

From Takarazuka, we went to Namba, which has the iconic neon sign Glico man view of Osaka.



We went to karaoke on a whim and had a grand ole time. Big Echo has a fabulous 飲み放題.

The next day, we had a picnic in 大阪城公園 Osaka Castle Park featuring food we bought at the supermarket and bakery by my station. Here I am with cheese.






Guess why I'm smiling.



One more for the road:

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: