Pictures (part one): Shimogamo Shrine, my neighborhood, and my host family

Hello, people.

So I finally managed to get the pictures from my camera onto my computer. It only took FOREVER. (There is a long and exciting story concerning My Quest to Find a Computer Which Can Actually Talk to My Camera, but I will spare you.) So now I'm going to be posting some random pictures of things from my trip. WHOO.

I'm going to be doing a bunch of short-er-ish posts, because you really don't want to look at a couple hundred pictures all at once. Really. Also, I'm obviously not going to post ALL my pictures, 'cause a bunch of them are of Boring Things That No One But Me Would Find Remotely Interesting. This means that even though I took forty thousand pictures of tiny shrines, I will only show a few of them. And I will attempt not to fangirl over them too much.

Also, standard warning: I'm not a photographer, and it's a miracle that I can even get my camera to point in the general direction of the pictures I want to take, most days. Also, my camera is not the greatest. It does not understand the concept of focusing sometimes. So if my pictures cause those of you who have forty thousand times more camera skills than I do pain, um...sorry about that. I'll just grovel at your feet for forgiveness.

Also, it took me four tries to spell "forty" (and I just misspelled it twice more trying to type it there). Today is a bad day for English, apparently.

So, yeah.

So here, have part one of random pictures of things.

My host family! 3/4 of them anyway.

Best host family in the universe, yes/yes?

Me with my host family.

Yes, that is a picture of Moomin on the wall.

The last 1/4 of my host family (and Michael Jackson). He (my host brother, not Michael Jackson) was unconscious on the kitchen floor while we took the first picture (ASLEEP, not knocked out, so don't give me that look), so this was the next day.

Also, my little host brother and host father put that poster of Michael Jackson up when my host mom wasn't looking. She wasn't too thrilled with having it right in the middle of the living room, but it was too late.

A random street in the area of my host family's house.

The "shop village" (literal translation of the word), which was actually a street that was right next to my host family's house.

Also, the back of my little host brother's head.

The Kamogawa (the river right by my host family's house)! You have no idea how much I love this river. This was when it was pretty low, 'cause I took this picture my first day there, before the rainy season started.

Okay, now for some random pictures of Shimogamo Shrine. This was the shrine closest to my host family's house, and the place where the boy scouts went every other Sunday.

The first of the many (many) torii leading to the shrine. There was actually quite a long street between this torii and the next one (which led onto the actual shrine grounds).

Sacred tree!

Then there was a loooooong walk from here (right inside the second torii) to the actual shrine. The way was dotted with smaller shrines as well.

Here's one of the smaller shrines along the way.

And here's an even smaller one!

A sacred rock, which apparently sang the national anthem. OH YEAH.

The front gate to the main shrine. Right through the gate you can see the stage which important ceremonies are performed on, and beyond that is the actual honden.

This was a little tiny basin for purification right inside the shrine.

The pieces of paper tied to the tree are actual fortune telling papers. Depending on where you go, you tie good/bad fortunes to nearby trees so that they will/won't come true.

Okay, I just thought this was amusing.

The rope with the hanging bits of paper denotes a sacred place/object. (You'll always see those hanging around shrines, usually from the torii when you first enter.)

[/amusement]