The End, More or Less

As I've said in the past few posts, I'm back in the United States, which marks the end of my study abroad trip to Japan. It was fun, educational, expensive, and delicious, though if you were to ask me to put those in order, I don't think I could.

The best thing about going has to have been the people I was able to meet. I made a number of friends with whom I identified with in a surprising number of ways, and I was able to experience and relish in the rich variety of languages and accents, as well as getting to see little bits of the world from other people's points of view.

One of my goals while I was in Japan was to eat ramen. Sure, it sounds silly, but I'd only eaten instant ramen prior to coming to Japan, and I did so on a daily basis for upwards of eight years. So I wanted to eat lots of varieties of ramen. While I was able to try a number of shops' ramen - probably around 30 - I still couldn't tell you whether I like the miso-, soy-, or salt-based ramen best.

While tasty, my primary reason for coming to Japan was not to eat ramen, or gyuudon, or takoyaki, but to study Japanese, and my stay there was - of course! - invaluable to that end. I'm still very weak with kanji and my vocabulary is very small compared to a native speaker, but the difference between when I left and my current ability is no less than marked.

Writing on this blog was an experience all of its own, and I'm glad that I did. I'll be able to look back on this much like I might a journal.

For those of you that have been reading this whole time: your time and your comments are appreciated.

For who have supported me in other ways, be it in the form of money, cookies, a partner for Super Smash Brothers or DDR or that taiko game, or help defrosting my fridge because I forgot and was late to miss plane, I cannot thank you enough.you for your efforts and your friendship. I don't know how I would've survived this year without the help I received from others.

I hope that many others have the opportunity that I did, and I hope that maybe this log will help one or two of those people out at some point.

Good day and best wishes.
- William Lockwood

Arrival

And I'm back in the real United States. Feel free to not worry now.

Edit: It appears that there was considerable worry, as the blog's front page usually gets about 30 page loads a day, but during my little stint with air travel, it got nearly 400 hits in the span of three days.

先生の家

Today, I visited one of my teachers from last semester who I've been in somewhat constant contact with. He invited me to lunch a few weeks back, and I kind of invited myself up to his house. He said it was fine, and we decided on a day, which was today.

It takes him (who was sick today, hence the mask) about ten minutes to get to school by scooter; it took me about an hour to get to his house by bike. Needless to say, there're some slopes involved. It was difficult, and I barely managed it, but I was able to bike the entire way up and even farther than I had to go by quite a ways. He lives up in a suburb about eight kilometers (5.7 miles) away from where I live, and while the elevation gain is only about 200m (~650 feet) it feels a lot more significant on a bike.

He met me at a traffic circle - the first I've ever actually seen - which I went to kind of on a hunch, and it ended up being right next to his house. This picture is a 360-degree panorama taken from nearly the middle of the traffic circle. Guess where the sun is.

I met for the first time both his children (two of 'em) and his wife (one of those!) and both seemed very pleasant to say the least. My teacher is well into his fifties, and from the time frames they mentioned while we were talking, his wife (who is Canadian, and appeared to be of Northern European ancestry, maybe so far as Irish, but I didn't ask) must be getting near that mark as well, but she must be benefiting from the Japanese lifestyle or something, because she could very well be in her early thirties judging by her appearance.

Oh, and they had cheese. Real, honest to cheese, cheese. White cheddar, yum, yum. You have no idea how long it's been since I had cheesy cheesy cheese. Cheese. ... Apparently, they had gone to Costco (there's one in Osaka somewhere) the previous day with some friends, and had just gotten back, as they gave me about a half a pound of cheese to me and a further half pound to deliver to some friends. Yum. Cheese.

We went for a walk and ran into some kids who were walking a dog. When they saw me, they started talking about me a little, and eventually, one of them said to another "Hey, say something in English!" I turned around and interjected "Japanese is okay, too." I love getting people with that one. They had a cute little dog, as well. Isn't he (?) cute?

We visited a bird sanctuary near where he lives as well as a couple of parks, then came back to his house for a bit and talked for another hour or so, then I headed home. The ride home didn't take nearly as long, since the whole thing was downhill and I don't need a map to simply go down a hill.

[These random plants are blurry because I have my camera set to use a shutter speed of 1/60 when the flash is on, and I didn't think to compensate for the fact that I had the lens zoomed at 200mm on top of the 1.5x magnification from my APS-C sensor. That gives an effective 300mm of focal length, and while my lens is rated for a nominal three stops (1/60>1/120>1/240>1/480) the flash didn't take in enough light to overpower the ambient, hence the blur.]

With just a few days left in Japan, I'll be selling my bike tomorrow. I've used it pretty hard, so it looks older than it is, but used bikes don't fetch much anyway. I'd be getting a pretty good deal if I got $30 for it. The other one (the first new bike I bought in Japan) is too beat up to fetch me more than $10 if I'm lucky, but one of my friends is going to fix it up and use it, since it has gears and she has a tire patching kit.

[Edit: We also saw this car while we were walking around. You can see on the front it's a GT-R, but we saw a couple of other really nice cars while wandering around.
On the way back, I saw an import car shop and saw for the first time in nearly a year a car with the steering wheel on the right (which is to say, "left") side.]

[Another edit: I asked my teacher later if it was alright for me to put this up later, and I like it, so here it is. My teacher and his wife, at right.]

Recon

Since Jes is coming to Japan - and more specifically, coming to Kyoto - in a few weeks, I did some reconnaissance today for churchy things. I managed to accidentally take a different path that led me to a taiyaki stand. Deliciousness.
I also saw the first usage of the character ゐ wi since I got here. It was removed from the language prior to World War One, but I guess you can use it if you want. I asked an old man about it and he didn't seem to think it was strange at all. I have a picture, but I'm honestly too lazy to upload it right now. The sign was written in red and read やすゐ薬局　yasui yakkyoku ("cheap pharmacy").

「紅葉」 or "It's fall. The trees are dying. Yay."

The Japanese celebrate the changing seasons like... well, like the Japanese celebrate the changing of the seasons. Partly, I think it's an excuse to party and generally make merry and, more importantly, imbibe some final alcohol before it's too damned cold to go buy beer. In any case, trees changing color is a Big Deal here. Photographers come out in troves, and festivals are had all around the city on every other day. If you imagine Leavenworth, but with 1.5 million people living in it, you have the right idea.

Anyway, I'm here, so I have to take pictures of the trees going into a coma or people look at me funny - er, funnier? I don't know.

Fine, it's an excuse to take pictures. Here's what I got today, whatever the reason.

This (above) was a place that looked nice and was on the way, so I stopped to take some test shots. It started raining just as I was finishing up, so I hurried to get packed up and move on.

Totally random trees. I photoshopped this one pretty hard, and I'm not so great with Photoshop, so there are quite a few artifacts, but if you look at it like this, it looks good enough.

Don't worry, I don't intend to put all the pictures up in this massively space-consuming fashion, but I spent a long time between taking these four and doing the post work, so they're getting the annoying treatment.

Random bridge where I took advantage of my waterproof boots to tromp around in a shallow river that runs through town and get this picture. Boots, boots. I didn't like the view from on the bridge is why, in case you're wondering.
I'm kind of kicking myself for not getting the left-side pillar, but it looks really weird if I crop out the right-side one, so...

This is one of places we've done parties, and it was my goal for heading out to the middle of nowhere. I saw some friends boating along, so I photosniped them and headed to where I thought they were going and helped pull them ashore and got to show off my super-cool waterproof boots. Muahaha. Danner boots: Mmm, mmm, good! No, seriously!

And now is time for yet another picture spam.
Really, there's not that much to be said for momiji ("crimson leaves") 'cause I think almost everyone in a temperate climate knows what fall looks like.
Random flower picture, because it was required. It's a shibazakura, which means someone thinks it looks like a cherry blossom. Kind of.

(Far left) Probably the prettiest single tree I saw, and it was a Japanese maple, which my mom seems to have some kind of fetish for, so, again, required.

