Brizmus Around the World

Arrival in France

2012-02-14T16:39:00.000+01:00

As most people who are a part of my internet life have probably noticed, I've basically disappeared from the internet over the past two months. I was super busy doing the life thing getting things ready for my imminent move from Japan in December, and then in January I was working. And there's just something about sitting in front of a computer from 8 AM to 5 PM for work that takes away all inspiration to do anything personal on a computer.

Now, though, I have arrived in Paris, and it's looking like I'm going to have far more free time on my hands than I could ever possibly want. So I figured it was as good a time as ever to try to return to the life of brizmus on the internet.

I got here on Friday, and I'm already sick. Frankly, I'm not surprised, as the most common odors I have smelled since being here are cigarettes (frankly, I believe it should be illegal to smoke them both outside and inside, and I think you should think so, too) and the carbon monoxide from cars. And I'm convinced that the only thing green I have seen since being here is the trash bags on the street outside (and really, there's not much trash in them, since Parisians seem to think the ground is a much more appropriate place to throw things) - certainly no plants. As such, I've literally done next to nothing since arriving. Other than just, sit around.

This is the closet in which I've been sitting around:

This is the view from the closet in which I've been sitting around:

The apartment I was supposed to be staying in isn't ready yet (one of the things I've discovered when it comes to Parisians is that you HAVE to have patience or you will go crazy and be miserable all of the time. When it comes to getting things done, you should know that you have to add at least a month to the deadline workers give themselves, often more), so this is where I'm staying in the meantime. Theoretically, the apartment will be ready to move into by this Saturday, but we'll see. . .

I've also discovered the awesomeness of Vegan Folie's, the new vegan cupcake place in Paris, so I've been eating lots of this deliciousness:

Anyhow, since I'm going to have some much free time on my hands here, I've been thinking about some things that I could do. I'm going to try to continue working on a couple novels I started writing a while ago that I never finished (and that I will most likely never allow anyone to read), I'm going to try to keep studying Japanese, and I'm going to keep continuing to try to learn to play the guitar.

I've also decided that I might try to start a "Cigarette Butts are Trash" campaign, though I don't really know how much I could accomplish in 2 months.

We all know that cigarette butts are toxic waste , even if they're not yet labled that way (or at least we should know this, but it would appear that many people choose not to believe because they love smoking too much or because it makes their lives just a little bit more difficult. Or because they're just idiots, you choose.), but it would appear that this news hasn't made it to Europe yet. Regardless of whether or not they are toxic waste, though, they are very obviously TRASH, and I can't understand when it became appropriate to throw trash non-chalantly wherever you choose (I am in Paris, though, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised).

I'm an optimist, though (or at least I try to be, but you know, sometimes we all fail), so I like to think that, with a little knowledge and understanding, maybe Parisians could at least take a step in the right direction to get rid of their disgusting habit of littering the streets with cigarette butts and turning what could be beautiful into a trashcan.

And that's that.

Next time, which will definitely be very soon, we'll go back in time a couple months to some trips I took in Japan (a country where they seem to understand that cigarette butts are, indeed, NOT biodegradable), etc. . .

In the meantime,. . .

2012-01-16T21:45:00.000+01:00

I know I know I know, I haven't updated in FAR TOO LONG! And it's not because I haven't been doing things to update about - it's because I've been doing so many things that I haven't had the time to update.
I promise, though - a real update is on it's way, and hopefully SOON!
In the meantime, to tide you over, a purikura picture of me with my friends Miho and Rachael.

Enjoy, and I'll be back soon!

Doing the Colorado (Taylor Swift) Louisiana Thing

2011-11-10T11:00:00.000+01:00

So, last time I wrote, I wrote about things in Japan, but the time before I hadn't finished writing about my trip to the states, so I think it's time to do that now. :-)

After California, I hopped on a plane with Kristen and Shawn (it really wasn't as easy as hopping on a plane - I swear the whole flying thing gets more and more ridiculous every time I go home. Talk about taking away our right to privacy), and headed on over to Colorado. I was super excited to get to hang out in Kristen's classroom and and to get to meet all of her new students and see some of her students from last year.

And then, Kristen and I went with Krist's friend Katie and her daughter Riley to see TAYLOR SWIFT!

Katie had found this wooden rooster and decided that she needed to bring it with her everywhere. So that's J-Z the wooden rooster in the picture with us.

Taylor Swift was absolutely AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL! And her voice was just as sweet and princess-like as ever.

She sang MOST (unfortunately not ALL of them, but I guess that just means I'll have to see her again) of my favorite songs, and it was more like a Cirque du Soleil type thing than a concert. She changed outfits between every song, and there were acrobats or dancers and stories that seemed to go with every song. I think my favorite was Haunted, when she was banging this huge bell and her hair was flying all manically around her. It was just amazing!

Anyhow, so Taylor Swift was awesome, and I had a GREAT time hanging out with Krist and Shawn. Unfortunately, it was over way too quickly, and before I knew it I was on a plane to Louisiana.

Louisiana was fabulous, though I unfortunately didn't really have all that much free time, as I had doctor's appointments every single day. I did get to hang out with Donald and Christine, though, and with Russell and Miranda and Tyrone. And plus I got to meet Mom's new boyfriend!

Mom and I took a trip to Lafayette to see Aunt Debbie and Brittni on my first day back! It was super fun! Brittni's already in college, and she seems to be doing great! Mom and I just about to start our journey.

Mom had a lunch, so I decided to give Russell and Miranda their wedding present. This is them. Perhaps you'll notice how the knives have Baker carved into them in Japanese.

Tyrone, Miranda, Christine, Donald, me

Tyrone loves me!

Dad and Tina also gave me a shopping spree at this really cute store in Alexandria for my birthday, so I went and picked out lots of fun sweaters! Yay! I've been wearing all of them all the time, and every time I do, I get compliments! It's fabulous! Then we had a birthday dinner for me over there, and Tina made the most DELICIOUS chocolate pecan pie with my favorite - polenta stuffed butternut squash. Talk about yummy!

And then it was already time to head back to Japan.
Good times were had, and it seems like it's almost already time to head back for Christmas. YAY CHRISTMAS!!!! I can't believe how excited I already am about it! :-)

Happy Halloween!!!!

2011-10-30T08:47:00.001+01:00

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

I know it's a day early, but still, YAY!!!! :-) I love Halloween! And I have been having a fabulous weekend to celebrate! :-)

On Tuesday, it was Joanna's birthday, so Friday night she had a dinner at her home stay family's house, and it was absolutely lovely! Her host mom made vegan tempura for me, and it was absolutely delicious, and it made me wish that I were capable of making my own tempura. I made cupcakes, and people seemed to like them, which made me happy. :-) It had been a long time since I'd made cupcakes and let other people eat them. I'm always afraid they won't like them.

After dinner, we went to karaoke, and, as usual, it was super fun. Since I might be leaving Japan in December, I've decided that I need to take advantage of awesome Japanese karaoke while I'm here and go lots and lots!

Joanna, Vickie, and Cesar at karaoke

Then Saturday, after a very hard day at work, during which I had about 30 students between the ages of 9 months and 10 years old for an hour straight in a very small classroom with no room to move - すごく大変だった! - Martin and I went shopping to find me a costume so that I could be a mormon missionary with him. I was originally going to go as a visual kei band singer, but in the end it just seemed too much like my normal clothes. So, a mormon missionary.

Me, Martin, and Miho, the Native American

We went out to dinner and then we went bowling with a bunch of friends.

It was super fun, even if I reverted back to my usual terrible bowling self. I think I must have bowled, like, 72 or something. Still, I managed to do better than Chiko and Miho. :-)

I didn't stay out too late, though, because this morning I had to get up super early to run a relay marathon I was doing with some friends.

Cesar, me, Yumi, Nathaniel

I am NOT a runner, nor have I ever been a runner, and I'm not sure that I'd ever actually run an entire 5 kilometers (= 3.1 miles) in my entire life. At the gym on the treadmill, when I make myself run, I usually go about 3 km, and then it's usually more of a fast walk than a run. Yet, for some reason, I agreed to run 5k in the relay today. I wasn't sure if I could do it, and I was certain it was going to kill me.

Somehow, though, I managed. In 30 minutes and 23 seconds. Which for me was amazing, given that I had told everyone to expect an hour, as I just knew I was going to have to stop and die many times. I only stopped to walk for water. :-)

Me after running - proof that I survived

Notice how red my face is and how slumped my shoulders are. Who knew that 5k could be so long?

I was thinking of going to a concert tonight, but running always gives me a headache, so instead I came home and got immediately into a bath so hot it hurt to touch. Wonderful!

Tomorrow, I might try to wear the visual kei costume to school, since it is actually Halloween.

So that's what I've been up to. Oh, last Saturday, I spent the entire day watching Ouran High School Host Club - I literally watched the entire season in one day. It was super rainy, so I didn't want to go out, and I fell in love after the first episode. Totally my new favorite Japanese drama. I highly recommend it. And, um, Yamamoto Yuusuke - totally hot! How did I only sort-of notice when I saw Paradise Kiss?

And then Sunday I went to one of my old students houses to carve pumpkins. Super fun! I think the last time I carved pumpkins was when I was in Montreal.

Next time, I'll try to write about the rest of my trip to the states - Louisiana and Colorado! :-)

Russie does the getting married thing!

2011-10-27T09:26:00.001+02:00

So last Sunday the weather here in Okazaki was absolutely GORGEOUS! For serious gorgeous! It was one of those days in which the idea of being inside just kind of makes you want to go crazy (my dad, I am given to understand, has these days almost every day, but for me, they are quite rare). Soooo, after I got off work (yes, I had to work even though it was Sunday; no day is sacred anymore), I decided to take the day off of life and friends and school and work and have a day, just me and the sun.

This of course started with me doing laundry (I was going to do it Saturday, but it decided to rain all day) - luckily, was able to talk a walk around the lake while the laundry thing was happening. Then I went for a little hike on the mountain before heading over to the park to do some homework and read. With my friend the sun.

I'm really nervous about the fact that Healthy Mate has started selling organic vegan ice cream - it's entirely possible that I am now going to want to eat it everyday. WHY do I have to have such a sweet tooth?

Then I met up with Martin for a little walk around the park

and we found this weird walking panda thing.

And the park was beautiful!

Anyhow, so I had a LOVELY time state side for Russell's wedding!!!!

When I got to California (early, I might add), I was able to meet mom and Donald directly at their gate, and then we met up with Grammers and Grampers down by the baggage claim, and it was a happy reunion!

That night was the welcome dinner, and, despite my jet lag, it was lovely! It was SO good to see everyone, and I had a fabulous time, even if I did have to leave around 9 to find sleep.

There were many comments on how overly skinny and terrible I looked (which I guess means I did), but I suppose that's to be expected given that I was practically falling asleep in my food.

What's important is that Russell and Miranda looked fabulous and happy!

Russie and Miranda opening a wedding gift at the dinner

The next morning I woke up early, as my mother thought it was appropriate to wake up at, like 5, and start chattering away. This was okay. There was lots to do! I somehow managed to get to San Diego with next to no shoes, so we had to go shoe shopping! And, happiness of all happiness, Abbie and Evan decided to come down from Los Angeles to say Hello!

We went to Loving Hut, and the food was delicious, and Evan was happy to learn about the supreme awesome weirdness that is Supreme Master Ching Hai. Though our time together was short, I was more than thrilled to be able to see Abbie again. And to meet the soon to come baby. I still can't believe she's pregnant!

And then, that night, the wedding. On the bay. Absolutely GORGEOUS! And then I ate 6 cupcakes.
I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

The happy couple with Mom!

Russell walks down the aisle

Me and Krist with Grammers and Grampers

me and Donnie

The girls with their Daddyo

Grandpa did the wedding ceremony!

The next day we got up for a bay cruise, which WOULD have been super fun had I not had to go off and get all motion sick like. The whole fam was there, though, so despite the sickness, I had a great time, and Donald helped a lot by sitting on the deck in the fresh air with me when I needed.

Getting bay cruise ready with Krist!

Donald goes all Titanic

We got to go see the famous sea lions! They were so cute!

Sadly, this picture of Dad and Tina turned out blurry. :-( Still, I think it's cute!

That night we got delicious Thai food, and even though I got us lost (despite having the GPS right in front of me the whole way there), we had a great time, and the Thai food was mega delish!

Next day: San Diego zoo tour!

The whole gang in the hummer limo on the way there

Dad and Tina seal with little children seals

I look more like an elephant than the elephant bush, right?

Apparently the span of our arms is about the wing span of a vulture

Shawn feeds Russie giraffe. I wish there had been actual giraffes so that you could see how much more Russell looks like an actual giraffe than a giraffe does.

The caged animals were somewhat sad, but for the most part their habitats all seemed very comfortable, and all of the animals were SO cute! I realized recently, though, that I am OBSESSED with turtles. I don't know when this happened - every time I see a turtle, I find that my feelings for turtles grow, and now it has gotten to the point in which I absolutely find them to be the cutest animal in the entire world. So I was really hoping to get to see a giant turtle (and the best would have been to see a giant turtle in the process of eating lettuce), but I was unfortunately disappointed.

Saying goodbye next to the flamingos

Still, the zoo tour was fabulous.

After, we went on a little driving tour, and we got some reinactments of the kiss statue (it's apparently based on a famous picture that I'd never heard of before)

Anyhow, so that was San Diego. Tina pretty much planned the whole wedding, so a HUGE thanks to Tina for making it a seriously awesome trip! I know she put a lot of hard work into it, and that definitely did NOT go unappreciated!

The next day - after some hassling from the baggage people (seriously, I am SO over the way the high terrorist threat is taking away my flying freedoms), I hopped on a plane with Kristen and Shawn to make our way to Colorado!

But this is already super long, so that will have to be for another time!

(Oh, also, I'll make a wedding photo album on Picasa sometime soon - maybe - and then come back and post the link here)

Typhoon 15, Roke

2011-09-21T07:50:00.000+02:00

Typhoon Roke is here, and I have to leave for work in about an hour. We got school off today because of the typhoon, but I still have to go to work. The winds are so ridiculously fast and gusty that I have no idea how I'm going to make it to the station without being blown right off the road.

This is what it looks like outside. Not so bad, right? No flooding, and aside from that tree in the corner, the craziness of the wind is barely noticeable.

That said, I'm sort of glad I have to go to work, as I have done absolutely NOTHING today. Except sleep. And study kanji for about an hour. And stare at the wall. And not study for the test I was supposed to have today that has now been moved to tomorrow that I'm worried about failing.

So I figured, before work, I could at least update the blog. Even though I've really done nothing of interest lately.

I went bowling with a bunch of people from my class, and I bowled my highest score ever!!!! 139. I'm really good at bowling zeros, and somehow I just didn't this time (of course the next two games, I returned to my typical score of around 70).

Cesar, Sandra, Vickie

It was the first time (and probably the last time) that I've ever even come close to beating Martin. But I did!!!!

That 131 is Martin, and the 139 is me!!!!

It almost makes me want to practice and try to become a good bowler so that I can be better than Martin at at least something.

Notice his inability to believe my awesomeness!

We also went to the gay dance party again, but this time with more people than just me and Martin!

Martin, Alexis, me, Miho, Paul, Cooper, and our new friend, Leo

The hot drag queen came out and talked to us, so we took a picture with her.

Other than that, well. . . I went to a pet store with my friend Tatsushi, and it was SO sad to see all of the little puppies in their little cages. I really think I hate pet stores. At the same time, I was once again overwhelmed with an unbearable desire to have a pet dog. Please.

I want a shiba or a husky.

Please. Thank you. Okay.

We also went to this Japanese/English language exchange thing, and it was the best one I've been to yet, and if I get a chance, I'll totally return. I spoke lots of Japanese, which I NEVER do, because I'm too embarrassed, and I realized (as I regularly do) that if I'm even going to advance, I need to regularly put myself in situations like that in which I'm forced to speak Japanese.

Other than that, I've just been working like a crazy person and trying to keep up with my school work. Tomorrow is the last day of term, and Friday morning I head to the states for Russell's wedding!!!! I can't believe my little baby brother is getting MARRIED! I'm so old.

That said, I should have packed today, since I had miraculous and unexpected free time, but I didn't, and now I don't know when I will.

And that's pretty much it for now! I'll be sure to post wedding pictures, once they exist and all. :-)

Doing things in the RAIN!

2011-09-04T12:28:00.002+02:00

So theoretically 梅雨 (tsuyu), the Japanese rainy season, is over, but you really could never tell from how much it has been raining lately.

Last weekend, Alexis and I headed over to Mie Prefecture for a hike, and of course it rained. Which didn't really bother me all that much, as I adore hiking in the rain. . . but still. You would think just ONCE I could plan to go hiking and have it NOT rain.

First, we headed over to see the wind turbines, and they were AMAZING! They were a little smaller, I think, than the ones I've seen in Texas, but still awesome. And because of the rain and the fog, they were all creepy and mysterious. <3ed it! What made it even cooler was that they kept disappearing and reappearing, so you would be walking and not even realize at first that you were about to walk right into one.

The we headed over to 青蓮寺ダム　（Shourenji dam, I think), and it had the most AMAZING view! At first I wanted to jump into the water, but then Maranda pointed out a very large mass of floating oil, and then I no longer wanted to jump into the water. Still, the water was still and gorgeous and with the mists in the mountains, it just felt so peaceful and nice. I think that misty mountains with water in front of them has to be my favorite view in the entire world. And the Japanese know what they're doing when they throw a red bridge into the mix - sheer gorgeousness!

The we headed further into the depths of Mie for a hike (in the rain!). We were supposed to see 48 waterfalls, but, while we did see an ENORMOUS amount of waterfalls, I don't think there were that many.

The hike was super easy and breathtakingly beautiful, which I was more than grateful for, as the car ride there made me totally motion sick.
At the end of the hike, there was a salamander museum, and we got to see some of the CUTEST salamanders native to Japan. They have five fingers,and when they move them it's really just the cutest thing ever. I wanted to hug one and bring him home with me!

Then this past Friday, despite the fact that a typhoon was very obviously coming in, I went to Nagoya to meet up with Rachael to go see Skull Candy and Bunny the Party. Skull Candy played a very short set, but Bunny the Party was ON! The singer was ridiculously energetic, and just watching her up on stage filled my heart with happiness.

At one point, though, she pointed directly at me and said "あの白いお姉さん、超素敵！”　　That basically means "That white person is super awesome!" Maybe I should have felt flattered, but I think more than anything I felt embarrassed. In any case, I love Bunny the Party!

The last band to play was Splash, and they were SO amazing! Super fast totally addictive ska punk, and I was into it (unfortunately the lyrics leave much to be desired, but, well, meh). Now, I know that a lot of times this kind of band will single out one person in the audience, but after the Bunny the Party comment, it felt weird that this person should once again be me. Especially since he was speaking in super fast Japanese, and he had no way of knowing if I would understand him. He asked who I came to see and then he asked if it was my first time seeing them. . .and yeah. I guess it's normal to do that to someone in the audience. I dunno. . .

Anyhow, it was SUPER fun, and I fell in love with Splash and will definitely be seeing them again. And Bunny the Party. And Skull Candy. And the Rattle Trapz, who also played and were fab!

Last night, Martin and I once again braved the typhoon and went to Nagoya to meet up with Rachael (again!) and some of her friends! Her friends were all awesome, so we had a great time! First, we went to an izakaya, where we were practically accosted by crazy people.

Note that we didn't know about half of the people in this picture

Then we went bowling, and I feel bad for Martin, who was on a team with me. I think I must have bowled the worst game ever of my entire life. I was very consistent in bowling 0s.

Will, Tatsu, and Chiko, seen in the left of the picture, weren't much better than I was, but Stephen (picture, right) was an interesting bowler.

He would either get 0s or strikes. But there was very rarely much in between. He also had techinque, which all of the rest of us were completely lacking.

On the right, there--> Tatsu, me and Chiko.
Rachael's friends were all really amazing.

Except that, for some reason, the boys (Will, Tatsu, and Stephen) felt the need to be anti-social and go off and smoke. I hate cigarettes. I hate smoking. I eventually went over and threw their cigarettes away (yes, I actually threw them in the trashcan - why they didn't seem to hate me afterward, I'm not entirely sure), but in the meantime, I had to make some new friends.

The guys sitting across from us were ridiculously amazing bowlers, and they were also quite nice. Plus, they were eating ice cream and NOT smoking. I really don't know why I so regularly feel the need to talk to random strangers, but I do, so. . .what you gonna do?

Other things I have recently done in the rain:

I went shopping in Nagoya with Rachael, and she received an extraordinarily large number of kleenex

And that's sort of it, actually. I'm sure I've done other rainy things, but none of them are coming to mind.

