the last weekend

For my last weekend in Japan, I went to Tokyo with some friends. Keiko had invited us to join a booze cruise type of boat party that some of her friends from college were having so we did that on Sunday night. Everyone I was with had brought yukatas to wear. I didn't buy one since I'm leaving Japan in like six days and I didn't want to spend the money.

But before the boat party, we walked around Asakusa, the neighborhood we were staying in, and visited Kaminari-mon temple. It was super crowded!!
This is the entrance:

This is the long, long shopping arcade that led to the temple:

Pagoda and other stuff from the front porch area of the temple:

Then we went back to our place and everyone got ready for the boat party. Here's how they looked:

Somewhere around 50 people got on a motor-powered, Japanese style boat for the purpose of drinking, eating and celebrating. The boat drove us around Tokyo for about two hours I think. During that time, we drank beer and cooked okonomiyaki at our tables.



















After we got off the boat, nearly everyone went to a bar for a little more drinking and partying.
The next day, a few of us went around Tokyo for a while.
Even on Monday afternoon, Harajuku is super crowded.

I guess that was it. Next weekend is my going away party. Then I'll be back in America.

My four day weekend

I had a four day weekend this weekend. On Friday I went to Tokyo to see some things that I hadn't yet gotten to. This red-brick building used to be all of Tokyo station I guess. People were out there taking pictures of it like crazy.

On Saturday I tried to go see the Imperial Palace but it was closed for construction or something. This is one of the buildings from outside the walls. That's the moat around there.

Then I came back to Handa Saturday afternoon for Becky's first of two birthday parties this weekend. The one on Saturday night was just for Handa people. We went to a bar and had our own little room and ate grilled chicken on sticks!

After that Becky and I walked to Mos Burger and I finally got to take a picture of their slogan.

Hamburger is my life! I feel that!

Sunday night, Becky had another birthday party. This one was in Nagoya and for her foreign friends. We went to a cool Moroccan restaurant first and ate and drank for a long time. Then we did lots of other stuff for the rest of the night.
This is everyone at dinner.

That was it I guess. This weekend went by way too fast!

Other photos:
The Tokyo Central Post Office











Tokyo financial district from the Imperial Palace's garden














Some rainy rice paddies between Handa and Nagoya

this past weekend

I went to Hiroshima on Sunday morning with five other girls I know. We got there around eleven, dropped our bags at the place we were staying in, and got on another train for Miyajima (I think it means 'shrine island'). We took a ferry across the water and to the actual island where the big, orange gate-thing is.
Here's a picture of the gate as we approached the island from the ferry:

The shrine gate is in the water, but since the tide was low, we could walk out to it. There were lots of people digging for oysters all around it. Here's another picture up close, and you can see some oyster hunters in the background:

Then we walked around some more and saw these ladies with weird hats doing some dances:

This town looked pretty cool. We walked along this road for a while and then climbed up a big, big hill to get to the "rope way" which actually meant cable cars to the tops of the hills.

Being up really high looking at all the islands and water was really cool.

Then we walked around some more, saw lots of temples, pagodas and statues. It was a really neat place and it would have been easy for us to have spent the entire day there.
But around four or five o'clock, we went back to Hiroshima city. We saw a festival happening from the bus as we were going home so we decided to check it out. I think it was a summer festival. I didn't know there were so many rivers in Hiroshima.

We also walked past the government building of which a large part was blown away by the atomic bomb that fell there.

All the girls at the festival were wearing their summer-time yukatas so the whole scene was really bright and festive. There were lots and lots of food stalls all over the place. We ate lots of good food there.

Then it was time for us to do some puri-kura. This involves a bunch of people cramming into a photo booth and taking some pictures, then decorating them. I think this one was our best:

The next day I went to Tokyo to see a musician play in Shibuya. It was pretty awesome. Then, I left Tokyo at seven in the morning on Tuesday to be at work here by noon. It was a really really fun weekend, but pretty exhausting and expensive.
Sometime next month I think we're going to visit (and possibly conquer) Mt. Fuji.

the last two months in photos

My life has pretty much been the same day to day routine. Here are some photos from the last two months.

Cherry-blossom-tree season (which is actually only like 10 days long) came and went sometime in April I think. That day I went to Tsurumai Park in Nagoya with a bunch of my friends and we all played kick ball and looked at the trees. The trees were pretty cool, there were flowers all over the place.

A couple weeks later, they had city council elections (I think) all over Japan. I thought their methods of campaigning were pretty funny. All around Handa, they had these big placards with candidate's faces on them. This one is pretty close to my work.

I went to the beach a week or so after that. The water was still way too cold to swim, so I walked around and found a pretty cool shrine off the road and in the woods a little.















I walked to the top of those stairs in the left picture, and then when I got to the top, I could see the ocean. It was pretty cool. The shrine itself was not so impressive, so I won't include any pictures of that.

Then, a few weeks ago, I went to Osaka with Becky and her sister. It was a cool city, I liked it a lot. We went to the aquarium there where they have a whale shark. This whale shark is so famous, it's even in our Aeon textbooks. The whale was cool, but definitely not as awesome as these HUGE crabs crawling all over this big tank.
The disappointing whale shark.


The AWESOME crabs! I couldn't even believe how humongous they were. Isn't he terrifying?!