Some more pictures taken while tromping around in the river. Dunno what the weed-ish things at the bottom arm, but they looked kind of wheat-y. The far right tree looks... like I need to leave the 9th grade.

Still tromping around in the not-quite-a-river, I found this random fish and about six of his buddies. I wasn't sure it was a real dead fish until I poked it with my shoe. It felt real enough. And no, I don't know why someone would scatter fake dead fish around. It's Japan; you never know.

Mun, the guy at the paddles, finally squinted at me in recognition, so I gave myself up and waved at them. They went and bought some random sweet wine and passed it around.
Some more people came, and we took a bunch of pictures, and my tripod got passed around like...

In any case, I need new similes.

It's a... Good... Too Good... Day?

Today has gone scarily well. I'm not kidding.

To start with, I woke up early. That's a good thing, by the way.

Then, I made breakfast and it just, you know, worked. It was delicious, the texture was nice, and it actually looked appealing. The seasoning worked well, and all the flavors blended nicely. Rare indeed for my cooking.

Did I mention that my school has the day off due to some freaky PE festival that we don't have to go to? I should mention that. It means I basically get my very own holiday, but without the crowds that ruin holidays here.

Next, I was helping Jes get some stuff set up on her computer, so she was actually talking to me. Problems that popped up promptly vanished for no known reason and without us really doing anything. I had solutions for most of them, but it was really nice to be overprepared for once.

So then I start reading about some DIY stuff and I'm in a particularly good mood from talking to Jes, so I exercise a little, grab a shower, and head down to the mall. Well, I went to the cycle shop I go to all the time, and he was more than happy to give me an old bike tube. In fact, he asked "Are you sure you only want one?" and we chatted for a few minutes. On my way out, I filled up my front bike tire, so the rest of the time riding around was extra comfy and easy.

So I deposit the tube at my bike and go into the mall to get some tasty treats. Because no trip to the mall is complete without tasty treats, right? Right! I ask for one tsubuan, which is kind of a shorthand way of saying that I want a two pieces of mochi (gelatinized rice) wrapped around a filling of tsubuan (red bean paste with a little bean texture left) and fried. When I tried to give her money to pay for it, she refused and said. "That's not necessary, you come here all the time. Go on, now." I checked once more and thanked her, happily on my way.

A few feet away is another shop that sells a different kind of mochi and I tried a new flavor of mochi that I honestly have no clue what it was supposed to be. That store always has issues with spelling, but even I can't figure out what flavor "Seeqester" is. It was frozen, so I couldn't eat it right away. Eh.

I head down to the hardware store to get some majikku teepu ("Velcro"). It's kind of pricey at $4.50 for a matched set of hook and loop sides that are each about 2"x3". I found it in bulk and asked someone who works there to help me figure out how much would cost how much. As it turned out, I was able to get about twice as much for two-thirds the cost that way, and it was the perfect size for what I wanted it for.
To top it off, I found some non-slip pads that I've been looking for and some glue that together were less than $2, so I have a second project for a little later. All told, I got out of there for less than $5.
How cool is that?

So I'm on my way home and I discover a new bakery that has pretty much just the stuff I like, and a bunch of new things I've never seen before - "leaf pie", for example, is some kind of thin strudel-like thing sprinkled with sugar in the shape of a piece of pizza. On top of that, they're all really, really cheap. Most bakeries here charge between $1.30 and $2.50 for their various bits. The most expensive thing I saw here was a new kind of fluffy クリームパン kuriimu pan ("delicious") and that was $1.16, which I of course bought. It was extra delicious.

So I'm about to get started on my little project. Here's what I got on my outing, minus the food, which I kind of... consumed.
The reason that today is scarily good is because things going this smoothly makes me worry about what's going to happen tomorrow.

But... I can't do anything about that, so on to hacking together some pieces!

A New Store

I just discovered that there's a hardware store about ten minutes away from me on a very simple path. Today is a day for some DIY, I think!

Flower Park/Not-Park

I went up to Northern Kyoto yesterday and was somewhat surprised to find out that it's less than half an hour away by bike. I visited the park I talked about in the day before yesterday's post, but it turns out it's not so much a park as... A 50'x30' dirt field with flowering plants on three sides and a bench on the fourth. There's a also a large fenced off building. I'dve gone in, but it was locked, so presumably I'm not supposed to go in.

[Left: A rock.
Right: A leaf.]

I imagine this place is beautiful in the spring and summer. It should look fairly pretty once fall comes, as well. Many of the trees and plants have wooden labels attached to them, written in kanji with yomigana (how to read the kanji).


It's nearly fall, of course, but there were still some flowers in bloom, like you can see on both sides of this paragraph. There was also a shrine of some kind, but I'm not sure what it was dedicated to. There were flowers and maybe a glass of water, which leads me to believe it's similar to the shrines that you find all over town. I think there are are a few hundred scattered around Kyoto. I'm not certain why I didn't take a picture of it... It has some nice carving done on it, so maybe I'll grab a shot later and at it here.

They have an interesting choice of lights that I don't really understand the reason for. I mean, it appears to be a normal socket that's completely exposed to the elements and simply protected from physical shock by the cage around it. Seems as though you would go through a lot of bulbs or power due to shortages and random water, but I have to assume they don't. Either way, it looks pretty cool.

They seem to really not want you to bring bikes in, as there's this freaky fence thing at the entrance, and a sign saying not to bring bikes into the park. It also warns against playing ball games, especially baseball, in the park. Please see the picture at right for further details.

These last two were just me playing around with my camera and flash. I couldn't tell whether the bug-thing (left) was alive or if it was just the molted skin, but I didn't know what it was, so I stayed a few feet away.
You can see a little of the shrine in the background as that out-of-focus speckled gray splotch.

And, yay, flash.

Some Bikery

I wandered towards northern Kyoto on my bike today with Bryden. We found a park I fully intend to visit later with my D80, and a few hundred preschoolers to dodge. I tried to ask one of them if there was anything at the top of the hill we were on, but they kind of looked at me like "What's that? Is that a person?"
Beyond the staring, they didn't respond. They watched us until we were out of sight, though. Kind of creepy, all in all.

On the bright side, today was a very nice day for a bit of bike riding, though I ended up using a bandanna to keep the sweat out of my eyes, the exercise felt good. Ten kilometers on a bike isn't much for most people, I'm sure, but it was a nice way to spend a few hours. Cut me some slack, there are hills and we ate lunch.

I'm planning to run a similar path tomorrow, and I'll bring my camera with me, so maybe I'll have something for you next time.

Tokyo: Akihabara (Day 2)

This day was originally supposed to be entirely Akihabara, but in all honesty, I simply ran out of enthusiasm for looking at figures, porn, and porn figures after the first fifteen shops. I mean, there was non-porn stuff as well, but there was as much that was blatently pornographic as there was anything else. This may have had something to do with being led around by an anime otaku, but I'm not certain. This kind of stuff was largely limited to just a few buildings we went into, so don't let it deter you from going. Then again, if it's what you're looking for it won't be difficult to find.

I picked up some little omiyage for people, but none of it has shipped yet because I've been lazing around and breaking my computer instead of being productive. I left my room once today to go check the mail, if that gives you an idea of just how lazy I'm being right now.

Okay, so on with the Akihabara! Well, after this picture of a flower I took that morning. My 18-55mm just doesn't do macro well, you know, but I like it and this picture anyway. So there.

We left the house around 10:30 or so, and got to Akihabara within an hour or so, and it cost us about $5 in train fare. We got off at Akihabara station, where we met our guide, a Mr. Kanayama. You can see him posing at left.

We started off wandering around in random stores, as far as I can tell, and I saw a lot of figures that I wanted to buy. This confuses me for two reasons: I didn't think I liked dolls; the starting price for the good ones was about $50. Two of those would be the same as a brand new tripod. Four would be a cheap lens... You can see where this is going, I think.
I'm generally not a big fan of things whose only purpose is to go on a shelf and never be used, so I don't know what I would do with figures if I had bought them. Fortunately, I didn't, so all is well.