In the meantime, this is getting extraordinarily long, and I've got some homework to finish.
以上です。

自己PR

2011-09-03T08:48:00.001+02:00

This has very little to do with anything, but I just finished writing the first draft of my 自己PR（jiko PR)in Japanese, and it's awful. I don't know how I ever am going to make it good.

For those of you that don't know, when you're applying for jobs in Japan, which I presently am trying to do, a 自己PR is a necessary paragraph talking about all of your good points and how awesome you are. It's similar to a cover letter, except that, to apply to a job in Japan, you need both. It's basically a short presentation of your attributes.

The thing is, I really don't clearly understand myself what my attributes are, so I have NO IDEA how to present them to an employer. It was hard enough writing all of my English cover letters, so this whole 自己PR in Japanese really seems like an impossible, insurmountable task. Especially since, despite studying for over a year and a half in Japan, I still feel like my Japanese is horrible.

My "I might as well just give up on life and make fake hair mustaches with Martin" face

That said, the first draft is done, and I really think I say the same thing about 1000 times over and over again. It feels like I said nothing.

In other news, yet another typhoon is hanging out in the area. I braved the fierce winds last night and went to a FABULOUS concert in Nagoya, which, since it's me, you know I'll write all about (later, though, as I want to now type up what I have just written), and it looks like I'll be going out again tonight, despite the fact that the winds are so strong that it's felt in my room as if a series of small earthquakes have been going on non-stop since I got home last night.

Hike, concert, and tonight's activities - to come later! Back to typing and feeling discouraged.

Nagoya Grampus, Shink and Jackpot Bell ROCK 豊橋(Toyohashi)!

2011-08-29T16:39:00.000+02:00

I've still got to write about my Mie hike with Alexis, but I'll skip that for now and come to more recent things. Because I'm all fired up about last night and this night, so it's time to WRITE!

Yesterday, I met up with a friend in 豊田市(Toyota) so that we could head over to Toyota Stadium to see the Nagoya Grampus play Ventforet Kofu (I don't know if that Ventforet is supposed to be French for windy forest or what, but it's weird). We would of course be routing (have I ever mentioned that I HATE this word?) for　名古屋！！！！

Toyota Stadium was absolutely LOVELY, surrounded by trees and with two very cool bridges leading up to it on both sides.

When we got there, I felt very out of place. First of all, I was wearing blue, which ended up being the color of the opposing team. Second of all, I wasn't wearing red. And when we got into the section where we could sit, it seemed like EVERYONE was wearing a jersey - and those that weren't were at least wearing red t-shirts. In any case, certainly not blue.

See all those people with the flags up - yeah, every single one of them had on a Grampus jersey.

Miho and I were also both SHOCKED by the amount of people that there were there. The last soccer game I went to was in Colorado, and it seemed like there was practically no one there (granted, it WAS snowing, but still), whereas this wasn't even a special match, and the stadium seemed practically full. We actually had trouble finding seats.

It was AMAZING, though, because everyone was SO into it! There were people with loudspeakers leading chants and cheers and dances, and everyone was just SO into it! Miho and I have decided that we must go again, and next time we will wear jerseys and get there early enough to sit in the real "supporters" section with all of the crazies. SO MUCH FUN!

I'm happy to say as well that Nagoya totally rocked - 4 to 1. Two of the goals literally happened in a period of about 3 minutes. It was amazing!

With that super exciting experience under my belt, tonight Alexis and I headed out to Ell.Knot in　豊橋　(Toyohashi) for some awesome concert action. Five bands played, and I kind of loved all of them!

The first one was ポタリ（Potari), and, aside from one song, the music was upbeat and fabulous and exciting. The drummer (who looked like he couldn't have been more than 15) was the most adorable thing I had ever seen. He reminded me of L from Death Note, in a weird way.　　I gather from their website, though, that he's not their usual drummer. Sadness. The bassist actually started CRYING, and for someone like me, who cries a LOT, it was absolutely FABULOUS. I loved her!

Up next was 洗脳集団キミとロック (Sennnoushuudann kimi to rock, which basically means Brainwashing group, you and rock). They were SUPER fun, and I will totally be seeing them again. For serious. If I can, that is. Like perhaps Sunday when they play at Cam Hall in Okazaki.

Then was Eve. I think that I could have liked them if I hadn't seen them. The music was very screamo rock with the occasional punkish or skaish twinge, and I was into it. Unfortunately, the guys in the band seemed. . .well, ridiculous.

Then Jackpot Bell!!!! I have been dying to see them for ages, as they seem to play in Okazaki a lot, and I always just keep missing them.

They were just as amazing live as I expected them to be, and they'll also be playing Cam Hall Sunday, so really I've just got to go.

Then Shink. They were AMAZING, but I think they could have been MORE amazing. The crowd didn't seem to be all that into them, which I really just don't understand. They put on a better show this time than when we saw them last time, and still, most of the crowd just wasn't having it. :-(

i am a concert addict, and all I ever want to do anymore is go to concerts.

以上です。

郡上祭り　(Gujo Festival)

2011-08-28T05:56:00.000+02:00

I don't know why I've decided to always write my titles in Japanese and English lately. But I have, and so there it is.

Anyhow, so after our lovely day at Ise Shrine, we slept in and had a lovely lazy day. Abby made okonomiyaki, so I got to try to first real vegan okonomiyaki, and it was delicious beyond belief. It makes me want to move to Gifu just to have them around more often to make me delicious food. (I'm a user, what can I say?)

For those of you that don't know, okonomiyaki is basically a Japanese vegetable stuffed pancake. Usually, it's stuffed with cabbage, but Abby's version had none. It did have this delicious green leafy Chinese vegetable thing, though. Yum!

Then we had the perfect ending to a lazy day (during which I did my best to attempt to study)! Abby's friend Shio came to pick us up to bring us to her house, where her mother put us in yukata. It was SO cool - her mother had TONS of old yukata and a huge box of obis. She seemed quite experienced at obi tying, and she tied a different style bow for all of us - me, Abby, Shio, and Riho.

The boys decided not to wear yukata. :-(

Around 8:00 PMish, we headed over to Gujo for the all-night dancing festival. Gujo's a pretty small but extremely gorgeous town which is famous for it's all night Obon Dancing festivals, during which, instead of dancing Bon Odori, you dance the Gujo Odori, which is really quite similar, but somehow much more difficult. We danced until about midnight (which was long enough to leave me exhausted beyond belief, and I literally fell asleep the second I hit the futon when we returned to Matt and Abby's).

Despite being there for approximately 4 to 5 hours, I think I only managed to pick up on one of the many dances (which I promptly forgot). I did, however, manage to step on the feet of about 10 different people and almost elbow some poor woman in the face. Apparently dancing is not for me. Which I knew beforehand, but what can I say, quite like singing, I love it anyway!

Abby and Shio dancing it up!

Matt and Abby's friends were super great, and we had an absolutely fabulous time just hanging out in Gujo and dancing! Even if I was slightly intimidated by Abby and Shio's mad dancing skills, since Riho and Shio's husbands were in the same lacking the coordination necessary to dance boat as I was.

Both of these are things you're probably NOT supposed to do in a yukata. And my shoes - definitely shoes you're NOT supposed to wear with yukata!

A definite success of a night, and I am looking forward to my next all night dancing festival! :-)

We were all basically dead when we woke up the next morning (and I'm sure Matt and Abby won't appreciate me taking a picture of our deadness, but I'm doing it anyway).

I was feeling kind of sick and headachy, so I headed home fairly earlyish (which was around 4PM, but we woke up late, so it felt early), and when I got home, I had some delicious vegan Doughnut Plant doughnuts waiting for me that Alexis had brought back from Tokyo. There were three, and I ate two and immediately felt better. Then I made peanut butter cookies and ate about 12 of them. I think I might have been in overly hot Gifu sugar (and maybe protein) withdrawal.

As is becoming usual when I do things with Abby and Matt, Abby's blogging of the event is way more interesting and comprehensible with better pictures. SO check it out!

And with that, お盆休み、以上です。

お盆休み (Obon Break): 伊勢神宮　(Ise Shrine)

2011-08-26T16:42:00.000+02:00

Obon is on of the biggest holidays in Japan. It's basically a big festival in order to honor the deceased, and it's pretty much the ONLY time of the year that most Japanese workers can be guaranteed a full week off.

I, of course, only had off Friday and Monday, so I decided to head over to Gifu to hang out with Abby(fine, I'll spell your name right) and Matt for my four day weekend. I was originally planning to just spend one night with them, but somehow that turned into the whole weekend.

Normally, it takes 40 minutes on the train to get to Gifu, but there were some train problems (a suicide, it seems :-( ), and it ended up taking me two hours. My first Japanese experience with train delays (and I was even in Tokyo the day after the earthquake)! There was something kind of exciting about it! After heading up to the top of a super tall building and getting a lovely view out over the city, they brought me to this DELICIOUS Italian restaurant where their friends work - they have tons of gluten free options for Abby, and they were very obliging in whipping me up some vegan pasta and a vegan pizza. Now I need to go back to Gifu again just for the deliciousness of this restaurant!

Then we woke up super early on Saturday morning, met up with Martin in Nagoya, and headed all together to Ise Jingu in Mie Prefecture. If you want a well put-together blog entry with lots of info, check out Abby's post, as you're probably not going to get that from me.
It's this amazing shrine complex that is dedicated to the goddess Amaterasu. I guess she's apparently enshrined there, but according to Matt, she's also enshrined somewhere in Nagoya, so that's weird.
There's an outer shrine and an inner shrine, and while the outer shrine itself was nothing overly impressive, I can't even remember the last time I felt so peacefully surrounded by nature. There was this HUGE hollow tree, and despite Abby's lack of desire to meet a spider or get bitten by a mosquito, I managed to convince her to go in with me! She left quickly, but it was my first time actually INSIDE a tree, and I practically had to be dragged out. I could literally stand up inside and look up all the way through it. It was amazing!

Us in the tree!!!! As amazing as everything about this day was, this might have been the highlight for me!

When we got to the inner shrine, which was infinitely more impressive, there was this big box thing, which supposedly contained something that the goddess once touched. Except that it's never been opened. And when they move it they don't open it. And so it's just been told over and over again over the generations that it contains something that the goddess has touched, and you've just got to believe. I like believing in things like that, so I've decided to believe.

Apparently the buildings are changed fairly often, so what we were seeing wasn't old. You can read all about it in Abby's blog, but I guess they just dismantle them and then rebuild them every few years or so. I guess the Shinto's don't believe in permanence, and really, why should they? The world is an ever-changing place, after all.

After exploring the shrines, we walked a little bit around the small shopping district nearby. It was very old style Japanese, and we bought some akafuku, which is basically like reverse daifuku - the red bean paste is on the outside, and the mochi is on the inside. It was utterly and absolutely delicious! The picture to the right is the akafuku shop - I have no idea for real, but I'm just going to say that maybe they make some of it in those vat looking things! :-)

And that was our day in Ise! We stopped in Nagoya on our way back for some delicious Indian food (it's wonderful that Indian food can almost always satisfy both the gluten free diet and the vegan diet) and were basically exhausted beyond belief upon our return home (well, Abby, Matt, and I were - I can't really say for Martin)!

岡崎花火大会　(Okazaki Fireworks Fest)

2011-08-11T14:05:00.000+02:00

And because apparently I do things in excess (like how I have pretty much listened to nothing but the Radwimps for the past 2 or 3 weeks; and how yesterday I listened to the same song on repeat approximately 40 times in a row), one fireworks festival just wasn't enough for me.

So Saturday afternoon, after working in Obu (where I apparently have a twin - I was told by at least three people "looking forward to seeing you next week!" and by a good 5 people "it's so good to see you again." - seriously, what was that about?), I headed over to Alexis's for help putting on my yukata to head over to the Okazaki Fireworks Festival!

Alexis had to put on our yukatas and tie our obis, as we were totally incapable.

I wore my new yukata that I got from Miyoko - it was my first time in yukata, and I was super excited about it!

me in my new pretty butterfly yukata - thanks for tying it, Alexis!

When Alexis finally got our yukatas on, we walked painfully slowly in our geta (which, despite all of my best intentions, I had not worn in) to catch the bus up to the castle fireworks area.

Alexis, Vickie, Me

Alexis and Martin had headed over earlier in the day to put out mats, and it was a good thing, too, as there were SO MANY people there's no way we would have found a place to sit if they hadn't headed out earlier. Apparently, 70% of the fireworks in Japan are designed and made in Okazaki, which basically means that the festival, which has at least 20,000 fireworks, ends up being HUGE! It was.

When we got there, we met up with Martin and Paul.

And then Mai and Voi.

me and Mai

I was waiting for Mai and Voi by the bridge when everyone else was taking pictures, so I don't really have great pictures of everyone. Though I did manage to get a nice picture of most of us.

Me, Vickie, Joanna, Sandra, Zack, Alexis, Mai, Voi

And the fireworks were AMAZING! Seriously. . .I thought the ones in Gamagori were pretty spectacular, but really, they had absolutely nothing on Okazaki.

They lasted for about an hour and a half, and the start was like the mega intense end in Gamagori. And then it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Apparently they kept making stars in the sky with the fireworks, but I kept missing them. :-( I did see a heart, though! (I would have much rathered a star)

My camera's definitely not the best at fireworks pictures - I bet Zack got some nice ones, though

After an hour and a halfish of amazingly impressive fireworks, there were SO many people leaving that we decided to hang around by the river talking for a bit, and we got to witness someone jump in and swim. Interesting. . .

It was an AMAZING evening, and I'm so glad I got to go this year - I missed it last year as the day after the festival, in which I danced yosakoi and did the obon odori, I headed down to Hiroshima and Miyajima.

And that's it! Totally awesome day. . .(and the next day I went to see the new Transformers with Nathaniel, which was AWESOME, despite what everyone else says!).

蒲郡花火大会 (Gamagori Fireworks Fest)

2011-08-09T09:00:00.000+02:00

Still got that paper due and still have no desire to read the newspaper article - so I figure I might as well just write two blog entries in a row, right? Especially since I've been doing so many awesome things lately!

After my amazing Saturday in 春日井市(Kasugai), I headed over to 蒲郡市(Gamagori) to spend the day there with some friends and then hit up the fireworks festival that night. It takes place every year on the last Sunday in July (or maybe the last day of July? can't remember), and I didn't go last year, so I was psyched to get to go this year. You might recall that I also took a day trip to Gamagori with Alexis and Martin when I first got here last year. It's amazing how different the experience was this time (though both times were defo fabulous!).

I met up on the train with some friends heading over from Gifu and some of their friends, and we got there early enough to do some exploring before the sun decided to come out and kill us.

The tide was down, so instead of using the bridge, we headed over to the turtle island under the bridge, and there were TONS of adorable little crabs (or crabby things) crawling around everywhere - SO CUTE! :-) The turtle island is this adorable little island that is uninhabited and covered with shrine type things. Very natural and very Japanese, and I love! (Note that it is not ACTUALLY called the turtle island - I just keep calling it that because it reminds me of the huge sleeping sneezing turtle from the best movie of all time, the Neverending Story).

Exploring the island was super fun. There were lots of flags and cute statues and shrine things everywhere!

Why do Rachael and Abi look so perfect and well-kept while Matt and I look as if we are attemping and maybe failing to survive a windstorm?

There were also fun rocks everywhere, and everywhere we looked there were the BEAUTIFUL iridescent blue and green lizards. I totally wish it were appropriate to keep a lizard as a pet. I wonder what they eat. I can just imagine it hanging out in my room and then sleeping curled up in my elbow. Yes, I want a pet lizard. There were also some extra large scary lizards, though. Like the little dude to the right. Click on him to make him bigger. If you want a picture of a pretty lizard, , check out Abi's blogging of the day!

Me being rather monkey-like and Abi being a dancer, we couldn't help ourselves and just had to climb out on the rocks. There was one that looked like a duck-billed platypus (which I apparently also noticed the last time I was there)!

Abi's got a nice version of the pictures from all three of our cameras put together. Check it out - mine's super boring compared to the other two.

After exploring the island, we found some shade and ate lunch. The sun was so strong, though, that we might have all gotten sunburnt despite the shade and the spf 45/50 sunblock. I was wearing a unicorn necklace, and I was hoping for a unicorn burn on the chest, but no go. :-( In order to escape the sun, we then headed over to karaoke. Being with two Japanese guys and three Americans all capable of singing, I had NO PLANS of actually singing anything myself. Somehow, though, when I get into the dark room with music, I can't help myself, and I destroy everyone's ears with my inability to sing.

In front of the karaoke place, there was a hair salon, and there were all these really creepy practice heads just sitting outside in a line.

I made a new friend!

Karaoke done and the sun setting, we headed back over to the beach for the fireworks! We sat right on the water with an amazing view!

The fireworks lasted an hour and a half and were すごく迫力　(i.e. super intense - somehow it sounds more powerful in Japanese)！ They counted down with fireworks in the sky - it was amazing!

Getting home after was a bit difficult because of the CRAZY amount of people at the station, but we managed, and all in all, it was a FABULOUS day! :-)

春日井市と犬山城 (Kasugai and Inuyama Castle)!

2011-08-09T08:17:00.000+02:00

So, today I have a paper due in which I'm supposed to summarize a newspaper article. I still haven't even read the article, and I've got to work and go to the gym later, so I thought - why not update the blog?!? Seems like an appropriate response to a looming deadline, right?

Anyhow, I've been eating the most fresh, wonderful delicious veggies for the past week now, and I'm feeling spoiled. Why, you might wonder, have I been able to enjoy such wonderfully deliciously perfect veggies? Last week, I finally got out to my friend's house in Kasugai. We've been planning for me to go out there for ages, and yet somehow it just never kept working out. I'm SO glad it finally did!

He lives on a huge farm in the country, so it was my first time to get to see how a real Japanese farmer lives. As we arrived, his grandmother was sitting on the porch doing something that looked suspiciously similar to de-shelling soy beans. There were vegetables EVERYWHERE! They even had a shrine room in their house to pay homage to dead relatives. It's entirely possible that the shrine room in itself was larger than my entire apartment.

I of course didn't bring my camera (WHAT was I thinking? I always forget it at the worst of moments!), so unfortunately I've got no pictures for you.

After exploring the house and the farm for a bit, my friend and I headed over to Inuyama, where I got to eat my very first Dango, which was incredibly delicious! Every time I've asked before, I've been told they're not vegan, but this woman ASSURED me that hers were, and it was DELICIOUS! I will definitely be asking again in the future about their veganness.

Then we went up to Inuyama Castle, which was AMAZING! It felt super old and creaky with these ridiculously STEEP stairs! We had to take our shoes off and put them in bags before we went in, and my socks were so slippery and the stairs were so steep that I was afraid I was going to fall off the stairs to a very gruesome and uninteresting death. Luckily, I survived and was treated to a breathtakingly spectacular view from the top.

Inuyama is actually the oldest castle still standing in Japan today, and you could totally tell. I told my friend how it felt SO much older than all of the other castles I went to, but he assured me that Okazaki-jo is DEFINITELY older. So I read the guidebook, and Okazaki-jo was originally constructed earlier, but it was abolished during the Meiji Restoration, and, if we count when construction started, Inuyama-jo, building starting in 1440, is the oldest left in Japan. Super cool!

When we got back to his house, his mother had prepared a HUGE bag of fresh veggies for me, and she'd made me some vegan somen. It took me about an hour to eat with chopsticks, but it was totally delicious and worth it! I even managed to make the loud slurping sounds like you're supposed to! :-) When I FINALLY finished eating, his mom took me to the peach trees to pick some peaches! So much fun, and I've been gorging myself on delicious peaches all week!

Some peaches and a delicious kabocha right from their garden!

I had a lovely time, and I am SO looking forward to visiting again! My friend lives in Osaka, so maybe I'll just have to go visit his mom and sister sometimes. :-)

Freedom Nagoya 2011

2011-08-01T14:10:00.002+02:00

So, when I was talking to the singer dude, ちゃっせ (Chasse) of Scusi, he mentioned this free concert in this huge park right outside of Nagoya. Freedom Nagoya.

Last Sunday, Alexis, Joanna, and I decided to head over and check it out.

We headed over around 11, even though Scusi had played at 9. And of course the first person we see upon arriving, directing traffic, was ちゃっせ, who informed us that we had missed his band. We were aware. Oops. At least he smiled and waved, though, which implied that he remembered us.

And with that began an awesome day of MUSIC!!!!

