Masks

Swine Flu had its 15 minutes of fame here, and so did the masks. (The sign above says one mask per person)

Dinner Pt. 2

This is from a gathering at a friend's apartment a few weeks. It was actually only people from the UCs that were there. But they're all pretty good cooks.

End of the Road/Matsuo Shrine

A few weeks ago I had a free day (which are rarer than I expected), and decided to take a bike ride down one of the huge streets I live near, in search of a venue that a band I like was planning on playing at. The name of the street is 四条 (Shi-jou, "4th Street") and it runs east-west for quite a while. If I head east from where I live, I'll cross the Kamo River right away, head through the tradional/touristy area known as Gion, and then after about half a mile get to Yasaka Shrine, which is where Shi-jou ends in that direction. However, if I head west, which I did in search of this venue, I'll go through more shopping areas, big buildings, and crowded streets. I eventually found this venue, but decided once I was there to just keep on going until Shi-jou ended, since after all, it had to end at some point. It took me past more big buildings, the beginnings of some kind of street fair, and then gradually into a more residential area. I eventually came to a huge bridge that crossed the Katsura River, which was when I took the picture below.


So I crossed this huge bridge, and a few minutes later finally came to the end of Shi-jou. I was also pleased to find a pretty good-sized shrine there tucked at the feet of some mountains. As I said, I had no idea where the end of Shi-jou was nor what was there, so finding Matsuo Shrine at the end of my odyssey was quite poetic.



The shrine was really beautiful, which added to the whole experience. The pictures show it a little, but behind and around most of Matsuo Shrine is a forest and some mountains. It kind of reminded me of some Hayao Miyazaki films, which I highly recommend if you've never seen any. They're all animated, and lots of scenes take place in forests with traditional spirits interacting with children from the regular world.




As you can see from most of the pictures, the sky was a thick grey, which I should have noticed at the time. The majority of my hour long bike ride back was in the rain, but that too, in an odd way, added to the whole adventure of going there and heading back, etc. etc. I stopped at a grocery store on the way home and picked up a bitter melon, since the smaller grocery store by my apartment doesn't have carry any. Since then, I've gone to that grocery store again to pick up other things my grocery store doesn't have, which ended being mostly snacks :)

The Kyoto Psycho

So I recently met this old Japanese guy who some of us are now calling The Kyoto Psycho. He's harmless, but pretty annoying. Here's what he seems to do pretty consistently: approach a foreign looking person, ask them in English where they're from, and then he says he lived there or near there for some period of time. It's a bit of a stretch, but I might have actually believed him had he just said a few places. But every one of my friends seem to have met this guy, and he always says that he's lived somewhere near where they're from. He's lived in Long Beach, London, Ann Arbor, West Covina, Scotland, San Jose, etc. etc. Had he just lied about living in these places I would probably only think of him as a liar, but he also gets angry if you speak back to him in Japanese. I actually didn't know who he was, and only spoke Japanese to him, and kept on speaking Japanese even though he claimed to not understand me, and while he was walking away, he shouted at me "You can't speak English!". Uhhhh, okay.

On the bus to Nagoya

So I took a bus to Nagoya yesterday (and one back last night), which takes about two and a half hours each way. I killed time by reading my paper back of short stories, napping, and ofcourse listening to my iPod while staring out the window. I realized that the music of Nick Drake goes incredibly well with watching rice paddies and farm houses go by at 75 kilometers per hour. The song I really fell in love with was Man In A Shed, which demonstrates Nick Drake's skillful finger-picking on the guitar, and also has a very cool piano solo (I'm not sure if he played it himself). You can listen to Man In A Shed on YouTube, so check it out here: Nick Drake - Man In A Shed
I first heard Nick Drake on the soundtrack of The Royal Tenenbaums. His song, like all songs on that soundtrack, is very good, and was very well used in the movie. I didn't become a big fan of his until my friend Adam gave me all of his works last year. Thanks to that, I was really able to enjoy that bus ride yesterday. Here's a link to his song from The Royal Tenenbaums: Nick Drake - Fly
Nagoya was cool, but also kind of accurately demonstrated itself as the big city in Japan that isn't famous for anything, which in fact, is what it's famous for. But it was cool walking around and checking it all out. It's bigger than Kyoto and Osaka, but doesn't have the crazy overwhelming attack-on-all-your-senses power that Osaka and Tokyo have. The local food to have there is said to be Miso Katsu, but we couldn't find any restaurants with it, so we settled for regular katsu, which is always really good anyway. If you've never had katsu, you MUST, it's very very good.