There were a lot of figures in each store, and I we visited at least four stores completely dedicated to them, each about... figure the average size of a Radio Shack. In spite of the quantity, I really didn't find myself drawn to many of them. Here are some girls, I think - it's often hard to tell with Japanese people - checking out the scantily clad figures.
Go figure?

But there were a couple that I was very tempted by, such as these Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball figures. Some of you may remember these characters either from that game, or the multi-platform game Dead or Alive 3. A number of people have played it on my Xbox at our Chamith house.
Looking at this picture more closely, I can see that they're supposed to be from the second version of DOA:XBV that's for the Xbox 360. I haven't played it myself, or even ever seen it. I mean, I've only played the actual Dead or Alive 4 for Xbox 360 once, and that was at Sakura-con. Was very thoroughly schooled.

This one was surprisingly low on the creepy figurines list, despite the human-size scale. I've seen people here that look less realistic than this giant doll, though, which I will admit worries me to some extent. Japanese women have a tendency to wear... rather more makeup than one might think. I've checked with at least five other people and they all agree with me, so I'm not alone on this.

I watched Shana and Fate with someone who hasn't been reading this blog lately, but I'm putting these up because I found them and thought they were cool. The Zero figurine is a little bit odd, yeah, but we are talking about a store for otaku, so it's either that or a maid outfit, right?

We wandered around quite a lot, but mostly found more of the same general sort of thing. I mean, I probably have 60 pictures of random figures that I took while no one was looking, but honestly, you can only see so many before you start thinking "Oh, on this figure, only the skirt comes off?" and "Look, it's another random anime character I don't recognize!" Though I would wager I recognized at least half of all the characters I saw. Given I haven't watched but two anime since coming here, that make me feel good as an anime-watching person.

While we were doing the aforementioned wandering around, we stopped for some ice cream, and right next to the place was a place selling some kind of pork-based food. You can see the guy shaving off little bits of pork at left. Interesting method, don't you think?

And here (at right) you can see why it is that I don't want to buy radios (AKA walkie talkies) here in Japan. The cheapest price I see in that whole lot is about $100. For one. Oh, and did I mention that they're not interoperable? They only work with radios from the same brand, and even then only sometimes.

I'd love to get a batch of six or so cheap bubble-pack radios here. They'd be so nice for coordinating groups and meetups. Given the cost of voice calls on a phone, they'd pay for themselves pretty quickly, too. And they're usable in an emergency, unlike a cell phone, as cell networks are so easily overloaded.

Specifics aside, my overall take on Akihabara is as follows:

• If you're looking for anime, manga, or anything related to them - including music and third-party porn - come to Akihabara and you will be at home. You'll be broke pretty quickly, too.
• If you're looking for hard-to-find electronics and have exhausted all other methods of getting whatever it is, come to Akihabara. They have it, I'm sure.
• If you're looking to build something that involves any number of a variety of different random tiny eletronic thingamawhatsits, come to Akihabara. They have more thingamawhatsits than you can shake a doohickey at.
  
• If you're looking for name-brand or popular consumer electronics - say, camera gear - don't bother. Prices in Akihabara are no better than you would get from anywhere in the Western world. They're slightly cheaper than average for Japan, on average, I think. But not enough to make it worth the trip unless you're also coming for sightseeing.

In the end, I can't say that it was a really amazing place, but it's a place that I couldn't not go, given the chance. I'm glad I was able to go, even if the only thing I gained was to be able to say, "Yeah, I've been to Akihabara." I may just mentally add a "... So?" on the end of that.

[This is, I think, the last of my posts about my trip to Tokyo. People keep asking, so here's what I thought of the trip as a whole: It wasn't great, but I definnitely don't regret it, either.]

Tokyo: Wandering (Day 1)

Yeah, this is the third or fourth post for Day 1. It was by far the most fun day. I spent the first half of it navigating on my own, which was fun. I mean, sure, I was headed to a popular tourist destination that hundreds of thousands of other people have no problems finding every year, but I'm a little... special when it comes to pathfinding. It's an aura I have with me, I think, as people have a tendency to get lost more when I'm around even if I don't say a word.
In the end, I was able to find my way to the "Raumen" museum without getting lost. I think I already said that, though...

So, what'd we do after that?

Well, I met up with Shimpei and his fairly cute girlfriend. You can see the two of them posing on the left. Apparently, she was going to help us navigate the city, and is a "train expert" in Shimpei's words. Oh, her name is Natsumi, though I'm not certain which kanji she writes it with. I haven't checked, but I would assume there are at least ten different ways you can write that name.
I hate kanji.

So we visited some random parts of Tokyo: Ginza... and... other places I don't know the names of. Yeah, I was completely lost and just following our train ninja.

I took the obligatory picture of the Tokyo Tower. Or rather, about 30 of them, when all was said and done.
The sky was pretty bright, but nothing compared to the tower, so I couldn't get them to expose with each other. I didn't realize it was that much of a problem until I got back, or I would've set up a couple shots to make into an HDR picture when I got back. Tried to pano everything together, but to no avail.
I got Natsumi to take this picture of me, but it took us a few tries because I was backlit. She moved the camera a little and blurred the background. Honestly,I think it makes the picture better. It looks cool. Though I'm a little worried for my right kidney and lung, which might have something to say if that part of my body started disappearing.

After about six hours of wandering around Tokyo, we headed back home, where Shimpei and I intended to make some food. Really, though, he made the smart decision and didn't let me try to cook anything, so I just watched. Mabudofu is pretty good, by the way.
Tempura eggplant is not good, by the way.

Saw this random bit of goodness on the way back. I want to make some connection between this and traditional Asian healing practices I don't believe in, but I've got nothing witty for it, really.

After dinner, we basically lazed about until it was time to go to bed. After a day filled with standing up and walking around and riding the train, it was really nice to stop, sit still, and just kind of exist without all the people and noises and... everything.

やっぱり、田舎の人なのね。。。

Two Weeks' Plans

I'm currently planning and generally preparing for two trips I have coming up. One to Tokyo and one to Matsue.

Tokyo, besides being the capital of Japan, is also home to the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. Well, technically, that's in Shin-Yokohama, but it's all part of the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area, but that's like the difference between Seattle, Renton, Tukwila, and the rest of Western Washington. It's all kind of one big urbana.
The main reason I want to visit Tokyo, however, is Akihabara. While KMD may think that it's Swahili, it's actually like Mecca for geeks. Imagine an entire area of town that's basically a big Radio Shack. Blocks on blocks of camera gear, various electronics, games, anime, and all kinds of a things otaku. Sounds fun, right?

I would normally not be able to afford this at all, but a graduate student who is the son of one of my teachers has offered to let me stay at his apartment and show me around.
I was talking to Sara yesterday while she was trying to find hotel reservations and she's looking at about $950 US for five days' stay. Not too outrageous, but that's double the amount of money sitting in my bank right now and doesn't include the two-person, two-way Shinkansen tickets, which are $110 each way if you get the student discount. Normal tickets are $135 or so, but they're both students, so figure an extra $450 for transportation.
You can see why I think they're rich.

Matsue is the place I was originally going to do my study abroad. It's the largest city in the Shimane prefecture, and home to Shimane University and Shimane Junior University, where Yoko KODAMA (a teacher of mine from a year or so ago) works. I've got some friends in the area, too, and hope to visit them.
Transportation to Matsue is roughly equivalent with transportation to Tokyo, but I'm told there are really cheap hotels you can stay at in Matsue.

Anyway, that all starts on the 27th of this month, which is three days from now, but somehow feels like more than that.

Random Bits Not Big Enough for Post of Their Own

Miscellaneous interesting things that happened to or around me today:
- First off, these two pictures wouldn't fit in the Obon post, but I took them there. They're two of my favorites, so I couldn't just leave them out.
- Tried out some bug repellant that I got from Shari. Instead of getting gnawed to death, I was actually playing with the mosquitoes, and they wouldn't get within two or three inches of where I had put the repellant. Next time, I might leave one spot for them to land, just so I can swat them. I got at least four or five while I was checking my email today.

