(no subject)
warning: this next post and the pictures on my yahoo account include alcohol. so, if you're a family member, beware.
im typing this just after getting home from our two day field trip so as not to forget anything. a great time was had, to be sure.
all the foreign exchange students met up at school at 8:45, piled in two big buses with a couple teachers, and set out on our two day "study tour", an annual event for kyoto gaidai ryuugakusei in the spring. after a couple hour drive, we were delivered to a sake factory where we took a short tour and enjoyed a tasty teishoku lunch, complete with sake jello shots! who knew. we all spent some time perusing the gift shop and sampling their wares, including the 100 dollar a bottle sake, which none of us purchased. after souveniers were purchased in hopes of putting them to use later that evening, we all boarded the buses and off we went to himeji-jo, the most famous castle in japan. it was a beautiful, extremely impressive structure as you can see from the pictures i'll put up. we wandered around for about an hour, climbing the scary old japanese steps to the sixth floor to see the view. our next stop was a katana museum where we looked at a bunch of old swords and guns and it was pretty cool, though i didn't understand much more than the katanas on display cost as much as a house. they gave me a manual to appreciating japanese swords, though, so maybe i'll be an afficianado if i read that.
we reached the hotel at around 6:30 and we all split up into our rooms; i was staying with rebecca, en and ella. the hotel turned out to be a large japanese style hotel that looked like a factory and was right on the water across the huge bridge to shikoku island. some of the ryuugakusei immediately donned yukata (bathrobe-like cotton kimono provided in those places for everyone to relax in) and we went to another large teishoku course dinner. prior to eating, tanaka-sensei and the head of the office at school made short announcements about how we should be careful when we get drunk later. thats one thing i love about the japanese school system here, they expect you to be crazy and drink all the time. they don't try and stop you in any way.. i mean, they took us to a sake factory! after the meal they broke out the karaoke and i was happy to recieve a call from my dad then so i could avoid the scene. i have a terrible chest cold right now, and as stephen said, i sound like al pacino. not the best condition to be singing in (as if i'd get up there anyway).
after a couple rounds, a bunch of the ryuugakusei escaped and decided to find a convenience store to buy some beer. about 12 of us set out on foot to find this phantom store enda said he saw "a bit down the road." we ended up hiking 2 hours total to get beer up and down mountains, nearly avoiding being hit by cars and eaten by weird japanese bugs. i've never worked so hard for something to drink my entire life, but i have to say it was worth it. i enjoyed everyones company and appreciate the people i'm spending my time in japan with. looking around the bus earlier i thought "man, this is just really cool. i'm travelling around japan with australians, dutch, germans, italians, mexicans, koreans, chinese, irish, thai, burmese etc.. how ridiculous." i have exactly two months left here and although i'm eager to get back to the states and eat a steak, i'm really going to miss these people i've had the opportunity to meet and learn so much from. we have a lot of fun together. which continues on with my journal about our trip..
so we drank/hiked our way back to the hotel to find the rest of the students all on the beach with three yakuza members. (yakuza is japanese mafia) they were only about 18 and said they were working at a local whorehouse, but they had the tattoos and all. they left right when i got there but tyler has pictures of their tattoos i'm going to try to get. it was really crazy. but so we ended up partying on the beach for a couple hours. it was tylers birthday at the stroke of midnight and our hard won beer and sake we purchased earlier was put to good use. tsuneda-san from the office at school joined us right when the irish and a couple people decided to skinny-dip.. i'm glad i was on the other side of the beach when that happened!
