Pictures (part three): Nara and kimono day/Nijo Castle

For the record, the pictures in this post correspond to this post, this post, and this post. Yay. However, because I fail, they're backwards in chronological order. SORRY.

In other news, I'm going to try to post only pictures of things that I haven't posted pictures of before. So, yeah. That ought to explain possible big holes in story telling. Sorry again.

So travel back in time to kimono day and Nijo Castle, which apparently I skipped over too quickly for Certain People's tastes. So, here, have lots of Nijo Castle.

The outside!

Don't scribble here.

We mean it.

Here's a big gate that led inside.

And here's the actual castle. It has nightingale floors, which means that the floors sort of squeak when you step on them. But it's not exactly a squeak. It's more like a squeaky moan thing. Kind of hard to explain. Anyway, the floors were made that way so that no one could sneak up on anyone else.

Have I mentioned how much I love Japanese gardens? I love them so much.

A moat! It's a moat, you guys!

(No pictures of the inside of the castle, 'cause we weren't allowed to take pictures in there. Wish I could, 'cause it was cool.)

(Happy now, sir?)

Okay, now let's all hop in our time machine and go back to Nara.

What do you mean you don't have a time machine?

Get on that.

Geez.

Pictured here:

A man-eating deer eating our residential director's map.

Not pictured here:

Our residential director FREAKING OUT and attempting to reason with the deer.

Kind of awesome hand-washing place (for purification). Just with a deer.

It was a really long walk to Kasuga Taisha, but totally worth it.

Secret agent deer! Secret agent deer!

...

I'm not the only one thinking this, right?

A tree growing out of a tree!

Yes, I take pictures of strange things.

Some of the charms they were selling at Kasuga Taisha. As you can see, it was quite an assortment.

The sacred tree which apparently grew one of those offshooting child trees WHICH GREW INTO THE SHRINE. But they couldn't cut it down (what with it being sacred and all), so instead they just build bracers so it wouldn't collapse the wall and let it grow into the shrine.

Remember how people were tying fortunes to trees at Shimogamo Shrine? Well, Kasuga Taisha was such a big shot shrine that it made a special place for people to tie their fortunes.

You probably can't read the sign ('cause it's so small), but it says that if you tie your fortune there, it will come true in a year.

Stone lanterns!

Also, remember how back here I said that the sky turned red? Well, here are pictures.

I'm not sure whether it's really cool or really creepy. Probably both.

Next is Arashiyama. And probably something else with it. Dunno. We'll see.

Need to go work on my Fulbright proposal. Laters.

The internet connects THE WORLD

My little host brother has gone partially deaf. It's...actually pretty bad. I guess it started about two or three days ago, but my host parents would be talking to him and he just wouldn't notice. At first they thought he was ignoring them, but then they realized that he really couldn't hear them AT ALL, so my host mom took him to the hospital. It seems that he has a really bad ear infection, so he's on antibiotics.

On a lighter note, I told my little host brother and host mom that I had posted a link to LHB's video and that my mum and friends had watched it and said that he was good dancer.

Host mom: Did you hear that?

Little host brother: Huh?

HM: Her mom and friends watched your video.

LHB: Video?

HM: The dancing one?

LHB: What? How?

HM: The internet connects the world, you know.

LHB: [wide-eyed stare] REALLY?

Also, I was talking to my host parents about traveling in Asia the other day, and somehow it came up that I'd never had kim-chi. "What? Never had kim-chi? Shock! Horror!" So my host mom gave me kim-chi tonight. It was not as bad as my father claims it is, although it certainly has a very...distinctive taste.

And guess what! You get more pictures! YAAAAY!

On the platform, waiting for the train to Osaka.

Okay, let's fast forward past the rest of the Osaka trip.

Here we all are on the train to Nara!

What an incredibly stylish mustache.

SHE IS A CAMERA NINJA. (In case you couldn't tell, we didn't have a whole lot to do for an hour on the train.)

Well, look who was being sensible and studying on the train. PSSH. (And our residential director was drawing him as a detective. Long story.)

Lunch. It was tasty.

HA HA, NO KIDDING.

Run, little girl! Run before the deer eats you!

Notice how I'm standing a safe distance away from the deer.

The pagoda at Koufukuji! And I don't have any other pictures of it, because they wouldn't allow people to take pictures of ANYTHING.

The walkway up to Kasuga Taisha was lined with stone lanterns. It was seriously like something out of a Ghibli movie!

Yes, those are heart-shaped ema. Kasuga Taisha's specialties are marriages and fertility.

