Pictures (part four): Tanabata, countryside adventures, and Arashiyama

To make up for my getting sidetracked and not posting anything yesterday, here's a whole boatload of pictures. YAY.

Also, I managed to fix it so that they're not super tiny any more.

At least some of them aren't. Whoops.

For anyone who cares, this post corresponds to this post and this post for Arashiyama, this post for the Tanabata festival, and this post for my voyage into the depths of my host family's extended family.

First, Tanabata festival. For some reason, some of these pictures turned out ridiculously blurry for no particular reason. I think maybe my camera was drunk.

My first attempt at goldfish scooping. (Little host brother was hovering right over my shoulder, trying to give direction.) I failed so badly.

Little host brother demonstrating how to do it correctly.

This was some kind of bouncy ball scooping.

DRUNK CAMERA, WHOOOO.

Are you feeling seriously tripped out now?

This was some kind of...toy scooping? I didn't really understand the rules.

Oh, thank goodness, my camera decided to be sober for a moment.

The street! It was very crowded.

Turtle scooping.

I don't know what they were eating. The sign said it was "Italian spaghetti," but I'm pretty sure that someone was seriously confused.

More street!

Yo-yo fishing. I failed at this one too, 'cause the little paper attaching the hook to the string got wet.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No explanation necessary for those who know anything about anime.

For those who don't, this is Suzumiya Haruhi. She is God. Literally. Yeah.

The final fish count. See that blackish one all the way on the left? The kind of big and derpy looking one? Yeah, I caught that one.

Okay, flash forward a day to COUNTRYSIDE ADVENTURES!

Spontaneous tea ceremony!

(From left to right: the back of my host mom's cousin's head, me, my host brother's cousin, my little host brother.)

(My host mom took all these pictures for me.)

The tea master hard at work.

And my little host brother being the cameraman.

Tea drinking! (That's an anko manju on the floor next to me. It was the tea sweet.)

Outside! And the back of my host mom's head.

More outside!

See why I was getting Summer Wars Vibes?

The river! Because all awesome places need a river.

My host mom said that when she was a little girl she would go diving off the bridge into the river. Then she told me not to try it because it was too dangerous. GEEZ, spoiling all my fun.

More outside! But the street this time, instead of river.

Crawfish fishing!

(From left to right: little host brother, host mom's brother, host mom's brother's son)

It's probably really hard to see in these pictures, but here's the water snake we saw. It's right between the two rocks. Can you see it? I'm not sure if you'll be able to if you don't know what you're looking for.

A bucket of CRAWFISH WHO ARE ANGRY AT THE WORLD.

I AM A CRAWFISH. HEAR ME ROAR. NOW LET ME KILL YOU, PLEASE.

(I think they wound up letting all the crawfish go at the end, 'cause then my host mom's cousin scolded them for not bringing them back so they could eat them.)

Okay, travel waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay backward in time to Arashiyama.

Rice fields! Rice fields we had to walk through!

Oh, yeah. Remember this trip now? It's the one that should make you INSANELY JEALOUS OF THE SCENERY.

It's an army! An army of tanuki! And they're going to smash you with their--

Actually, maybe it's best not to finish that sentence.

Wait, did you think I was done making you jealous over scenery?

Think again.

MWAHAHAHAHA.

My Tanabata wish. Points to people who can read it. More points to people who can read it without laughing.

These flowers will come back.

Just a couple weeks later.

Wait for it.

A bird living in a temple. Awesome, yes/yes?

Pretty gardens!

(Are you sensing a pattern here? This is actually the "let's make you look at pretty Japanese gardens" blog.)

The torii at the marriage/fertility/success in examinations shrine. It was kind of funky looking, so I took a picture.

Tiny Inari (god of rice) shrine!

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is actually a tiny temple. It's hard to tell from this angle, though, and it could be one of those Buddhism-Shinto-mix ones.

But it has an umbrella roof!

And now random pictures from school.

This was one of our weekly meetings with the residential director. Note the number of C.C. Lemons on the table. (The proportion of C.C. Lemons to students steadily increased as the program progressed. I think at the end it was all C.C. Lemons with two milk teas, one straight tea, and one water. I had the straight tea. Because it was delicious.)

