Author: redoctopus13

after our wonderful rest at our cute little hotel we woke up bright and early for a day crammed full of sightseeing. there are somewhere around 1600 shrines and temples in kyoto so we had a hard time whittling the list down to just three days worth. at the top of the list (mine at least) was fushimi inari. it’s actually a little south east of the central area of kyoto so i guess not that many people go there – though it’s certainly popular enough. wikipedia article on fushimi inari with a link to the official website too.

anyway. it was really awesome!! there are thousands of bright reddish-orange torii (gates) that line paths going up the mountain. they were all donations to the temple, so the writing that’s on the back side says who donated it – sort of like permanent, pretty advertising for a lot of companies apparently. it felt like i was walking through a giant modern art project. the gates came in all different sizes – some of them were about normal ceiling height and some of them were monstrously huge.

We went about half way through the paths and took about 8million photos… we took a different pathway down and ended up seeing a lot of little side temples (and very few gates) and a bunch of average japanese residences. plus a really fun poster (hhheheheheh) and a strange buddha. we got hungry and ate breakfast at a SUPER cute and tasty place before moving onto our next bit of sightseeing.

Our train to Osaka left Nagoya station at around 8am so we left Nisshin at like 6:30!! torture!!!!!! but it wasn’t too bad – i slept most of the three hour train ride there. :-P mom and gramma stayed up to take photos all the way there.. after we arrived we crammed our backpacks into a coin locker at the station and then wandered around a little lost trying to get our bearings in the station. a helpful english speaking goodwill guide pointed us in the right direction and even gave us a little photocopied map of the exit we would be going out of! handy!!

first we walked around dottonbori area (the dottonbori river goes through the middle of it). there are a lot of shops all nestled nicely in covered walkways. we had breakfast at starbucks of all places! …they’re everywhere – pointless to resist!! i’m pretty sure we ventured into the shinsaibashi area, but i’m not really sure. we were just wandering pretty aimlessly – zigzagging our way through the streets. there were a lot of clothing stores and miscellaneous goofy shops but nothing super marvellous or outrageous. of course we took photos of the gigantic “glico” neon sign. Glico is a foods company in japan (they make gum and drinks and ..stuff) and their giant sign is synonymous with osaka. and then we also rode a ferris wheel! got a nice view of the city.

And then it was off to SUMO!!!!! We specifically decided to hop over to Osaka just for the day because the sumo tournament was coincidentally happening while they were here. here’s the official website – in english and also available in japanese if you want to try to be authentic…or just confused. I had watched sumo last year in june in nagoya and had all sorts of fun. i hope that mom and gramma had just as much fun as i did. truth be told, i don’t know much of anything about sumo – some of the background history and the basic rules, but no players’ names or anything.. but i still enjoy watching!!

After sumo we walked around aimlessly trying to find somewhere that had appetizing (non-octopus related) food! and possibly an english menu. but that got frustrating and we ended up going into a little buffet style shop with a friendly waitress who strongly invited us in. gramma had some really tasty fish; mom’s wasn’t as good; and i wasn’t impressed. but it was food and not bad and filled us up.

After dinner we made our way back to our faithful train station and i asked to find out how to get to the appropriate train station to go to kyoto. we saved a bunch of money by going directly from osaka to kyoto. we took what i thought was the express train but turned out to be a packed local train (smae price). all of the trains were running behind – really unusual for japan!!! so we just took whichever one came first and that we could cram into. but there was no airconditioning and with a ton of people smashed in we all started sweating awfully quick!! gramma got to sit down about half way there which was definitely a good thing.. :-)

We arrived at kyoto station – which is quite huge!! and we were all pretty tired…. i remembered which exit the hotel was near so we made our way in that direction but soon discovered that no one actually had a map for where it really was!! hehhheeehehehh… thank god for japanese cell phones – i connected to the internet and we found it a few minutes later. Here’s the site we found it through: Hostelz.com.