- I have never before been patted encouragingly on the butt by woman. Or rather, I hadn't. I don't know what that means. Thanks, Chen, now I will worry about that for weeks.

- Ran into Alessandra and company at the Obon festival. Alessandra is the Italian girl I've been chasing all semester and summer break. I have had no luck whatsoever, and she's leaving in two or three days. Well, that's normal for me, you know?

- Got a haircut. First time in Japan. It doesn't look so good, but... He did what I asked, so I have nobody to blame.

- I saw the police, uh, handling a drunken guy on my way back. I was making pretty good time (considering I was crossing 80-90% of the city's diagonal size), but stopped in Omiya to watch the drunken guy. The police were trying to get him to take a taxi, and had to rather forcefully wedge him in the taxi at least twice. I think the driver wasn't comfortable with the idea, so the cops called for a cop-van-mobile and they shoved him in that instead. They were really polite to him the entire time and the most physical force I saw them use was to keep the guy from falling on the ground again. See, at first they underestimated his drunkenness, and he fell into the street simply by epic walking failure.
I've never before seen someone roll down the street.
Anyway, I had hoped to congratulate the cops on handling it so well, but the four of them (two came in the cop-van-mobile) left the police box unmanned - yes, locked; yes, I checked - and took him away. Dunno where to, but he didn't seem to know where he lived, if "Where do I live?" and "My home? Where the hell is that?" are any indication of that. Have some pictures, but I was trying to be discreet, which is hard to do in a well-lit intersection.

- Was there, but not involved in, the creation of a new standard of beauty: long ass and tight legs. Little too much sangria for some people? I dunno. It was pretty funny, though.

- Went farther to the East than I have previously, to the point where many of the main roads simply stop existing. Hung out with Ana, Waii (sp?), Chen, Eileen, Jonas, and some other people whose names refuse to come to my mind in it's groggy state of dogged fogginess.

- Ate a strawberry jam mochi pan which was basically a strawberry jam sandwich.

- Was very glad I had an extra shirt, 'cause the one I was wearing when I got to Chen's place was... pretty damp. It was so wet, it was difficult to take off, and when I went to dry myself off a little with it, I couldn't find any dry spots.
It was not a good-smelling thing.

An Old Picture from a Maid Cafe

A few days before he left Kyoto, Aaron went with me to Osaka, where we wandered around dendentoun (literally "electric electric [town]"). We also stopped at a maid cafe, as we didn't have enough time for our alternate plans.
They didn't want you to take pictures, because they wanted to charge you $8 a shot for them, but I managed to piece together a couple that we took and got this:
Which looks a lot like a random room, but frilly. The maids were all noobs and not very good, and I think that's pretty normal if you go at the start of summer. It's the only time I've been, but I'll make sure to go near the end of summer next time, if I feel the need to blow another $20-40 to talk to 16-year-old high-schoolers in maid outfits.
Alternately, my university has a high school stuck on the back of it, so...

Transportation

Here's a table showing my costs and times for the places I went yesterday.  You should know that Kobe is decently far from Kyoto, about 40 miles as the crow flies and well over 45 if you have to stay on the ground like the rest of us mortals.

From	To	Duration	Cost	In Real Money
Kyoto Saiin	Juuso	00:50	¥ 390	$ 3.54
Juuso	Kobe Sannomiya	00:40	¥ 250	$ 2.27
Kobe Sannomiya	Juuso	00:40	¥ 250	$ 2.27
Juuso	Kyoto Saiin	00:50	¥ 390	$ 3.54
Total		03:00	¥ 1,280	$ 11.62
From	To	Duration	Cost	In Real Money
Apartment	Sanjo Keihan	00:30	¥ -	$ -
Waiting in the crowd		00:25	¥ -	$ -
Sanjo Keihan	JR Yamashina	00:20	¥ 250	$ 2.27
OMG CROWD		00:20	¥ -	$ -
Yamashina	Otsu	00:10	¥ 180	$ 1.63
WTF crowd (even after an hour!)		00:30	*	*
Otsu	JR Yamashina	00:10	¥ 180	$ 1.63
JR Yamashina	Sanjo Keihan	00:20	¥ 250	$ 2.27
Total		02:45	¥ 860	$ 7.81

*Actually, we were going so slow that I got a lot of pictures here; there was just enough space for my 18-55mm to get most of a person at the wide end.  Good thing Japanese women are short?  In addition, I was running around and spotted a pretty decent fan that had fallen under-ish some shrubbery.  It's blue.
So I spent about $20 total on trains yesterday, and figure about $15 for food: $5 for lunch, ~$4 at a pastry shop, and $3 for a melon-flavored shaved ice thing.

Kobe!

Today was my first time going to Kobe. I went with Bryden, my neighbor, and we wandered around aimlessly for four or five hours. It was hot and muggy, which I'm growing familiar with, though I don't think I'll ever be used to it.

The most interesting thing we saw while we were there is a shrine whose name I didn't catch. It had a bunch of little torii (the red, upside-down-U-shaped gates) and three different sets of koinu (part-dog guard statues that scare off evil spirits) that I found. The one at right is a rather slim kind that I haven't seen anywhere else, while the two at left are the more standard form.

Now, this may be a strange thing to notice, but I was a little bit perturbed to see that one of them (to the left of this paragraph) actually has a penis. His partner doesn't, so I have to wonder if the sculptor just did it to see if he could get away with it, or if that's for scaring off evil spirits, too.

Maybe I haven't noticed it before and it's really common on statues or something. This boar also had one, though I didn't notice until I was picking which pictures to post and which to toss. There was some English just out of the frame on the bottom, but we were in a bit of a rush by this point, I think, so I didn't stop to get that.

We did our best to figure out what this sign was for, but we were completely defeated. The windows of the shop were very small, so we didn't get a good look at what was on the inside, either. It's English, though, so at least it's cool, even if it doesn't make any sense. Right?

In other news, we saw an old woman wearing a shirt that read "too blessedness". Bryden thinks maybe it was supposed to be a toast like "to blessedness", but I pointed out that there are plenty of shirts that just say "SEXY" in the largest letters possible, so it's I think the standard humility doesn't apply because a lot of people don't understand. Maybe. Or something. We were on the subway, so no picture. Sara and Bethany are convinced my camera makes people think I'm a terrorist or something.

We found some other Engrish, though, as you can see at right. The text reads

READY STUDY GO
FAVORITE THINGS
MYSTERIOUS FRIGHT TO ORIGINAL
DEPTH OF ANYTHINGS
BY PROGRAMING MASTERS

During this time of year, when you're wandering around, people will be wearing yukata (summerweight kimono) because they are very cool and breezy. Here's a token yukata girl. Don't worry, there'll be more with the fireworks pictures I'm putting up later.

We went to a ramen shop for lunch, and it was pretty decent. I got yakisoba and gyouza (meat dumplings, I guess?) and he got a fried rice set. After this, it was 3:30 or so, so we had to rush back so I could meet up with Ana to go to Fireworks. Also had to get a picture of Bryden for his mom, since she wanted to see his shaved head.

Yes, he even shaved his eyebrows.

Matsuo Taisha, Episode Three - But Mostly Arashiyama

I went to Arashiyama again, this time with Hamid and Alessandra. We wandered around the shops a little bit and took random pictures. Pictures like the one at right are, I'm sure, pretty much required by everybody who ever goes to Arashiyama.
Saw the shoes at left while we were there. Hamid pointed them out and I had taken the picture before he had finished his "Wow, look at those shoes!"-like sentence. I have to wonder if they're any more difficult to walk in than normal high-heeled shoes, or pretty much the same. I guess it's possible they'd be easier, since the sole is at least more regular.
These Hello Kitty cups were pretty cool, too. Almost bought one for Jes on accident.
Wandered up to a spot where we always go swimming at night and discovered that it there are lots of fishes and frogs in the water. I had a staring contest with a frog, but completely lost. I walked off and came back five minutes later and he still hadn't looked anywhere else but where I had been standing. This frog picture is from a different day, but I like it because it has a tadpole of bigness.
I also found a 毛虫 ("hair bug") up there. You might recall these from Super Mario World for the SNES. I was very surprised to learn the things actually exist. They dangle from trees by a string and have very long hairs, presumably to get caught on things and travel.
And speaking of bugs, it's worth mentioning that the mosquitoes here are not to be ignored. Or rather, you're going to have to try very hard if you intend to ignore them. You can see poor Alessandra's ankle in this picture at left.
I don't scratch mine nearly as much, but I have four bites on one side of my right ankle, and four on my left hand, in addition to random bites in other places. I've recently been taking more precautions, but it's too hot to wear anything with sleeves and even jeans are pretty uncomfortable.
Hamid wanted to play with my camera, so I got this shot at far left, along with about 20 more that are the exact same or very nearly so.

