I’m checking out of my hotel and then I’m off! Wish me luck. 🙂
Hi guys! I’m writing from my hotel in Izumisano, the same hotel I stayed at in the beginning of my trip. I’ve done a really poor job of updating around here, but I figure I can give you a bit of the last leg of my journey before I get home.
This past week has been sad because people have been leaving one by one. After the graduation ceremony last Saturday (yes, we “graduated” from the Asian Studies program 😉 ) I’ve definitely felt a sense of relief at having no more responsibilities (read: no more homework)!! My roommate left on Monday morning, and that was a tearful goodbye… she’s such a character, and I will miss her. The rest of my days at the seminar house were probably some of the best ones I’ve had this semester. I got to go to karaoke and sing all my favorite Japanese songs, went to Nara and played with the deer, went to see Green Zone and had dinner with one of my Japanese friends, and got to go to our resident hookah bar one last time. I also had a terrible incident involving some chili pepper and my eye, but no worries, it’s all gone now and I didn’t go blind. 😛
I spent all yesterday packing up the rest of my things, sending two boxes full of stuff back home because I just didn’t have enough room for everything. I woke up around 7 this morning to clear out my cupboard and food items, and I check out around 11:30. I got to say goodbye to a couple of people, but most of my friends have already left… I got a taxi at 12:30 and went to take a limousine bus (basically a charter bus) to Kansai International Airport. At the bus stop one of my friends from running club was also heading home, so it was nice to have her to talk to while we rode the bus. At the airport we parted ways, and I went to go find the shuttle for my hotel. When I talked to the woman at information, she told me the shuttle wouldn’t be there for another 3 hours… oops. She told me I could also take the train and walk a little ways to the hotel, so I went and thought about that over a bowl of udon. It was delicious udon too. 🙂 After that I went back to her and asked her to draw me a map (I’m under the impression that any Japanese can draw you an amazing map… I wish I knew why). With that in hand, I easily found my way to the train station, and then to the hotel afterward.
My hotel room is slightly bigger than it was before, and I have a comfy couch! They also have a pool here, which I totally didn’t notice before, but actually it’s still around 65 degrees outside so even if I had brought my swimsuit, it wouldn’t be too nice, haha. They do have a supermarket across the way. Maybe I’ll go buy some strawberries for dinner tonight. 🙂
Tomorrow I have to be on the shuttle at 6:30am, and my first flight leaves at 8:40. I have a 6 hour layover in Tokyo, then it’s 12 hours to Houston, another 2 hour wait for the Raleigh flight, and then I’m home! Wow!
I’d like to say, like so many others, that these months have flown by, I wish I had more time, etcetera, but they didn’t fly by. They were long months filled with some hard days sometimes. Now that I’m used to Japan, obviously I feel more comfortable and could stay here for longer, but I don’t really want to. It’s time to go home now. Of course I want to come back someday, and it’s been a very enlightening and good experience. But for now, I need to get back to real life, whatever that may be, haha.
It’s been fun Japan. Sayounara. 🙂
As of today, I have exactly 1 month until I’m on the plane heading back home to North Carolina.
Wow, really?
It’s kind of hard to think things will be “back to normal” very soon, because here has become pretty normal, and I think that’s because of this seminar house and the little bubble we’ve been living in for quite a while. Even today, when I was heading down the street to try to find some medicine (still sick), I walked out the door and realized that I’m still in Japan. Truthfully, this happens quite a lot, because I am almost always surrounded by people who look like me and people who speak English. So, it’s kind of felt like summer camp — really long summer camp — instead of being in a new world.
I’m going to Yokohama this week to stay with my friend Kana, who spent an exchange year at my high school. This week is called Golden Week in Japan, because it’s series of holidays right after the other, and it’s when everyone travels. I’m excited to see her and meet her parents, and also to spend more time being with Japanese people in Japan. Which sounds weird, but most of the time I’m pretty removed from it.
After I get back from Yokohama, I’ll have another week of classes, and then we have final exams. Then I have one more week to stay here, in which I hope to go see another friend of mine who lives up north. Crazy, but I’m excited!
🙂
Today Aya and I woke up early to go see Sherlock Holmes, but we were late for the train (even though we ran about half the distance to get there…) and thus late for the movie… so we bought tickets to the next show and shopped until it was time. There wasn’t much interesting to look at, but I finally bought some sunglasses (all sunglasses in Japan are at least $10, and I’m cheap haha), and some fan earrings that you can even close up like a real fan. Aya took a while deciding on a makeup bag she wanted, and also got a purse. At lunch, a random girl, who was sitting at the table beside us, came up and asked me if I was from Yahata and how old I was. I said 20, and she said she must have mistaken me for someone else. Lol aw, all white people look the same. 🙂
The movie was pretty good, but I guess the Japanese translation wasn’t very good, because no one got any of the jokes… I was the only one laughing at anything. I think a lot of the humor was in the tone of people’s voices and body language too, but it was still pretty funny that I was the only one laughing; everyone else was silent! We got popcorn too; Aya got “butter-soy sauce” flavor. It was really good… Oh Japan!