Kasuga Taisha! WHOO! (The rope around the tree means it's sacred.)

I'm pretty sure this guy's job is keeping the man-eating deer out of Toudaiji.

Shrine in the middle of a lake!

Toudaiji! Also known as the largest wooden building in the world!

Purification by incense, also known as let's-give-Cal-an-asthma-attack.

Here're some pictures of the statues both inside and outside.

Here we have my classmate attempting to crawl through the space the size of the Buddha's nostril. And she made it!

This is Sentokun, the official Nara 1300th anniversary mascot. In the words of our teacher, "Sentokun is きもかわいい (creepy cute)." In the words of one of the students, "Is he a monk? Is he a deer? Is he a baby? I HAVE NO IDEA."

You know this is the real reason why everyone's here in Japan: men's pocky.

And now I need to go do homework! I'm doing a presentation on this article tomorrow.

Also, I'm going to get to teach a class in week 5 or 6 of the program, so I need to pick a reading and come up with some activities to do. I'm thinking of doing a reading from a light novel (because they're about at our reading level and no one in the class knows what they are but me, plus I have two of them with me), but I'm trying to decide which one I want to do, what the in-class activity will be, and what I'll assign as homework. Hmm. I need to turn in my lesson plan on Monday.

Anyway, g'night, everyone!

P.S. Opal, でも is more like "however." And in terms of formality, it goes (with formality increasing) でも、しかし/ただし/だが.

P.P.S. Okay, once again this has NOTHING to do with anything, but Ludo's new video came out yesterday. And MY GOODNESS. It is so low-budget (I mean, how much does whipped cream really cost?) and bizarre, but I love it for some irrational reason. (Mom, don't watch, 'cause if the toothbrushing turned your stomach, this'll make your stomach attempt to stage a jailbreak by way of your esophagus. Not even kidding.)

P.P.P.S. I want it with whipped cream on it~~~

P.P.P.P.S. ...but not literally.

Also, the deer will kill you TO DEATH

So we went on a field trip to Nara today, which was awesome yet exhausting. We spent pretty much the entire day in this giant park (full of temples and deer, but more about that later), walking around and seeing different things.

We went to Koufukuji first, which was awesome if only for all the historical artifacts they had there. There were a bunch of Buddhist statues dating from the 8th century. EIGHTH CENTURY, GUYS. Anyway, there was a museum too, which was really crowded, so it was kind of hard to see anything, and it took forever to get anywhere because aside from having a million people trying to see all the statues and artifacts and the old ladies trying to read every single placard and stopping up the flow of people, you also had a bunch of people with prayer beads, standing in the middle of the museum aisle and praying and no one could walk past them because they were blocking the pathway. So, yeah, that was a little less than awesome, but oh well. There were some really cool statues, and I was amused that I actually knew who a lot of them were without reading the placards. (Yay, Popular Religion and Peasant Rebellion in China!) (Actually, I was also amused that I apparently knew more about most of the buddhas/bodhisattvas than the people praying to them. When we entered the main shrine there was (what I assume was) a family praying to Yakushi (the main buddha of the shrine), and the girl turned to the father and said, "Who is this again?")

After that, we went to Kasuga Taisha, which was a big shrine complex, so needless to say, I was swooning all over the place. I must admit that I tend to find Buddhist temples a lot less interesting than shrines (partially because you always have to pay to get in and you can't take pictures and all the statues' expressions are so bland, except for the guardians who are AWESOME and usually look like they're about to kill someone and have huge veins standing out on their foreheads), but since the temples tend to be a lot more impressive than the shrines, that's where we've mostly been going. BUT ANYWAY, we went to this shrine, and it was huge and there were all these stone lanterns along the pathway and we got to go into the back of the shrine and walk around back there and it was AWESOME. Pictures coming...sometime.