The first band we saw was Banbi, and while I don't really remember them at all, I put a star by them, which means I must have liked them. Then we saw Misty and 太陽族　(taiyouzoku), both of whom were quite good without being overwhelmingly awesome. I didn't get to see more than a song or two of 太陽族, though, and I think I really could have loved them.　

Next up was Yum! Yum! Orange, a ska band from Osaka, I think. I'd heard them a couple times before, and I was psyched to get to see them.

Unfortunately, pretty much before the first song even began, the singer tripped over the speaker and fell in an extraordinary show of klutziness that impressed even me. Later, I read in her blog that she doesn't know how she'll ever be able to get excited about a show again without first falling. :-P In any case, they were wonderful. The perfect blend of pop and punk and ska with great female vocals.

Up next, ソライアオ (Soraiao), who according to my memory and their lack of star on the schedule, pretty much did nothing for me.

The the Gelugugu, who, well. . . I don't know how to describe them. They're ska, but also a little hip-hoppy, and while it's weird to say that music is Clockwork Orange-influenced, they totally were, not only in their style, but also in their sound (which isn't to say they sounded anything like Beethoven - they didn't).

I liked them, but I'm still not sure if I loved them. I think I would need to see them again doing a one man live (which is what they call it here when a band plays a show with no other bands). I gather they're fairly popular.

And then after the Gelugugu, SKULL CANDY!!!!

I have now officially seen them three times, and each time was pure awesomeness. Seriously. I said that Yum!Yum! Orange is the perfect blend of pop, punk, and ska, but their perfection pales in comparison to that of Skull Candy. And the female vocalist is just the cutest thing since. . . I wanted to compare her to sliced bread, for some reason, but that's not really all that cute. . .so, insert something super cute.

They're playing a one man this Saturday in Nagoya, and if it wasn't the Okazaki Fireworks festival, which I unfortunately had to miss last year, I would SO be there!

After Skull Candy, we saw Sim, who was mostly boring despite drawing the largest crowd I saw the whole day, and then Feelflip, who I apparently liked but not enough to have remembered them if I didn't have the schedule in front of me right now.

Then　Misspray, who was awesome.

And awesomely adorable - they're playing in Nagoya at the end of August, and I'm thinking I might have to go.

Then Fatprop, who were relatively boring, which was okay, because they were followed by the Skippers, who ended up being on of my two favorite bands of the day (that I had never previously heard of). They were seriously AMAZING!

Downright straight up punk, and absolutely perfect! And I can't find their albums anywhere, so I might have to get a Tsutaya card so that I can rent one.

Then Eddy, who were okay, Crossfaith, who were terrible, and Each of the Days, who were also terrible. Then Last Gasp, a band from Okazaki (I think). I like them on CD, and I liked them live, but I feel like there's something missing about their sound. They're rock, and there's nothing to make them special to make them anything more than just another rock band. Still, they were fun.

And then Egg Brain! Along with the Skippers, my other favorite previously unknown band of the day. They were like doofy, nerdy pop punk, which is totally my favorite kind of pop punk.

I liked them so much that I have to include a video, even though I promised myself no videos today. I've pretty much been listening to them nonstop since.

Then Astral Mess, okay. Then Backlift and at Anytime, who were AWESOME!!!!

But not awesome enough, apparently, because I forgot about them when Hey Smith came on.

The whole day, we'd pretty much been sitting back and enjoying the bands over people's heads, but for Hey Smith, Joanna and I decided to join the crowd, and we danced and skanked and pogoed, and seriously - Hey Smith knows how to rock!

Then music was over, and it was time to go home, and I was sad, because I was SO not ready for music to be over. It felt SO good to hit up an outdoor summer music festival again. I went to one in France, but there was only one band I liked, so mostly, that doesn't count. It's been FAR too long since my last Warped Tour, and this TOTALLlllllllllllllY made up for it!

So that was Freedom Nagoya, and it was fabulous, and it was two whole weeks ago now, and I already feel like I'm going through concert withdrawal. I'll have to find another one soon! :-)

The end.

Theoretically, ends always turn into beginnings

2011-07-30T11:16:00.003+02:00

So, we're only three weeks into this term, and I already feel like somehow an entire LIFETIME has passed. I've barely had a second to breathe, but I can't really figure out what I've been doing. Other than going to school all morning and then working all evening and afternoon everyday Monday to Friday. I've managed to keep myself busy the weekends, too!

First of all, it was Martin's birthday on July 14, and I'd been telling him I would go to this all night gay dance party with him, so we finally did the Saturday after Cathryn left. And it was SO MUCH FUN!!!! Even though it required staying out till 5 in the morning. I was worried, because, well, I don't stay out that late. And, contrary to when I was in Montreal, when in France, I really hated going out dancing.

a picture a new friend took of us walking to the station at 5ish. We look (and are) tired!

Then the next Friday, we celebrated with the class, and we all bowling!

Me with Cesar, and Martin and Rin in the background!

I love bowling!!!! This was only my second time going since being in Japan, though. As usual, I won the first game and then BADLY lost all of the following games. It's as if, while everyone else is getting into the groove of things, my arm is deciding that, no, it's done.

Of course I forgot my camera, so I had to steal that picture from Cesar. We also got a purikura, which I was SUPER excited about, as it was my first one EVER!

Then that Saturday, I headed to Gifu to hang out with Abbie and Matt, friends of Kristen's from Colorado that are living in Gifu now. They came to see me in Okazaki, and I finally found time to return the visit.

Abbie made vegan gluten-free banana pancakes, and they were DELICIOUS! We also decided to buy matching-ish hats, and I sort of love mine! They brought me to this place called Donkey Hodai (I really can't remember what this place was called, and I know it wasn't Hodai, but it was definitely Donkey something), which had to be the craziest store I'd ever seen. Everything was EVERYWHERE! And when I say everything, I mean EVERYTHING, as this store really did sell any possible product I could ever think of.

Good times were had. I left on Sunday eveningish and headed to Nagoya, where I saw my FAVORITE Japanese (well, really they're pretty high up there on the general list as well) punk band, Special Thanks.

I've definitely written about them before, and I was SO excited to FINALLY get to see them live! It was AMAZING! Unfortunately, I think that it could have been MORE amazing. It was the last show of their tour, and you could tell that they were super tired. And I got the feeling that there was some major tension going on between the bandmates. I can't imagine how AMAZING it would have been, had they been on. I'll obviously just have to stay in Japan long enough to find out.

A band called Stompin' Bird opened up for them, and they were also TOTALLY amazing! How did it take me so long to realize that punk in Japan is where it was in the late 90s in the states? How am I ever going to leave?

The the next weekend, I went to Sakae Oktoberfest on Friday.

It was cool, and it was HILARIOUS seeing all of these cute little Japanese girls dressed up in what I assume was supposed to be German costumes but which looked far more like Swedish milk maid costumes.

Then I went out dancing at Club ID, and I had a fabulous time! Two times going out dancing in three weeks, and two times having a great time! Obviously there was something wrong with me when I was in France. Or, rather, there was something wrong with France.

Then Saturday, I went yukata shopping with Naruse and Miyoko, as Miyoko seemed to DESPERATELY want to see me in yukata. She even bought me some geta and made me some yukata undergarments. So anyhow, now I have a new yukata, and if things go as planned (and I can find someone to teach me how to put it on), I'll wear it to the Okazaki fireworks fest next week. And then you'll see pictures!

Then last Sunday I went to Nagoya Freedom. And it was so awesome that it deserves its own entry.

The end of, yeah, stuff. . .

2011-07-26T15:28:00.000+02:00

So, on the morning Cathryn left, we started classes for the new term. I was SO sad to see her go - if only she could have gotten an apartment here and stayed forever! Hopefully I'll get to see her, though.

Before I get ahead of myself, though, I just found some pictures of when we went to the izakaya at the end of last term to say goodbye to some of the people leaving, and I thought I'd post them!

Me with Kaorin and random woman on the left whose name I have forgotten.

Me with Marc and Kim, who both went back to England. :-(

Me with Thama, who is now back in Australia (and Nathaniel's fingers).

Also, while Cathryn was here, I had to take a day away from her to go take the JLPT. It was awful, and I totally without a doubt failed (especially since I knew 100% for sure only, like, one of the kanji from the kanji section). I was expecting that, though, so I'm not too worried. I'll take it again in December, and then theoretically, I'll be okay. So, despite the failing, it was actually a quite lovely day.

I headed over with Alexis and Martin, and despite the fact that we were headed towards imminent failure, we were in relatively good humour.

Met up with Stephen there, and he also seemed in relatively good humour!

We'll get our results at the end of September, and you probably won't be reading about it on here.

Anyhow, even though it's only the third week of term, I feel like I've been crazy busy since it all started, and I'm sure you'll be reading about it soon, as I seem to have been on a crazy blog updating spree lately. Let it continue. . .

Cathryn Visits: 長島スパーランド (Nagashima Spa Land)

2011-07-25T12:26:00.001+02:00

Despite our waterfall exhaustion, we decided to wake up early the next day and head to the theme park in Nagashima with Martin and Zack!

We got there a few minutes before it opened at 9:30, and we were a bit nervous, as no one else seemed to be there. We were assured, though, that the park would be opening as per usual. Relief.

Because of the lack of people, there were practically NO lines to get on the roller coasters, which on the one hand was AWESOME, but on the other meant that we didn't really have any breathing time between roller coasters. I get motion sick.

First, we went on the Steel Dragon!

As you can see, Zack is totally Steel Dragon ready!

Then we went on the water ride (whatever it was called, I don't remember), and after much hesitation, we finally decided to go with wearing the ponchos.

Turns out this was a smart plan as

the splash looked something like this before it was even at its' largest.

The ponchos, though, of course didn't stop Zack and Martin from getting soaked.

After several more rides, I was feeling extraordinarily motion sick, so Cathryn and Zack decided to go on a spinny ride while Martin and I tried not to die. Turns out the ride was awesome, though, so Martin and I had to check it out. Super fun, indeed! It might have ended up being my favorite there.

We checked out most of the rides in the park, and, aside from Cathryn who was feeling totally fine, we were needing a break.

I was dying of motion sickness, Martin's knees were killing him because the rides aren't made for people with long legs like his, and Zack was having neck issues!

So, after a brief lunch, with one of the more adorable caterpillars I'd ever seen, we decided to hit up the ferris wheel.

Great view of the whole park from the top!

Then Zack and I decided to go for a little boat ride.

Then a little cable car ride around the park, which Cathryn and I seemed to enjoy way more than Martin and Zack.

After that, we did a couple more rides, and we'd pretty much finished with the park. Earlier, though, we'd seen this pink monkey stuffed animal, and everyone was all "Audrey, that's SO you! You have to try to win it!," and I was all "eh. . ." But then everyone was walking around with them, and it turns out they had these HUGE heads and ridiculously long skinny arms, and I fell in love. So we had to go back and get me one.

Luckily, the game involved throwing a ball into a jar, and I had a Martin with me. His arms were practically long enough to touch the top of the jar, so very little throwing was involved. After three tries, I had a new pink monkey!

Me and Cathryn and きらっづちゃん(Kiraddzu-chan)!

Isn't she cool?

And with that, our day at Nagashima Spa Land came to an end. It was super fun and once again super exhausting! This didn't stop Cathryn and I from getting up early the next morning and walking through the pouring rain to eat Martin-made delicious vegan Belgian waffles with maple syrup! Yummy!

Cathryn Visits: 阿寺七滝 aka Aterenana Taki

2011-07-25T05:48:00.000+02:00

While Cathryn was here, we went with Rin and Martin to see this waterfall that was supposed to be AMAZING! Even though it was super close to Okazaki, because of the lack of trains to get there and then the lack of buses once arriving, it somehow took us, like, 3 hours. In a car it might have taken half an hour.

It was a lovely train ride, though, and we were given lots of random souvenirs by random Japanese people in the train and at the bus stop.

These bracelets were made by a man waiting for the bus with us. Martin's was for traffic protection, and ours were to drive away demons.

We were originally going to walk to the temple once arriving at the station, but some every sign we saw kept saying it was longer than we originally thought, and then finally some dude told us it was around 6 km with a treacherous, insect filled path. So we decided to wait for the bus, and in the meantime, we did some exploring!

And we did some sand writing! Mine says "rad," as you can see, which is a super rad word, right? Cathryn's SAPD is for the San Antonio Police Department. And then I made Martin draw a heart. :-P

We also found some tori gates, which as I've mentioned several times, I illogicaly love!

Us exploring!

We did eventually make to to the waterfall, though, and it turned out I'd already been there.

The lovely waterfall.

The time before, though, it was super rainy, and it was after a long day of hiking in the rain, so it was hard to appreciate. This time, I found it quite lovely, and in any case, the getting there was way more fun!

Good fun was had, and by the time we got back to Okazaki, I think we were all so exhausted we were just about ready to die.

Cathryn Visits: Okazaki-jou

2011-07-24T15:38:00.000+02:00

So, when I got back to Okazaki, CATHRYN WAS WAITING FOR ME!!!!

It was SO good to see her. I really can't think of anything that could have possibly been more wonderful. I had sort of reached a point in which I more than needed my best friend.

For several reasons, we decided not to leave Okazaki while she was here, so we just had a GREAT time chillin' in the area! We played lots at Wing Town!

And we watched TONS of Jane Austen! It's amazing how healing watching Jane Austen with your best friend can be!

We also went up and explored around the castle area!

We got to be samurais!

I still haven't figured out why there's this random anchor there, but I figure there must be a story, and I'm interested.

The cute little turtle face looked angry, so we decided he needed some love!

So yeah, the castle area is super nice, and it was great for Cathryn to get to see a bit of the older, more cultural side of Japan. This creepy dude told her she was pretty, though, and offered her like 1000 yen (or 10,000 yen, I can't remember), to touch her. So that was creepy.

And now it is my bedtime! More Cathryn's visit to come soon!

金沢　(Kanazawa)

2011-07-10T07:35:00.000+02:00

So, Sunday morning after the Girls Rock Magazine Tour, we woke up early to head to Kanazawa! It was the end of the term, and after, well, everything, I was really feeling like I just needed to get away (unfortunately, it seems that as opposed to needing to get away from Kanazawa, I really just needed to get away from people and not Okazaki, but, well, that's another story for another not blog time).

So, to Kanazawa with Alexis, Martin, Zack, Thama, Sandra, Vickie, and Yui!
First up, we visited the castle area.

Then we headed to the museum, which was super cool with all this optical illusiony like stuff!

We got to stand under the water of a pool. It was cool.

Then we walked around the old town area.

The next morning, Alexis and I slept in while the boys went to breakfast, and we met up with them at NinjaDera, this old temple with all sorts of traps and cool things throughout it that made it seem all ninjaish, thus the name!

Us hanging out in front of the temple - no photos allowed inside :-(

Then Martin and I separated and went off to eat lunch at Takano, a vegan restaurant that ended up being utterly scrumptious! We got to eat Daikon flavored-soy ice cream, which, shockingly and unexpectedly, ended up being absolutely delish! I also had some delicious tempeh and seitan, and I got some vegan mac and fauxmage to go for dinner (SO YUMMY!)

Then we headed back over to the castle area to meet up with the others to go to the supposedly super nice neighboring park.

While waiting, we must have taken at least a bagazillion pictures of ourselves making ridiculous faces (for some reason, we love doing this)!

I think in this one we were trying to emulate the face we would be making if there were a woman beating a dog with suckling puppies over yonder.

We found this small but absolutely STUNNING little pond, as well, and I felt like I could have just sat there all day.

Then the park was absolutley LOVELY!

There were these fish that I found absolutely BEYOND adorable when they opened their mouths!

Me trying to open my mouth like one of the little fishy faces - do I succeed?

There were literally TONS of cool trees in the park!

There was also this big statue of this apparently mythical hero. I wish I could remember his name. He seemed super cool.

If you look closely, apparently there are tons of animals carved into the stones!

There was a little temple thing outside the park, so Martin and I played there for a bit while the others headed back to the museum.

There was this totally rad statue of a cow - so cute, right?

And if you've ever read my blog before, you know that I have a somewhat illogical obsession with tori gates. There's really no reason for it, but I get all giddy and excited every time I see them (in the same way that I get giddy and excited for the dragon fountains that are at just about every temple). There were tori gates, so I was satisfied. :-)

These ones were a little small, though. Martin didn't fit.

The next day, we headed to Kagano Onsen for a night in an onsen ryoukan.

On train over, things were quite typical and just as they should be: Thama slept and Zack talked to strangers. . .

After arriving, we decided to take a walk around the little village before heading to the baths. We found some oversized geta that we of course had to try on!

The view from our room was AMAZING(we all had to share the same room - Vickie and Yui had left us by then, but still - 6 people, one room, a bit claustrophobic feeling - thank heavens for the amazing view)!

Getting settled in the room finished, we went down to enjoy the nice baths, which were absolutely PERFECT! Seriously, the view was the most amazing onsen view I had ever seen, and the water temperature was PERFECT! And when I got to hot, there were little benches to go sit on in this area that somehow managed to be cool. I felt like I could have just sat out there alternating between bench and bath for days.

Then, the ryoukan had made me special vegan food for dinner. It was SUPER nice of them, and I had no idea how to say thank you. I got to eat delicious vegan tempura and miso soup and other weird things that I didn't recognize but that were delicious (except the weird slimy, foamy seaweed thing, which was not delicious). It was just wonderful!

The next morning, after leisurely eating breakfast and enjoying the baths, we went out on the walking path behind the ryoukan.

We stumbled across this super cool bridge, and Sandra totally matched it in her pink tank. :-)

There were these HUGE, super cool looking leaves that made me think of cloud giant hands.

Because it's me, I of course wanted to keep one forever, and so despite Alexis and Martin saying how dirty and covered with bugs it must be, I couldn't stop myself from carrying it around all day.

Then it was over, and we hopped on the train back to Kanazawa where we caught the bus back to Okazaki. Good times were had, and when it was over, I was ready for a break! :-)
(Apologies for the not so great quality of the pictures - I didn't really take many, so got to make do with what I had)

Girls Rock

2011-07-10T04:28:00.002+02:00

After Sakae Spring, I was feeling very concerty. I saw some AWESOME bands, and I was feeling like I needed to see them again.

Lucky for me, Alexis was feeling the same way, so we headed back to Nagoya the Saturday after term ended (it was a very burn outy term, and I feel like I didn't really learn all that much, but I still managed an A+, so I get to move on, and this term I plan to be totally studious and Japanese-learny!), we headed over to the Girls Rock Magazine Fest!

It was AWESOME! We left after I got off work, and the first band we saw, 桜華(sakura hana), was unfortunately not good. They seemed a little bit too put on, and the singer annoyed me more than anything else. I was therefore worried.

Next up, though, was Shink, and my world was rocked.

They were vibrant and exciting, and they put on an AMAZING live show. Alexis also thought so, and we might go see them again when they come back to Toyohashi.

Then was Hysteric*Flavor.

I really, really, really wanted to LOVE them, as all of their merch was pink and punk looking and fun. And they were super cute! Unfortunately, they didn't blow me away. I think a lot of that could be because the vocals were so low that I couldn't hear them at all. Listening now, the youtube song is WAY better than their live was.

Then came Scusi, who, aside from the obvious (Skull Candy, to come) was by far the best band of the night. They were totally Less Than Jake style with two singers, and it was pure awesomeness. I was shocked to find out that they're a newish band.

I was also psyched to find out that they're from Nagoya - I totally plan on going to see them again (and maybe again and again and again). I was talking to the male singer later, and he seemed super nice. Even if he didn't seem to really be wanting to talk to me. And even if the bassist (guitarist?) was sitting far away on a couch and kept being shocked that he was talking to the white girl. All like, "You're talking to her? What'd she say, what'd she say?!?" I felt very zoo-animal-esque.

After Scusi, Bunny the Party.

I love Bunny the Party, so I was super psyched to get to see them, and of course, they were awesome. Unfortunately, when I was first talking to the Scusi dude, I totally thought he was the Bunny the Party dude, and it took me a minute to figure out why he was looking at me like I was crazy. He had to explain. I was embarassed.

Then Hybrid Statice.

They were fun, but nothing overly special. I wasn't surprised to learn that they're a new band, and I think that once they get their sound figured out, they could end up being awesome (especially as I'm really digging the song in this video). This whole Nagoya seeming to have a newish music scene full of the kind of music I love is more than exciting!
The drummer pretty much begged me and Alexis to come to their next show, and I really do want to go. But unfortunately, it's July 17, and I've already got a ticket to see Special Thanks (YAY!!!! I don't even know how to contain my excitement about the fact that I'm going to get to see them!!!!), so no can do. :-(

Then came the ハイファイコーヒーズ (Hi-Fi Koohizu). Unfortunately, at this point, Alexis and I had begun to wonder why it was SO hot. Turns out the air conditioner had broken, and as their set progressed, it just got hotter and hotter and hotter.