Wowsers…been a long time!! for those of you that don’t know – i no longer have internet at my apartment so it’s kind of tough for me to update regularly. and i’ve been really busy with trips, decisions, and of course work and beer and regular life too!! so i have a bajillion pictures and stories to add – hopefully i’ll get through a good bit of it today. but i’m planning on breaking the posts into smaller chunks that are easier to swallow (and write). ;-)

FIRST: my lovely momma and grandmomma came to visit me!! it feels like it was a long time ago, but it was really only about a month ago.. i must be getting old – time is moving quickly and my memory fails me about 6 seconds after it’s over…

they arrived on march 21st at the nagoya centrair airport. my wonderful friend fumie was incredibly kind and drove me to the airport to pick them up. we spent our first full day just running around locally in nagoya. we went to nagoya castle and climbed a million flights of stairs all the way to the top!!

After the castle we hung around the sakae area of nagoya – lots of shops and tall buildings. we went to Tokyu Hands – a giant department store that has all kinds of goodies. costumes, toys, home furnishings, decorations, paper goods of a million billion different kinds, and on and on. Wikipedia article on Tokyu Hands and the official website in japanese of course!!

Then we moved on to Loft which is kind of like Tokyu Hands but maybe more housewares oriented? Their official website…. We found lots of goodies at both of them!! After walking and walking and going up and down far too many staircases (in and out of the subways) we headed back to Nisshin.

We went home and met up with Kerry (also nova teacher, now ex-roommate) and went to our favorite favorite restaurant ENYA!!!! We love enya….especially for their $1 mugs of beer…. (see earlier posts for more pics & descriptions) we even convinced mom to try some tasty salmon sashimi. She said it wasn’t too bad… proof:

We ended up going to bed at a rather decent hour… as the next day we were heading to Osaka BRIGHT and early!!! so we packed up our bags and turned in. :-)

This is already from two weeks ago! I went to a little town north (?) of Toyota called Asuke on March 1st. It’s right next to Korankei Gorge which has about 4,000 maple trees. It’s one of the most popular places for people to look at the autumn leaves. Anyways. So March 3rd is the actual festival day of ‘Hina Matsuri’. Matsuri means festival and Hina is the name of the dolls. A doll is given to a woman by her in-laws when she is pregnant with a daughter. Every year they have to display these dolls around March 3rd, usually for two or three weeks. The dolls are supposed to bring good luck for the girls – help them find good husbands, have babies, easy childbirth, etc. If the dolls aren’t brough out every year or are left out for too long or too short, they apparently get angry and bring bad luck like divorces, miscarriages, etc. Sounds fun huh? :-P

So why go to Asuke to see the dolls? You are supposed to keep your doll until you die – at which point it might get passed on to your children or you can take it to a temple and pay the priest to burn it for you. If you are tired of dragging it out every year and just toss it in the trash you get really bad luck. So apparently a lot of people in Asuke started ‘adopting’ unwanted hina dolls. This is one of the acceptable ways to pass on your doll – give it to someone. They’re still brought out every year so that means that you’ll sitll have your good luck.

It was a really lovely drive up through the mountains along a river with a lot of bamboo along the edges. Nice curvy road… The nature was beautiful and maybe a little more interesting than the hina dolls but it was still fun to see them.

And as a little footnote, I’m trying to figure out what to do after my Nova contract expires…which is mid-June this year. I don’t think I want to stay here any longer. But I’ve been thinking about hanging around for a month or two just as a tourist. That will require a lot of logistics as far as housing and money, but it would be nice to travel around for a bit not having to worry about getting back to work.

I also don’t really know what to do once I get back to the states. I’ve sort of had Philadelphia in my mind for the last several weeks. Not too sure why, but I’ve always been attracted to Philadelphia…so if anyone has any input on where I should go or a fabulous job that I could have it would be much appreciated….