Dinner

Dinner = kabocha (a kind of pumpkin), kimchee, rice

Aoi Matsuri

The Aoi Matsuri (which means Blue Festival) is the quietest and calmest festival of the many festivals there are in Japan. It involves young people (especially ones of high-class and good taste!) dressing up in very traditional clothing and make-up. The color blue is generally associated with youth over here, and also coming of age, and spring as a season is very much associated with new beginnings. Blue=Youth=Coming of Age=Spring. They, along with some older people, walk in a parade like fashion very very slowly, apparently around the city of Kyoto. We all caught the festivities at the source, since they start at the Imperial Palace, which is across the street from my university. The point of this festival is to display one of the things one of the gods will be living in for this year. This is it:

There's also an ambulance back there, but I don't think that serves any traditional or symbolic purpose. Unless the tradition is needing to be saved, which doesn't require an ambulance if you ask a missionary, but requires god, which is also present in this picture. The spiritually complicated Japan strikes again.

Lunch pt. 3

I don't think I've posted this yet, but if I have, please forgive me. We had this for lunch at Miki's house. We scooped out the part we would eventually eat, and it was delicious :)

Bow and Arrow

While in Nagano, we went to Kaikoen, a park that had the foundations of Komoro Castle, a museum dedicated to a famous author that lived in the park (Shimazaki Toson), and a lot of traditional buildings and things on display. There was a part where a guy was demonstrating his traditional bow and arrow skills.

"What band is this?"

This is a video I took at a glasses shop in Tokyo. It was a really cool glasses shop, it had this music theme, some 50's-ish and for some reason a bunch of Tom Waits albums on the wall, which I'm not complaining about, but his music is very different from everything else that was going on there. Either way, I remember digging the 50's tune they were playing when I arrived, so I asked the old man that was working there what song it was. Every time I ask an employee of a store in Japan what song they are playing, they never know. They always have to go to the backroom and bring out the CD case or look it up in one way or another. And this old man was no exception. I can't remember what song it was he pointed to on the case, I just remember being disappointed that this guy hadn't hand-picked the music of this place. However, had he done that and been able to answer me right away, I probably would have engaged him in a conversation, and maybe he knew that, and didn't feel like a conversation on a rainy Tuesday, the last day of a long Golden Week of tourists, etc. Either way, I still dug the whole style of this place, I can only assume it wasn't his creation. I mean, any place that has a bunch of Tom Waits records on the walls has to be worthwhile, right? My $10 glasses have indeed served my sensitive eyes well.

Shinjuku

I took this while I was waiting for my bus in Shinjuku. I recall myself being incredibly worn out and thoroughly enjoying sitting down and being away from the wet, busy streets of Tokyo.

UFO

This was on a sidestreet of Shinjuku, near the main station. This is the area I bought my digital camera five years ago, but there are also many arcades, restaurants, and interesting-thing stores along with the electronics stores.


This was at one of the arcades. It's the giant claw game where you try to pick up the prize from the inside and drop it into the hole, they call them UFO (pronounced "ooo-foh". This was had bags of candy...


and this one had Ritz crackers.

The one behind it has Pocky, which are pretty good, in case you don't know what they are.

Choices...

There's vanilla, green tea, roasted tea, and mango flavored soft serve.


We decided to go with all four flavors...


and yes, they were all delicious.

Tokyo Ink

Pizza, Dongria, and Sqid-Ink Pasta. Guess which is which...

Coffee Break

It probably wasn't very smart to have two cups of coffee in Tokyo, and then expect to sleep very well on the bus.

Secret Cave

A kind of secret cave we found at the shrine.

Orion

Many of us have agreed that this guy on the left looks like our friend Orion.

Long View

This from a shrine we went to in or near Komoro. It was way up on a mountain and we had a great view of the city. I told my friend and her dad that when they had the olympics in Nagano eleven years ago, I never would have imagined that I would eventually be there some day.