Last weekend I went to a Nagoya Dragons baseball game. I had forgotten how boring baseball can be. The stadium did remind me of the Astrodome though.

After that, we all went to another neighborhood and played table tennis and did some bowling. It was really fun! Here's a picture of almost everyone.


Maybe that's it. I'm going to Hiroshima not this weekend but the next, and then to Tokyo for a day a couple days after I get back from Hiroshima. It's good having things to look forward to.

Japanese grandparents!

Today I was adopted by my new Japanese grandparents, Michiko and Ryogo! They took me to an art museum about 30 minutes away from my house. I can't remember the artist's name now, but this was my favorite painting of his:



I think it looks like there's some toilet paper coming from behind the main dude, and the little guy is standing on top of it. HAHAHAHAHA!

After that, we went and had some really nice sushi for lunch. Here's a photo I took of Michiko and Ryogo.



Then, we went to a really old temple out in the country. There were Magnolia trees blooming all around the temple, so it was really sweet to look at:







Awwwww!
It's still incredibly cold here. I can't wait for the weather to warm up.

Inuyama Monkey Park

Yesterday I went to Inuyama again, but this time to see the monkey park. It was pretty far away from the train station, so we had to walk for a long time to get there. The park was a lot better than I thought it would be though. I hadn't expected to see so many different kinds of monkeys there. I forgot to bring extra batteries for my camera, so of course it died like half an hour after we got there. We didn't know this, but the monkey park had not only lots of monkeys to look at, but also an amusement park. The amusement park had lots of cool stuff for kids (and us!) like a ferris wheel, haunted house, go-carts, spinning tea-cups and these things:

They had these big, mechanized animals that you could ride around. I think you just put a couple hundred yen in the panda or whatever, and then the thing takes off, moving its legs and sort of gliding around. It looked pretty fun.
Here are a couple funny signs I saw:


Of course the monkey park was lacking in the way a lot of the monkeys were cared for. Often times they were in cages alone, and the baboon's area was just a big cement dome with no trees or grass, and some of the monkeys looked pretty sick. Of course I don't really know anything about how to create an ideal environment for all these different kinds of monkeys, but as far as I could see, maybe 70% of the monkeys looked like they had everything they needed.

There were lots of Japaese Snow monkeys. Watching these 30 maybe monkeys run around, clap their hands for food, fight with each other and scream at the tourists was pretty disturbing and scary. Just like in a movie or something, there was one of these guys who was really ugly, it looked like he had mange and a number of other problems, but he was also the meanest one. If ever a tourist threw a piece of food down near him, and someone else tried to get it, he got really angry and would run after them until he caught them and then start biting them all over. See what I mean about scary? Here is a picture of a couple nice ones:

Here's a picture of another monkey. I don't remember what kind it is, but jeez is it cute!

I guess that's all of my pictures since like I said, my camera died pretty early on in the day. After about five hours at the monkey park, we went back to Nagoya, searched for a Mexican restaurant in Shin-Sakae, turned out it was closed, had ramen, and then I went home. I was completely dog tired.

Inuyama Castle

Yesterday I went to Inuyama Castle. It's only a half hour north of Nagoya so it was really easy to get to and see in just a day. It's the oldest castle in Japan having been built in 1537. The castle wasn't all that big. It was maybe four or five stories tall I think. We had to climb these super steep wooden stairs to go from floor to floor. Here's a picture of it from the outside.

On the second floor they had some glass cases with like old, Japanese armor inside. Here's a picture of one of them.

Then we went up to the fourth floor balcony that you can see in the first picture. The city of Inuyama looks pretty much like Handa except they have a nice river. Here are a couple pictures of Inuyama from the top balcony of the castle.


While you might think from the pictures that the weather was nice that day, it was actually insanely cold. After the castle, the five of us got the idea to go to the next prefecture, Gifu which is north of my prefecture, Aichi. There were no open restaurants in Inuyama so we were sure that there would be some there. So we got on the train to Gifu, then walked around forever trying to find some food. Eventually we ate somewhere and then got back on the train to have some drinks in Nagoya. It was a great day.

The rest of my vacation

We left for Kyoto on the 2nd, and then went to Nara on the 3rd. Nara is a really old city like Kyoto with lots of nature and shrines and temples everywhere. The funny thing about Nara is that deer there are sacred and protected and allowed to roam around the whole city as they please. I guess the story is that first emperor of Japan, Jimmu, descended from heaven, and rode a deer. So in turn, the deer of Nara are supposed to be the descendents of Jimmu's deer and thus are to be protected. Here's a picture of one deer hanging out on the sidewalk, waiting for someone to give him some food.

In Nara, we went to Todaiji temple. This place was really neat and the temple building itself is the largest wooden building in the world. Inside is the largest Buddha statue in Japan too.


There were these big pillars inside the temple, and one of them had a hole in the bottom of it. The story is that if you crawl through the hole at the bottom of this pillar, you will reach enlightenment. So there was a long, long line of kids whose parents were making them crawl through the hole. Here's a picture.

Then we walked all around the park in Nara. Here's a picture of some moss covered lanterns on the way to another temple.

The next day I had to come back to Nagoya to work on the 5th. It was an awesome trip though. We definitely saw and did all we could in those eight days. I guess I won't have another real holiday until Golden Week in May. Ugh, what a bummer.
Oh well, it was a wonderful time. Having my friends here was great and I miss them already. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year's! See you later.