Well, it certainly seemed to take long enough but i guess spring has finally arrived! i definitely did NOT enjoy the japanese winter, even though everyone tells me it was very “mild” this year. i guess it’s been confirmed that i’m not a cold weather girl. on tuesday after work my lovely friend fumie picked me up and we went to a plum tree park near one of the train stations (umetsubo – one stop before toyota). even though it was already late in the day and pretty much completely dark i took some wonderful photos thanks to the flash of my camera. it smelled absolutely delicious….. i hope i can get back to the park before all the blossoms are gone. according to most everyone, everything’s blooming super early this year. the plum blossoms (‘ume’) are about two weeks ahead of schedule. the cherry blossoms (‘sakura’) will follow in a few weeks time.

As if I haven’t gone enough times, I went to Tokyo again this past week. But this time I only went for one day – took the overnight bus on Tuesday night, got there Wednesday morning, did a billion things, took the bus again on Wednesday night, got back Thursday morning and totally crashed out. I didn’t take too many pictures this time but actually did some interesting things…. monologue follows:

i arrived at 6:30am and killed time by walking around ginza and near tokyo station until about 9:30am. then i went to the bridgestone museum of art to see their exhibition. (website) it was really nice – very good pieces of work. but my favorite painting was on loan from a private collection so there were no prints of it anywhere. not even in the exhibition catalogue. :( it was a self portrait by andre derain. and there was a sculpture by picasso of a jester that was so realistic looking (yet still abstract) that i thought if i looked at it long enough it would jump off the pedestal. if you go on their website you can see the sculpture: click collection > view works by artist > artists p – r > picasso > and it’s the first one listed. :-)

and in tokyo station i saw the most expensive bottle of barbancourt rum. heheheh.. i couldn’t afford it so i just took a picture of it instead.

after that i walked to a small gallery near tokyo station ‘span art gallery’. (website) i took a look at their latest exhibition and bought a few books and postcards from their shop.

then it was on to kabuki-za for a single act. (website) the website has nice info on it – history, story lines, etc. kabuki shows usually have 4 acts – each 70 minutes long with 20 minute intermissions in between. i saw just a single act – but the place was well over 50% full for the seats where people were watching the whole show. i met a nice woman in the line to buy tickets and she saved me a seat right in the middle of the front row! of course, we were far up in the balcony but it was the best possible seat for those tickets. very nice.. it was a strange combination of boring and amazing. there were parts that i was almost falling asleep during but then there were parts where i had goosebumps and was really moved.

after kabuki i went over to shibuya to another gallery ‘le deco’. (website) it took me a little while to figure out where it was – the station was confusing so i ended up exiting on the wrong side and then walking all the way around to the right side through the streets. i eventually found it though. the exhibition was great and i even got to meet the artist and his wife!

after that i went to the 109 building and people watched – it was almost like being in the states! (website) the 109 building is 8 floors of tiny clothing and accessories stores geared mostly towards japanese girls (with a few shops having men’s things). they play loud music and it’s crammed full of people! almost like miami – i had a headache by the time i left. but i found a few really cute shirts.

i had planned to go to harajuku after that, but i was running out of time already so i had to skip it. i went directly to shinjuku and found the little haitian restaurant i wanted to go to – ‘haiti cafe’. (map) my roommate had seen it over winter vacation when she was wandering around tokyo so i had to go. it was NOT haitian food. but it was good anyways. the ambiance was lovely – real haitian music, paintings, sculptures, carvings, etc., but those were the only haitian things in the place. the drinks were made with haitian rum, but too weak. the food was curry , which does not exist in haiti!! there were no plantains, no fresh bread, no creole sauce, no beans in the rice; it was really strange. anyways, the coffee DID seem to be haitian but it was much too weak. it had the right flavor but was thin like american coffee…

anyways, then of course i wandered around shinjuku going into a bunch of shops and buildings. also heard some really great jazz being played on the street. it was fun wandering around feeling like i was actually in a city again.

after the stores started closing i still had about an hour and a half before my bus came so i found a corner to read my book in. then the bus finally arrived (a little early) and i climbed on and promptly fell asleep. what a day! even after i got home in the morning i was still tired so i went to sleep again and rested up some more….