The singer was hilarious, and it was SO obvious that she really did NOT want to be performing in that heat.
After the Hi-Fi Coffees was Skull Candy, our reason for going.

They were, as they had been at Sakae Spring, AMAZING! Seriously. This band knows how to rock, and I hope to get to see them lots more times before I leave Japan.　　Despite the broken air conditioner, I barely noticed the heat.

By the time they were over though, both Alexis and I were sweating maybe more than we had ever sweat in our entire lives. Our clothes and bodies were literally so drenched with sweat that it was as if we'd jumped into a sweat swimming pool. Delicious.

This made watching the last band, fly sleep fly, rather difficult.

I'd downloaded their album the week before and had been listening to and enjoying them, so I was psyched to get to see them.
We ended up having to sit outside for most of their set, because it was just too painful to be outside. 超ー暑かった！　　And what we did see ended up being impossible to enjoy because it was just, so, well, HOT!

So there we go. . .my second music fest in Japan, and aside from the broken air conditioner, I think it might have even been better than the first. Sheer awesomeness!

Next post, no music, I promise (maybe).

Term 5

2011-06-08T15:21:00.000+02:00

This term has been INCREDIBLY eventful so far! I can't believe that I haven't written a single word about it up until now (except, yknow, the awesomeness of concerts). I also still haven't written about my couple weeks hanging out with Krist in Colorado. For now, though, this term! And then later, maybe I'll do some looking at the past and post some pictures of Colorado.

Since I missed the last test when I left Japan after the earthquake, I had to miss the first day of class to take it. It went fine (well, even, despite my twoish week break from Japanese), and I got to enter into the next level up. Yay! This would feel like more of an accomplishment if I felt like I were actually doing some Japanese advancing. . .but I think I'm really just at that level where it's impossible to see any progress.

Because of the nuclear disaster, the number of Yamasa students decreased, so there's only one class for my level this term, and there are 14 of us, with 3 new students, Kim, Zack, and Cesar, all of whom are fabulous. So yeah, new class, and I love all of us! <3Aside from learning Japanese and working nearly 15 hours a week, I feel like I've been out and about quite a bit this term! :-)First, there was hanabi - a bunch of us went up to Okazaki Castle to observe the beautiful cherry blossoms in bloom.

It was seriously gorgeous, and at night, all the lights in the trees lit up, and it was just, well, amazing!

So then we had a few days off for Golden Week, and since we had a test pretty much right when we got back, I just hung around in Okazaki pretending to study, but mostly not.

The first night, Thama had a crepes and cocktails get together in his apartment, and that was super fun!

Martin and I hanging on the balcony

Cesar used to be a bar tender, and Alexis has this uncanny ability to just mix drinks, so they both had, like, little bars set up.

Alexis, me, Kimiko

And then Sandra made crepes, which I couldn't eat, but which were apparently delicious. Joanna came over beforehand, and the two of us made a vegan curry. It was delicious!!!! Yay vegan curry!

Cesar, Joanna, me, Martin, Kimiko, and in the front, Zack

Then over the break (or was it not the break? I literally can't remember) I also went with Zack and Thama farming, which was super fun!

Thama, me, Zack

We planted onions and tomatoes and spring onions and potatoes and spinach and other things, I am sure, and, yeah, awesomeness! :-)

And then Alexis, Zack, and Thama came over to play cards, and we played spades, which filled me with immense happiness, since it is my favorite card came in the entire world, and I never get to play it.

Me and Thama and Zack reflection -

I kind of love this picture because Thama sort of looks like the cute kitty face magnet thing next to him.

Oh, and we also went hiking to Horaiji Temple, which was SUPER fun!

Us at the beginning of the hike!

At least it was super fun for me. It was raining all day, so we hiked in the rain, and I realized that, for me, there is something so calming and peaceful and wonderful about hiking in the rain. I rather love it. I don't think everyone else felt the same way, though.

Seriously, though, the rainy mist actually made the view even MORE beautiful!

Oh, and we also went to see this waterfall that's supposed to be on some list of the top 100 waterfalls in Japan.

It really was quite lovely!

And despite feeling like this term has been super exciting and fun and eventful, I feel like this post has been very boring and mostly pictureless. Sorwy. :-( Also long. Therefore, the end.

Sakae Spring + LC5

2011-06-05T12:01:00.001+02:00

I have another entry about non-musicy things coming soon, but for now, music awesomeness!

So, I finally decided that the fact that I had been living in Japan for over a year and yet had never been to a concert was just depressing. And that something should be done about it.

So, I bought tickets to see LC5. I didn't know them all that well, but the singer was the singer of An Cafe, pretty much my favorite Japanese band of all time, so I figured they were a good choice. Steven Cayco went with me, and I had a GREAT time!　　I'd say it was about 90% girls there, which was funny, since their sound is pretty hard. The band members also spent about an 10 minutes talking about what makeup they wear and what their favorite brands of makeup are, which was funny, since they're all dudes.

Anyhow, the music was wonderful, the talking wasn't too much, and the environment was fantastic. I had a super great time, and I totally have a new crush on the bassist, Sato. He's so goofy and dopey seeming that I couldn't help but think he was adorable. All the other girls, though, just kept screaming "Aki-sama, Aki-sama." That's the drummer, and he just seemed, well, broody.

Isn't he cute?

The most fun part was that there seemed to be line dances to every song that everyone just seemed to know, and it was hilarious trying to dance along in unison with everyone (and, of course, fail).

So then yesterday, a bunch of us went to Sakae Spring, a summer music fest in Nagoya. It was seriously the most fun I have had in I can't even remember how long.

I went a little bit earlier than everyone, because I wanted to see Namba Akihiro at 3:00.

Yummy Japanese punk rock! Unfortunately, the line to get in was 8 stories long and then out the door. I got there about 20 minutes early (with the help of some very nice Japanese people that showed me the way, because, you know, it's me, so I got lost) but still didn't manage to get in.

The next band I wanted to see though, was also in the same club, so I decided to just keep waiting. And I STILL almost didn't get in. That's how packed this place was. Like, 10 people behind me got in and then it was full.
Still, I got to see Pay Money to My Pain, and they were AWESOME!

They put on an AMAZING show, and I got to headbang and mosh and scream along, and I felt like I like nothing more than a good hardcore punk show.

And then I went to see Skull Candy, and I changed my mind. Ska punk shows are the most fun shows ever!!!!

The singer was just the cutest thing in the entire world, and she couldn't stop exclaiming how HAPPY she was to be in Nagoya. And everyone in the band was just so energetic and enthusiastic, and everyone in the crowd (which was 98% male, which I will admit was kind of weird) was super into the music and skanking and dancing around, and I was filled with extreme happiness. It was WONDERFUL! I'm going to go see them again when they come back to Nagoya in 3 weeks.

Then it ended, and nothing could bring me down. I went to meet up with the others, who were seeing Ms. Ooja, so I got to see the end of her set.

It wasn't bad, but I was still on my high from Skull Candy, and it was hard to come down. Plus, the sound quality was really bad, and she was singing to a dj, which was weird and made it feel like karaoke.

Then, we headed over to see a band whose name I do not remember. They were all right, but they had that double guitar sound (I don't know how to describe it other than that) that I don't really like, so we'll just forget about them.

THEN, we went over to see Rookiez is Punk'd, a band I totally love.

They were SO MUCH FUN!!!! The music was wonderful, but more than that, they were super interactive with the audience, and so everyone was singing along and dancing and laughing, and the atmosphere was just WONDERFUL! The singer was so doofy and happy that I just had to go talk to him afterward. He was SO nice! There's something about doofy happiness that just does it for me everytime.

This songs not particularly pop punky, but some of their stuff is, which made the experience all the more wonderful! I will SO be there when they come back to Nagoya.

The we went to see the end of this dude playing the piano, and it was really pretty and quite good, but I don't know his name, and we only saw one song. I should try to remember his name.

So yeah, basically, yesterday was AWESOME, and I am SO in a concert mood now, and I can't wait to go to lots and lots and lots more! I'm so glad that I'm finally discovering a live music scene in Nagoya that I love! YAY!!!!

I went to Honolulu with Alexis, did you?

2011-05-10T15:49:00.000+02:00

Leaving Japan on such short notice after a huge earthquake followed by a huge tsunami by a nuclear crisis = not so easy.

The plane that took me out, therefore, had a full day of layover in Honolulu. Alexis was on the same flight, so we chilled in Hawaii.

I ate this

and it was delicious. Vegan soup pho is totally always the best.

We played here

and it was beautiful, and our hair was crazy.

We forgot that we were in Hawaii and not Japan

and left our stuff hanging out on the beach.
It's okay, though, because we have the coolest stuff evs. :-)

The smart Alexis, who had brought a bathing suit, played in the water

while I sat on the beach getting my pants all wet. Which led me to put on Alexis's shorts, which were all big and fally offy.

Good times were had, and then I got to Colorado, and Kristen wondered why I was so tan.

My day in Honolulu 以上です。

January to March 2011 randomness

2011-05-01T15:08:00.001+02:00

So, this updating thing might take a little while, as it has been AGES since I last updated. I'm going to do my best to keep things super brief, though.

So, small summaries - no longer a Minna no Nihongo student but now a New Approach student nearing the end of the blue book.

I went home for Christmas and had a fantabulous time!

Then I went to France for the end of my Christmas vacation, where I got to eat delicious Ethiopian food and do Viet Vo Dao and just generally chill.

Came back to Japan and pretty much immediately got the flu, which put me basically out of commission for a good threeish weeks. Other than that (and the obvious), had a fabulous term.

Went indoor rock climbing.

Went bowling.

Went plum blossom viewing.

Went to some cool festivals (the Takisanji Ogre festival being the coolest!)

These dudes were supposed to be chasing an ogre around the temple with fire. It was super awesome.

Went to the Okazaki Zoo and saw lots of cute animals.

Did lots of other things that I don't really remember (because I didn't take any pictures of them), studied probably much less than I should have but still managed to do well (though my Japanese speaking could use some major work), hung out with friends in Nagoya,. . .

Then the earthquake happened, and I was in Yahagi, and it felt like the building I was in suddenly went to sea, and I'm surprised I didn't throw up. Then I

Went to an okonomiyaki restaurant and didn't eat anything.

Played some cards.

And then I woke up the next morning and inexplicably went to Tokyo.

Saw some beautiful mountains on the way.

Ate lots of DELICIOUS vegan food, including
adorable caramel heart-shaped donuts

and peanut glutinous rice balls and a chocolate shake!

Yummy!

Then I met up with my friend Jonnie who was in Japan for the first time ever.

He still has the coolest bag ever of all time.

It had been ages since I last saw him, and it was super cool to catch up and just get to spend the day together. I seriously had an AWESOME time hanging out with him.

The next day I had a medical visit right in front of Tokyo Tower.

It was my first time to see Tokyo Tower, and it was actually pretty cool.
Then I took the bus home to Okazaki, where I was finally able to talk to my father, who ordered me to evacuate. So I did (I'll admit, it was kinda scary, especially as the night I got back there was a huge aftershock, and while I was in Tokyo the ground never seemed to stop shaking).

And next time (which will hopefully be sooner rather than later), I'll write about my day in Honolulu with Alexis and hanging out in Colorado.

Why I Stay

2011-04-13T01:41:00.000+02:00

I've had several people ask me to write a post like this, so here we go.

Okay, so the fact is, I'm a neurotic person about a lot of things. Anyone that knows me knows this. Not about everything, but there are certain things that just sort of bring me off the wall.

One of those certain things is disease, specifically cancer. Disease SCARES me. For serious. Everytime a somewhat youngish person dies, I go a little bit crazy for days, scared that that could so easily happen to me. The only thing that can calm me down is understanding WHY this person died and HOW this has nothing to do with me (like, oh, this person died of a drug overdose - I don't do any drugs, so calmness returns).

And anyone that knows me knows that I regularly freak out about the potential of getting cancer. I don't even want to smell a place where someone has recently (in the past few days) a cigarette - mostly because it makes me feel sick, the smell, but I'm sure a lot of that comes psychologically from the fact that I think it's giving me cancer. I spend a great deal of time trying to make sure I do everything to lead the most carcinogen-free lifestyle possible.

Therefore, a lot of people are having trouble understanding how *I,* of all people, feel totally fine staying in Japan when a nuclear crisis is happening.

The easiest answer to that question is - I don't really know, I just do. I guess I love it here so much that I'm able to just not think about it that much. That doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about it, though, and I assure everyone that I am doing my best to keep informed.

A lot of people are concerned about the radiation level where I am, in Aichi-ken right outside Nagoya in Okazaki.
This sight gives a daily reading of radiation measured in the air and in the water by prefecture. So, if you're interested, go check it out. And you'll see that, while it's not flat-lining the bottom, the radiation level here is still really quite low. Low enough that it doesn't worry me. And, as of yet, no radiation has been detected in the tap water (which hasn't stopped me from drinking bottled water, but still, it's good to know).

So anyhow, I'm staying, and I'm doing my best to keep myself informed enough to feel comfortable staying. Even though the nuclear disaster level has now been raised to a 7, I still feel like I'm okay. If you're still really worried, check the website.

And that's all I've got to say for now! :-)

Japan - fleeing, feeling, and donating

2011-03-22T17:55:00.000+01:00

I posted this in my book blog, but I know some of the people that read this blog don't read my book blog, so I thought I'd do a double posting, just to be safe.

So, as most of you probably know, I have been living in Japna for the last year. And with all of the things going on in Japan lately, I have received SO many wonderful comments and e-mails from you guys inquiring about my safety. First of all, I just want to say thank you SO much. I really appreciate all of your thoughts and concerns, and I am sure Japan and all of the Japanese people do as well.

Second of all, yes, I am safe. The area I live in was basically unaffected. I felt the quake a little bit (I was actually teaching 2 year olds at the time, and the building we were in shook like we were in a boat for about 4 minutes - the worst we got was some crying two year olds. And me feeling motion sick), but other than that my area was unaffected.

Still, because my family was worrying so much (and let's face it, when it came to radiation, me, too), I have returned to the states. It was a little bit crazy going through everything to get my re-entry permit and a last minute flight and to get myself packed, but now I have safely arrived in Colorado with my sister.

I've been a little bit blah and a little bit depressed about the whole situation, so I've been doing my best to avoid the internet (unfortunately, it's been hard, and I've been watching and reading way too much about Libya and Japan).

Now, I know you all want to help Japan (I know I can't watch the news without crying and feeling sick), and what they need more than anything right now is money. There are lots of great ways to donate, and I hope you will. For a list of donation possibilites, go check out this article.
In the meantime, please keep Japan (and Libya, of course) in your thoughts (and prayers, if you have those).

And, since I know it's been ages since I last updated about anything, I'll do my best to post a real update as soon as I get back to Japan.

Hokkaido: A Photo Journey

2010-11-28T10:13:00.000+01:00

So, basically, there's no way around it - I have a TON of pictures of Hokkaido. And I want to post ALL of them! Sooooo, I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures and let you guys figure out the rest. Commentary ONLY when I feel it's necessary. Enjoy! :-)

This waterfall was seriously one of the most amazing waterfalls I had ever seen, and I am sad that the picture of course is incapable of doing it justice.

I don't know what it is with Japanese people, but they seem to LOVE huge over-sized doll things.

Can you tell what my new favorite flower is? Seriously, these are the PERFECT color!

Guillaume loves melon!

So yeah, as you can tell, Hokkaido was beautiful and awesome! I am sorry for the lack of explanation, but I'm sure you guys prefer pictures, anyway. If you click on them, they get big. :-)

Momiji viewing in Korankei

2010-11-27T05:07:00.000+01:00

So, I still haven't written about Hokkaido, I know. And now it seems like it was ages ago. A friend helped me turn off some parts of Windows 7, though, so that I can finally easily upload photos even with the old router that I must use in my home. So soon, I promise. Perhaps tomorrow.

In the meantime, last weekend was FABULOUS! I worked late on Friday, and immediately fell asleep upon getting home then had to get up and work again on Saturday morning. I worked until 3:30 and once again came home and fell promptly asleep (apparently I was very tired). Then, around 5:30, I headed to Nagoya with a friend, and we attended something called a 飲み会(nomikai). I unfortunately didn't bring my camera, but suffice it to say, it was interesting, and I had a GREAT time.
I spent the entire evening attempting to converse in Japanese and being yelled at by men with megaphones. Because I was the only non-Japanese person there (and I just so happen to be a tall, white girl), the men that were for some reason walking around with megaphones announcing things (yeah, I don't know what that was about) liked to come over and talk to me and about me to everyone there.
It was great Japanese practice, and it made me realize that I REALLY need to speak Japanese more often, because it's hard to get out the words that I want.
Next time, I will definitely be bringing a camera.

So then Sunday, I woke up early to meet up with some friends to head over to 足助(Asuke), in こらんけい(Korankei) for こうよう(kouyou) or もみじ(momiji), which is basically the viewing of the fall leaves. Asuke is about an hour away from here by bus, and it is well-known for its beautiful fall leaves.

We were going to take the bus at 10:47, but it turned out that bus had actually been at 10:10 (I'm convinced the times on the web site changed), and the next bus wasn't until 12:10. So we took that bus.
Upon arriving at the bus station, Alexis promptly managed to break a glass and then almost fall down the stairs. Then, even though we had been standing at the bus stop for far longer than most of the people, we realized we were waiting for the long bus and had to go to the end of a HUGE line. Which ended with us having to stand the entire way on the bus. Great start to the day, right?

Me feeling sick (can you tell?)sitting down in the bus where I totally shouldn't have been sitting.
When we were about 5 kilometers away, the traffic started. Standing for over an hour in a bus so crowded I could barely breathe, I was already feeling sick, and the stop and go added a whole other dimension to that sickness. So we got off the bus and walked the rest of the way.

The car fumes smelled like fresh air compared to the interior of the bus. And the view on the walk was AMAZING!

But it was nothing compared to the view when we actually arrived. The place was super crowded, which in no way took away for the magnificence of the yellow, red, orange, and green colored hill with a sparkling river flowing right in front of it.

We sat on the bank of the river for a picnic and then

Is that color not just PERFECT?!? And the shape!!! It was love at first sight.
I saw my new favorite car in the entire world.

In order to try to get away from the masses, decided to head over to the castle. There was a lovely bamboo field on the way up. I don't know what it is about bamboo, but it always seems so magical to me.

On the way up, there was as side path that led us to what was supposedly a well. Martin and I weren't convinced.

We were actually the only people at the castle, though I don't know why, as it was old school and super cool (though, I admit, not very castle like), and the view from the top was more than spectacular.

Delicious strawberry mochi!
Afterward, we headed back down the mountain and over to the hill (I wish I could remember what the hill was called) to try to find some of the special もち(mochi), aka condensed glutinous rice, for which the region is known.

Instead we found the end of a taiko concert. It seemed to be quite good, and I'm sad that we didn't get to see more of it.

The hill was all lit up for night, and with the almost full moon in the background, it was almost even more beautiful than during the day.

Since we walked the last 5 kilometers, we didn't know where the bus stop was, but we managed to find it without even looking, and a bus just so happened to arrive the second we stood in line.

Unfortunately, we were standing up again, but another of the exact same bus pulled up right behind us, and the driver's stopped so that the people standing in our bus could go sit in the other bus. Nice! Gotta love Japan, right?

Halloween and the Jazz Fest

2010-11-09T13:26:00.000+01:00

So, I haven't written yet about the Hokkaido part of the trip with Guillaume, and I promise that I will, but in the meantime, other things have been going on!

First, there was Halloween. There was a Halloween party at the bar by Yamasa, and I went, but I unfortunately had to go off and have a headache for the day, so I couldn't bring myself to dress up (or even stay after 10 PM). It was fun, though, and there were some amazing costumes, but I unfortunately took no pictures. :-(

Then Sunday, on actual Halloween day, a bunch of us got together for a Halloween karaoke. It was super fun, and I actually dressed up this time!

I was a thug, and Martin was a mime!

Lauren dressed up as sort of deadish Little Red Riding Hood - her costume was absolutely AMAZING! She looked totally awesome. It made me wish I were good at costume making.

Daniel wore a fun Rilakuma hat, and Alexis unfortunately got sick and couldn't go, so she didn't get to see it. :-( She would have loved it, I think.

Vanessa and Stephen also came, though they didn't dress up. Sadness.

Neither did Wooreeh and Tan.

