Everything is finally coming together for Winter Break. After about two weeks of planning, Kyle and I decided to take a five day trip to Tokyo. We’re leaving the 26th and returning the 30th. The 27th we’re going to the Ghibli Museum, the next two days will be spent at the Disneyland in Tokyo. The little things are what excite me the most. This morning I bought the tickets for the Ghibli Museum. The main convenience store here is called Lawsons, and they are indeed convenient. Not only are they everywhere, but they’re open 24/7 and you can pay any kind of bill there. So far I’ve paid my gas, electric, and even health insurance bills there. They are also apparently the only place to buy tickets for the Ghibli Museum in Japan. So this morning I walked the fifteen feet to Lawsons and spent about thirty minutes fighting the little ticket machine. Though the site shows you how to get tickets, some steps are left out (as it often happens). Simple things like being denied for a specific time slot can be very confusing when you don’t know the language. There was even a part where I had to enter my name in the slot for Japanese names (the writing system for Japanese and foreign words is different), and then change it into katakana (just nod), even though there was a lower slot for katakana… Very confusing…

Kyle has also bought the tickets for Disneyland, and I’ve booked a hotel for us. The hotel is called Hotel New Azuma, and my mother can’t get over how tiny everything is. Each room is three tatami mats, which is 6 x 9ft. It’s just a futon, pillow, and a tv. Everything else is shared. I’m pretty excited. They even have a drink machine, a Japanese essential.

We’re also slowly compiling a list of shows, restaurants, and rides we’d like to see in Disneyland. Just so we don’t miss anything.^^

Well, that’s all for now. またね！

Chris.

Tonight I got a surprise call from one of my friends, Ceili (Kay-lee). She lives right next to me, and we often visit each other. Today she popped up at my door with a last minute invitation and I got ready in two minutes flat. We joined five other people and headed downtown, to a light up at one of the temples. Kiyomizu is a pretty famous temple, and is known for being built on a waterfall. I’d been there twice, but this was the first time I went the whole way through. It was pretty amazing. It wasn’t lit by lanterns or anything as romantic as that, just normal lamps. However, the light bouncing off of the buildings and the autumn leaves created a stunning effect. It was also raining (as it seems to almost every day here in Kyoto), and that seemed to caste a slight fuzzy glow to everything. Or that may have just been the blur of my camera. Nevertheless, it was pretty nice, and I hope to maybe go again before they stop the light up.

Light up night!

(sorry for the sideways picture…)

After the temple, we walked for a bit and found a restaurant. I wasn’t very hungry, so I tried something from and oden. Oden is kind of a weird soup that has chunks of vegetables or meat in it. I ended up getting this:

It’s kind of a tofu bag filled with something that has the consistency of melted mochi. Very… strange. I still don’t know whether I like it or not. My stomach is also unsure… Maybe it just doesn’t know how to digest traditional Japanese foods. I don’t really blame it, though. Sometimes it’s kind of hard to judge what exactly a food is. But that’s really part of the fun. I love not knowing what I’m ordering half the time, and when I do recognize something, I’m almost tempted to get a different mystery food, even if I know what I want. It bothers me all of the people who come to Japan and don’t want to try new things. Or they get tired of this one dish, but aren’t brave enough to try another (as I write this, I know that karma may come and I may have to eat my words… pun not intended). However, I am kind of biased. I love most Japanese food, and have found few dishes that I outright dislike. If I were traveling to a place like India, I may be less adventurous because while I like their food, I do not like all of it. Japanese food in general is simple, most times mushy, and has meat with slabs of fat still attached.

I’ve been here for about two and almost half months now, and I’ve learned a lot in the process of traveling around the city of Kyoto, Japan. The biggest things I’ve come to realize is that tourists are all the same no matter where you go. They are all kind of odd. They are all kind of rude. They are trying their best to see everything that they can while at the same time not realizing they are in a place where people live and work. This may seem like a bold statement or statements depending on which sentences you read. I think I can make a good argument on to why I’m at least slightly correct just based on my experiences here in Kyoto.