after a couple hours, the manager of the hotel came down and yelled at us, so most of us vacated to alvaro/diego/enda/brendan's room where we continued with our partying. since tyler turned 21, he collected 21 kisses from the ryuugakusei, much to the distaste of johannes of germany and diego of mexico. poor james got a little sleepy so i had to cart him off to bed, but after i spent about an hour talking to tsuneda-san about various things. apparently the office at school gossips a lot about us ryuugakusei and think that diego and i are dating because we went backpacking together. when i told tsuneda-san that wasn't the case, he starting naming various male ryuugakusei and asking why i don't date them. he said because i'm "the most beautiful ryuugakusei" i should have a boyfriend. haha thanks? of course not to sound vain, because frankly i'm confused by it all, but it's scary/flattering how many comments like that i recieve regularly over here. james told me that all his friends that have met me "are in love with me" and bunsho told me that japanese people don't stare at me because i'm foreign, but because i'm so gorgeous. just two days ago i was out with james and we ran across several of his korean friends and as soon as they saw me, they began talking excitedly in korean.. james later translated saying they were asking who i was and if we were dating and why i'd be out with him. it kind of cracks me up, but i can't figure it out. but definitely i recieve comments like that 1000 times more than ever in the states. maybe i should stay here! haha.
aaaaaanyway, so about 3am i went back to my room and crashed, only to wake up at 7 to shower and get dressed for breakfast. except i laid back down and slept through breakfast. ooops. needless to say most of the ryuugakusei and a couple of our teachers were quite sleepy for the second day of our trip. at 9 we got on our buses and drove off to ohara to visit the art museum there which surprisingly had quite a nice collection including monets, pissaro, gauguin, noguchi, roualt, rothko, etc. i'd never heard of the place and it was pretty small but almost every work there was noteworthy. i ended up walking around with about 4 or 5 people following me asking me questions about the pictures and what they all meant. it was nice to be able to explain gauguin's te nave nave fuena, kandinksys and rothkos to people who have little knowledge and/or interest in art. the museum shop was selling really nice reproduction prints for a real cheap price and i picked up te nave nave fuena (which alvaro said "is just terrible.") and munch's madonna lithograph. we wandered around the surrounding grounds and small town which were really picturesque and then next arrived at fushimi shrine for a teishoku lunch.
after eating yet another batch of cold noodles, fish, rice and tea, we went to visit the shrine. the shrine was huge and seemed more like a temple to me, but it was really nice. the monks were performing some ceremonies including one monk who was burning the prayer sticks visitors have written to ensure their wishes reach kami-sama. after wandering around for a while and purchasing some mountain dew i found in a vending machine (!), we got back on the bus and drove about 3 hours back to kyoto.
all in all, a really fun little trip. we got to see a lot of things i wouldn't have otherwise, but i think it was a really good time for us to get to know each other better. it's rare that all of us are together in an environment other than class, and even then we're seperated into different classes so a lot of us dont know each other that well. we were lucky to have such a relaxed environment to get to know each other in. as my departure date looms closer and closer, i'm torn about whether i want to leave or stay more. i'm really going to miss the friends i've made here and the experiences i'm able to have daily. i think one of the things i'll miss the most is visiting shrines and temples. a lot of the other students find them boring, but i think a temple is one of my favorite places to be on earth. there's a serenity that i couldn't begin to explain. i think i feel the way in a temple as a very religious christian would in church, although i'm not buddhist nor shinto. it's a kind of calm i've never experienced before and wouldn't begin to know where to find in america or anywhere except maybe japan.
also in recent news, i've been hanging out with katie kent! i'm sure a lot of you guys in georgia know her.. she's here studying japanese fabric design techniques for a month and we've been getting together so i can show here around the ways of living in japan. last weekend we went to nara, a smaller town about an hour away that was the capital of japan before kyoto. the most famous attraction is the daibutsu, the largest statue of buddha in japan. it's quite famous so it was rather crowded with kids on school tours and tourists from various places, but it was still a lot of fun. we talked a lot and took a lot of pictures and fed the deer that live on the grounds.. it was a really fun time. i'm glad she's here.. i can talk to her a lot about things i've discovered living here and give her advice about what to eat and random things. i think what i've really enjoyed though is talking to her about being an american abroad over here. she told me that one of her first days here, her group was at a famous sightseeing spot in kyoto and a frenchman in a blood for oil shirt approached them and after discovering they were american, because asking them what they thought of his shirt, etc. i've gotta say, it's still something that i find hard to deal with.
