Mobile: 京都

昨日、大阪の新世界と道頓堀で食べたり遊んだりして、京都に行って、ホステルを見つけた！ホステルは外国人いっぱいいるんだけどみんなは優しそう。

大阪の有名な焼きたてチーズケーキを朝ご飯で食べた。そして友達は親戚の家に行って、私は一人で金閣寺を見に行った。金閣寺はすごい混んでた。でもめちゃキレイ〜

今竜安寺にいる。世界遺産！

Kyoto

Yesterday, we ate and played in Osaka's Shinsekai and Dotombori, then went to Kyoto and found our youth hostel. The hostel is full of foreigners, but everyone seems nice.

We ate Yakitate Cheesecake that Osaka is famous for for breakfast. Then my friend went to her relative's house, so I went to go see Kinkakuji by myself. Kinkakuji was really crowded, but suuuper pretty~

Now I'm at Ryoanji. World Heritage Site!

Mobile: 龍安侍

This is the famous Zen rock garden at Ryoanji (temple).

大阪に着いた！

We arrived in Osaka this morning around 5am!　We were originally going to start in Kyoto and make a day trip out to Osaka, but since our bus stopped at both for the same price we figured we'd spend the first day in Osaka and get to Kyoto in the evening to check in to the youth hostel.

We started out by going to Shinsekai where they have a lot of really good food on these really busy streets. We ate some really good kotsukatsu and takoyaki!　Then we made our way over to Namba to see another street. I forgot the name, but I'll figure it out and post again. I'm in this really strange internet cafe right now. Ayae is looking up the phone number to the hostel so we can tell them we'll be checking in a bit late. It's half a manga cafe and half an internet cafe, but entirely creepy. Our half hour is almost up. We'll see how the rest of this trip goes... =D

good things > bad things

So tomorrow I'll be regretting that I didn't do all my reading and that I went to bed late, but today was interesting and fun and full of good things. Little things, but good things.

good things that happened.

- I went to MOS Burger by myself, but Tom ended up going there too so we ate lunch together!
- I ran into Vinodh and So-ky so I actually got to catch up with them a little bit today.
- Had some imagawayaki from Tobu (department store). Red and white an!
- My next 3 volumes of ハチミツとクローバー came!
- Going to Kyoto will only cost 7500 yen.
- I got some unexpected emails. ^_^ (サンキュー！)
- I found out that Hiroshi Fujiwara goes to Pinkberry's. (hahaha...I also want his IDF album, think its worth the 1400 yen it costs to download?)
- Mariah's new album and Epik's new album are awesome.
- Big Bang interview in Japanese. I promise I'm not a crazy fan girl, it was just hilarious and cute. It actually made me laugh out loud. (Youtube 'Big Bang Gyao' and you'll find it.)
- ラストフレンズ was on today. I love the cast. They're all very lovable, with the exception of Nishikido who plays a very convincing abusive boyfriend. O_O
- Japanese commercials are cute. (Yamapi's Toshiba CM, Oguri Shun's aji no moto CM, Arashi's au CM...they're just...Japanese CMs are something else. Haha.)


good things that will happen.

- Tomorrow is Friday!
- I'm going to see Nobuko!
- I'm going to buy new shoes!
- I'm going to read ハチミツとクローバー！
- I'm going to sleep in!
- Vinodh might hook me up at the Singaporean restaurant he works at in Ebisu! (Haha, that one depends though.)


bad things that will happen.

- I will be tired tomorrow.
- I will feel unprepared because I didn't do all the reading.
- I will be doing homework this weekend as well.


But in the final analysis, the good things win, and that's all that matters. =)

大田原市屋台祭り

This weekend, I went to visit Yuhki again for the Otawara yatai matsuri. Roy and I went, and two of Yuhki and Roy's friends also went. We all stayed at Yuhki's so it was a bit of a squeeze, but it was fun. ^_^

On the way to Otawara, our train got delayed because of heavy winds. It was stuck for an hour! I've never been stuck on a delayed train so long. >.<


The festival is a taiko festival where 9 groups from different villages (Otawara, Okubo, etc.) carry out their yatai carts (that are very nicely decorated, I might add) and play taiko while they go around the area. There are a bunch of people pushing, pulling, and turning the yatai while the taiko players sit inside and play. This is the matsuri that Yuhki's group waits for all year, so it's very exciting for them. We walked with them around the town for a few hours before Roy and I got way too cold and a little bored. (They play the same rhythm the whole day...I don't know how they do it...and in that horrible wind.) So we went to cafe*repo, this cute cafe by the karaoke place and had waffles and coffee. (Kinako/kuromitsu waffles are really good!) Then we went to karaoke for a couple of hours. (They literally do the yatai thing all day!) When we got out around 7:30, I met Kuroha and Chitose (Yuhki and Roy's friends) and we got to see all of the yatai come together and 'battle'. I don't really understand how it all works, but it's really cool to see so many people and the different styles of yatai and everything. There was one girl that looked really, really cool standing on top of the yatai because her clothing was blowing in the wind and her hair was done all cool. Then there was lighting that just made her look really bad-ass in general. XD It was so cold though!!!!


