Earthquakes and meat volcanoes

I was awoken this morning by an earthquake. I would say that it was very exciting, but it wasn't really. It was just kinda shaky. (My host mom said it was a 4.2, but I dunno if the Japanese earthquake measurement system is the same as the American one.)

(Okay, I just looked it up, and it's not the same. It was a 4 out of 7 on the Japanese scale. That would mean that it's the biggest earthquake I've ever been through. WHOO.)

Anyway, I finished packing my stuff up, bid my host family goodbye (it was sad), and then rode the bus to Kyoto Station, where I (with the rest of my group) hopped on the Shinkansen to Yokohama. (Or technically to Shin-Yokohama, where we took a train to Yokohama.) Then we took another train to Kamakura, where we ate lunch, which was tasty. Then we broke into groups of four and met with Japanese guides who were supposed to give us a tour of some important landmarks near Kamakura. It. Was. Excruciatingly boring. Part of the problem was that our guide wouldn't actually let us look at anything, and instead made us walk places incredibly quickly and then stand just outside of where all the interesting things were and listen to him rhapsodize about random things. Plus I could probably only understand about 60% of what he was saying, 'cause he kept using all these historical words that no foreigner outside of Japanese history majors would know, and also he had a super thick accent (that wasn't a Kyoto accent...I miss my Kyoto dialect already) and mumbled. And when I wanted to go look at things that seemed like they might have maybe been interesting, I couldn't, 'cause we had to stick to a schedule. FRUSTRATION.

So that was pretty much a waste of 2 hours and 20 minutes.

So then we got on another two trains and went back to Yokohama, where we went to our hotel. It turns out that our hotel is located just outside of the Yokohama Chinatown, so we went there for dinner. It was actually pretty good (if expensive).* Also, there were soup buns, which we, for some reason, started calling "meat volcanoes."** And then we came back to the hotel room, and now I am typing this and about to pass out.

Tomorrow we're going to Tokyo (for real this time). One of my other classmates and I are going to try to go to the Ghibli Museum, although we don't know if we'll be able to get tickets. Other than that, I am planning on going to Akihabara and Ikebukuro, and maybe Shibuya if I have time. (Everyone has been making fun of me for wanting to go to Akihabara. REAL MATURE, YOU GUYS. KEEP ON CALLING ME DEROGATORY NAMES WHEN YOU THINK I'M NOT LISTENING. SOMEDAY I'LL BE RULING THE WORLD, AND YOU WILL BE SORRY.)***

Okay, I need to sleep now, even though it's only 10:15 p.m. G'night.

*Then again, I believe that any meal over $8 is expensive. I think this may have something to do with my total unwillingness to buy anything for myself.

**Less random than it sounds, 'cause the fillings were spurting out the top of half of them. But they were still tasty.

***Host mom: Where are you planning on going in Tokyo?

Me: Akihabara!

HM: [awkward silence]

Me: [squirm]

HM: ....do you want to buy a computer or something?

Me: .....noooooooooooooooooooooooo....

HM: But everything else that's there is for otaku.

Me: [awkward silence]

HM: I mean, it's all anime and manga.

Me: Yes, that's the point....

HM: [awkward stare] Oh. Well. Hmm.

Me: I'm sorry...?

*fangirl squeal*

Okay, this is going to be another extraordinarily long post, so you might want to go get a drink of water or something.

Anyway.

This morning I got up, did laundry, and then went out on an ADVENTURE. This particular adventure was supposed to take me to Kitanoutenmangu, but when I got there, the shrine was closed and there seemed to be some sort of demonstration/protest going on outside, so I figured that it was a good idea to skip it. So instead I wandered around the northern half of Kyoto for half the morning, and somehow wound up at another hole-in-the-wall shrine, this one promising success in sports! There were seriously basketballs left as offerings. Also, there were a variety of articles about various teams who had come to pray at the shrine and then won whatever it was that they were competing for plastered up on the side of the honden (see previous post for explanation). Oh, and I picked up a crazy interesting piece of political propaganda. It was, once again, a flyer for the recent election, but one of the slogans on the flyer was

神道の心は日本の心

The heart of Shinto is the heart of Japan

Apparently she (the candidate) was endorsed by some sort of Shinto political society. Not surprisingly, she's part of the 自由民主党 (LDP; the conservative party of Japan).