pictures here under "two day field trip" and "nara."
im typing this just after getting home from our two day field trip so as not to forget anything. a great time was had, to be sure.
all the foreign exchange students met up at school at 8:45, piled in two big buses with a couple teachers, and set out on our two day "study tour", an annual event for kyoto gaidai ryuugakusei in the spring. after a couple hour drive, we were delivered to a sake factory where we took a short tour and enjoyed a tasty teishoku lunch, complete with sake jello shots! who knew. we all spent some time perusing the gift shop and sampling their wares, including the 100 dollar a bottle sake, which none of us purchased. after souveniers were purchased in hopes of putting them to use later that evening, we all boarded the buses and off we went to himeji-jo, the most famous castle in japan. it was a beautiful, extremely impressive structure as you can see from the pictures i'll put up. we wandered around for about an hour, climbing the scary old japanese steps to the sixth floor to see the view. our next stop was a katana museum where we looked at a bunch of old swords and guns and it was pretty cool, though i didn't understand much more than the katanas on display cost as much as a house. they gave me a manual to appreciating japanese swords, though, so maybe i'll be an afficianado if i read that.
we reached the hotel at around 6:30 and we all split up into our rooms; i was staying with rebecca, en and ella. the hotel turned out to be a large japanese style hotel that looked like a factory and was right on the water across the huge bridge to shikoku island. some of the ryuugakusei immediately donned yukata (bathrobe-like cotton kimono provided in those places for everyone to relax in) and we went to another large teishoku course dinner. prior to eating, tanaka-sensei and the head of the office at school made short announcements about how we should be careful when we get drunk later. thats one thing i love about the japanese school system here, they expect you to be crazy and drink all the time. they don't try and stop you in any way.. i mean, they took us to a sake factory! after the meal they broke out the karaoke and i was happy to recieve a call from my dad then so i could avoid the scene. i have a terrible chest cold right now, and as stephen said, i sound like al pacino. not the best condition to be singing in (as if i'd get up there anyway).
after a couple rounds, a bunch of the ryuugakusei escaped and decided to find a convenience store to buy some beer. about 12 of us set out on foot to find this phantom store enda said he saw "a bit down the road." we ended up hiking 2 hours total to get beer up and down mountains, nearly avoiding being hit by cars and eaten by weird japanese bugs. i've never worked so hard for something to drink my entire life, but i have to say it was worth it. i enjoyed everyones company and appreciate the people i'm spending my time in japan with. looking around the bus earlier i thought "man, this is just really cool. i'm travelling around japan with australians, dutch, germans, italians, mexicans, koreans, chinese, irish, thai, burmese etc.. how ridiculous." i have exactly two months left here and although i'm eager to get back to the states and eat a steak, i'm really going to miss these people i've had the opportunity to meet and learn so much from. we have a lot of fun together. which continues on with my journal about our trip..
so we drank/hiked our way back to the hotel to find the rest of the students all on the beach with three yakuza members. (yakuza is japanese mafia) they were only about 18 and said they were working at a local whorehouse, but they had the tattoos and all. they left right when i got there but tyler has pictures of their tattoos i'm going to try to get. it was really crazy. but so we ended up partying on the beach for a couple hours. it was tylers birthday at the stroke of midnight and our hard won beer and sake we purchased earlier was put to good use. tsuneda-san from the office at school joined us right when the irish and a couple people decided to skinny-dip.. i'm glad i was on the other side of the beach when that happened!