It was super fun. And then last weekend was the Okazaki Jazz Festival (Jazz Street), and I went on Sunday with Sandra and Carla. One of the students with whom Carla and I do French conversation gave us the tickets for free (otherwise 4000 whole yen) - super nice!

Super fun times, even though neither Carla or I are huge fans of jazz. The first concert we went to was actually in a Buddhist temple, which was an interesting experience. The second concert we went to was at the outdoor Noh theatre by the Okazaki Castle.

On our way over to the castle area, we saw a Japanese couple that had just gotten married, and they were in traditional Japanese wedding garb. It was the first time I had seen that, and I was impressed. The bride's little head thing was especially awesome.

Then there were tons of people and lots of things going on over by the castle area as well.

Thiss fun little bear/lion/cute thing was just walking around randomly. I have NO clue what he was doing, but I of course had to get a picture with him.

After the Noh theatre concert (which was actually quite good - the trumpeter reminded me of Guillaume's dad, and he had a fun story for every song they played. They also played more be-boppy tunes than jazz tunes, so I was into it!), we got to take a picture with some dudes dressed up as samurai! One of the dudes let me hold his sword, and I was a little unsure as to what to do with it.

The last concert was in the library, and even though the band was super energetic, we found ourselves falling asleepish. It's crazy how tiring watching jazz concerts can be.

Other than that, well, we had a first test of the term a little while ago, and I did super good, with only two small, slightly idiotic mistakes. Today we had our first talking test, and I have to say, I'm not feeling nearly as confident about that. Then this past Friday I started a new job in Yahagi, and I think it is going to be good. I have the CUTEST little Japanse girl twins in one of the classes.

Times have been good, though because I work Monday to Saturday, I find that I'm not having as much time as I'd like to really explore Japan. Luckily, I'm here for several more months!

And this weekend, I promise, I'll write all about Hokkaido. It was SO BEAUTIFUL there, and I'm therefore having trouble deciding which pictures to post.

End of term and Guillaume and I rock Tokyo

2010-10-30T12:12:00.000+02:00

So, after Guillaume's first visit, I got back to work studying Japanese! The time between his two visits, though, was quite short, so I really didn't do all that much before meeting up with him in Tokyo.

I finished my term here and ended up with an A! :-) Yay! We took the final term Yamasa test again, and I got a 100 on all of the information that I am supposed to know, so that was lovely.

And then, before I knew it, term was over, and I went to meet up with Guillaume in Tokyo for his second visit!

Despite how over-crowded and dirty and fast-paced Tokyo is (can you tell that I would NEVER want to live there?), we had an AMAZING time and ate lots of delicious food! We stayed in Asakusa, so when we first met up, we took a little tour of the area.

And then we headed up to Akihabara, and I felt very at home surrounded by lots of old school Nintendo games!

And of course we had to head up to the awesomest chair ever so that Guillaume could have a little sit in it. Unfortunately, it reeked of cigarettes in the chair room, so he didn't get to enjoy said awesomest chair ever as much as I did the first time I sat in it. :-(

Our second morning there, we discovered that sumo was in Tokyo, and Guillaume desperately wanted to see a match, so we woke up early to get tickets. It was windy and rainy, and as such I think we were lucky, as the obtaining of tickets was actually quite easy, and I hear it's normally not for those waiting for the cheap early morning tickets.

Even with the rain, the line was still kinda crazy.

We had a bit of time before the match started, so we decided to check out Ueno Park, which, as I noticed when I went back there with Josh and Rachel, is a WAY cooler place when it is not so overcrowded with drunk and smoking people there to do お花見 (ohanami - cherry-blossom viewing) that you can't even move.

We went to the museum (the is the wrong word, as there are several, but I can't remember to which one we went) in the park and saw some SUPER cool statues.

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of the coolest ones.

Then we headed back to sumo, which was a bit different in Tokyo. I was quite happy to see another match, as the Tokyo one was SO MUCH MORE intense than the Nagoya ones. It's crazy how much feeling they manage to pack into their 5 second matches.

The match ended late, so we didn't have much time for anything but eating afterward. This was perhaps for the best, as we were both extraordinarily tired.

On Sunday, we headed over to Harajuku, and like with every other time I've been there, I was very disappointed with the cosplay corner. Nothing very interesting to see, I thought. We took a nice little walk in the park there, though, and then checked out the temple (whose name I have forgotten), so that was nice.

This was perhaps the coolest thing that I saw near the cosplay area. How awesome is that?!? I mean, it's pink. With polka dots.

And I, of course, also had to show Guillaume Takeshita street.

Luckily, it wasn't quite as crazy as it was when I was there with Rachel and Josh, but, still, sheer craziness. Barely able to move, much less breathe, we only stayed for about 2 minutes. :-P

We also checked out ginza at night, and I was sad that the kabuki theatre was already being torn down, so Guillaume didn't get to see it.

On Monday, we headed to Hokkaido, and that will be for the next post, but after Hokkaido, we came back to Tokyo for two days, so I thought I would include those two days.

We tried to check out the Imperial Palace, but the gardens were closed, so we ended up just walking around it. We also decided to take these couple days to eat donuts.

(they had DELICIOUS vegan cranberry donuts and pumpkin buns - I mean, seriously, how yummy does that look?)
and shop.

We also did some exploring of the Ginza district.

So yeah, Tokyo was AWESOME, and it was so great to get to see it with Guillaume!
We also ate in lots of delicious restaurants!
Loving Hut had really done some getting amazing since the last time I ate there. And then Hanada Rosso, while quite expensive, had delicious veggie burgers and smoothies.

My favorite, by far, though, was Little Heaven. They had pizza that was almost on par with the pizza we ate in Budapest (I don't think anything will ever be as amazing as that pizza was). The first time we tried to go, we couldn't find it (the Happy Cow directions are quite bad, actually), so the second time, I called, and the guy actually came to MEET us and walk us to his restaurant.
He was INCREDIBLY friendly, and we were SO thankful to him for coming to get us, especially after eating his amazing pizza and gyoza. I was thankful to speak enough Japanese to be able to explain that we couldn't find the restaurant, as his English was non-existent.
He gave me some tips on how to make my own vegan cheese like the one that he makes himself for his pizzas, so I'm excited to try that.
He also had the most DELICIOUS homemade desserts.
If you are ever in Tokyo, FIND THIS RESTAURANT AND GO!!!! I am almost thankful that it's not here in Okazaki, otherwise I fear I would go everyday!

Guillaume Visits: Kyoto!

2010-10-08T08:46:00.000+02:00

Okay, so lots has been happening here in Japan lately, and I haven't updated in a while, which as usual means that I have a TON to update about! Before I get ahead of myself writing about the end of term and Guillaume's second visit, though, I think I should finish writing about his first.

So, after Hiroshima and Miyajima, we hopped on the Shinkansen and headed on up to Kyoto. And, as it was the first time, it was AWESOME!

The first thing we did was to look for record stores so that Guillaume could try to buy some rap.

Then we took a lovely night walk around the Gion district and the park beside it.

We didn't stay out late, though, because the next morning we woke up early to go see some monkeys and a bamboo forest!

The area around the monkey temple was super cool and old-fashioned seeming, and even though I'm sure it was a tourist trap, I loved it!
Especially the boats.

And the lily pads.

These lily pads are really everywhere in Japan, and, like with the dragon fountains, I'm not sure I will never get over how awesome I find them to be.

We had to hike up pretty high to see the monkeys, and the view was pretty amazing.

In the temple next to the bamboo forest, there were tons of amazing paintings of dragons.

I totally wanted one.

And the gardens were exquisite.

And, of course, it wouldn't be Kyoto if we didn't visit the Gold and Silver temples. You'll perhaps remember these places from pictures from when I went to Kyoto with Josh and Rachel.

Of course, the rock Garden at the silver temple was once again amazing.

Seriously - these Japanese people know how to do rocks.
And I was once again overwhelmed with the desire to jump over the barriers and roll around in the beautiful, green, squishy-soft looking moss!

After the golden temple, we took a little walk down the Path of Philosophy (at least I think that's what it's called), and we found ourselves at one of the coolest places in Kyoto. I unfortunately can't remember what it was called.

There was this AMAZING building with some of the biggest columns I had ever before in my life seen!
Then there was this super cool seemingly totally random wall.

We followed it down until it ended and then up a mountain path to where we got to see a beautiful waterfall!

It's still amazing to me that such beautiful, natural places can exist in what seems to be the middle of a huge city.

We ate pretty much every day at this delicious restaurant called Cafe Proverbs. And there was the river by Cafe Proverbs, so we went to play on the turtle and ducks stones they use to cross the river.

What else?
It was SUPER hot, so we bought super awesome fans!

And of course we had to visit Nishiki Market again, where we got to eat some delicious soy ice cream!

And we walked around the Imperial Palace gardens, which were unfortunately mostly uninteresting, and not only because it was raining.

Oh, and the last day, we went to an anime/manga museum, which was super cool and having an exhibit about sculptures.

Guillaume Visits: Miyajima!

2010-09-19T08:45:00.000+02:00

So, right next to Hiroshima is they very well known island of Miyajima, or rather Itsukushima.

You might never have heard of Miyajima or Itsukushima before, but I am sure you have at least seen pictures of the famous Tori gate for which it is known, which floats in the water right off its shores.

While the pictures are, of course, amazing, nothing lives up to this gate up close and personal.

When we visited, it was low tide, so we didn't actually get to see the gate floating in the water. I think what we got was better, though, in that we got to walk right up to it.

With the bright orangeish red color of the gate combined with the beautiful blue sky with the perfectly white and fluffy clouds, the image was breathtaking.
Even if the part that is often covered with water was, um, cute.

Little shellfish things lived all over it. :-)

At the temple by the Tori gate, there were also some really cool things. It was cool to get to watch the crabs crawling all over the place where normally there is water, and to check out the bridge that seemed to be over nothing because of the low tide.

And of course, no Japanese temple would be complete without the notorious sake barrels.
While the island is known for this Tori gate, there are also quite a few other amazing things to see.

We hiked through and ate lunch in a beautiful park, that would have been peaceful if it weren't for the deer that were even more annoying than the Nara deer. They tried to steal our food, and when we didn't want to give it to them, they tried to attack us with their antlers.

Then we hiked up to this really cool temple. My favorite part of the island, I think, was the hundreds of mini statues leading up to the temple.

Seriously, they were SO cool. And there were really hundreds of them - they seemed to go on forever and ever.

What made them particularly awesome was that each and every one of them, though they looked the same from afar, was extraordinarily different. There were fat ones and emaciated ones and serious ones and ones making funny faces and. . .

This was my favorite one, holding a dragon!
Sorry, just one more picture so that you can really get the feeling of how they were EVERYWHERE!

Okay, enough pictures of the little statues. There were also some other super cool statues at this temple.

Like this one of some weird Japanese Pinnochioesque man.

And of course, not to be forgotten, An Pan man. An Pan is basically this pancake like bread filled with red bean paste, and this little dude's head is supposed to be An Pan. He is the face of An Pan!

The gardens at the temple were also beautiful!

As was the amazing view out over the island!

On our way down, we stopped at the five story pagoda.

They must really love these things in Japan, as they seem to be everywhere I look!

Guillaume Visits: Hiroshima!

2010-09-15T09:50:00.000+02:00

So, Saturday morning, after a lovely week in Okazaki, we headed off to Hiroshima.

Hiroshima was AWESOME! I had just seen a movie about the bombing right before going, so visiting genkaku dome was very sad for me. I really almost cried.

We were super tired, but it was absolutely worth seeing.

The memorial was absolutely lovely, and

and there were these paper cranes EVERYWHERE!

The dome itself was really something to see.
I have to say, I'm glad that they've decided to keep it in this condition for everyone to see.
I wished that I had brought a paper crane to add to the pile.
We also went into the Memorial Museum.

us looking tired
It was incredibly sad - they had a database so that you could look up pictures of all the people that died during the bomb or from affects of the bomb. And then they had digital books that you could look through to see pictures drawn by accounts written by people that had actually been there and witnessed it. There was one story, accompanied by picture, that actually did make me cry.

We also went for a night visit of the castle - we didn't really feel the need to go inside, and it was so beautiful lit up at night.

in front of the castle

the castle lit up all beautifully at night

One day while there, we decided that we were going to hike to the top of the mountain to see the dome up there. We had read wonderful things about the hike (despite there being NO mention of it in the Lonely Planet - how odd)

On our way towards attempting to find the trail,

we saw these ADORABLE bunny road things!

We started off at the wrong temple and ended up hiking high up into a mountain on the way to nowhere. We did finally find our way, though, and let's just say: the hike was steep.

Notice the ambulance - yes, they were having to escort someone down. It was hot and steep and rugged and rough!

When we got to the graveyard, there was a firetruck, and someone was being escorted down. I'm not surprised - getting from the bottom of the graveyard to the top was rough. The dome at the top of the hill was cool,

Me in front of the Peace Monument

and the view of Hiroshima was also pretty cool,

but it was the hike down that was the most amazing. We hiked a trail (a different one) that has a name, but I've forgotten what that name is. We found ourselves hiking down through tori gate after tori gate.

Guillaume in the tori gates

Me in the tori gates

There were literally HUNDREDS of them!

Seriously, they just went on FOREVER!
I seriously couldn't stop taking pictures.

Notice how scary Guillaume looks behind me

It was really an amazing sight.

While there, we ate in this Indian Restaurant called Roopali.

It was definitely NOT the best of Indian restaurants in which I have eaten, but it was alright.

We also discovered this restaurant called Vegan Cafe, which was absolutely DELICIOUS! I can't remember if we ate there twice or three times. I wish it was here in Okazaki

And one day, when leaving the restaurant, we came across a rockabilly/punk band playing in a square. Almost everywhere I go, I come across a random punk band playing in the street - Okazaki, Nagoya, Kyoto, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Takayama,. . .

It was SO hot! I don't know HOW they were wearing those black leather jackets.
They were really good, and I wish we had had more time to stay and watch for a while.

We also decided to hike up to the manga library.

I say hike up because, well, it really was a long hike up a very steep hill, and then the manga library wasn't even all that interesting.
Let me just say - if ever I were to live in Hiroshima, I would SO want a car!

So yes, we had a FABULOUS time in Hiroshima! And, in case you were wondering, we did indeed go spend a day in Miyajima (how can you go to Hiroshima without heading to Miyajima?), and the next post will be all about that!

Guillaume Visits: Okazaki! and Yosakoi!

2010-09-12T09:07:00.002+02:00

Sooo, at the beginning of August, Guillaume came to visit!!!! And because I was still in class, we spent his entire first week here hanging around Okazaki.

I was SO excited to get to hang out with Guillaume again! Yay!

His first day here, we took it easy, and I just showed him around Yamasa and the area where I live. Then that night, we went to the Dance Festival at the Okazaki Civic Center.

Guillaume and I at the Okazaki Civic Center festival!

View of the festival

The week was extremely busy - every day, I would get up and go to class, meet up with Guillaume for lunch, then go back for more class. And then after class we would do some exploring!

The first day, we went to Gifu and explored the gardens there and went up to the castle - it was a lovely ride up and then walk around. We also made our way over to the temple with the largest paper mache Buddha. It was HUGE, and I would never have known that it was paper mache. I guess it's base wasn't, and it was covered with gold laquer. It was super cool.

I somehow have NO pictures of Gifu (I really remember taking some, though), and since Guillaume hasn't yet sent me his pictures, that will have to wait.

Another day, we hung around Okazaki and went up to the castle, which was lovely. It was actually only my second time up there - I really love the area.

I don't know why I like to regularly stick my tongue out in pictures! Us at the castle - it was hot, and we were tired!

Us at the castle!

Beautiful clock on the castle grounds!

And then, of course, one day it was my birthday.
When I got to school,

this little dude, whom I have named Bazarian, was sitting in my seat,
and in front him there was a card from Martin with Tetris for my FamCom Emulator.
Bazarian was from Alexis, and I absolutely ADORE him! And I have been having so much fun playing Tetris!

And then I got home, and Guillaume made me a delicious dinner with a delicious chocolate banana cake.

Guillaume cooking my dinner!
It was so nice to have someone cook for me again. And then, of course, I had lots of fabulous presents from him, as well - a ton of delicious food, an adorable bag, and some fabulous new earrings and bracelet.

I can't even believe how much I love birthdays! I also got a package in the mail on Saturday morning right before we left full of fun games and clothes from Mom and Kristen.

On Friday night, it was the beginning of the Okazaki Festival, and since I was dancing in it, Guillaume and I went.
After school, Guillaume and I met up with Jin Han, and we went to a short shamisen concert, which was lovely (and of which I unfortunately did not take pictures) before heading up to Northern Okazaki. Jin Han and I danced in two dances, and I think I only messed up once. It was super nerve-wracking because it was in front of a TON of people and we were being filmed (and apparently appeared on TV), but it was also extremely fun!

(PICTURES TO COME - the were unfortunately all taken on Guillaume's camera)

After our yosakoi dances, we participated in a Bon Odori parade. Basically, everyone was doing the same simple dance, called Bon Odori, and parading down the street. It was fun for a while, but it was so repetitive that it did eventually get boring.

Guillaume hadn't danced at all, so after far too long of watching that, he decided to go home. I stayed, though, because that night we were going to carry the mikoshi, and I SO wanted to see what that was all about.

If you're wondering what a mikoshi is, it's this thing!

I met up with Laura, and she let me chant with her group for the performance in front of the judges, so that was fun!

Me ready for mikoshi carrying!

Jin Han rockin' out mikoshi style in his happi!

Other than that, we watched lots of episodes of the season 3 of True Blood and tried to keep things a little calm (which was impossible for me, what with school everyday and still having to work) before heading off to Hiroshima and Kyoto!

And that's it! We had a fabulous time hanging out in Okazaki before heading on our way to Hiroshima!

I'll be adding pictures of Gifu to this as soon as I get them, and I'm heading off now to write a post about Hiroshima!

The Time Between

2010-09-04T05:34:00.000+02:00

So, after Rachel and Josh left, I had a little bit of time to hang and relax and have tests before Guillaume arrived and I went traveling again.

First, we got assigned to our new classes (wow, that seems like it was AGES ago at the beginning of August - I can't believe I am just writing about it now), and I ended up in a class with Alexis but not with Martin. I absolutely ADORE my new class, so that is good. I still have Suzuki先生 sometimes, and since she is awesome, I am happy about that. Tsuruta先生 is my homeroom teacher, and she is fabulous as well. My two new teachers, though, I am still very iffy about.

Other than that, a bunch of us went to see a sumo match, which was super fun.

Martin, me, Lyn, Lauren, Alexis, and Tom

It's true that they were all super enormous, but for some reason they weren't nearly as enormous as I was expecting them to be.

The matches lasted about two seconds, and very little happened in them. But somehow, they stilled managed to be super intense.

So yeah, the sumo was SUPER fun, and I am so glad to have gotten the oportunity to see that in Japan!

Then one weekend, Jin Han and I met up with Sayumi, one of the people that was teaching us in our dance class, and we went to the matsuri (festival) in Nishyou (and least I think that's the name of the place).

Me and Jin Han

We were psyched to get to go, and we even got to dance (with Sayumi's team), which was super fun!

Sayumi's team dancing

Notice how incompetent I look compared to Jin Han!

It made me want to learn ALL of the Yosakoi dances, and I am sad that I haven't been able to continue. It was nice to be able to practice before the real dancing as the Yamasa team at the Okazaki festival.

Also, one day, Yamasa had a "try on your own yukata" get-together/session/I really don't know what to call it. We got to try on two different yukatas, and, well, I proved to be fairly incompetent.

This is the first one I tried on, that was super awesome 80's looking!

Me with Lauren and Alexis in the second one I tried on.
I had some trouble breathing in the second one.
When Guillaume came to visit, he was so kind as to buy me a yukata (YAY!!!!), and so now I've got one of my own!

Me in the Yukata that Guillaume bought for me.

Which one of the three do you like best?

Anyhow, so I'm sure there were other things going on, like we went to see the new Miyazaki film, Arietty, which is based on the books the Borrowers, by Mary Norton, which are some of my favorite books from when I was little. And since it was Miyazaki with the Borrowers, of COURSE it was AMAZING. More than amazing. And it was in Japanese without subtitles, and I actually pretty much understood it, which was super exciting for me!

And then it was time for Obon, and Guillaume was on his way! Details and pictures coming soon!

Vegan Voyager: Rockin' Out in Tokyo with Rachel and Josh

2010-08-29T10:08:00.000+02:00

After Tokyo, the three of us headed back to Okazaki for a bit. Unfortunately, I was having weird appendicitis-like stomach pains (I have since been to the doctor and taken Chinese herbal medicine and am thus feeling all better), so they sort of hung out without me for a bit (sorry guys).