When I hurt my back awhile back I had to ride the train to and from school because I didn’t want to hurt my back. Where my school is, there are a lot of sights to see. The train I take even has maps that you can look at to see which stops service the various touristy things around. Over the course of that two weeks that I took the train I saw more then my fair share of tourists being tourists. One particular afternoon a family of four came onto the train all dressed in tank tops and shorts. If that wasn’t a big enough give away that they were tourists, as people in Japan rarely dress that way, they were also wearing huge cameras and were not Japanese looking at all. In fact, these people were German. Now we mostly think of Americans as the loud obnoxious type but I think its honestly just how people are outside of their normal lives. They are loud and obnoxious when they are trying to figure things out. These Germans were not exception. They walked onto the train and started talking at the top of their lungs. Japanese trains are very quiet normally. If you talk, you whisper. You are just being thoughtful. So the second thing that these people did that made me quite ashamed was talk to the driver of the train. Don’t do that as all the trains are on a tight schedule. They all share the same track so that they minimize space and trains pass one another at the stations. Because of this, we don’t talk to the driver. The driver didn’t speak English and the Germans didn’t speak it well to say the least. To hurry on this conversation, I helped out and let the driver be. We finally got it worked out and it turned out the people were on the wrong train so I told them how to get back to where they wanted to go. They got off at the next stop and another crisis in tourism was averted. On a side note, the driver let me ride for free that trip.

I was down at Kyoto Station and decided to go check out the souvenirs in the shops. I decided to go look at the people paying. This was an exercise in not laughing out loud. There was a couple around the age of my parents buying gifts on what I assumed was the last day of their trip. They had found some item that they wanted to buy and took it to the counter. The lady behind the counter was speaking English to them and while it wasn’t wonderful English, it was passable. At least I thought so. The Americans buying the gifts looked like deer looking into the bright lights of international relations. I was just browsing nearby when I was rushed over by the lady. She asked it I spoke Japanese. I said I could and she seemed relieved. I told the person that I was going to speak for the people. The lady told me that she was speaking English and seemed very destraught that these Americans couldn’t understand her. I said just speak Japanese to me and we will leave quickly. The people left and I started speaking in English to the lady and she said she was thankful. I assured her that they just freaked out over something small like a lot of Japanese do when they hear English. It was an odd experience to say the least.

Overall, these two experiences have shown me that everyone in the world has a hard time being a tourist. I personally think its very stress full. Its also amazing to see the tourist from a different point of view here. Everyone just needs to remember to not be rude and be calm. The world will be a better place for it.

The Golden Temple

-Kyle

Holidays in Japan are interesting things. They tend to celebrate the more popular American holidays in the more consumer aspect. Halloween is a good example of this. Halloween in America is a commercial holiday through and through. We have giant shops dedicated to costumes and entire rows of candy in the supermarkets dedicated to Halloween candy. We then have parties that are for grown ups to just dress up in fun costumes. This is very much how Japan views Halloween. The difference is that it isn’t as big here. Things like costume shops popping up around this time aren’t really existent. Instead you’ll have a small section in a store just for costumes and props. There is a store in Kyoto called Loft that had most of a floor dedicated to the Halloween stuff. That was quite fun.

The school I go to had a Halloween party that I attended as the embodiment of America. It took awhile to find everything that I needed for my costume, but most things were found at a $4.00 Store. Its like a nice Dollar Store. So my costume was cheap. Some people had never celebrated Halloween so they went out and bought expensive costumes from Loft and other stores. The party over all was interesting to watch because it was just like a normal party except people were in costume. This is kind of how Japan views things. The interesting part of this was the costumes though. Japan has a strange sense of humor and that was reflected in the costumes. Things like wigs that blow off to make it look like a topee falling off. It did get weirder but its hard to explain. This wasn’t as present in the party I went to. Most people dressed up as zombies or witches. Some people did go all out and make costumes that were pretty cool like this.

Over all Japan views this Holiday as a reason to be different. Its an interesting social observation to say the least. Oh and they don’t really sell Halloween candy. Its sad. Kids don’t really go around trick or treating either. Its just not a Japanese thing to do I guess.

-Kyle

Hello everyone,

First off, we have new pictures! I know it’s exciting. They can be found here. They are pictures of the first three weeks or so. I know I haven’t been updating as regularly as I should but that’s okay because I plan to change that starting right now. Just so I can amuse you, I’ll give a brief rundown of my boring life here.

The first couple of weeks were already covered for the most part but the major thing that happened was covered in my last blog post. I broke my back during the second week of school. It wasn’t too bad, and I’ve healed well. Now I can ride my bike again. The bike has been a wonderful investment. It was about $22.00 total for something I will easily get $23.00 worth of use this year. I need to actually take a picture of the thing at some point It’s a blueish bike that is very typical of an Asian bike. This means that it has no gears and has a front basket. You’d know it if you see it. You could just look it up on your favorite search engine (e.g. Google, Yahoo, ect.) if you want to know and can’t wait for my pictures.