after a couple hours, the manager of the hotel came down and yelled at us, so most of us vacated to alvaro/diego/enda/brendan's room where we continued with our partying. since tyler turned 21, he collected 21 kisses from the ryuugakusei, much to the distaste of johannes of germany and diego of mexico. poor james got a little sleepy so i had to cart him off to bed, but after i spent about an hour talking to tsuneda-san about various things. apparently the office at school gossips a lot about us ryuugakusei and think that diego and i are dating because we went backpacking together. when i told tsuneda-san that wasn't the case, he starting naming various male ryuugakusei and asking why i don't date them. he said because i'm "the most beautiful ryuugakusei" i should have a boyfriend. haha thanks? of course not to sound vain, because frankly i'm confused by it all, but it's scary/flattering how many comments like that i recieve regularly over here. james told me that all his friends that have met me "are in love with me" and bunsho told me that japanese people don't stare at me because i'm foreign, but because i'm so gorgeous. just two days ago i was out with james and we ran across several of his korean friends and as soon as they saw me, they began talking excitedly in korean.. james later translated saying they were asking who i was and if we were dating and why i'd be out with him. it kind of cracks me up, but i can't figure it out. but definitely i recieve comments like that 1000 times more than ever in the states. maybe i should stay here! haha.
aaaaaanyway, so about 3am i went back to my room and crashed, only to wake up at 7 to shower and get dressed for breakfast. except i laid back down and slept through breakfast. ooops. needless to say most of the ryuugakusei and a couple of our teachers were quite sleepy for the second day of our trip. at 9 we got on our buses and drove off to ohara to visit the art museum there which surprisingly had quite a nice collection including monets, pissaro, gauguin, noguchi, roualt, rothko, etc. i'd never heard of the place and it was pretty small but almost every work there was noteworthy. i ended up walking around with about 4 or 5 people following me asking me questions about the pictures and what they all meant. it was nice to be able to explain gauguin's te nave nave fuena, kandinksys and rothkos to people who have little knowledge and/or interest in art. the museum shop was selling really nice reproduction prints for a real cheap price and i picked up te nave nave fuena (which alvaro said "is just terrible.") and munch's madonna lithograph. we wandered around the surrounding grounds and small town which were really picturesque and then next arrived at fushimi shrine for a teishoku lunch.
after eating yet another batch of cold noodles, fish, rice and tea, we went to visit the shrine. the shrine was huge and seemed more like a temple to me, but it was really nice. the monks were performing some ceremonies including one monk who was burning the prayer sticks visitors have written to ensure their wishes reach kami-sama. after wandering around for a while and purchasing some mountain dew i found in a vending machine (!), we got back on the bus and drove about 3 hours back to kyoto.
all in all, a really fun little trip. we got to see a lot of things i wouldn't have otherwise, but i think it was a really good time for us to get to know each other better. it's rare that all of us are together in an environment other than class, and even then we're seperated into different classes so a lot of us dont know each other that well. we were lucky to have such a relaxed environment to get to know each other in. as my departure date looms closer and closer, i'm torn about whether i want to leave or stay more. i'm really going to miss the friends i've made here and the experiences i'm able to have daily. i think one of the things i'll miss the most is visiting shrines and temples. a lot of the other students find them boring, but i think a temple is one of my favorite places to be on earth. there's a serenity that i couldn't begin to explain. i think i feel the way in a temple as a very religious christian would in church, although i'm not buddhist nor shinto. it's a kind of calm i've never experienced before and wouldn't begin to know where to find in america or anywhere except maybe japan.
also in recent news, i've been hanging out with katie kent! i'm sure a lot of you guys in georgia know her.. she's here studying japanese fabric design techniques for a month and we've been getting together so i can show here around the ways of living in japan. last weekend we went to nara, a smaller town about an hour away that was the capital of japan before kyoto. the most famous attraction is the daibutsu, the largest statue of buddha in japan. it's quite famous so it was rather crowded with kids on school tours and tourists from various places, but it was still a lot of fun. we talked a lot and took a lot of pictures and fed the deer that live on the grounds.. it was a really fun time. i'm glad she's here.. i can talk to her a lot about things i've discovered living here and give her advice about what to eat and random things. i think what i've really enjoyed though is talking to her about being an american abroad over here. she told me that one of her first days here, her group was at a famous sightseeing spot in kyoto and a frenchman in a blood for oil shirt approached them and after discovering they were american, because asking them what they thought of his shirt, etc. i've gotta say, it's still something that i find hard to deal with.
pictures here under "two day field trip" and "nara."