I convinced her to pose with me a little more, saying that my parents get sad if I don't show them I'm hanging out with cute girls at least once in a while. Here we posed to illustrate our difference in size, and I think you can see it pretty clearly at right. Notice also that I'm wearing sandals and have one of my legs bent so I'm standing up straight instead of sloping sideways.
She's usually pretty shy, but Hamid seems to have rubbed off on her a little, 'cause she actually asked us to take pictures of her.

A little later, we actually got around to going to Matsuo Taisha and stopped in to get some Mitarashii dango (prounced "meet-ah-rah-she dahn-goh", if that makes sense), which the shop is famous for. You can see both the dango and Hamid's reaction to their slimy mess at left.
That brown sauce is a kind of sweet soy-based goo, while the dango themselves are a basically a ball of rice cake. The whole thing is a dessert.
Between the dango and the sauce, you have to drink about a glass of water for each kebab of 'em that you eat.
Once we were done, I convinced two of the girls working there to pose with my friends, and they got all giggly, as Japanese girls tend to do when you ask to take pictures of them.


I've been threatening to upload a nice, high-resolution panorama composite for months now, and I'm finally making good on that. If you click on the picture, you'll see the nice, sane, 120KB JPG version. Should load decently quickly, even on 56k. Anyway, this is the downstairs part of a shop we went into. If this shop doesn't yell "Tourist trap!" or "Leavenworth!" to you, then... Well, it should, in any case.And then there's the ridiculously high-resolution version (33MB PNG), which will take a while even on a fast connection. It's something like 10,000 pixels horizontally.

Saturday everything: Hiking around

So after being up until 4AM and not having made any preparations whatsoever, I somehow woke up at 8AM the next day - a half hour before the first alarm I had set. So I threw my stuff together, got a shower, and headed off. I knew at this point only that I had to cross a river, and not the one to my west.
So I did.

Then I called for help.

After that, you can pretty much follow the pictures... at the gallery!

I have to get going, so none of those even have captions. The girls are Ana (dark hair) and Simone (blonde).

Woot, Akiba plans!

Well, it looks like I've accidentally secured a place to stay late-ish in the summer for my Tokyo trip. A friend's son has offered to let me stay at his apartment in Yokohama for a few days. It's a $7, one-hour trip from Akihabara, so I won't be limited to just one trip to Geek Mecca, but will be able to go numerous times. Figure three or four days if that's okay, and I will probably spend two to three of them exploring Akihabara.

Short, but finally a picture

Went to club, wandered off, and got overconfident in my ability to find my way home. Took me an hour and a half, but I (as you can see) managed it decently.
To demonstrate the extent to which I was lost, here's a picture of a fountain I found that neither Sandy nor Aaron had seen before.

Disgustingly enough, this picture is from my phone. You will note that the biggest problem with this picture is a little CA on the zoo's roof.

Unforseen Bicycle?

I went out to a bar called The Pig and Whistle today with a friend from club. It's described as a British pub, so I had hopes their fish and chips would be decent. They were actually pretty good. My chicken and chips was pretty good as well, and the dressing on the salad was the perfect amount, which I thought was pretty cool. We ended up spending about two hours there, and had some pretty good conversation.
I'm getting in the habit of using a lot of diagrams. I drew, to scale, the US, four different cartridges (.22LR, .223, 12G, and .45), and made an attempt at Portugal. And between my friend and I, we sketched out a unit circle and poked fun of my math.
By the way: KMD, you make for a great topic. I've talked for hours about my crazy American friend with twenty guns and a box of assorted knify bits.

Anyway, the bike, which is the subject.

[Edit: I seem to have forgotten to mention that a new bike, from a bike shop, will cost between $120 and $200. Probably towards the upper part of that range, since I want a bike with more than one gear.]
[A second edit: I should also mention that while Kyoto has a very usable mass transit system, it's small enough that I can get anywhere on my bike just about as fast, and while getting exercise, and it's free. I was just doing some math, and if I go downtown once a week for the remaining time I'm here - and I am much more likely to go two to three times a week - it would end up at about $120, assuming I never use the buses, which are much more expensive. This is why the "walk, you bum!" option isn't really.]

As it would turn out, my bicycle's rear brake chose today to decide that it would get stuck half engaged. Today, I went 6 miles (8.4km) - not a long way, right? - with the rear brake half engaged.
I thought I was just being particularly out of shape at first, and then it started to squeak more and I realized what the problem was. I tried poking at it, but this is Japan, so I can't carry my Leatherman with me. I kicked it a couple of times for good measure, and generally pried at it with my flashlight, but to no avail.

I poked at it anyway on a couple of different occasions. On the way back, it was extra sludgy, though not as squeaky, so I did my best to go at a decent speed in spite of it. I stopped at one point in hopes of getting a picture of some policemen, but they said they can't do that while they're working. When I got back on, I felt the brake assembly, and it was a touch under 100 Fahrenheit after two to three minutes of cooling in humid air.

I'm going to try and disconnect the brake so I can use my bike tomorrow morning, but I think I'm going to see about buying a new bike either this weekend or tomorrow afternoon. What I'm thinking is that this bike cost me about $60 with the registration and whatnot. Having the tires replaced would cost about $30, and that needs to be done anyway, 'cause they only hold a safe amount of air for about three days. After that, the tires slide sideways on slight slopes. So, $30 there.
I have no idea how much it would cost to have the rear brake fixed, but I can't identify anything wrong with it, and I can't imagine it will cost any less than having the tires replaced. So, figure another $20-30 for that. We're up to at least $50.

The light on my bike won't engage when the tires are wet, which is exactly the kind of situation where I want cars and other cyclists to know I'm there. Those are about $15, plus an unknown installation fee, though I could probably do that myself. About $65, so we've now exceeded the original purchase cost of my bike.
To add to this, there are no reflectors on the wheels, and only a small one on the back and just the light on the front, so I'm nearly invisible at night. Good situation, right?

Then we can get into things that aren't actually broken, but are merely inconvenient. This is my first bike of this sort, so I'm looking at it much like my FZ8: a learning experience to grow from.

• Height: It's a small bike, even for a Japanese person, which I am not. The seat does not go nearly high enough to make for a proper ride.
• Gears: This bike has one gear: "Go." Seriously, it has just one gear. This is fine as long as you want to go roughly ten miles an hour and never encounter a slope, but it's not so great if you're trying to not get run down by cars doing 30km/h.
• Racks: The basket on this bike is small, and it's rounded, so a lot of things just don't fit into it. Oh, and the paint burnt off where someone tossed a cigarette into it, for some reason, so it's going t
  The back rack is the same as just about every other one, though, so no complaints there
• Form: If I wore an ankle-length skirt, this would be a great bike in terms of form. But I don't. I wear pants. And the traditional triangle shape is traditional for a reason: it's strong. The wobbly curves of this bike are scary if you put any more than about twenty pounds on the two racks.
• Even when the rear brake does engage properly, it still doesn't effectively slow me down, it more just makes a loud squawk and tells people that I'm there. This has it's uses, but I'd prefer that it didn't do that. I'll be avoiding a rear drum brake if possible.
  