Now on to school! School is in its fifth or sixth week at this point. I’m not quite sure but it has gone by really fast. I’m finally in my mode of doing school work here. It took quite sometime for it to sit right with me as its quite different then what I’ve been experiencing the past two years at UNM. The classes are structured more like my high school was. At the same time they are more like a University in the sense that they are only once a week if they are normal classes. Mine however are not normal at all. I have different classes that are always with the same people.

Japanese Reading and Writing

This class is a great class. This is the only class that I have everyday but its the only one I really need to have everyday. This is the basic language class. We do vocab, grammer, kanji, and reading everyday. For those who don’t know what kanji is, it’s the writing that is used in Japan. Each character represents an idea and has a meaning. There can be many different ways to actually read the kanji based on the context. Its complicated but makes reading a lot easier since a lot of Japanese words are the same but they just mean different things. So anyways, I have this class everyday but there is a different teacher almost everyday. I have one teacher twice and she’s the nicest one. So it’s a lovely treat. I do have another teacher again but she teaches another class. I should mention that this class is entirely in Japanese. No English is spoken. Fun, huh?

Japanese Culture

This class happens once a week and is taught by a teacher I already have. This class is my most confusing as I have no clue what is going on usually. This class is taught entirely in Japanese as well. I’ve gotten better so this has become less confusing. Still, it’s hard. This class though just focuses on the over all structure of Japanese society, history and various other things. Its a very fun class. I had a test the other day that I did well on. How? I don’t know.

Japanese Speaking and Listening

This class is exactly what it sounds like. This class is all speaking and listening skills. Its ALSO in Japanese but its not as hard as you think it would be. We just talk for the most part and fill in sheets of paper based on all the conversations we hear. The only thing of note we’ve done so far that isn’t just what I described is we had a speech on our home country or in my case, state. I did well. We had to write a speech, she corrected our grammer errors then we read. I really hope that we do something else like this again. One last thing, we have this class twice a week. I really do enjoy it.

Japanese Society

My only class that’s in English. Its a course that focuses on Japanese society and Japan’s role in the world. It’s taught by a guy who has an accent I can’t tell. He’s a very nice guy and has a child on the way. I wish him well.

Japanese Ceramics

This is a fun class that I have for half a day on Saturdays. We just make stuff out of clay. I’ll talk about it more once I have some actual finished product.

So that’s really it for all my class stuff. I think I’ll end this post for now as its approaching one thousand words. I’ll finish with a picture of me doing something weird. In this case, its me in my Halloween costume!

I AM AMERICA!

-Kyle

How is everyone today? Well I’m doing well right now. Last night and this week was another story. I’ll tell you right now.

On Tuesday I fell going up the stairs to my room. I was going up the second step when I misjudged that step and fell forwards. This didn’t seem like that big of a deal until the next day. About 1:00 PM I started to feel like I had a slipped disc. I couldn’t stand up all that well. To top that off, I had to walk two miles with my bike back to my dorm…in the rain. Not making that bit up. It wasn’t a very good day. So I really couldn’t stand up all that well so I just stayed in my dorm for a day or two. Luckily (oddly) we had a typhoon the next day. My classes were canceled so I got to rest that entire day. It was quite nice. As for Friday, I felt fantastic in the morning. It was a good morning. No pain. Once I went to school (I took the trolley because of my back and fear) my problems started up again. This time, it was something completely different. It was a muscle tensing to epic proportions. I was massaging my back for my entire class period, which is an hour and thirty minutes. I went home and was in pain.

Last night was one of the longest I’ve had in a long time. I tired to sleep but my back kept me up. This was to the point that I was crying. If you know me, most people know I have a severely high pain tolerance. I tried to fall asleep at around 4:00 AM. I ended waking up at around 6:30 AM due to the my muscles tensing up again. I started to shake (I do that when I’m very sick or in a lot of pain) so I decided to go see my Japanese friend in the room near me. She is a lovely girl who gave me some medicated patch. It worked well I must say. Well I felt the effects after I went to a medical clinic. So after she gave me this, I had to wait until 8:15 AM to go to a hospital. (bi yo0 i n) Once there we had to wait until 9:00 AM to be seen by a doctor. He didn’t speak English so it was fun.