And then we went to Toudaiji, which is probably one of the most famous temples ever, and it was ridiculously crowded, because everyone and his brother was there for school trips it seemed like. So I thought that it being a temple and ridiculously crowded it would not be worth it (plus I had a headache, probably from dehydration, even though I had been drinking massive amounts of water all day). BUT BOY WAS I WRONG. It is probably my favorite temple I have ever been to. (Well, maybe. Kiyomizudera still holds a special place in my heart.) First of all, it is a friggin' old temple (first built in 728), and it is most famous for a giant Buddha statue. I had seen pictures of that statue before, BUT MY GOODNESS IT IS SO MUCH BIGGER IN PERSON. (It's 15 meters tall, okay? That's frickin' tall. Also, the temple is the largest wooden building in the world.) So I walked into the temple and it is entirely possible that my jaw hit the floor, and I probably stood there just staring at it for a while. AND IT JUST GOT BETTER FROM THERE. The statues were really expressive, and there was a ton to see, and even though it was crowded it was really easy to get from place to place. Also, there was a pillar with a hole in it which is supposed to be the same size as the Buddha's nostril, and if you can crawl through it you'll be enlightened. I didn't have time to do it (and given how small the hole was, I'm not sure my hips would have fit), but one of the other students did. Pictures coming...sometime (because this temple, unlike pretty much every other one I've ever been to, was perfectly okay with people taking pictures). Yeah.

Also, one of the guys in the program (blond haired, blue eyed, most obviously American guy there) kept being stopped by middle schoolers who needed to talk to a foreigner for their homework. AND THEY ONLY STOPPED HIM. It was very odd.

ALSO ALSO, what is with Americans and restaurants? Every time I run into an American in a restaurant in Japan, I wind up dying a little bit inside, because they are SO RUDE and complain about EVERYTHING and inevitably don't speak any Japanese at all and treat the waiters like they're stupid. UGH. Seriously, if I was going to go to all the trouble to travel to another country, I would at least read up on proper etiquette and basic phrases so I would know how to order food. I mean, it's not as though it's terribly difficult. You just say what you want and then "onegaishimasu." LESSON 3 OF JAPANESE 1, GUYS. Also, I don't care you if you think the waiters don't speak English, they can still differentiate a loud complaining voice from a regular one.

[/exasperation with rude Americans]

Also, THE DEER. Nara's known for its wild deer, which roam the park we were in and aren't scared of humans in the slightest. When we entered the park, there were big signs saying, "Warning! These deer are wild and may kick you, bite you, knock you over, or head butt you!" And everyone laughed at the sign.

Well, everyone but me. I've been around deer enough to know that you don't mess with them if you want to stay alive.

Anyway, first deer we see, everyone surrounds it and tries to pet it and starts squealing over how cute it is. And what does the deer do? It eats our residential director's map. Oh yeah. Bet you didn't see that coming. So there our residential director is, fighting with a deer, saying, "No, no, no, I NEED that! Don't eat that!" And of course everyone in the general vicinity is snickering quietly. Finally our residential director managed to get the map back (well, parts of it anyway), and we continued onward.

But had everyone learned their lesson? No, of course not. The next time we stopped (some people wanted to get shaved ice because it was freakishly hot), a deer came trotting up to our group, and once again everyone started squealing over how cute it was. And this deer was very friendly, and let everyone pet it, but then suddenly it caught sight of a toddler nearby, turned around, charged the toddler, and jumped on his leg. And my only thought was, "Oh gods, I am going to have to punch this deer, because it is about to maul this child to death." Fortunately, I was saved from having to get in a fist fight with a deer because after knocking the child over and probably scarring him for life, it got bored and wandered off, leaving the screaming child's frazzled mother to try to figure out how to explain to her son why the nice, cute deer had suddenly decided to beat him up.

Throughout the day, we kept coming across children who burst into tears every time a deer came near them. I WONDER WHY.

In any case, it is getting late and I am exhausted, and I'm getting up early tomorrow morning to do homework and go out with my host family, so, yeah. G'night!

(OHWAITOPAL. How can there be only one episode left????? I mean, SERIOUSLY? The light novel series's 8 volumes long right now, so obviously there's more story. I think I know what I'll be doing during all my free time next semester. IN ANY CASE, I don't think it'll be terribly hard to read, because on the train ride back from Osaka yesterday I tried to read it, and, without a dictionary, I could understand about 85% of it. So if you want to do some sort of translation thing, lemme know.)

(P.S. いーざーやーくーん。あーそーびーまーしょーうー。)

(P.P.S. If Izaya doesn't get his face pwned in some incredibly embarrassing way, I will have to go to Ikebukuro and PWN IT MYSELF.)

[/Durarara!! fangirling]

Osaka and why I never want to work for the government

I'm exhausted to the point that I'm having trouble staying conscious, so this might be a bit shorter than usual. Still, I'm writing something, and that's good, right?