I will totally take the pedals off, though, and have them put them on the new bike, when and if I do buy a new one. That should only cost about $5, and then I get to keep my $20 pedal investment. As it is, this bike has too many things wrong with it for me to feel safe riding it, let alone comfortable. But these are things I would never have considered before I bought it, and now maybe some of you will have been able to learn from this, as well. Most of this has been bother me for a while, but the whole brake thing makes it effectively unridable. I can walk next to it with less effort and at the same speed.
I'll make sure to post a picture once it's gone, if I can't fix it, since I haven't put a picture of it up as yet.

[eloquent segue]

Like I said, I'm looking at this bike as a learning experience; it cost me, but now I know much more clearly what I do and do not want in a bicycle. Hopefully I can sell it back to a cycle shop for $20 or something, and they can fix it in-house and resell it at the same $50 price or something.

Input would be appreciated.

An Interesting Shop

Warning: Vaguely NSFW.

Though you'll be happy to know that this post has no pictures.

Ever since I heard about the existence of shops devoted entirely to sex-related stuff, I've wanted to go one. I mean, it just seems like something that everyone should do at some point. I mean, besides Jes.
Anyway, I heard there was one in the area, got directions, and then headed over to it today. Unfortunately, it turned out to basically be a four-story porn shop with random anime and manga of the non-porn variety mixed in on the first floor - plus some clothes and various otaku miscellany - and sex toys, bathing suits, and underwear on the top floor. There really wasn't anything particularly exciting here, though I think the swimsuits actually looked fairly nice.

In any case, the way I found the place totally beats what was actually inside. See, I went past the first time on my bike and didn't see it. I turned around and head back the direction I came from, hoping to spot it since I knew which side of the road it was on. Naturally, this means I was only mostly looking forward. It also means that the pole that hit the left side of my handlebars and drive my left should right into said signpole was totally unexpected.

Want to guess which store this sign was in front of?

Chibi Store

I found a cool little kids' store. It has all sorts of little candies that can be bought for about 10¢, and a wide range of candy under a dollar. For about a dollar, they'll do all kinds of tempura, as well, from what I can tell.
It's not so much a shop as much as a shack that's been hot-glued on his back door, so it's not really a classy place, but it's one of those things that really doesn't have upkeep, and it probably makes kids really happy.
Yum, cavities!

Harvesting All You Can Eat Strawberries

So I went to a strawberry farm during the trip, and I finally got around to putting my two chibi-pano shots together. I like the composite at right, personally, and think it works fairly well.
Anyway, when we went to the strawberry farm, they gave of us these little paper cups that we could put strawberries in. They were your standard paper cups capable of holding about 5 ounces of water, so they filled up pretty quick given the place.
As it so happens, I had a bandanna in my pants pocket. As it so happens, two knots transformed it into a bag.
As it so happens, I was standing in about an acre of densely-packed, ripe, delicious strawberries. Some were so moist and delicious that they exploded when I tried to pull them off the... vine? Anyway, I ate a bunch of strawberries, and brought out this bag.

As I we were driving away, I found out that that we weren't allowed to bring any strawberries out of the greenhouse. They enforced this to the extent that someone tried to walk out with three or four and they wouldn't let her go until she ate them.

The bag weighed three to four pounds, just so you know. Also, as far as I know, there were no signs indicating that you were not to harvest the delicious fruits contained in this greenhouse for purposes other than immediate consumption.

To make me feel better, me and some friends finished them off the next day.

Surprisingly enough, as far as I know, nobody in our whole group got sick.

Okayama Field Trip, day 1

I'm going to start off by saying that if it seems like this is an awful small number of pictures for a two-day trip... Well, it is. The reason for that is that I have about 50 up in the gallery for this trip.
On Wednesday and Thursday, all the study abroad students went on a field trip instead of classes. I'm sure a couple people skipped out, but pretty much all 120 or so of us went, I think. It was school-sponsored, and it would be entirely possible to go and not pay a dime more, but I spent about $60 during the two-day period between various random food and ice cream and drinks and omiyage.

We left the school around 8AM, stopped at some kind of rest area about halfway, and got to our first place around 11. It was the Bizen sword smithing village, which is cool, but we pretty much just wandered around in a museum, which was not so cool. Everybody else must have thought it was pretty boring, too, as the three little smithing video games they had set up never fell into disuse for more than about thirty seconds. They had some hand-forged kitchen knives for sale, but I fortunately only had about $90 on me and they were averaging about $120. As cool as swords are, I'm not really a museum person. They always feel kind of snobby, I think. Or at least it's similar to snobby.

Next, we got back on the bus for... a... while? Anyway, we had lunch a bit later, and I ate most of it, but couldn't convince myself to eat the little sardine fish thing.

Ew.

On the bright side, after lunch, we looked at another random tourist-trappish shop, then went and played in a park. I'm not sure if that was planned or not, but I think it was one of the highlights of the trip. There are some good shots from the park in the gallery.

This is a picture of the girl I sat with on the way back. I can neither spell nor pronounce her name, but it's Russian, and is apparently very common.

Next up is the oldest public school in the world. Or at least, so they claim. I thought it was a nice area, as it was the first time I've seen grass in decent quantity since comng to Japan. There were a couple of other schools touring around here, too, and I accidentally got a pantyshot on some random girl when I took a picture of their class. There was some interesting stuff here, but I would have to recommend the Korakuen garden over this place if you're choosing between the two. The school's name was something like shizutani, which I would venture to guess means "quiet valley". By the way, gallery.

Later, we went to an all-you-can-eat strawberry farm, where you basically get an hour to pick and eat as many as you can. This by itself was pretty cool, but I had a bandanna in my pocket and ended up bringing about four pounds of strawberries with me. That bandanna now looks like I tried to kill someone with it and smells like I put about four pounds of strawberries in it. Strangely enough.
I later found out that they were stopping people when they tried to bring out even a handful of strawberries, so I guess it's just by chance that I managed to walk off with my big bag o' fruity business. Even though we didn't have a fridge, we managed to eat them all before they went bad. Some were so plump and juicy that I popped them just by pulling them off the vine. You can see the fruits of our labor in the picture at right, but somebody else got a picture of my sack, and I want to get that from them for my own uses. You really should check out the gallery, by the way.

After this, we finally went to the ryokan (Japanese-style inn), where many people immediately went into the onsen, but my group of guys just kind of sat around and talked. It was cool anyway, as the onsen was probably overcrowded with everybody in it and I was pretty wary of the whole idea, anyway. It's been a long time since I got naked in front of random people, and I wasn't intending to stay naked previously, which psychologically makes a big difference, maybe.

Dinner was traditional Japanese cuisine, which means I couldn't recognize any of it and most of it was completely inedible. Raw beef was surprising, but it was the most delicious thing there. After all the scary foods, they finally brought out some rice just before the end, for which I was oh-so-thankful. Even if the rice blew, it was still nice to eat something I could identify. I mean, I'm all for trying new foods, but this trip used up all of my food bravery for about two months. Did I mention lunch was also traditional Japanese cuisine?

Oh, and breakfast the next day.

Traditional Japanese food might be okay if you are against cooked meat, really like fish and random seafood, think that everything is better with fish eggs sprinkled on top, or have just always wanted to eat vast quantities of raw egg, or don't have taste buds. I qualify none of these conditions, and will happily go on eating plain white rice every day. Oh, and the Japanese food that's imported from China, like ramen. Yum.

As an added bonus, us silly Americans were just about the only people wearing our street clothes at dinner. At breakfast, we were just about the only ones wearing yukata. There's just no winning, I think.

[eloquent segue]

Well, that was day one of our two-day trip! It was my intention to do the whole trip in one post, but this is already well past a printed page (though it's less than I thought), so I'll end here for now.
Oh, and check out the gallery.

Why?

Well, I've annotated all the photos that I intended to upload, but the administrators here apparently feel that Picasa is a scourge upon the world (or something) and have felt the need to block access to it. Since my laptop's battery is already drained, I'll upload the gallery either tonight or tomorrow. I should have a few more pictures from later today by then, too.

