Lake Biwa

One of my cultural classes had a fun field trip a town next to Lake Biwa, which is the biggest lake in Japan. During out lunch break, a bunch of us decided to go up to the top of the big mountain in the city for a good view of the lake.

There was a gondola lift, but some of us more adventurous types decided to just hike up to the top of the mountain. It took about 30 minutes, so it wasn't that big of a deal.
In the picture is Frederik from Sweden. We usually chat a little about hockey, he's a St. Louis Blues fan. He says it's because they used to have Brett Hull and Al MacInnis, but I think it's because their colors are the same as Sweden's. Behind him is the beginning of the trail up the mountain.

Albert and Kevin are even more adventurous and opted for a very different trail.

These are wishes.

You can see the lake in the top half of this picture, and this sign says the name of the lake "Biwako".

This is the gondola lift that only those willing to pay ~$4 one way rode up and down.

And here is the biggest lake in Japan, Lake Biwa (Biwako in Japanese).

Some things are self-explanatory.

New Pepsi

This new flavor of Pepsi is delicious! Yes, it's green. Yes, it's named after a root. But I assure you it's the real deal, not just some fad. It might be my Japanese version of Mountain Dew: Code Red. Unfortunately, I doubt they'll sell this in America, or atleast at American stores.

Gion Matsuri

The Gion Matsuri consisted of 3 nights of walking the streets of downtown Kyoto, viewing platform like floats, tasting some of the treats from the hundreds of vendors, and dressing up in yukatas. This festival is older than many countries, and about five times older than my own, which probably doesn't even begin to put things into perspective.







It all ended on the fourth day, in which all of the floats got paraded along the streets starting at about 11 a.m., with people leaving behind work, school, plenty of other obligations to go watch. Luckily our school had long expected the Gion Matsuri, and cancelled all classes after 10:30.

You will notice, these floats aren't motor-powered, but pulled by a huge group of people. Some friends from my program signed up and got into one of the group, but unfortunately this video isn't of any of them.


Most of us foreign students wanted to get in on the act of wearing yukatas, so we all found some pretty cheap ones on the backstreets of Kyoto. This yukata, the belt, and the fan cost me a total of $20, and if you don't know those sunglasses, you don't me either.


This festival was an eye opener to a lot of things I've seen over and over here but didn't give much thought to. They are things I'd rather devote entire entries to, so next time or the time after that, or even the time after that one. Who knows....

Eggie The Eggplant

A package arrived from friends Ilya & Rosie, and this package was filled with a number of treasures. One of the treasures was the new issue of their zine, which had comics, movie and book reviews, stories, and some recipes. I recognized the Eggie The Eggplant recipe right away, recalling the delicious Italian dinner they made for me in my last few weeks in northern California. I was craving it the next few days, and finally got around to making it.

Dip those things above into this thing below...

Toss them into something that looks like this...

And they are even more delicious with tomatoes!

If you're lucky, you'll have left over eggs to scramble. If you're like me, you'll manage to screw up the eggs 9 times out of 10.

Ki

Ki = tree in Japanese (木）Doesn't the character kind of look like a tree?

More Pictures! Pt. 3 (Tea)

Tea is a big deal, not only in Kyoto but all over Japan. There seem to be a lot more coffee cafes around Kyoto, but I get the impression that tea is more of the daily regular drink, and coffee is the treat to go out and get, which is why it's usually $3-$5 a cup. Either way, everytime I have bought tea there have been great directions on how to prepare it. A famous tea company even has some directions in English! These are directions for sencha, one of the more common kinds of green tea, the kind you probably drink at a Japanese restaurant in the US.

A bag of cheap tea even comes with wonderful directions! This was a $2 bag of 52 packets of Oolong Tea.

For those of you that don't know, Kyoto is the heart of Japanese Tea Ceremony, so there are also many shops around the city selling tools and goods for tea ceremony, as well as tea ceremony snacks and matcha flavored anything. If there's something that matcha can be used for, it seems to happen pretty easily. There's a store that sells very thin papers that you use to blot off the oil from your face, and they even have matcha flavored ones, even though I don't think you're supposed to eat them.

More Pictures! Pt. 2 (One Way To Spend Saturday)

Some friends came down from Akita (way up north on west coast of Honshu, the main island, the same one I'm on). They studied abroad to UCSC last year and came to hang out with my friend Jake (also from UCSC) and me for a few days. These parfaits are from a really popular matcha dessert restaurant, and are pretty good if you're a fan of matcha and parfaits, as well as waiting in a long line to get one. It was so crowded that we had to split our group into threes, so here are Noriko, Jake, and me terrorizing the restaurant with photography.






There are some geishas in this tinted cab!