When the drumming was finally over (it took a very long time), we went to an izakaya (drinking place) for dinner. For some reason, my appetite hasn't been very good lately, but the food was great there. I tried 'bakasashi' which is a mix of raw horse and deer!!! I've really been getting my share of strange foods this year.

(これは祭りモードのユウキ!　祭りは最高って...笑)

Anyway, after that, we went to karaoke again. (I'm glad the workers changed from when Roy and I were there earlier that day. Hahaha.) We ended around 4 and then slept in until around 11 or so this morning. The actual, actual matsuri was today, but it doesn't go for as long. When we went out to the street, everyone was so nice. Country people are waaaaay nicer than city people. There was one store that offered us beer and gave us sushi boxes..for free. Yummy!

After watching the yatai battle again for a little while, we stopped at a taiyaki (fish-shaped red bean filled pastry things) stand that's really well known in Otawara. People come from the next prefecture over to get taiyaki from them, and I can see why. It's the best taiyaki I've ever eaten. Filled from the head to the tail with azuki. Mmm...and piping hot.

（面白かった、人のいない電車は）

Then Roy and I headed back here. The train car we were in was empty, which was cool since that NEVER happens in Tokyo. We stopped in Ikebukuro to eat at Latin, my favorite spaghetti place. And now I'm finally back, but tired. I'll upload pictures when I get the chance. (Or energy. Haha.)

吉祥寺

Today, since I didn't have school, I went to go hang out with Yu, who I haven't seen for nearly a year and a half or so. We met at Kichijoji, which was a little bit of a pain since it's far, but it turned out well. Roy came too, since they're around the same age and Roy wanted to make friends, I thought that'd be cool, and Yu invited one of his friends, Kenny, who's also around his age. It was weird being the only girl and the only one not fluent in Japanese, but I it was fun since I haven't really been able to hang out with any guys for a while.

Yu, Roy, and I walked around shopping for a bit while we waited for Kenny, who was finishing all of his job-hunting activities. First, we went to go play pool, which was funny since I'm really, really bad at it. I think the whole time, I only dropped one ball. XD Roy is really good, so his team always won, meaning that I won once. Hahaha.

Afterwards, we went to the park and walked around. It was really pretty, although I wish I could have been there when the cherry blossoms were blooming. That would have been really pretty. Yu and Roy pointed out some boats...they say if couples go on them, they'll break up. Go figure. Along the way, we stopped at the yakiniku place I went to with Yoko and Theo over summer.

Then we were off to eat dinner at an izakaya, which was just eating, talking, and good company. And last, we visited a pachinko place so Yu could try for 'beginner's luck'. No one won, and it was really noisy, but interesting since I didn't really understand how pachinko worked before. (There were these weird 冬のソナタ, or Winter Sonata...I forgot the Korean title, machines that were themed machines from the Korean drama. o_O) Roy and Yu are planning to drop by Sophia on Monday just for kicks. That should be interesting. XD It was a good night~.

弁顕密....何だっけ？

Wow, it's been a while.

Since last time, Roy moved to Tokyo. We went out to play the other day, which was cool since I still miss home and all. (No one's called me Madee in months and months, I almost forgot people call me that.) We just went a bunch of random places, ate, and went to karaoke. I'm really not a good guide of Tokyo. Anyway, it was nice to see him, and it's cool that he'll be around for a while.

Besides that, I've mostly been preparing for school and such. Our first day was yesterday. Here's how my schedule looks.

1. Cultural Encounters in Literature
2. Issues in Chinese Women's History
3. Advanced Japanese 1
4. Philosophical Approaches to Buddhism

Those are all Tu/F classes, except Japanese, which is everyday except Wednesday. I might drop one of the 3 non-language classes if I like History and Theory of Architecture during 2nd period on M/Th. Having a complete day, 4 classes in a row, seems like it could really get to me. But then again, then I'd only have Japanese on M/Th and no class on Wednesday, so maybe it would even out.

I must say, the Philosophical Approaches to Buddhism class seems really intimidating. We're going to study the Benkenmitsunikyoron (弁顕蜜二教論) by Kukai in classical Chinese (but pronouncing everything in Japanese). We're going to be working on individual translations into English. (So, kanji studying finally has a purpose..haha.) By the end of the course we're supposed to have it memorized, and our oral test is to recite it. I don't know how I'm going to do that. It's hard to even get through the title smoothly if I'm not looking at the kanji. It seems really interesting, but also really intense. It's a 400 level course, which is the highest in the FLA (Faculty of Liberal Arts), so it probably won't be a walk in the park. Our teacher is a French guy, but I think he was trained at Koyasan. He can chant pretty well.

Cultural Encounters in Literature seems the easiest. It's my lowest numbered class, a 300 level. We'll see. We were going over this whole idea of 自分探しの旅 (a journey to find yourself), and it got me thinking about this whole being in Japan thing. Very strange ideas and all.