When we got back, Mama picked us up from the train station and we went to Yamada Elementary to visit Aya’s old teacher, back when I was here last, Kitani Sensei. He hasn’t changed a bit, but I guess there weren’t many people left there who still knew me. It was a nice visit though.
Tonight we watched Michael Jackson’s This Is It, which made me really want some more of his music, and ate dinner. Well, I didn’t really like anything we were having… I had some strawberries, but the cheese-filled egg rolls, octopus, tofu soup, and something else I couldn’t identify were not really my cup of tea, lol.
Well, tomorrow we’re supposed to go to someplace “interesting,” so it should be fun! Yay! 🙂
Today was a great day! I slept late, and came down to find a typical Yokomine breakfast of sweet egg, sausage, edamame, and toast. Mama must be cooking all day long… she works as a cook at a nursing home, then comes home and cooks dinner, then usually makes breakfast for the morning… it’s crazy!
Aya and I woke up kind of late, so we didn’t think we would have enough time to go shopping and get back before going to shuji (Mama’s brush painting class), so we sat around for a bit. But that didn’t last too long, beause we were soon on a train anyway for Kurosaki to search for an English book at the huge bookstore they have there. Aya wanted me to help her pick out something easy to read. She ended up with Anne of Green Gables (I’ve never read it, but that’s what she wanted), and we looked around for a while more. It took just enough time to get home to eat lunch, and then I went to shuji with Mama, but Aya stayed and slept (that girl can outsleep me any day!). It’s been 4 years since I’ve even attempted shuji, so I didn’t remember how to do it well, but I did remember some faces!
I tried to write “sakura” (桜), and managed something passable after 6 or 7 attempts (with a lot of coaching, of course), so I’ll be bringing that home. On the way out, I told the master teacher that I still had the scroll she wrote me last time (which is also the tagline for this blog: “天に星、地に花、人に愛”), hanging over my bed, and she seemed very happy about that. So happy, in fact, that she asked us to stop by her house so she could give me a present. It was something else she had written, and so beautiful! I was so surprised! I’m not sure what it says, but it’s on beautiful sakura paper, plus she gave me a scroll to hang it on, and a plastic sakura branch from a decoration in her house. How sweet! 🙂
Tonight we watched Avatar over dinner (English with Japanese subtitles), and tomorrow Aya and I will go to see Sherlock Holmes and go shopping. I also found out about Tohoshinki, a Korean boy band Mama and Aya are currently obsessed with. I tried to explain about The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, back in the day… but it still is a little funny to me that boy bands are so popular in Asia right now. Teehee.
NOTE: Since I didn’t have access to a computer very often during my spring break, I just wrote down most of what happened each day, so here’s how my trip to Okagaki went. 🙂
3/23/10
I was so nervous about making this trip that I woke up at 5:30 to make sure I had everything together, though my train was leaving at 8. I checked the bus schedule again: first bus leaving at 6:30. I was up there at 6, just to be sure. Getting on the bus at 6:30, it was 15 minutes to the train station because of the crazy traffic (I should have expected the city to be crowded so early in the morning… this is Japan), but then the train to Yodoyabashi didn’t come until 7. Another 20 minutes on the crowded train, then I had to take the subway to Shin-Osaka to get to the Shinkansen (bullet train) station. Of course I had no idea where this was, but luckily I saw a nice-looking woman with a suitcase with two kids and asked if she was going to the Shinkansen too, so she showed me the way! Friendly Japanese people always make my day. 🙂 By the grace of God I made it with 5 minutes to spare, and then I was off. 2 hours later, Kokura.
It’s so weird seeing the Yokomines again! In a good way, of course, but 4 years ago seems both so far away and not that long ago. Aya’s gotten taller, as expected, but overall looks the same. Papa looks the same too, and kept commenting on how I’ve thinned out and gotten prettier, lol. He was also full of questions: “Do you smoke?” “Are you getting married soon?” “How did you lose that weight?” It turns out a lot of things have changed though. Papa, who used to light a cigarette about 5+ times a day, says he’s quit for 3 years now. He’s also retired from piloting, but has another job inspecting people’s electrical wiring. He says it’s not fun, but it pays well, and that seems clear: the Yokomines have a brand new car, a new washer/dryer, a plasma tv and a new living room table (with a heater underneath…). Yes, at first glance a lot of things seem to have changed. Aya is about to start high school, and Mama is slowly but surely becoming a master at Sumi-e (Chinese brush painting). Everything seems so nice for them!