Back from Nagano

I arrived back in Kyoto yesterday morning, on a very tired, rainy overnight bus. It was easier coming back on the bus then going, but I may seek a different form of transportation when I head up to the Tokyo area again. The bus leaves one station at about 11:30 p.m., and the idea is that you can get some sleep in before the bus arrives at its destination seven hours later. However, the bus stops every two hours, which is good and convenient if you're doing anything but sleeping. It's not quite torture until you realize that all of the Japanese people around you are sleeping soundly for most of the seven hours, through the rest stops and all. Either way, I arrived back home in Kyoto very sleepy, exhausted, with full bags and a wonderful trip to the Kanto region seven hours behind me. There's so much to say, I don't know if I'll be able to get it all in. After all, I do have homework tonight and school tomorrow!
The meat of the trip was going to Nagano with my friend's family to visit her grandparents, and a few other family members. It was a three hour car ride northwest of Tokyo into the mountains, and actually in a smaller city called Komoro, which is in Nagano prefecture. The area is famous for apples, as well as a certain kind of pickled leaves, which we ate in most of our meals. The meals were all very delicious, well-rounded, and a nice change from the eating habits I have developed over here. I just had soba noodles and kimchee for dinner (not together), so I guess it's back to the old routine.
We ate all of our meals in the living room around the family table, which stood about a foot and a half above the room's tatami floor. We sat on cushions, had rice and miso soup with every meal, and drank tea afterwards almost every time. It was a nice experience of traditional Japan that I hadn't had before, especially living on my own in an apartment. However, I think I might start changing a few personal eating customs from now on...
My friend's family was incredibly kind to me, and I am very grateful for that. I was really happy that they invited me along for the trip, which was very different than anything I had done here until then. She and her family lived in Ohio a long time ago, so my friend and her younger sister speak pretty much perfect English, and their parents understand quite a bit too. However, I tried had to practice my Japanese ofcourse. They were really nice and fun, and we had some pretty good conversations. The grandparents were also really nice, but were a little bit more reserved and spoke in a thick dialect, so it was sometimes hard for me to understand them. They have a small grocery store, which is attached to the house, and also a small garden a few blocks away. We woke up around 6 a.m. the first morning to go help out at the garden, which was bitterly cold, but, like everything else, a new and interesting experience. My friend's aunt and cousin live across the street, and came over quite a bit. We went with them to a hot spring bath house (onsen) about 45 minutes away, which is a lot of fun. Onsens are really popular in Japan, they have somewhat of a resort kind of feeling. More on that later though. Basically, it was really great spending time in a place as traditional as her grandparents' house is, I don't get to see that very often. Though I am living in Japan, I can't just walk into random peoples' houses and observe what they're doing and take notes, and expect that to be what Japanese families are like. They'd probably call the cops.
I spent the last day and a half of the trip back in the Tokyo area. My friend's family lives in Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo, so I stayed with them one more night. I spent most of the next day exploring Tokyo, making stops in Hachioji, Harajuku, and Shinjuku, which is where I caught my bus. I had actually been to Harajuku before, but wanted to see it again. It was a national holiday, and despite the rain, the streets were still very crowded with people from all over. I can only imagine what it would have been like had it been sunny. I bought a sweet Beethoven shirt (no, not the dog) in Harajuku at a store called Santa Monica, and had a conversation with the sales girl there. It started off with me mentioning that I'm from a place pretty close to Santa Monica, and then eventually found out this full-Japanese girl was actually born in Israel, and speaks fluent Hebrew! The conversation went full-circle when I told her that my Israeli-American friend lives in Santa Monica, and that it's a very fun place.
I figured it'd be a good idea to get over to my bus area a few hours early and scout the place to make sure I knew where to be and everything. I was kinda worn out from walking in the rain with heavy bags, and took a coffee break at the world's most popular coffee chain. It was there that, to my surprise, bewilderment, and worry, I realized I had misplaced my return ticket home! I ran through possible options I had in my head, in the event that for some very strict and technical reason they wouldn't let me ride. After all, they did have my name and information, but I also recalled the guy at the ticket office telling me to always hold on to the ticket. The best one would probably be the UC system's education abroad office, because it's in Tokyo, and they would be able to atleast find me a place to stay for the night and get me home the next morning. I also have a few other contacts in Tokyo, or the area, if needed. However, none were necessary! First things first, I went to the office of the bus company and they told me the ticket wasn't needed, since, after all, they had my name and information. Second, when I sat down at Peace Coffee near Shinjuku Station a little later and had some hot cakes and coffee (no wonder I couldn't sleep, two coffees!) I found my ticket safely hidden in my notebook. I took my time on my hot cakes, made my way to my bus with time to spare, and began the seven hour ride that ended on a rainy early morning in Kyoto with heavy bags, and a very tired Eric.