After a calm day of resting, we then headed on over to TOKYO! It was my second time there, and it was possibly even more exciting this second time around because I was with people that actually wanted to vegan restaurant explore with me!

This is perhaps going to sound lame (what can I say, I'm obsessed with delicious vegan food), but I think my FAVORITE thing about Tokyo was the Donut Plant. In Japan, they don't use eggs, and they have a soymilk donut and cinammon roll that also doesn't use real milk or butter. And is vegan. The flavor of the season was key lime while we were there, and it was absolutely TO DIE FOR! We got one EVERY DAY, and I don't know why I don't seem to have any pictures of me eating this deliciousness. The present flavor is chocolate mocha, and I am devastated to be missing it.

Other than donuts, though, the other food was also delicious.

Such as this wonderfully scrumptious pie!

And of course the rest of Tokyo was also awesome.
I can't decide if my favorite thing about it was the overabundance of dragon everything:

Such as this awesome dragon that was hanging out in the subway,

And this dragon fountain in Ueno park (I think I mentioned before that I don't think I will EVER get tired of the dragon fountains)!

or if it was perhaps Akihabara, where

We went into this old school game store, and

I got to sit in this AWESOME chair made out of fam com games - I totally need one!
More than that, though

I BOUGHT THE VERY FIRST DR. MARIO EVER RELEASED!!!!
If I look pyshco in this picture, it is because I was feeling psychotically excited!
Yes, I think just for that Akihabara was my favorite. I mean, I now own that Dr. Mario. And a way to play it. And everyone that knows me knows that I am even more obsessed with Dr. Mario than I am with food (and plus, there was a Donut Plant in Akihabara).

Then, we also went over to Harajuku,

where we got to walk down this ridiculously overwhelming street.
And thankfully it was as overwhelming as it was, because I was overcome with desire to buy almost everything I saw.
We checked out the park nearby, which was lovely,

and there was this huge group of people rocking out and dancing to 50's music.
I wanted to join in, but I didn't know any of the dances. :-(
We spent quite a bit of time in Ueno park, and I got to see MUCH more of it this time because it wasn't cherry blossom season and so we could actually walk through it.

This pond full of lily pads was breathtaking.

I also really enjoyed the lanterns!
Also in the park, there was this museum that was supposed to give you the feel of what a house/shop in Japan used to be like "back in the day." It was super cool, and most of the things had actually been used way back when.

We got to see what an old school candy shop looked like!

Then of course, I can't forget Asakusa, which is the area in which we stayed.

There were some very old and beautiful temples.

Some other interesting things we saw

were the amazingly cute balloon decorated road entrances,

these repulsive looking soy sauce kit kats,

and their adorable caps to cover the water for firefighters (which, of course, don't match in any way the beautiful sewer caps of Okazaki).

Oh, and not to be forgotten, we played the drum game on the electronics street right by Ueno Park!

It was super fun, and Josh was totally great at it!

Our last night there, we of course had to do karaoke - I mean, you can't come to Japan and not do Karaoke at least once.

We totally rocked out to the Scorpions!

The last thing we did, before heading to the train station and heading our separate ways (Rachel and Josh back to NYC - sadness) was to head over to the drum museum. It was super awesome - there were drums from all over and from all times, and most of them we were allowed to play.

We totally rocked out!

And that's it! Sorry if I wrote too much - as you can see, Tokyo was AWESOME! And a big thanks to Rach for sharing her pictures with me - I think half of these must be hers.
Anyhow, lots of things have still been happening, so be expecting more pictures SOON! :-) Enjoy!

Vegan Voyager: Kyoto with Josh and Rachel

2010-08-22T06:07:00.000+02:00

Okay, so a TON has happened since Kyoto with Josh and Rachel (I've actually even been back) - I've gotten SUPER behind in the writing department. Mostly because, for some reason (probably that the internet connection here is terrible), I couldn't get my photos to upload - I finally found a new site, Fotki, that works! So since I'm sure what interests you guys most is pictures anyway, I'm going to try to minimalize the writing and just post mostly pictures. Enjoy!

I was SUPER psyched to go to Kyoto for the first time, as I had heard a TON of great things about it. It definitely lived up to expectations!

When we got there, we immediately hopped on a bus and headed over to Tenryuji Temple.

There, we ate DELICIOUS vegan temple food (although there were lots of pickled things, of which I was NOT a fan),

and from the place where we were eating, we had the most AMAZING view!

On the temple grounds, there was also this ridiculously OLD koi pond. It was huge and amazing and wonderful and forgive my lack of adjectives to describe it.

Then we headed over to Kinkaku kuji, the Golden Temple, which was, without a doubt, all that it's cracked up to be. It was AMAZINGLY beautiful, and the gardens were also a sight to behold.

After then going down the Path of Philosophy, which was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, we made our way over to the Kyoto Arts and Crafts center (which was super cool), and we got to see the most amazingly huge Tori I had ever seen. It was breathtaking.

One day, we rented bikes, which made getting around Kyoto SOOOOO much easier, as the day before we had walked NON-STOP, and I know my feet and hips had been killing me. Having bikes was such a relief.

We biked up to this restaurant (Cafe Proverbs), which was by the river. Cafe Proverbs was, I think, as of now, the most delicious vegan restaurant I have found in Japan. It by far tops all the others! I got this to die for soy milk ramen. The river was also cool because there were all these bird and turtle shaped stones that you could use to cross it.

Other than that, while in Kyoto, we checked out a cool art exhibit, and we got to do our own woodblock print, which was cool.

We checked out Ginkaku kuji, the Silver Pavillion, which was nice,

but what was really amazing about it was the gardens. I want a garden like that at my house if I ever grow up.

We walked around the Gion area (unfortunately didn't see any geisha) and got to see the big shrine filled Ueno park.

I feel like everywhere we looked there was the most BEAUTIFUL moss. I really don't know how they get it to grow like that, but it was impressive, and I just wanted to roll around in it.

We also checked out this world-renowned rock garden, to which many buddhists monks have been known to meditate. It was really quite something.

We went to a performance and got to see geisha dance and perform a tea ceremony. There were two different musical performances and also a traditional style Japanese play. It was totally worth doing!

And, of course, we checked out Nishiki Market, where there were some amazingly interesting things, such as vegan ice cream and these vegetables covered in miso.

And I wrote FAR more than I was planning on writing. Forgive me. EVen if you don't read it, I hope you enjoy the pictures.
I'll be updating soon about TOKYO!!!! :-) So stay tuned!

Vegan Voyager: Shikoku, the Mists of Iya Valley

2010-07-24T08:25:00.025+02:00

And after those slight problems with Rachel and Josh getting to Japan and then weather and us getting to Tokushima, we woke up early and refreshed the next morning and were off!

And our first stop, after what we were thinking would be about a 3 hour drive, was our hostel. After driving on some of the most precariously small and windy and narrow and steep cliff-bordering, railless mountain roads I had ever seen (I'm serious, they all looked something like the following, except with the occasional waterfall pouring right down onto the road - I am NOT lying when I say it was SCARY!),

They really all looked something like this but scarier in life.
we made it to an even scarier, winder, steeper, so sloping downhill that you could barely see in front of you road that led us right to the hostel. Josh was driving, and he did an ABSOLUTELY amazing job. I was so stressed out just sitting in the car that I think there is no possible way I could have driven. We were sure hoping the hostel would be worth it.

And it totally was.

Yeah, that AMAZINGNESS is the view from the hostel.

We pretty much immediately set back off, as we had tons of things to see and not a lot of time!
Our first stop was the Kazura-bashi, the largest and most famous of the three remaining vine bridges in the world. They're made of wisteria branches, which are supposed to be some of the strongest in the world.

We just had to hope that sucker was solid as the rapids underneath were so hardcore that I wouldn't be surprised if they would have been considered illegal rafting in the states.

Seriously, that's what I would have fallen into. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't really do those rapids justice.

Right next to Kazura-bashi was Biwa-no-Taki, a sort of famous waterfall - although, to be honest, I really don't see what made it so different from all of the other bagazillions of waterfalls around. The guidebook says it's impressive because it's 50m high, and don't get me wrong, it was awesome, but there were far more awesome ones to be seen as well.

Me trying to use an umbrella to stop the waterfall spray from soaking my feet.

After hiking around the area for a bit, it was time to go off in search of Mannekin Piss. A statue of a little boy peeing off a very high cliff. They say that travelers used to stop there and pee of the cliff and so they built the statue to commemorate.
We saw many amazing things along the way.

Such as views like this.
After sort of getting lost, we finally made it to the statue.

While the statue itself was inconsequential, the view was, not shockingly, AMAZING!!!!

After driving around and hiking and exploring a little bit more, we followed this road

and returned to the hostel.
Where the night view was possibly even more amazing, if possible, than they day view.

The next day we were up early and ready for more Iya Valley exploring! First stop was the Samurai house!

At the top of a mountain was a thatched roof house in which Samurai used to live. Everything was still how it used to be, and it was super cool!
It was full of all sort of tools and utensils that samurai used to use.

And the view from the house was absolutely AMAZING!

The woman working there told us all about how they used to live hidden at the top of high mountains in the trees so that enemies wouldn't be able to easily attack. It was all in Japanese, though, so I only halfway understood.

Next to the Samurai house was a super huge, super old tree.

It was really cool because, because it was a cedar tree, the branches started super low down. It would have been so easy (and fun) to climb, but it was blocked off. Perhaps because it's over 800 years old.

After driving through some beautiful waterfalls,

we made our way to Oku Iya Kazura-bashi, twin husband and wife vine bridges. The other vine bridge had been fairly touristy when we crossed, so we were glad to get to see these, which, while smaller, were far less peopled and thus far more pleasant.

It's sort of crazy to think that, back in the day, people were actually for real crossing the river using these bridges, because there was no other way. And they had no way of knowing how sturdy they actually were. Next to the bridges was another way of crossing the river - this small little house thing. You had to pull on the string to move yourself across. It was small and shaky and super fun!

Next stop (well, aside from quite a few little small stops along the way) was Mt. Tsurugi, which we were going to try to hike. On our way there, we passed through a village that seemed to be 100% peopled by these life-sized stuffed human things. We had actually been seeing them everywhere, but this village had at least 20 of them out and about, and it still shocked us. The entire day, we definitely saw more of these stuffed people than we did real people.

Me with my new best stuffed people friend!
It was just weird.

We also saw this really cute/cool mountain village.

People don't really live on mountains here in Japan, so it was neat. Especially since, if I recall correctly, they are totally self-sufficient and technology free.

We finally made it to Mount Tsurugi, but by the time we got there, it was starting to rain, and we weren't sure it was such a good idea to hike in the rain.
We explored the cool shrine thing at the bottom.

We started hiking a little bit but decided to turn back when it really seemed like rain. And when we heard something that sounded suspiciously like a bear.

the beginning of the Tsurugi hike
It was a good thing we turned back, too, as it turned out we had a long, windy, rainy drive back to Tokushima.

The Iya Valley was absolutely AMAZING, and despite our limited time there, we really were able to see pretty much everything we wanted to see! Yay! I think it is now number 1 on the list of most beautiful places I have ever seen. Tied with Plitvice Lakes in Croatia. With Lake Bled in Slovenia in a close second.

Anyhow, if Picasa keeps cooperating, I'll be posting lots more pictures soon, and I'll be sure to post a link to that. Along with links to Josh and Rachel's photo albums, if they make them.

Sorry this is so long! YAY IYA VALLEY!!!! Be sure to check back soon, as the next morning, we made our way up to Kyoto!

Vegan Voyager: Rachel and Josh Arrive and Getting to Tokushima

2010-07-18T07:33:00.005+02:00

So, I know it's been a bit of time since I last wrote, and for this I am sorry. Especially since I had a 2 week vacation during which Rachel and Josh visited, and we did many awesome things. So there's lots to write about! :-)

So, Shikoku is up there as being one of the most amazing and amazingly beautiful places I have ever been, even if getting there wasn't so easy.
As I said last time, Rachel and Josh's flight was delayed by 6 hours (during which they sat in the airplane on the runway). They ended up having to spend the night in Tokyo, and we met up at the Nagoya airport the next morning for our flight. They got there JUST IN TIME to make the flight.
We flew to Tokushima, and when we got there, they informed us that the weather was bad so we were going to have to fly around for a little while waiting for it to get better.
We did this for about an hour before finally turning around and heading back to Nagoya.
Poor Rachel and Josh.

All of the rest of the flights to Tokushima that day were canceled, so we got our refund and headed to the Nagoya station. From there, we took a Shinkansen to Kobe where we quickly transferred onto a bus which took us all the way to Tokushima.
While it was long and we (especially Rachel and Josh) were tired, the upside of this is that we got to see the Naruto Whirlpools, which are sometimes thought of as one of the greatest natural wonders of the world, from this bus window. And, because it was SO STORMY and it just so happened to be the high tide, they were at their best. And let me tell you, it was a sight to see. They were absolutely AMAZING! I am SO glad that we got to see them. Unfortunately, also due of the ridiculousness of the storm, we weren't really able to get any good pictures. :-( Believe me when I say they are a sight to behold.

Pretty much all of the pictures take from the window looked something like this. Josh might have a better one - I'll post it later if so.

We finally arrived in Tokushima, surrounded by a thick shroud of fog and rain, at around 7:50 PM, and the place from which we had rented the car closed at 8. So, we hopped in a cab and called them to let them know we were on our way.
Our cab driver was NOT your typical nice, subdued Japanese man. He kept literally SCREAMING at us these things that we did NOT understand, and when we acted confused, he would just scream them LOUDER (even though we were already covering our ears in pain). He then proceeded to pull into this abandoned back alley, turn of the meter, and scream at us to get out of the car (in Japanese that I actually did understand). Needless to say, we were frightened.

Luckily, I have some minimal Japanese now, and I was able to explain to him that we were trying to rent a car and that we were obviously in the wrong place since the scary back alley was not a car dealership. I called the car dealership and stuck the phone in his face and told him to talk. He got directions, and we eventually made it to rent our car.

And FINALLY our luck started to change. They stayed open a little late for us, and we were thus able to rent the car. We had seen an Indian restaurant on our way in, so we decided to go see if they had some vegan food. They did, and it was DELICIOUS!

Rachel and Josh FINALLY settled in the restaurant!

We ate dahl and eggplant and vegetable curry and samosas, and it was DELICIOUS! I do love me some Indian food! :-)

From the restaurant, I called the hostel at which we were supposed to be staying that night. It was about a two hour drive away, and they informed us that they are located on an intense mountain and that, with the storm (which, admittedly, was raging), there was no way we would be able to get there. We were actually slightly relieved, as it was about a 2 hour drive from where we were, and Josh did NOT want his first time driving on the left side of the road to be in that horrendous weather. So I called a hostel in Tokushima and luckily, they had space!

us FINALLY relaxing in the hostel

I think we all slept as if we had never slept before (well, I know I did, and Rachel and Josh MUST have been far more exhausted than I was). The next morning we bought early our train tickets for the trip to Kyoto a few days later and then were on our way.

And since this is already so long (who would have thought that I could write so much about just GETTING somewhere) and since I have a festival to attend, Shikoku awesomeness will be for next time. That will give me time to go through my pictures, too! Yay! I've got some really awesome ones, so definitely be looking forward to that! :-)

おわり

2010-07-04T01:06:00.004+02:00

So, I'm on break right now, and I have been having a FABULOUS time traveling around a bit with Rachel and Josh, who are here visiting. But I will get to that in a while.

The last week of the term was actually sort-of sad. On Wednesday, we had our very last day of dance classs.

Jenny-Lyn, me, and Jin Han with our last group of dance class teachers

I'm so sad that it's over. Despite being a completely awkward, totally uncoordinated human being, I had a totally great time. Now I've got to take up something else, and I'm thinking maybe kendo.

On Thursday, we took our final test. The listening part was actually quite difficult. I ended up doing pretty good (94% if I recall correctly), but for once I wasn't SURE that I was going to. On the writing part, I made a few stupid mistakes, but I still got a 98%, so ROCK! :-)

After class, Alexis, Martin, and I went and hung out with Jenny-Lyn down at the river. She's leaving, headed to Australia, and not coming back for next term, so it was sort-of our Jenny-Lyn goodbye get-together, since it was the last time Martin would see her. So sad! :-( Jenny-Lyn, you will be missed!

Martin, Jenny-Lyn, Alexis, me!

Then, Andrea from our class is also leaving, heading back to Italy, so Alexis and I went and met up with him and a bunch of people from our class for Andrea's goodbye dinner.

Andrea, me, Alexis

I had a great time, actually, despite the fact that pretty much everyone was drunk wheen we got there and well, let's just say, being a non-drinker and observing, I felt sorry for the waitress.

John, Ii, and (a falling asleep) Ken

Still, it was great fun. I really do love hanging out with the people in my class. I'm really curious as to who will end up being in my class next term. I kind of wish I could know already!

On Friday, we had the going away ceremony, and everyone that was leaving had to give a speech. I really only knew two of the people leaving (and sort-of knew a third), but, me being me, when we got into the speeches of the upper class people, most of whom had been here for quite a long time, I found myself getting all teary eyed. Because some of them were teary eyed and obviously not wanting to leave, and so I just felt so sad for them! The empathy thing, yknow. . .

After the speeches, we went out with Suzuki-sensei and Sakakibara-sensei, our two main teachers from class. I ended up sitting at a table with Suzuki-sensei, Martin, and Andrea, and I talked a lot (in 日本語, of course) to Suzuki-sensei, and I discovered that I actually really like her. Right at the end when she will no longer be my teacher - perfect timing, right?

On Friday night, I went to Jenny-Lyn's actual goodbye get-togeter at Zig Zag, the school bar. I had a great time; we met a bunch of people and played cards for a super long time, which made me super happy, as I love playing cards and yet I never get to because no one ever wants to (and in any case, I can never rememeber how to play any of the games I like).

Unfortunately, I was also sort-of stressed, because Rachel and Josh were supposed to be coming in, but their flight had been delayed by 6 hours, and I was waiting for their call to see if they were going to get in on time for us to make our flight into Tokushima the next morning.
They finally called at around midnight; they were having to sleep in Tokyo and would theoretically be getting in the next morning with just enough time to make our connecting flight.

And that is another story for another time. Now, I'm headed to Tokyo to finish up the awesomeness of this vacation thing! :-) I'll be sure to write all about it when I get back!

Disaster

2010-06-20T11:05:00.002+02:00

The other day I was saying something about how my favorite kind of music is really sugary, bubblegummy, poppy punk rock, and Alexis replied with something like "I don't believe you. Every time I hear you listening to music, it's that folk metal or whatever."
And I realized she was right. I'd been listening to so much metal that bubblegum punk was slowly taking the backburner, and this saddened me.
So since then, I've been rocking out to the awesomeness of bands like the 20 Belows, the Yum Yums, the Riverdales, the Queers, the Ergs!, Screeching Weasel, etc. . . And not to be forgotten, of course, the Unlovables.
And I was reminded that, like there is a Southpark episode for every life circumstance, there is an Unlovables song for every Audrey life circumstance.

And right now, the song that describes my life is Disaster, even though, for me, my life is totally not a disaster.
Go here and listen to it, and I assure you, you will be rocked.

Anyhow, things have been fairly uneventful since the last time I wrote.
On Wednesday, we had a big test that was the same as the placement test that we took when we first got here.
We got the results back on Friday.

That orange circle that you see is where I was when I first got here. The pink circle is where I am now. I feel happy because I super advanced a lot (more than the other people in my class, as their original circles were all way bigger than mine). I missed one question from the things that we did this qusarter, and I feel really stupid about having missed it. Immediately after turning in the test, I rethought about it and knew I got it wrong. As for the things I wasn't supposed to know (i.e. that we didn't cover this quarter), well, no shocker, I didn't know them.

Wednesday, after the test, I had dinner at the student village (that's, like, the real Yamasa dorms) with some people I know over there. Laura made the most scrumptions vegan spinach quiche, and I wanted to eat ALL of it, but unfortunately I had to be nice and share. Also unfortunately, the last one got burned to a char. :-(

Laura with delish quiche!

On Friday night, I went over to Lyn's again, and she made a delicious cabbage potato stew, and it was DELICIOUS. I seriously love having people cook for me. We watched Naussica in the valley of the wind, and it was fabulous! It's one of my favorite Miyazaki movies (maybe they all are one of my favorites?), and I was happy to watch it again. Especially as it was super rad to understand some of it.