I can’t say I did much today — they bought me McDonalds after picking me up from the station, we looked around a shopping center for a magazine Aya wanted, and then came home. I had a crazy Okinawan orange (a cross between a grapefruit and an actual orange), went for a walk with Aya and her dog Jam, in the rain, and came back to watch a lot of tv. Aya and I also fell asleep around 4 under the heated blanket table; the blanket has the table top sitting on it, and underneath is a pad to put your feet. The heater, which is adjusted from a connected panel, hangs down from beneath the table. Because Japanese houses have about zero insolation, they get very cold in winter and very warm in summer, so basically you don’t want to move from this heater-blanket ever.
Papa made me gyoza around dinner time (I guess they’re like dumplings?) while he ate squid, which still had its big old eyes staring up at you. When Mama got home from work later, she made us taco rice, which I’m told is also from Okinawa. When I first heard about “taco rice,” I thought they meant “tako” as in the Japanese word for “octopus,” so I was about to politely decline, but taco rice does actually come from the concept of tacos. It’s rice with lettuce, tomato, taco meat, cheese, and salsa on top, and it’s delicious. I’m guessing the Okinawans invented it because of all the Americans there and our love for Tex Mex, lol.
I also gave them the souvenirs from Kyoto I bought them, sugary pickled plums and “cherry blossom flavored” pastries with sweet bean paste inside. I hope they liked them enough.
Well, it’s going to be a fun and interesting week! 🙂
Hello! It’s been a little quiet around here, I know, but there hasn’t been much out of the ordinary going on. Well, if any of you were to think this place is ordinary. Mostly I’ve just been stressing about tests and homework and essays, all that boring stuff us college kids have to deal with. My Saturday was interesting though…
I’ve been keeping with the running club, which I hope is at least keeping me from gaining weight for my efforts, but it’s hard to tell. The runs during the week are rather nice, apart from having to wake up at 6:30 every other day, but I don’t know that I’ll be joining the Saturday runs much any more… this week, we had the “Panasonic Run,” so called because some employees from Panasonic joined us to show us around a place called Fushimi-Momoyama (Fushimi is an area around Kyoto; Momoyama means “Peach Mountain”). What I thought was going to be a nice 2-hour social outing ended up being the 8-hour excursion from hell. We started off playing some games (odd stretching and relay races), but even after we had been relay-ing on the gravel paths, which are just as hard to run on as sand, for some time, then the actual ran began. I wish I had remembered to bring my camera along, because I saw a lot of cool places, but maybe it was better that I didn’t have something extra to worry about.
But the actual “run” lasted about 2 hours, as in, 2 hours of jogging for a while, then stopping to take pictures or get a history lesson, then run aimlessly again, on and on and on. The professor who leads our group was not with us because he claimed to still be sick, so we didn’t really know what was going on, or when this was going to end. It got ridiculous real quick. At last we made it back to the train station to get our bags, and we trekked over to a public bath.
Some of you have heard my stories about the hot springs (onsen) before I’m sure… well I really don’t know what the difference is between public baths and hot spring places, because it’s basically the same concept: everybody gets naked and sits in hot tubs. Of course, there are separate sections for men and women, but you go in, make sure to wash off first with soap and shampoo and all that, and then you can go sit in whatever tub you want. But it’s a little disturbing, seeing as everyone is walking around naked like it’s the most normal thing in the world, and in our case we were surrounded by old Japanese women. If the grandmothers of America knew about such a thing… hahaha.
By the time this joyous event was over, I was absolutely starving (stupid me for not eating breakfast), but the place our professor wanted to go was quite a ways away. After getting back on the train, then walking for another 20-30 minutes, we finally found the place, but they told us the wait to sit down was 30 minutes. One girl and I were fed up by that time as well as hungry, so we decided to go off on our own… good thing we did too. We found a great restaurant, which was Germany-themed for some reason, and had wonderful food with two big bottles of beer accompanied by champagne flutes. I think we were mostly happy about the beer. 😉
We got home around 4 (an hour before the rest of the group, I later found out) and I collapsed on my futon. Interesting day, yes, but I thought I would have much more time to get some work done. Let’s just say I might be conducting my own Saturday runs that won’t take nearly so much time from now on…
Hello there! There hasn’t been much going on in Japan-land lately, but I thought I’d tell you about my trip last weekend to Kyoto. My speaking partner lives about 2 hours away from where I am, so we decided to meet halfway at a spot in Kyoto to visit Kiyomizu Temple, one of Japan’s most famous and frequented temples.