Here are some pictures to hold you over.

Arashiyama

Grah, I meant to post some stuff today, but I was too busy catching up on webcomics and now I need to go to judo club. Well, rest assured that I at least had an interesting weekend. On Friday, I took about 50 pictures, and this is the only one I can post here.
Yes, she's putting her clothes back on.
Everybody afterward agreed that they were not nearly drunk enough to do something like what they had just done, but nobody drank anything afterward. To answer your questions: no, I didn't drink and no, I didn't lose my underwear, which more than I can say for one guy, who had to search for about half an hour to find it.

Oh, and I just remembered this green tea Kit-Kat that I found. Too weird to not take a picture of, right?

Maybe just disturbing.

Belated Adventuring Pictures (non-monkey-park)

And here are my pictures from wandering around the city after the monkey park.

First up is a random 人力車 (rickshaw) and its... driver? Puller? Runner? Whatever you call the guy who pulls a rickshaw.
I think the composition of this shot came out well. I'm always surprised when a shot comes out decently, because my artistic sense (the important thing when dealing with composition) is almost non-existent. This shot feels like it has a decent amount of balance, but still has some tension. I caught that pose entirely by accident, but I like it. He looks like the main character out of Ninja Scroll.

I kind of accidentally uploaded this one, but I was playing around with my camera. Can you guess what the picture is of?
I'll check the comments later and see if anybody gets it.


I mentioned that it's Golden Week, and this means that there are random things going on everywhere. I don't really understand it, but there was some robo-sumo going on in the mall. It seemed too Japanese for me to not take the picture, so I didn't. At left.

Another Golden Week thing, I guess. This picture is called "Uberchu.jpg" on my computer, for good reason. I would like to remind you that Pikachu has an official height of something like two feet. I remember it being something like 1' 4", though.
Anyway, this Pikachu is there probably because of the movie/game ad he's standing in front of and because of the massive pile of everyone that's wandering around around this time.

Last up are these maico. Or geisha. I seriously can't tell the difference, so if you can, tell me, please. Nice kimono, in any case. The guy with his hand up is the old guy I mentioned yesterday. You can't see the grey in his hair due to him not being in the depth of field.

Belated Adventuring Pictures

I mentioned yesterday that I had gone to Arashiyama to do some hiking, but never actually found the place. This was due to a couple of reasons, not the least of which were map failure and a late start - 3PM. On the bright side, I totally headed over to the monkey park, where I got some nice pictures of monkeys, a couple people-monkeys, and a few great panoramas I'll stitch together at some point. Anyway, here's some monkey picture spam.

These first two pictures are of the first monkey I saw. I had to switch to my telephoto lens, 'cause he was about thirty feet away and my 18-55mm just wouldn't cut it at the range without serious cropping, to say nothing about bokeh. The DOF came out nicely with the telephoto lens, I think.

The female hanging through the fencing is sitting at the feeding area. They had decent-sized bags of food that you could buy for a dollar and feed to the monkeys by hand. I eventually ended up buying one and I really think it was worth it. I mean, for that sort of thing, I'd expect they'd charge you a bunch of money, just because it's touristy and it's what usually happens with stuff like that. Anyway, I fed most of the bag two or three of them and discovered they have quite sharp claws. I mean, I guess I would too if I didn't clip my fingernails, but it hadn't occurred to me before. One of the weirdest things to me was their size, which ranged from the size of a small cat to a medium-sized dog.

This guy with the munchies at the right was fed an acorn outside so this guy could get a picture of it, and I took the opportunity as well. This was still up by the feeding area, which doubles as an observation area, and you can see the entire city of Kyoto. Well, a lot of city, in any case.

At left is the panorama, though it's not that impressive as it would appear that I didn't line up my shots right, so I had to crop a lot out. I'll dig around later and see if I can get something close to a 360. I took two sets of shots for that, so I should be able to.


Alright, then. This is right after the resting area, where there's a drinking pond that I saw a couple using. This pose was too good not to pass up, and even with how nicely it came out, I got it on accident trying to get a different pose that makes this one look lame. I was too slow on the camera draw, though.

Oh, and monkey snuggles. I saw a couple monkeys sleeping together and the phrase "monkey snuggles" just stuck in my mind. I know a kitten for whom the monkey snuggles pictures are for, but she's not greedy, so everybody gets some monkey snuggles.

Seriously, who can resist the monkey snuggles?


Here's a monkey in a tree. It seemed odd that monkeys are basically thought of as hanging out in trees all the time, but this area had plenty and they all kind of walked around. This guy with the cute expression just watched one of his buddies fall ten feet through a bunch of branches 'cause the branches in another tree snapped. Nothing like hearing a snap followed by a serious of fwooshes as a monkey discovers gravity does indeed apply when you're in a tree.

Right before I took this shot, I had pissed off a monkey apparently. I think I was taking pictures of it cleaning its mate, or maybe just one of its friends. Who knows. In any case, he/she got all pissy and ran at me and growled. Next time I go, I'll be wearing my nice, big desert boots, in the event that a monkey finds my feet to need some gnawing or something.

Segue.

A monkey licking the handrail of a slide. Go figure.
There was a sign posted saying "Don't run down the slide. Please only slide down the slide." I have to wonder who first ran down the slide and broke something.
In any case, the slide was pretty cool. It had about 15 feet of drop and about 20 feet of horizontal displacement. And a monkey licking it.


Here's the last picture from the monkey park, and I felt it suitably ironic that, inside the monkey park was a small human park, where the monkeys could sit and watch the humans play. Is that really irony?

An Attempted Hiking

I tried to go hiking today, but I couldn't find the place. I did manage to get lost in some kind of massive park. And then there was a tourist trap. And a shrine. Or a temple. I can't ever keep the two straight, but I understand it's difficult for Japanese people, so I don't feel too bad about it.

While I was wandering around in the temple-thing, I saw a woman walking with her son (who was pretending to be a ninja) and a man walking with his wife. At first, I thought Wow, he's pretty old for her. I mean, she looks like she couldn't be any older than 25. Then they started talking to each other. Now, that might not seem that strange, but Japanese people, I've noticed, don't just talk to people they don't know while they're wandering around. At that point, I realized that the man's "wife" was his daughter, who was probably about 14, and the woman with the boy was his wife. Which makes much more sense. The guy's hair was greying, but as you can tell, I have no ability to judge the ages of Japanese people.
"She's... between 14 and 25. Probably."

I asked the guy about the metal plates in the ground and he said they mark property lines, or at least agreed with me when I tried to say that. Mystery solved, I guess. Kind of anti-climatic, no?

Had some strawberry ice cream and a croquet that was delicious. It was a dollar, too. Got lots of neat pictures in the park, but only took a few pictures in town. I have a couple panoramas to assemble, thinking about it.

Oh, and on Friday, I ate lunch with one of my teachers and a teacher I hadn't met before as I'm not in any of her classes. Despite that, I've heard about her a number of times; a bunch of the male students are taking her class because she's the hot, I think. I've heard from at least three different players that she's the hottest thing since soup, or something similar.
In any case, the three of us had lunch together and I failed to comprehend my food. It was one of those pick-up-the-noodles-and-dance dishes that I always worry about.

Well, it was. I made some changes and went over by a little...

I went to Osaka with Bethany and Sara today. It was pretty lame. It was like Kyoto, but more spread out, with less space to walk, more people, and the shops were more expensive. Watch me stick around Kyoto for shopping. Bethany and Sara have both been picking on me quite a bit, and it’s getting on my nerves a little, so I have to admit that watching Bethany fail at the train made me feel good. You’ll recall that I did the same thing yesterday. (Edit: By the way, I talked to Bethany about it, and I think she must've mentioned it to Sara. Yesterday was much more fun.

That said, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. We stopped at a マックド(McDonald’s) and I had my first taste of Japanese McDonald’s food, which was, unsurprisingly, just like American McDonald’s food. I mean, imagine that! … Yeah.