So we had class in the morning today, and then we all took the train to Osaka (which was about an hour ride). Once we got to Osaka (which, by the way, all the rumors are true about: people really do cross against the light), we headed over to the American Consulate, where they proceeded to take away all our electronics. Yes, all of them. Including our electronic dictionaries. I'm okay with giving up my camera. I'm okay with giving up my cell phone. But you do not take away my denshi jisho. It is my love and my life, okay? How would you feel if they said to you, "Sorry, but we're gonna have to take away your wife and lock her in this closet over here for a little while"? Well, anyway, I had to give it up, and that did not make me happy in the slightest. Then we went upstairs and waited in this big room while a certain member of the consulate staff made sweeping generalizations about Americans, Japanese people, Osakans, Tokyo-ites, Virgianians, and pretty much anyone else he could. This did not particularly endear him to me, because anytime anyone starts a sentence with "all [type of people]" and doesn't end it with "need to eat" or "like to breathe," a small part of my soul dies.

So then we had our "security briefing," which was basically the exact same one we had in Washington, D.C. (don't stab anyone, don't do drugs, don't start riots) and then listened as the members of the consulate staff waxed poetic about the foreign service. And while I'm sure that the foreign service is a wonderful experience for some people, every time I hear about it, I want to do it less. Part of the reason for my total aversion to the foreign service is that every time we get the The Foreign Service Is Awesome Sauce Spiel (tm), the driving argument behind joining the foreign service is not "it's a wonderful job" or "I feel like my work is really benefiting my country" or "everyday I am excited to go into work" (all of which, I feel, would be entirely reasonable reasons to join the foreign service), but "it's really easy to get in and they pay you a lot." And while money is pretty important, I think that doing a job I, yanno, care about that doesn't involve my moving every three years on the whim of someone in some office somewhere is also pretty important. (Yes, I just used a Hanna-ism. Sorry about that.)

But I digress.

Anyway, after the security briefing, some people went to karaoke, and the rest of us decided to go "shopping." Now if you know anything about me, you know that I hate shopping with a burning, fiery passion, so I, of course, made a beeline to the nearest bookstore (as did two other people). And at the bookstore I found a copy of Durarara!! (the light novel). Guess who owns a copy of Durarara!! now. (And, yes, Opal, I picked you up a copy. Think of it as an early birthday present. Also, I flipped the book open to a random page and the first thing I saw was 「いーざーやーくーん。」I may or may not have started giggling like the fangirl I am.)

Anyway, the three of us wandered around the bookstore for a good long time and were intensely amused by the Japanese translations of English book titles. (My absolute favorite has to be No Country for Old Men becoming 「血と暴力の国」(Blood and Violence Country).) And then we met up with one of the dudes' friends (who was really nice and is studying lolita fashion and working at Baby the Stars Shine Bright, which if you've ever watched Kamikaze Girls you know is a big, honking deal in the lolita world), and we went over to Shinsaibashi, which is a popular district of Osaka among young people. We wandered around there for a little bit, somehow wound up going into a punk-visual-kei-lolita fashion store (long story), and then went to get okonomiyaki for dinner, which was pretty much delicious. (Although by that point I was so hungry that I probably would have eaten the ridiculously buckle-heavy shoes in the punk-visual-kei-lolita fashion store.) And then we hopped on a train and came back to Kyoto. And now I am typing this.

I have probably forgotten all sorts of important things, but it is late and I am tired and I need to get up early tomorrow morning so I can go to Nara.

(Oh, one more thing! There was a little sign up advertising the Durarara!! light novels with each of the main characters saying something about the story, and Izaya's said, 「私は人間が好きだよ。この本を買ってくれる君もよ。」さいかだよ！彼はさいか！)

日常生活

Well, I don't think I have any way of topping the TRIP INTO THE LAND OF WEIRD which was yesterday's blog entry, so, uh, yeah. I'm not sure whether to apologize or not.

Today's exciting bit of news: we had our keigo (super polite forms of Japanese) class today, and I had to write an email to a teacher (requesting a meeting with him), and I only got two corrections (both of which were really minor)! YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Other than that...not a whole lot has been happening. Just been doing homework and dying in the heat.

Tomorrow we're going on a field trip to the American consulate in Osaka for a "security briefing" (which I'm pretty sure is code-talk for a recruitment spiel), and then on Saturday we're taking the train to Nara! If you're not familiar with Japanese history, Nara was the first capital of Japan, and this year is their 1300 birthday (something is seriously wonky with that math, though, 'cause the Taika revolution was in 645, not 710...maybe it officially became the capital in 710?), so it's a big, honking deal. Anyway, I don't know how much free time I'll have in the next few days, so expect either very short blog posts or (worst case scenario) no posts at all.

Anything else to report? Hmmm...nope, I don't think so.