Once there, he asked if I was in pain or where the pain was. I said in my back but now there is no pain. So he tried to get me to say “ow.” It didn’t work but they did end up taking X-Rays of my back. Once those were done we went back to the doctor (i shya) to see what was the problem. It turns out that I fractured one of my vertebra. Its not as bad as it sounds but basically I’m going to be in pain for the next week or two.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m perfectly fine (except for the pain), and that I can still go to school and function in normal society. The only thing I won’t be doing is riding a bike or any other sports.

-Kyle

Well, this morning was our first typhoon in Kyoto, which is worthy enough for me to break my blogging fast. Since I’m a desert woman, any more than an inch of rain makes me worry. So I had no idea what to expect from a typhoon. I was relieved in the morning (most of it passed throughout the night) to find that my apartment was unscathed. Actually… everything was fine. A few branches fell off trees, and there are leaves everywhere.

The worst of the damage.

Though during the night it seemed pretty dramatic. I woke up once to find my whole apartment lightly shaking and another time to the wind. The city sirens went off around 2-3am, but apparently I’m the only one who heard them. So now I can stand proudly and say I’ve lived through a typhoon! I’m sure my grandchildren will be amazed.

Sorry for the lack of updates but I’ve decided to do something quite different this time around in Japan. Instead of just doing a weekly update that says what I did for the week, I’m going to do a series of more informative posts. I mean, I’m going to be in school mostly, that’s just boring.
Instead, I’m going to being doing posts on Japanese culture from my perspective. My first post (which I’m working on) will be on food and all its glory here. I’ll even have a seperate post on all the vending machines. Its amazing! I know it will be amazing.
My first post will be up sometime this week. It will have amazing pictures for you to look at as well as a story or two. I might even see if Christina will write something. Who knows.

-Kyle

So I took some pictures of the city today and some other various things that I did during this day. They can be found…

First Pictures of Japan

It was my first full day here in Kyoto. What a day it was. I woke up at 5am to go walk around. I then had to get some registration done so that I don’t get deported. After such, I went on to have some wonderful raman with my new friends Chad, Ayda, and Jyunku. So far I’ve learned more Japanese then I have in all my years of taking it. Jyunku speaks English but doesn’t to me at all. Yet somehow, she still manages to make fun of me. So life is good. I leave you all with the link to the gallery as well as a gorgous picture of me eating yakisoba.

Hey everyone out there! After some long and horribly long flight Chris and I made it to Japan! We left at 6am on Monday the 7th of September 2009. We went off to San Fransisco so that we could wait for a flight to Japan. I got Burger King for breakfast. It was a bit greasy. I’ll miss America just for that. So as we went to our plane we realized that we were surrounded by Japanese people. That’s when it hit me that I was going to a Japan. It was an odd sensation. So we were off to Japan! We rode on a Boeing 777.

This was a huge plane. Luckily, Chris and I were next to one another. We tried to sleep but that failed miserably. I was up for the entire time. I DID try to sleep but didn’t. We had some good movies to watch such as Star Trek and The Hangover. This was quite a nice surprise. Then they showed them in Japanese. That was quite awesome. They did feed us despite my mother’s fears. Even more so, the food was good. I had a chicken curry and a noodle thing.

After a long 12 hours, we landed at Kansai International Airport. Customs was very easy. It only took us about ten minutes total from going to the customs counter to getting out with our bags. Neither Chris or I were fined or imprisoned. So that was good.

Once we were out of customs, we were greeted by a sign with our names on it. A older looking man led us to the place where we would wait for our shuttle. This shuttle service then loaded up our bags and shuttled us to our various places of residence. This took quite a long time. Kyoto and Kansai International are no where near each other. So it was about two hours before I was lead up to my room at my dorm.

My Lovely Wall

Once I got into my dorm (after much knocking,) I was shown around the place. It is quite nice and I will be putting up pictures later. I met some of the students. There are two from Michigan and some from Korea. The funniest part about this is that no one speaks any Japanese (except the Americans) so everything I was told about the place was more of a vague idea to me. So I think by the end of this year, I’ll be very well off when it comes to Japanese.

After a good nights rest, I decided to go for a walk around my new surroundings. It was quite amazing to say the least. Everything is so cramped and there were people everywhere. I looked around for awhile then I found this lovely bakery. Since it was the only thing open at 7:30am I decided to get some food from it. I then preceded to a 7-11 for some refreshment. Then I was off to my dorm to eat. I got very lost for thirty minutes but luckily I found my way home.

So for now that is it. I’m going to be registaring for my foreigner status today. So hopefully that goes well.

-Kyle