Saturday, I skipped French teaching (I know, I know, I am horrible) and instead went shopping with Martin for a bday gift for his lady friend. And then we took pictures of us jumping around in the rain.

Apparently Martin and I love taking pictures of ourselves. It reminds me of hanging out with Josh back at NYU, and it is fabulous fun!

Saturday night, Alexis, Jenny-Lyn, Lauren, and some others went over to Aoi Hall/Zig Zag (the school bar to which I can't really go because you're allowed to smoke inside), where they had screens set up and were playing the Japan/Netherlands World Cup game. The game was pretty much boring and actionless (well, until the last 20 or so minutes), and Japan lost (::sob::) but good times were nonetheless had.

Jenny-Lyn, Lars, Laura
I know, I know, I suck at taking night pictures!

It was weird to ENJOY going out and being out and talking to people I don't know again. I feel like I turned into this weird anti-social hermit while I was living in France, and living here is turning me back to myself, when I had previously just thought I was getting old.

And that is all.
(Except that I also apologize for the ridiculous size of these photos. Picasa is STILL not working with my connection, which is ridiculously annoying, and photobucket is screwy. Can anyone think of a better photo hosting site?)

Emza is totally a name

2010-06-14T13:19:00.000+02:00

Last week, on Wednesday, our dance teachers brought us out for dinner. One of them was incredibly rich, and we got to go into her traditional style Japanese apartment. It was my first time in a Japanese person's home, and I fell in love. It was traditional with stones and tatami mats and awesomeness, but there were also these adorable pink covers with the cutest stuffed pink elephants on the couch. I wanted to steal one!

Us with dance teacher ladies

They brought us to this buffet style restaurant in a super nice hotel with a beautiful view overlooking the Okazaki castle. I had a fabulous time, and I got to attempt to speak Japanese which was, well, to be honest, painful. It was hilarious trying to understand each other. And they got slightly drunk and kept saying the exact same thing at the same time and then looking at each other and screaming "neeee" which is a Japanese sort of confirmation at the end of a sentence. It was super funny. Japanese ladies are awesome!

I actually found food to eat, and I guess the waiter felt bad that there was next to nothing for me, as he delivered a fruit plate that he had made. It was very nice of him, even if it meant I had to eat some grapefruit. He also gave me a "special drink" which was Japanese tea ceremony style matcha green tea, and it was one of the most disgusting things I'd ever tasted. I felt obliged to drink it nonetheless. One of the teachers kept telling me I should just accidentally spill it. It was funny, as she kept miming a disgusted face and me throwing it out the window. I mean, it was basically that green powder stuff with a small amount of water. Talk about ick!

On Friday night, Alexis and I went over to Lyn's house with some people for dinner. Lyn made the most delicious vegetable lentil soup, and it made me want to go eat at Lyn's house all the time. I was falling asleep, so Alexis and I left early, but we ended up going to see Sex and the City 2 instead of going home.

That's Lyn (and Jenny-Lyn and Lauren and Alexis and Tom and Kevin (I think that was his name)!

It was THE WORST movie I had ever before in my entire life seen. Seriously. It was SO BAD! It was sexist and racist and horrifying, and to top it all off, it was BORING. I really don't know what they were thinking. I feel like the ruined Sex and the City for me, and I felt so guilty having made Alexis sit through it, as she hadn't really wanted to see it to begin with. No movie should have the right to be that horrible. I am pained thinking about it.

On Saturday, after teaching French, I met up with Martin on the beach by the river, and we studied kanji and took pictures of ourselves making faces. It's funny how fun it is to pass the time taking pictures of yourselves.

Don't know if I remember what this face was, but I look miserable, and Martin looks scared. Hmmmm. . .

Saturday night, Jenny-Lyn was going to make dinner for me and Jin Han, a sort of dance class dinner thing. Unfortunately, I had to leave early, so I didn't get to benefit from the free food thing. I did, however, watch three straight hours of the BBC's newest version of Emma. I can't believe I have never read the book, as the awesomeness of this 4 part show totally made up for the destruction that Sex and the City 2 caused on my desire to watch movies.

Sunday, Alexis, Martin, Uri, and I all decided to make lunch.

Martin brought chocolate mousse, and I hear it was delicious, but since it was not vegan, I did not try.

Make a vegan dessert next time, Martin!
I felt kind of bad, though, because Uri's English is not perfect, and we were totally NOT speaking in Japanese, so I feel like we kind of lost her quite a bit.
I felt even worse when she sent me her pictures from the class barbecue, and quite a few of them looked something like this:

Alexis, Martin, and I are totally anti-social and exclusive, even if we don't mean to be. It made me think that I should make an effort to be more friendly with other people. And as I love hanging out with Uri, hopefully we will hang out with her more often!

Yay!

Now, I have two weeks of a にっき to catch up on for my private lesson tomorrow.

I kind of love onions

2010-06-13T14:47:00.001+02:00

Last weekend was, once again, kinda crazy.

Last Friday, our class had a Bar-B-Q on the beachish thing by the river (the same place Martin and I discovered while biking and then where Martin, Alexis, and I hung out last weekend).

back:Uri, Alexis, me, Martin, Chin, Yo
front: Andrea, Matan, Ken, John, Ii

It was, oddly enough, the first time I really actually talked to some of the people in my class (other than about class things).

Don't ask what Alexis and I are doing, because I do not know.

It was a lot of fun (even if I, not at all shockingly, didn't eat anything). Someone from the class had brought a ball, so we played at throwing it around while standing barefoot on the rocks in the river. And I determined that not a single person in our class (with the possible exceptions of Martin and Matan) is athletic.

Ken's birthday was Sunday, and the bar-b-q was sort of like a birthday party for him. They threw him in the river (from what I understood, it is a Taiwanese tradition to throw people celebrating birthdays into bodies of water - I don't know if this was made up or not), and, because he was so cold, he fell asleep afterward.

Ken being tortured while asleep.

me being too cool for Martin and looking like a blue-lipped man in the process

It was fun hanging out with all the people from our class. I'm glad I decided to go, as I was sort of hesitating in the beginning.

Then Saturday morning, Alexis and I went to the special farmer's market that was in town. Onions were so cheap that I might have bought at least 15 of them. I've still got some left over! Man, I love onions! And here, they are so huge that I only have to use one.

On Sunday, Alexis, Martin, and I headed over to Gamagori. It's this cute little town on the water about a 20 minute train ride from Okazaki. It was a LOVELY day, and we had a great time walking around and exploring.

Me and Alexis with Gamagori behind us!

There was this really cool island a bridge walk away. The trees puffed out of it in a funny way, making it completely adorable and making it resemble the turtle island (that was actually a turtle) in the Swamps of Sadness in the greatest movie of all time, the Neverending Story. It was love for me.

Us with the adorable turtley puffy island behind us!

We also saw this little statue thing on a rock that I thought looked like an oversized fat duck-billed platypus. Alexis and Martin thought I was crazy.

Do you see it? If you can find it, it's really cute!

Oh, and on the walk to attempt to find a grocery store, I came across the weirdest thing.

I don't know why they decided to hang their onions out, but it was kind of awesome. I want to do it now, too!

Fabulous times were had. Can you tell that I am absolutely ADORING my time here in Japan? This weekend has been great, and I will write about it soon. This week is looking to be pretty test crazy, though, so I'm off to read fiction and sleep to prepare for it (sounds like a great review plan, right?)

And then and then and then and then and then (aka resto and Nagoya and karaoke and biking and dance)

2010-06-05T15:50:00.002+02:00

So, it's been a ridiculously long time since I last updated, and to be honest, I don't even know where to start with the whole update thing. I can't really remember everything that I've been doing.
And thus - brief summaries!

Two (three?) weekends ago, a bunch of us got together and went to this nice buffet restaurant. I, of course, could eat nothing there, but it was still cool to get to hang out with everyone.

I believe, Martin and I took another bike trip around Okazaki, and this time, we went all the way over to Anjo, which is where he lives with a Japanese family.

Martin in front of his host family's house!

There was a cute little temple right by it

with, yet again, super awesome dragon fountain

and very pretty flowers.

And I really don't think I will ever get tired of these gate things.

Some weekend in there, Alexis, Martin, and I hopped on the train over to Nagoya.

Alexis got a beautiful pink donut!

We mostly just walked around and shopped, and it was super cool.

There are apparently ALWAYS festivals going on everywhere in Japan (there was a festival going on behind those things)!

We were for some reason all extraordinarily tired, though. We were planning on getting our hair cut, but we ended up not being able to find anywhere that would do it for us.

Last weekend, on Friday night a group of us went out to karaoke. I of course forgot to bring my camera, so I am sad to say that I have no pictures. We had a FABULOUS time, though! I got to sing "Nichiyoubi yori no shisha" by the High Lows, which is one of my favorite Japanese songs, and I totally rocked it (well, I managed to read the hiragana and sing along - my voice, however, is another story).

Jenny-Lyn, Lynne, and Laura all had FABULOUS voices, so it was embarrassing attempting to sing after them, since my voice is horrible. Lauren kept picking metal songs, which was sort of fabulous. And Alexis did wonderful old school 80sesque songs. Good times.
I will definitely be karaokeing again, and next time, I will remember to take pictures.

Other than that, I had my big kanji test two weeks ago, and I got 100%! Ohhh yeah! All that kanji time with Martin is totally paying off. Then we had our big test last week, and I totally rocked it. I didn't miss a single point for lack of knowledge, just a couple points for stupidity (i.e. writing things in that were already there). Just one more left and then the quarter is over. Time really has been flying by!

Oh, AND, I started doing this Japanese dance class thing. Jenny-Lyn and Jin-Han are the other two Yamasa students in the class with me, and it is super fun. It's good because it's like exercise.

me, Jin-Han, Jenny-Lyn

We already learned one whole dance, and then this past week we started a new one. Yay!

And that's what's been going on. Life is good. Japan is fabulous. Rachel and Josh are coming at the end of June. Guillame is coming at the end of July! And I might just come out of this all being a speaker of Japanese.

And I'll try to update more often, as I've already got things to say about this weekend.

Ibuki-san and Matsuri

2010-05-17T12:15:00.000+02:00

First things first, Guillaume finally bought his plane tickets to come visit in August! YAY! I am so excited!!!! And Rachel and Josh bought tickets to visit at the end of June. Mega mega yay!!!!

Moving on, last Saturday, some friends (Alexis, Martin, and Jenny-Lyn) and I hopped on the train and made our way over to Ibuki-san, an absolutely gorgeous mountain, for a nice day of hiking. It had been raining all week, but I guess we got lucky as the weather was absolutely fabulous (though it would have been even better if I'd had some sun block).

When we got off the train, there was no machine in which to put our tickets, and the guy seemed un-interested in dealing with foreigners, so he just looked vaguely at our tickets then let us all through. This worked out well for Martin, who hadn't actually payed for the whole way. Oups! Then we hopped on the ONLY bus in town and headed on over to the base of the mountain.

I attempted to take a picture of us at the base with my timer, but it didn't turn out too great. :-(

Now, I've hiked up many mountains in my time, but NONE of them were as steep as this one. It just went straight up the mountain side as opposed to winding around comfortably.
It was therefore hard for me to set a pace. Martin practically JOGGED up the mountain, but Alexis and Jenny-Lyn were going a little more slowly than I would have liked.

View from the first rest stop!

Because our paces were so different, we waited for each other at each of the rest stops (according to Martin, there was a 1,2,3,5,6,7,8 - no 4 because that's unlucky. I somehow didn't see a couple of them, though). On the way up, I ended up sticking mostly with Martin.

Martin and I at a rest stop!

Jenny-Lyn and Alexis hiking away!

As we got higher, the view got even more and more amazing!

After about three hours we made it to the top

and somehow we still had energy to act like idiots.

The view was absolutely breathtaking, and it was oh so totally worth it!

On the way down, Martin and Alexis both practically jogged, while Jenny-Lyn and I picked our way down doing our best (and failing) not to fall. It was so steep and rocky, I don't know how I survived. Several times, I really thought I was just going to go tumbling all the way down the mountain.

On Sunday, don't ask me how, but I managed to find the energy to get up and enjoy a bike ride with some other friends (Matan and Carla and some of their friends).

Sandra, Miji(?), Carla, and Matan

We went temple and matsuri (festival) exploring. It was actually the day of the Festival of Nomi, so we managed to find three festivals going on, and I think we saw about 5 temples.

I love the dragon fountains at all of the temples!

Temple!

We got to see some Japanese cheerleaders!

And some really weird fish!

At the last festival we went to, there were these really cool float type things that were being pulled down the road.

They had little boys and girls reenacting old Japanese stories. It was very cool!

Some friends of mine actually got to pull - Lauren and Jenny-Lyn!

There was also a temple by this last festival where I got to pour oil over this little Buddha.

It was weird and really quite disgusting, and I'm sure it was to bring some sort of luck or good thing on me, but I unfortunately don't know what that would be.

So, all in all, it was an absolutely FABULOUS weekend. Also a very active weekend. It's so nice to be able to get out and move about so much.
It also made for a VERY long post, so sorry about that!
Martin and I have started doing kanji together - we're trying to learn at least 5 kanji a day, and today I realized that I am not remembering them nearly as well as I would like to be, so now I must go study!

:-) (sorry the pictures aren't bigger or clickonable - once again, blogger is being an idiot.)

The Week That Was Golden

2010-05-08T12:56:00.012+02:00

So first off, you guys will be happy to know that, that test I had last Wednesday - yeah, I totally rocked it! It was super easy, and the only mistakes I made were totally dumb, like forgetting tenten (or however you call those things that change the sounds of hiragana and katakana), etc. . .

The Friday we had a speaking test, which I might not have rocked so much. I for some reason get EXTRAORDINARILY nervous when having to speak Japanese out loud in front of teachers (and so I'm sure all of my teachers think I'm stupid), and I stutter and spit words out weirdly and never say exactly what I want to say.

But now it's over! Yay! On Friday afternoon, Martin and I went to get cell phones, so now I'm all cell phoned up. It's SUPER expensive for me to call you, but if you want to call me, just send an e-mail asking for my phone number, and I will be oh so very extraordinarily happy. :-)

Friday night, a bunch of us went over to the school bar.

Tom, Martin, Matan, Alexis, and Lauren. Where is Jenny-Lyn?!?

I had the most expensive apple juice of my life, but I guess it was okay, because I had a great time, and I met some really cool people.

At a little after midnight, Lauren walked over to the train station with me, where we picked up Bastien, who had flown in from Shanghai to hang out with me! Yay! :-) Saturday morning, we woke up super early and headed to Osaka!

Audrey and Bastien in Osaka

Osaka was fabulous, even if I had to have a headache the whole time. We went to the castle, which was super cool on the outside and surrounded by an awesome park, even if the museum inside was slightly boring.

The castle was really amazing!

Small shrine on the castle grounds.

We walked around the gardens, and then we went shopping and found Bastien some of the figurines he was looking for in this really cool store that looked like a cave!

Entryway to cave store.

Bastien with one of his new toys!
Come night, we found a place to eat that had VEGAN miso soup (YAY!), and then we walked around an area called Kita and then Amerika town, which are supposedly supposed to be the hip area to hang out. It seemed like it was just a bunch of kids roaming aimlessly around in the streets.

I still had a headache, so we turned in eary, and the next morning we went shopping in Den Den Town, which is sort of the electronicsy district of Osaka. It was super cool but also extremely overwhelming.

My favorite thing about Osaka was how there were all of these little covered roads everywhere that were really just like pseudo-outdoor shopping centers. They were super cool. I kind of wish we had some in Okazaki.

The entry way to one of those streets.

For lunch, we met up with my friend Delilah, who is an old friend from high school at LSMSA (Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts - where I went to boarding school, for those of you that don't know). I hadn't seen her since high school, and it was SO cool to get to catch up with her. She's been living here for three years now, and she seems to be doing well. I'm sad I didn't think to get a picture of us together.

We ate in a delicious vegetarian Indian restaurant, and I had some absolutely SCRUMPTIONS aloo ghobi. YUM!

When we left her, Bastien and I headed to Nara, home of one of Japan's most famous relics, the daibutsu aka the HUGE Buddha in the biggest wooden building in the world.

Us in front of the wood building!

The Big Buddha - unfortunately, this is the best picture I got of him

It was extraordinarily impressive, and I wish that we had been the only ones there so that I could have really gotten the chance to appreciate it. Nara is also known for the TONS of deer there are there. Everyone had said they were annoying and that they would want to attack us, but I guess there were SO MANY PEOPLE there that they were actually tired of eating the deer crackers that you can buy.

Docile Deer

So they were just lazing around docilely actually REFUSING the crackers that people were trying to give them. They were so cute!

Another cool building in Nara!

Sunday night, we headed back by bus to Okazaki, and on Monday, we decided to go into Nagoya for the day.

Nagoya is, like, the awesomest city ever. Guillaume should be glad that it's not possible to have a yard there, otherwise he might never get me to leave Japan.

There are cool things like a ferris wheel on the side of a building!

First, we went to Toganji Temple, which was amazingly beautiful. I haven't been to many temples, but so far it's my favorite.

Right at the entry into the temple!

Check out those cool elephants!

It was so beautiful on the temple grounds!

Very cool hand by the green Buddha!

It was just so calm and beautiful and lovely.
Then we walked around looking for a robot museum. We never found it, but we did find an incredibly AWESOME pop punk band playing in the street.

I wish I knew what they were called, because it was SO my favorite kind of punk, and I absolutely ADORED it! I wanted to stay and listen to them forever! :-)

Then we walked around parks and found our way to Osu Kannon temple, which was less cool than Toganji temple, but still cool. And then we walked around the shopping district, which was like the small streets in Osaka.

Osu Kannon Temple!

On Tuesday morning, Bastien left. ::sadness:: On Tuesday night, I went over to Matan's and had Sushi with him and Tom. They made me vegan sushi, and it is officially decided that I just DON'T LIKE SUSHI. Most people think it's weird, but the feel it has in my mouth just makes me want to gag.

On Wednesday, Martin and I went on a bikeride along the river to the outskirts of Okazaki. I got my first closeup view of a rice field and of small town Japan. It was sort of fabulous.

Up close and personal with a rice field!

At one point in time, we found ourselves in this random bamboo field. It was so super rad, but when we were leaving, people were looking at us like "WHAT were you doing in our bamboo field?!?" Oops!

Martin and I in the bamboo field!

We left quickly and then found ourselves in some man's garden. He laughed at us, and I think he told us that the road we were on went nowhere.
Maybe dirt roads here mean driveway?
We also discovered a mini golf course in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, and we are thinking of returning someday to play.

After a very long ride, we soaked our feet in the river for a while, and it was absolutely WONDERFUL!

And that was my Golden Week. Simply fabulous! And now, after two very quick days of classes, it's already the weekend again! Yay! :-) Which means - be looking for another update soon!

Miso and Punk Rock and Matsuri

2010-04-26T13:23:00.003+02:00

So, this weekend was really the most fabulous of fabulous weekends. Seriously.

I woke up leisurely on Saturday morning and read in bed for a couple hours, until about 10. And then I made myself a DELICIOUS pancake breakfast.

I ate them with strawberries and tons of maple syrup and black-strap molasses, and really, they were absolutely HEAVENLY! It was nice to have a reminder of some of the scrumptious vegan food I have been missing, even if this particular example of that had to be similar to intestinal glue.

Afterward, I headed over to the French/Japanese exchange, and once again it was absolutely wonderful. The Japanese people wanting to learn French are absolutely fabulous. When it was over, I went grocery shopping with a Japanese woman I had met, and it was very awkward, since I don't really speak Japanese, and she doesn't really speak French or English. And of course I had to lose not one, but TWO avocados under the fruit counter, which had her crawling around on her hands and knees while I stood aside feeling awkward and trying to hide how red my face was. It was maybe a "you had to be there" sitch.

On Saturday night, Matan, Alexis, and I went to see "Clash of the Titans." Lucky for us, it was in English with Japanese subtitles. It was a terrible, terrible movie, and I absolutely loved it! I thought the plot, which was lacking, I am sure, was wonderful, and all of the gods and everything were just so beautiful. What can I say - I'm attracted to pretty things. I was certainly never once bored, and to me, that's what makes a movie. So even though Alexis and Matan didn't really like it, well, I loved it.

On Sunday, I got to talk to my Dad and Tina in the morning, for the first time since arriving in Japan. So that was wonderful.

Then I hopped on my bike and rode up to Libra, the HUGE public library and community center, where I met up with my friend Carla and the nice folks from the library to go on a tour of the Hacho miso factory.