The first shrine of the temple.
Leading up to the actual temple were many, many shops, so Shiori (my speaking partner) and I had a good time looking around and sampling tea and Japanese sweets. I also managed to buy a few more souvenirs for people back home. 😉
Myself in front of the temple, city in the background.
We had lunch at one of the shops, and later went clothes shopping (what else?), took some purikura, and generally had a good time! I left a little early because I was planning on going to Himeji Castle the next day, but I wish I hadn’t because I ended up not going anyway. Nevertheless, I am definitely in love with Kyoto now. 🙂
It’s been tests and homework mostly for everyone here the past two weeks, but today I decided that I was going to buy a bicycle. I refrained earlier because I thought there was no need to spend the money when I could walk everywhere just fine, but I was getting really sick of it, lol. I don’t usually mind walking, but getting anywhere takes quite a long time… now I have a lot more freedom (and don’t have to spend as much money on bus tickets).
The bike is used, and I got it from a nice couple who run their shop mostly for other students like me who aren’t going to be here long enough to invest in a really nice bike, just need something that works. Thankfully I was able to test bikes out before I chose one, so I got this nice red one that seems rather new to me anyways, for ¥7000.
It comes with a set of keys for security (it won’t move without the key in place), which is a lot easier than those wrap locks we have at home, a bell to alert people if you’re behind them, the basket obviously, and a light for riding at night (Japanese law). It rides very smoothly… and it’s my favorite color. 😉 After I bought it I thought I could just take it home and go get my stickers tomorrow, but my house father made me go back to school and get them, which was probably better anyway because I needed to test out getting myself to school! It cut my time in half, and plus, it’s so nice riding along when it’s nice outside. 🙂
So, I’m very happy that I caved on the bike thing, and now I can even wear my nice shoes to school (since I won’t have to cut my feet of in pain before I get there now)!
As a friend pointed out to me the other day, I have been lazy in keeping this blog for the past week. I’m sorry!
Of course if more people would comment I would be obliged to update more often… 😉 I know you’re reading so don’t be shy.
I did nothing of particular importance this weekend, especially not tourism-wise, but I did receive a lot of valentines and that made me very happy. 🙂 Needless to say my chocolate is almost all gone… haha. A lot of the girls around here decided to make their own chocolates too, because that is the very Japanese thing to do (they sell kits everywhere), and they were so cute! I’m glad I didn’t end up buying any though, because the kitchen was very busy and I think I would have gotten trampled reaching for a bowl or something.
This week I decided to join the running club at Kansai Gaidai. Although I am walking a bit more than at home, I think it will be a good way to get some exercise since I don’t have a gym class, and the best part is everyone else is a beginner runner (read: bad) too, so I’m not putting myself through undeserved torture trying to keep up with people, haha. We start on Monday at 7am!
I also just got back from Japanese Sign Language Club tonight, and I’m already hooked! Although we only meet once a week, I am still learning some sign language in Body/Comm, so I think I’ll get plenty of practice. I’ve always wanted to learn American Sign Language, but there are apparently no opportunities around Raleigh… so maybe I will be decent at Japanese Sign Language if I work at it. 🙂
I will get to go out this weekend, so I will try to take some pictures and post them here. Hope you all are having nice weeks!
Today was National Foundation Day in Japan, a day celebrating the establishment of the line of Japanese emperors, descended from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Ohmikami; the line has allegedly remained unbroken since the first emperor, Emperor Jimmu.
Basically that means we got a day off from school. 🙂
We finally found the mall in Hirakata today, which is a great thing for fun times but not so much for my wallet, haha. I bought a cookbook and a few other things, but mostly just had fun looking around. Then we went to Mos Burger for dinner, which made me very happy. You never realize how much you miss burgers and fries until you’ve been eating cup noodles and oranges for 3 weeks straight. Plus, these are ~Japanese burgers~; mine had tomato sauce on it that reminded me very much of Chef Boyardee Ravioli. They also have a burger with the buns made out of rice instead of bread. I am so trying that next time.
Two nights ago was one of our friends’ 21st birthday, so we went out to this nice restaurant to order drinks. I at last got to try sake (plum sake), which was completely delicious, and two other drinks. I think Kahlua & Milk is going to get me in trouble from now on…
Tomorrow I only have one class, and I don’t know what I’m doing for the rest of the weekend, but I sure am having fun now. 🙂
BK goes to Japan 