Roxanne has some bizarre obsession with ice, and the ice is different here. It’s smaller, a little jagged on the edges to improve surface area and thus cooling speed, and very soft. Perfect for chewing. The picture is McDonald’s’ ice, but that seems to be standard, ‘cause it’s the same stuff I got at the Mr. Young Men’s later.

We found a random escalator outside. I’m not certain how they keep it from dying in the rain, as it seems like it would be a pain to waterproof that kind of thing. Oh, and right next to the escalators was this nice fountain… thing. Is that a fountain? I don’t really know. It’s in the picture, on the right.

So once we decided that Osaka sucks, we headed back to Kyoto and got off at Kawaramachi, the shopping district. You’d think that shopping with two girls for a whole day that they would’ve bought something. As far as I know, the only things that were purchased by them were train tickets and one bottle of water because Bethany was getting pretty thirsty. Anyway, I lost them/they lost me somewhere in one of the shopping arcades, so I started wandering around on my own.

There are a number of interesting shops in the area, such as the two army surplus stores (one of which I checked out, and it has decent prices), a couple kimono shops (between $50 and $3,000 here), about three dozen (not kidding!) Japanese confectionaries, and a couple of convenience stores. It’s so weird to find a 7-11 indoors. Well, there aren’t any actual doors, per se. You know.

But right by the not-a-door entrance is an お好み焼き(okonmiyaki literally translates to “what you like, fried”) where I got a very delicious ラブラブお好み(“love love okonomi”, a heart-shaped お好み焼き with fish flakes and beef on top). I thought I was watching her make it, but she kept making other people’s orders. Right when I was about to ask about how long was left on mine, she pulls it nearly completed from a nearby countertop oven. At my request, she added ベニショウガ(pickled ginger chopped into cubes or Julian-style – it’s the red stuff with a strong smell), which is one of my favorite condiments/ingredients.

You can be certain that I’ll be going back to that shop in the future. It’s that Mr. Young Men’s I mentioned earlier. Sounds weird, but the prices are decent for that kind of eating. And they have an English menu that’s actually translated decently. First one I’ve seen in two weeks of being here.

Now that I had eaten my fill of delicious egg-pancake-pizza stuff, I headed towards the area that Sara had described as “Kyoto’s own little Denden town”. Denden Town is Osaka’s very own little Akihabara. We had meant to go to Denden town today, but we got off the train about three miles away and the girls are… girls.

This area was quite a lot of electronics on its own, so I can hardly imagine what Akihabara must be like. In any case, I found a place called Camera Naniwa that had all kinds of, you guessed it, camera stuff. It was a very decent store, and had two of four floors with interesting stuff. The other two were scrapbooking and an art gallery.

In any case, I ended up wandering around that place for about, oh, a good hour. Except, I had gone rather far south and had to walk about ¾ of a mile north to get to the station entrance. Then I got lost in the department store that leads to the train station. Seriously, a square turtle-load of overpriced crap. Oh, and a couple パン屋(basically a bakery), which I ignored due to it being very overcrowded.

Obligatory car-a-vator. See left.

So. I finally get on the train and get back to my part of Kyoto. I then proceed to get lost (vaguely in the right direction, though) due to it now being night and chat up a random family that’s walking home from… somewhere. Forgot to ask. I get to the mall about ten minutes later, wander around for a few minutes, accost some random woman and tell her about the supermarket’s really low prices on something she’s holding, and head home. As I step inside, I realize I’ve forgotten something.

So I toss all the bags (three of them) on the ground and go get my bike from Sara’s place, where we met this morning to walk to the train station.

And that concludes today’s freaktastically long entry. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; I have 929 here, and, what, six pictures?

Damn, I’m getting long-winded.

Transportation Price Breakdown
From		To		Cost		Running Total
City	Area	City	Area	JPY	USD
Kyoto	Saiin	Osaka	Umeda	¥390	$ 3.94	$ 3.94
Osaka	Umeda	Osaka	Namba	¥230	$ 2.32	$ 6.26
Osaka	Namba	Osaka	Umeda	¥230	$ 2.32	$ 8.59
Osaka	Umeda	Kyoto	Kawaramachi	¥390	$ 3.94	$ 12.53
Kyoto	Kawaramachi	Kyoto	Saiin	¥150	$ 1.52	$ 14.04	Total

Actually, my pride mandates that I also put one last picture up. You see that? It says the fare is ￥150 from Kawaramachi (the red one) to Saiin. Sara said it was ￥230. We got into quite a debate over it, so I’m glad to at least be somewhat right. She may be thinking of from a different station or something. I’m not certain.

Well, that’s one thousand words.

Adventure to the East

Obligatory picture of some 桜 (cherry blossoms) because I'm in Japan and they're blooming.

So I ventured out all by myself (to prove I’m a big boy now, I guess?) and found the sushi place I was looking for. Admittedly, I had to ask someone for directions, and I was a block away at the time, but the nice lady showed me the way there as it was on the way to where she was headed. That’s the second time someone’s done that for me here.

Once I was there, I stood outside until they opened, checking out their menu. I didn’t see anything that looked amazingly delicious, or even edible, so I just ordered something that didn’t look too bad. It was a good choice, apparently, as the only part of the meal I wasn’t fond of was the wasabi they had hidden in the sashimi. Oh yeah, I tried something with sashimi. It was a lot more edible than I expected it to be.

In addition to finding and eating at the aforementioned sushi shop, I managed to find the train station, which was a whole two blocks away. That didn’t stop me from crossing eight different intersections on the way, though.

The train fare was a pretty reasonable $1.50 to get there and the same price back, so I dug out a ￥100 and a ￥50 coin, and got a ticket from the ticket vending machine.

See, the way the fare works is pretty ingenious, I think. You pay fare X. It spits out a ticket that I think has data encoded on it magnetically. Then, when you go into the train station itself, you pass the ticket through this very aggressive feed mechanism, which then encodes where you started from on to the ticket. When you get off the train, you pass it through the same thing backwards and it eats your ticket.

My guess is that if you went farther than your fare allows, the nice man with the asp has choice words for you, along with a fee. I haven’t seen that as yet, though. I would’ve been completely lost if it weren’t for this guy about my age who helped me buy the ticket and showed me what to do with it. I had been relying on the fact that if I stood around for a while, I’d find someone approachable-looking to ask for help. As you can see, I did.

You might recall from my last post that I purchased a compass and thought it was kind of lame. If you don’t, that’s basically what I said, so don’t bother reading the other post. Eh.

Here's a picture of some hats. The cheapest was $98. Want to guess which one? I don't remember.

I found the place that the かんりんりん said would sell compasses, and it does indeed sell compasses. They had compasses for your pocket, your keychain, your backpack, your zipper. They had compasses integrated with barometers and loupes and all sorts of things, along with ones specifically for use with paper maps. It was pretty cool. The thing is, this was a very, very small part of their store. Maybe a ten square feet of hookboard. The rest of the shop was just as awesome. They had bags, ponchos, shoes, boots, boots for shoes, hats, waterproof hats, umbrellas, “bear bells”, loops, random little pouches, backpacks, slippers, keychains… It’s not a huge store, mind you. But it was very nicely laid out. It was underground, so it was a lot bigger than most stores in Japan. Probably a couple thousand square feet, so fairly average by US standards. Point is, the store is awesome. I think I have pictures.

I only had my 50mm with me – which is not a great indoor lens due to its rather telephoto nature – so I didn’t take a lot of pictures, but I did manage to find a compass, and grabbed a couple other things I’d been meaning to buy. Ended up spending almost $60, but I think it was worth it.

On the way there and on the way back, I managed to – completely by accident – run across the 花まつい(flower festival), a festival not listed in my book on Kyoto. I wonder if it was created in the last three years – I doubt it given Japan’s nature – or if they just missed it. In any case, there were a bunch of little munchkins

being cute, as munchkins are wont to do, some old guys and some cheerleaders that could’ve been anywhere from middle school to high school. I completely fail at guessing Japanese people’s ages. One of them glared at me, as you can see in the picture that I hope I will remember to attach when I post this.