I don't know what was happening here, but it was in the student lounge (where you were only supposed to be speaking Japanese, but inevitably there was some other group there speaking Korean/Chinese/English which made everyone else disgruntled).

In our classroom. Note the electronic dictionaries.

WHOO, made it to the end. More pictures at some point later in the week. Next is...Gion Matsuri, I guess. And tiny shrine adventures!

Pictures! Also, awkward screw ups!

When I woke up this morning (at 7 a.m.) it was 83 degrees. Right now (at almost 11 p.m.) it's a balmy 88.7. UGH. And that's WITH the rain cooling things off.

In other news, I got my midterm exam back. Before handing them exams back, our sensei said, "Now, take a moment to calm down, because I bet some of you have never seen scores this low before." Well, I did better than I feared and worse than I hoped. 91.6%, which is a solid A-. OH WELL. (In the words of my host mom, "Oh poor you, you missed 8 whole points. HOW TERRIBLE." And then she proceeded to shove watermelon at me until I felt better. In the words of my host father, "What are you saying? An A- is an A. Sheesh.")

In other other news, I met with my sensei about my report, and he said that it was really well written and easy to understand, so yay for that? Also, we wound up nerding out about shrines for a little bit, which was awesome. I really need to get out and visit more of them.

And now for today's awkward story!

One of my classmates was talking to a (Japanese) friend and wanted to ask him if he'd seen Gintama (a very popular anime and manga). (Also, you should probably know that "gintama" literally means "silver ball," although in the case of the anime it's the main character's name.) Unfortunately, she's always had problems remember the difference between "gin" (silver) and "kin" (gold), and so instead of asking, "Gintama, mita koto ga arimasu ka?" (Have you seen Gintama?) she asked "Kintama, mita koto ga arimasu ka?" Kintama means "gold ball." Or in this case, "gold balls." Yes, keep your mind in the gutter. It means exactly what you think it does. Needless to say, hilarity ensued.

Anyway, enough of that. I have pictures to show you from Saturday's trip!

Remember how I said we had to walk through rice fields? Well, I wasn't exaggerating.

Tanuki! Lots of them!

Squat toilets: there's a right way to use 'em and a wrong way to use 'em. Learn well from this illustration.

This guy was sort of a conductor. Sort of. Yes, he was wearing a demon mask. And he put a Hello Kitty mask over it whenever he had to talk to kids.

ONLY IN JAPAN, FOLKS.

The train's here!

We're on a train! A train to Arashiyama!

Pictures from the train ride. TELL ME IT IS NOT GORGEOUS.

Lunch! It was tasty. But then again, is it ever not?

Tying my wish for Tanabata to bamboo.

Here's something that I thought Ann and Opal and Meab would appreciate. (It was in Tenryuuji, for the record.)

(P.S. He totally looks like Chatik. Just sayin'.)

The gardens at Tenryuji! Tell me they do not make you swoon.

Loooooong walk way!

Then we found this nice room to chill in, so we chilled. (And our residential director got fanned and I looked like a dork any time anyone took a picture of me.)

(Also, a Japanese woman stopped me because of my headscarf. She said, "I have never seen someone use a tenugui [hand towel, according to my dictionary, but more a general word for that kind of cloth] like that before! I am going to try it right now!" So much better than the, "You keep your hair covered so you must be a terrorist!" reaction I'm used to.)

But there was a sign saying NO NAPS, so we got disgusted and left.

Let's randomly go to a marriage and baby-making shrine!

Here're some of the omamori (charms) they were selling at the shrine.

(These aren't the marriage and baby-making charms. The ones in the upper right are actually for passing examinations.)

Bamboo forest!

Okay, I should probably sleep, even though it is TOO HOT FOR LIVING. AUGH. Excuse me while I melt into a puddle.

Edit: I knew I forgot to mention something! I finally gave in and hopped in the river this afternoon along with half the college age population of Kyoto. And it was awesome. But I'll write about that tomorrow, I guess.