It was amazingly awesome, and I learned some very interesting things. First of all, you can buy Hacho Miso in the US, and it as advertised as having "100% US Grown soy beans." This sort of tricks people into thinking something that might not be true. Yes, the soy beans are grown in the US, but they are then sent over to Japan, where the miso is made and packaged and then shipped BACK to the US. Wouldn't it just be better if the soy beans were Japanese grown?

In those three barrels, underneath those stones, there is miso being fermented and created from organic soy beans that were grown in St. Paul, Minnesota. SIX TONS of miso to be precise. That's a heck of a lot of miso. And then the stones - yeah, there are TWO TONS of stones. Those are some HEAVY barrels!

Look at all that bacteria left over from miso making! They don't wash them too much, because this adds to the flavor!

You can also see that the barrels are held together by these sort of bamboo braided things. These stop the miso from exploding out and also cause the weight to go to the center so that the miso will not be lost even in the event of an earthquake. Unfortunately, no one in Japan knows how to make these things anymore, so they've started using iron ones in the place. As for the barrels, there are apparently only 3 people left in Japan that know how to make them, and when these barrels get too old to use, they will start using steel barrels, which will, inevitably, change the taste of the miso.

Okay, that was a lot about miso, I know, but I found it incredibly interesting.

After the tour, Carla and I hopped on our bikes to head over to the matsuri (festival) that was going on. On our way, we stumbled across a punk rock band playing in the street.

The picture that I attempted (and failed - grrr camera)to take. If you look really close, you can see some red and green in the top right. These are the colors of the mohawks of the guys in the band.

We didn't stop for very long, as we wanted to make it to the festival, but I thought it was so cool to see Japanese punk rockers. And I personally thought the music was quite good. I hope that in the future I will be able to find more things like that.

So then, on to the festival, which was absolutely AWESOME! There were these groups of Japanese drummers doing this really cool dance while beating on the drums.

At one point, some of them put their drums down and did this very martial arts esque dance that reminded me of the quen I was learning when I left France, which made me miss Viet Vo Dao. I am so sad that I can't be doing it here.

At the end, band started playing, and we all got up and did this weird dance where we flailed are arms around bizarrely and clapped and occasionally started jumping up and down, as if we were pogoing. It was super fun, and we met some interesting Japanese people and a very nice British guy.

Now that the weekend is over, though, I've got to get back to studying. We have a HUGE test on Wednesday containing everything that we have done so far. We "reviewed" today, which basically means we went over the things that will be on the test that the teacher hadn't told us yet. I'm sure it will be find, but I'm afraid that, because I am nervous about it, I will mess up simple things.

Sooooo, on that note, off to study

THE Castle aka Okazaki Jou

2010-04-23T16:37:00.000+02:00

So classes are kind of amazing. They are moving a little bit slowly, but I figure that's probably a good thing, as in between the everything I have already learned, there is a little bit of the new, so I feel like I'm probably learning a bit more than it seems. YES!

Twice a week, I have kanji lessons, and there is only one other person from my class with me, as everyone else has already learned a TON of kanji. So I'm with the lower level class, and it's kind-of cool, actually. I bought myself a blackboard with a beautiful pink liquid chalk pen to practice, and I think I'm in love:

Last Saturday, I participated in a Japanese-French exchange, and it was super fun. I got to talk to a ton of Japanese people, and help them with their French. . . and then I got paid! Bonus! I'm going again tomorrow, and I'm super psyched about it! :-)

Then last Sunday, I went up to Okazaki Castle with a group of friends that I've made here.

My camera is still doing that thing where every picture it takes is blurry, so this is a blurry picture of Alexis, Lauren, Martin, and Jenny-Lynn, some of the friends with whom I went.

It was quite cool. It was surrounded by beautiful gardens, and there was this cool turtle holding a scroll at the entry way.

Blurry turtle!

I find this weird, considering that today I discovered that turtle is considered somewhat of a delicacy here in Japan. There is even a turtle restaurant about 5 minutes from my apartment. I haven't seen it yet, but I will look for it tomorrow.

The castle itself was super awesome, though quite small, actually.

Blurry, terrible picture of the castle. Why do I even try?

Unfortunately, the inside was totally modernized, so it was less cool. But there were some super awesome samurai costumes, and let me just say - those dudes must have been some kinda SMALL! I wish that I could have taken a picture of one, but it was not to be. Which I guess isn't a big deal, because it would have been blurry, anyway.

WE also got to meander a bit around the gardens, which were totally beautiful and Japanese style and also had statues like this samurai dude:

After the castle, we headed over to the HUGE mall for a bit to check out the international food store. Unfortunately, there were still next to NO English ingredients listed, so I didn't buy anything.

Then we went and ate in an Okonomiyaki (aka Japanese cabbage pancakes) restaurant. Well, they ate; I watched. It was actually kind of sad for me, because vegan Okonomiyaki was one of the foods I loved to make back in France, but now that I am actually IN Japan, it seems like it might be hard for me to eat. It was really cool, though because the waiter came out with the dough (can we call it dough?), and put it on the grill that was the table, and then they got to flip it themselves.

This past week, I gave my second English lesson, which I think went well. My student seems to like me, so that's good. He wants to read Pippie Longstocking in English, so I'm going to try to base some lessons around that.
I also had an interview through Yamasa for an English teaching job, and despite the fact that it was totally in Japanese and therefore completely awkward, they seemed to like me. They've already set me up with a student, and I am supposed to meet her next week. The woman at the school has also asked me to help her set up English classes for children. She seems very excited about working with me on this new project of hers, which in turn has me excited!
It also means that I might make money. Which is good. Very good, indeed!

I also bought a bike last week! I'm in the process of thinking up a fabulous Japanese-ish name for him, and then I will post a picture! A picture that will most likely be blurry. Grrrr!

Tonight, we went to a chicken restaurant called Sen Sen Yakitori, and I snuck food in and ate it all clandestinely under the table. I felt guilty, but well, they didn't have anything for me to eat. And I am discovering that restaurants here seem to only have orange juice as a juice option, and their orange juice is terrible. It's unfortunate, really. :-( So I had bad orange juice and a great time, and I came home REEKING of cooked meat, and I had to immediately take a shower.

If I can manage to get some pictures from other people, I might come back later and replace these blurry pictures with nice pictures. In the meantime, I don't know what I am going to do. How can I be in Japan with a camera that doesn't work?
Also, blogger is once again not working to upload my pictures, so these ones are all small, and for that I am sorry.

Anyhow, can you tell I am absolutely loving life here?

Life in Okazaki

2010-04-14T13:59:00.003+02:00

I'm psyched to say that things in Japan are going smashingly! :-)

I started classes on Friday, and I like my teachers, and I like my class, and while I have hardly studied AT ALL, I am slowly finding the necessary motivation. I study just a little bit more every day. :-) The plan is to learn Japanese, after all. :-)

I also absolutely ADORE Okazaki, which is the city where I am living. The lake right by my apartment is so full of life.

The Lake

This is one of the TWO swans in what I have so fondly come to refer to as my lake!

There are ducks and koi and turtles and ants and lizards and everything else you can think of. The turtles are SO cute. They float around with their little heads sticking out of the water, and you have to look close otherwise you might think it's a piece of wood. And every morning I walk to class to the beautiful singing of birds. And the air smells fresh and clean. I have to say, it's a nice change from France.

Even the sewer caps are amazing!

They are all this beautifully decorated!

This past weekend, I walked up to the BIG mall that's about 20 minutes by feet from my apartment, and can I just say - when I say BIG, I mean BIG!

the Aeon Mall

It's three stories, and it's nonstop. By the time I made it up to the third story, I was EXHAUSTED! Seriously. I had to sit down and just breathe for a minute. Luckily, there were some comfy couches with a woman playing the piano and another on violin. So I listened to beautiful music for a little while, then continued on my way.

How could I not be exhausted when all of the stores are crazy like this?

And I wanted to buy EVERYTHING! I'm used to France, where everything is beige or black and subdued and simple. Not in Japan. Everything was a blast of cuteness and color. And there was crazy music coming out of every store. And, well, I need to find more work and quick or else I'm not going to last three months here. Either that or I just need to avoid the mall. That is probably the better idea.

Other than that, I gave my first private English lesson today, and it was my first lesson with an adult, and I have to say, I think it went well. I think I could grow to like teaching adults. Though I'm sure it will never be as fun as private lessons with kids. Now I've just got to find 4 or 5 more private lessons to give, and I'm good to go!

YAY JAPAN!

T-T-T-Tokyo!!!! Part 2

2010-04-09T12:46:00.006+02:00

So Day 2 in Tokyo. So much has happened since then - can I even remember what we did?

First, every night in the hotel, we went to the hot bath they had. It was SO WONDERFUL! I understand completely why Japanese people love their baths.

me on my way to the bath in the kimono provided by the hotel

Well, we got on the metro and headed to Harajuku in search of one vegan restaurant, which we never ended up finding. We found ourselves instead at another, the Brown Rice Cafe, which was quite good but quite expensive. It's not one that I would recommend (and not 100% vegan), though I was psyched that they had to go food, so that I could get something for lunch the next day.

The FUNNIEST thing, though, happened on the way there. Mahalia and I had eaten apples for breakfast, and she was holding our rinds in a cardboard cup, as there are trashcans to be found NOWHERE in Japan. It's as if they keep their trash on them, as it is also RIDICULOUSLY clean. Well, a train came as we were looking for a trash can, and last minute we realized it was our train. So we went to run for it, Mahalia tripped near the door, the apple rind on the top went flying out of the cup into the metro, the door closed, and the apple rind was in the car with us on the outside. SO not something to happen in Japan. We were shocked. People inside were examining it and looking out at us, both with our horrified faces. I didn't stop laughing the entire day. I am still laughing even now. Frankly, only when you understood how Japanese people are in regards to trash will you understand just how funny this was.

There are also women only cars on the metro in Japan. Though they don't seem very strict about it. Still, interesting. . .

Afterwards, we headed over to a museum that had an exhibit of old wood press Japanese art that we wanted to see. It was amazingly beautiful, but, once again, no pictures were allowed in the museum. Outside the museum, there was this super cool umbrella stand. They should have these everywhere!

[

And then we started exploring parks!

Aren't they beautiful?!?

We eventually found our way through the gardens of the Imperial Palace, which was just BREATHTAKING!

And then we headed over to Ueno Park, which is known for the Sakura, cherry blossom trees. They were absolutely BEAUTIFUL, but frankly, I was unimpressed overall. There were FAR TOO MANY PEOPLE! You could barely move when you were walking. How are you supposed to admire when you can barely breathe. And then there were drunk Japanese people everywhere. It just wasn't for me. The trees were AMAZING, though.

In case you didn't know, a lot of people makes a LOT of trash. They managed to get most of it in the trash can, at least. :-P

We were pretty exhausted after Ueno, so we headed out for an early dinner at the most adorable little restaurant that had delicious vegan Japanese curry and vegan ice cream. This made for a very happy Audrey. :-) And then, back to the hotel.

How CUTE is my heart-shaped bread?!?

Day 3, we did the Ghibli Museum, which was, of course, AMAZING! For those of you that don't know, this is the museum that focuses of movies by Hayao Miyazaki (think Howl's Movie Castle, Princess Mononoke, Naussica in the Valley of the Wind, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc. . .).

Once again, no pictures allowed. :-( We got to see a short film that was made just for the museum, and it was amazingly adorable. Of course. And we got to see all sorts of original movie drawings and paintings. And there was a cat bus, like from Totoro. We were too big to be allowed in, though. :-(

There was also a big robot!

Afterwards, we walked through the surrounding park, and we came across the most beautiful shrine on a lake. When Japan isn't covered with buildings and people, it can be absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. It's a pity there has to be so many people.

And that was the end of Day 3. The next morning, to Okazaki! So that finishes my time in Tokyo! :-)

My new chez me!

2010-04-07T10:29:00.004+02:00

Okay, so I promise, the rest of my trip to Tokyo is coming SOON, but in the meantime, I'm now officially settled in my new apartment!!

It's small and the walls are ugly, but I already love it! There's a nice-sized bedroom with a nice-sized balcony. There's a smallish kitchen, a nice bathroom with a shower and, YAY! a bathtub, which is super short and super deep, Japanese style. I've already used it once, and while I can't really lie out in it, it's wonderful. :-)

This is literally right next door to my new apartment! I can see it from my window!

Yesterday, we had our placement test, and I of course forgot absolutely everything I know. In the interview part, I was even using the present tense instead of the past tense. It was embarrassing, actually. In any case, I don't really mind being put at a level slightly below my actual level. I think it will help, even, as we're supposedly supposed to learn *30* new vocabulary words every day!! I'll know Friday what my level is.

Today, we had orientation in the afternoon. Tomorrow, we will have what seems to be an all day orientation. And we're supposedly going to have to introduce ourselves in Japanese in front of everyone. AGH! Scary!

After orientation today, a nice Swiss woman named Monica pointed me in the direction of a health food store. Right here in Okazaki. About a 5 minute walk from my apartment. I am SUPER psyched!! It seems as if I might now survive my time here!

I know you want to see pictures of what I bought - I know I do - I don't want to forget. There was a super nice woman working who understood what vegan means and who read all of the ingredients on things for me. I don't want to have to do that again.

Is it just me, or is it weird that all soy milk isn't vegan. The only one I can think of in the US that isn't is 8th Continent. So yay marusan!

Tempeh and tvp! YES!

Vegan Japanese curry! Mieum!

Vegan ramen - I can see this coming in extremely handy!

I'm super psyched! I also found this website for Tengu Foods, which is a sort of Japanese version of Pangea. And what's best is that their web site is also in English!
So, I think it's going to be easier to be vegan here than I originally thought. I'm so going to have to find a job, though, if I'm going to be able to afford it.

Welcome to Okazaki, Audrey! And that's all for now, folks! I've bought a Japanese squash, and I'm off to find delicious ways to cook it when I have no seasonings whatsoever. :-)

T-T-T-Tokyo!!!! Part 1

2010-04-06T14:23:00.001+02:00

NOTE: I for some reason can't seem to get the pictures to upload via blogger or picasa right now, so if the sizes are weird, sorry! I had to size them myself. I will replace them if it ever starts working here.

So, Tokyo was absolutely FANTASTIC! For the first couple days I was there, I actually had this shocking thought that I might actually be able to live there. That changed quickly, when I realized that the area in which I was staying and that I had previously been visiting were just especially calm and tranquil.

Anyhow, unfortunately my camera has been having some issues ever since I dropped it in Etretat, so all of my pictures are BLURRY! Luckily, Mahalia took some great pictures!

So, the first night, we went to this cute little restaurant recommended by the hotel, which was luckily non-smoking. There was a very scary dead fish staring at us from the bar right in front of us.

After much discussion with the incredibly nice barman(in a weird mixture of English, French, and Japanese), we finally determined that I could eat the edamame and the Japanese pumpkin, which actually looked like green squash to me. It was SO delicious, and possibly the most delicious thing I ate while in Tokyo.

Afterwards, we went to the hotel bar (non-smoking YAY!), where we had to take off our shoes, and I drank mango juice and sat down on my knees all traditionally. :-) There was one of those traditional Japanese heaters under the table (I forget what they're called), and it was sort-of awesome.

Day 1, when we finally got out of the hotel, after a brief stop at something that seemed to be a graveyard,

the first thing we did was, guess what!, eat. We went and discovered the Loving Hut of Tokyo. Loving Hut is one of my absolute FAVORITE vegan restaurants of Paris, so I was psyched to discover one in Tokyo, even if the menu was totally different.

I was mega psyched because I got to eat my first vegan bento box.

It was sort of super awesome, especially since I'm sure it probably won't happen again unless I return to Loving Hut.

After eating, we hopped on the metro and discovered something I thought was very weird: there was a blood donor station IN the metro. Weird!

Anyhow, we went off in search of the Japanese Sword Museum, which ended up being a small museum showcasing Japanese swords. It was sort of amazing. I got to read a pamphlet on how to take care of Japanese swords and how to appreciate them. I appreciated, and I wish I could show you guys pictures, but that wasn't allowed.

Afterwards, we went off in search of cherry blossom trees, but in the place, we found the Meiji Temple/Shrine. It was this huge beautiful building (well, area, really) in the middle of this amazing forest.

It was possibly the coolest thing I saw the entire time we were in Tokyo.

I think we got lucky, too, because there was a wedding going on while we were there, so we got to see a Japanese bride and groom in traditional garb. Super cool (to the power of infinity).

The exit of the temple ended up being at the Harajuku metro station, so we walked down the big street through Omote Sando, which is basically like the Champs-Elysees of Tokyo.

Then we hopped on the metro

and headed on over to Ginza. I think we were lucky that we ended up there at night, as lit up it was beautiful, but I think during the day it would have been concrete and too much.

We saw the major area where there are, like, 6 ways to cross all at once; it's sort of ridiculous - it's full of cars one second then totally empty and then totally full of people.
{{picture of crossroads}}
Sorry, my picture didn't really turn out so well.
We also got to see the major Kabuki theatre. I think that I would have really liked to see a Kabuki play, though it might have been hard given that I wouldn't have understood anything.

This post is already pretty long, and that's only day 1. So days 2 and 3 will be in a separate post (or two). So that's all for now, folks! Check back soon for Tokyo Days 2 and 3!

Step 1, we can have lots of fun!

2010-04-02T03:20:00.003+02:00

So, that's it. I'm in Japan! :-) In Tokyo, for the time being actually.

First things first, I've got to change the name of this blog. So far, I've got one suggestion from Kristen: I miss Cootie Satan. Cootie Satan, for those of you that don't know, is what Kristen hears when I attempt to pronounce her name in Japanese. :-P
I'm looking for something that I can maybe keep even after I leave Japan, since I'll probably only be here 9 monthsish. Suggestions, anyone? I'm giving myself a week to come up with something.

Now, for a play by play of my day yesterday (/the day before) (all done in French times so you see just how LONG it was)!

March 31
10:30 AM - leave for airport
12:50 PM - board flight
2:00 PM - take off for Shanghai
April 1
1:00 AM - arrive Shanghai (7 AM Shanghai time)
2:45 AM - board flight
3:15 AM - take off for Nagoya
5:30 AM - arrive Nagoya (12:30 PM Nagoya time)
6:50 AM - board train to Nagoya station (after getting my luggage sent to my new apartment in Okazaki)
7:30 AM - buy train ticket to Tokyo
7:52 AM - finally manage to find and board train to Tokyo
7:53 AM - train to Tokyo leaves (almost having been missed by me)
7:55 AM - 9:30 AM - blessed sleep in train (since I didn't sleep a wink on the airplanes)
9:58 AM ish - arrive Tokyo
10:14 AM - metro leaves Tokyo Station with me on it
10:38 AM - metro leaves Ueno Station with me on it
11:01 AM - arrival at Minami-senju station
11:17 AM - arrival at Juyoh hotel after brief walk (6:17 PM Tokyo time)
12:25 AM ish - Mahalia arrives at hotel
4:45 PM - FINALLY time to SLEEP! (11:45 PM Tokyo time)

After so much not sleeping, it's no wonder I woke up with a headache this morning. And went to sleep with a slight headache last night.

Anyhow, the trip here was LONG.
On the flight to Shanghai, they showed the movie "Daddy's Little Girls" twice, and I watched it zero of those times. Something interesting, though, was that at the beginning, where it normally says "This film has been modified from it's original version. It has been formatted to fit your screen," it was written "This film has been modified from it's original version. It has been formatted to fit your screen and edited for content."
Yeah, that's right.
The movie was censored for China.

Other than that, my first impression of Japan is that the people are extraordinarily friendly. They were all super helpful in helping me find the correct trains and metros and everything, and they didn't even laugh at my practically non-existent Japanese.
Mahalia and I "ate" in a (thankfully non-smoking) bar/restaurant last night, and we chatted with the guy working, attempting to use our Japanese. He was SO nice and even took a picture of us when we left. :-) I think he was the owner, and his wife, who was absolutely adorable, was working as well.

Then afterwards, we went to the (non-smoking again! YAY! It might be easier than I thought to be here) hotel bar, and we chatted with the guy working in a weird mixture of French, Japanese, and English. He seemed to be flirting with Mahalia, which ended up being absolutely adorable.

Other than that, well, the seats of the toilets are heated, which makes me want to spend a LONG time on the toilet. It's sort of wonderful, actually.
There's also a mechanical bidet as part of the toilet, which squirts hot water up at you, and it is the weirdest sensation ever, like reverse peeing.

Well, it is now 10:41 AM, my headache is gone, and it is time to get this show on the road. Be looking for pictures sometime in the near future! I'm going to try to update this far more often now that I'm in JAPAN!!!!