In any case, I wound up wandering out of northern Kyoto all the way to Nijo Castle, and then I hopped on bus and rode to Kyoto Station because there was a movie theatre near there showing the new Studio Ghibli movie. Fortunately, I was paranoid, and gave myself plenty of time to get to the movie theatre, 'cause I got seriously lost in spite of (or maybe because of) my map. After wandering around fruitlessly, wondering why none of the streets had the right names, I asked someone, who told me very politely that I was on the wrong side of the station. DUH. So then I had an adventure through the station (seriously, the thing is like a friggin' labyrinth) and managed to make it to the other side, and lo and behold, my map suddenly started working! So I went to the movie theatre, which happened to be on the fifth floor of a mall, and found out that they offer student discounts, but I had forgotten my student ID, so I had to pay 1800 yen to get in. (That's a little more than $18, for anyone wondering.) The crazy thing, though, was that when I went up to buy my ticket, the woman behind the counter asked me which seat I wanted. Apparently movie theatres in Japan are assigned seating. SWEET. Even better, I got a really good seat because I was by myself. (The other people in the program couldn't come today! Sadness.)

So I got to wait until 10 minutes before the movie started, which was when they opened the doors. And guess what! Movie theatre floors in Japan aren't sticky! What craziness is this?! Also, it was stadium seating (with really, really comfortable seats), so there seriously wasn't a bad seat in the house.

So at the beginning of the movie, they had a little "please turn off your cell phones and don't try videotaping this or else" announcement, and then there were trailers.

Trailer #1: Redline, which appears to be an anime movie from Madhouse about a man with a mullet that is larger than I am tall who is competing in some sort of intergalactic race. I may have been biting back giggles for the entire trailer.

Fast cars, big hair, kind of Gurren Lagann-esque animation. Yay?

Then there was a trailer for Cats and Dogs 2: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. It was only slightly better in Japanese. Only slightly. A lot of lines were changed. Everyone was just sort of staring at the screen and twitching slightly.

Then there was a trailer for How to Train Your Dragon...in Japanese. But it was called ヒックとドラゴン (Hikku and Dragon).

Then there were two trailers for Kamen Rider movies, which looked ridiculous and cheesy. WHOO.

Then there was a trailer for this Korean movie (Japanese title translates to "His and My Castaway Diary" but the English title is "Castaway on the Moon"), which actually looks pretty interesting. Here's an English trailer, for those of you who don't want to suffer through the Japanese one.

So then the movie started and MY GOODNESS. It was wonderful. And I could understand about 90% of what they were saying. (I was really worried, because I've never watched a full movie in Japanese without subtitles before. I've never even watched an episode of something without subtitles.) Ranting and raving about its epicness below. No spoilers, but skip if you don't want to be bored by my swooning.

Synopsis: I don't remember a whole lot about the original book this is based off of (The Borrowers), but it stuck to the parts I remember surprisingly well. (They even get in the tea kettle of The Borrowers Afloat at the end.)

Boy (named Shou) with undisclosed illness (it's explained later in the movie, but like I said, no spoilers) comes to live with his grandmother for a bit over the summer because his parents are divorced and too busy to take care of him. Grandmother is also too busy to take care of him, apparently, because she never seems to be around, and instead leaves most of the taking-care-of-ailing-grandsons to her almost entirely incompetent hired hand, Haru.* Shou is, needless to say, extremely lonely, but is delighted to find that there are 借りぐらし (borrowers, although the literal translation is "people who live by borrowing") living in his house. Unfortunately, the borrowers aren't so thrilled about being found out. DRAMA ENSUES.

Animation is, as always, excellent, as is the music. (The theme song is, surprisingly enough, sung by a French woman. She has a weird accent in Japanese, but it's still super pretty.) In addition, whoever did the sound effects needs a pay raise. Seriously. There's this incredible scene where Arrietty and her father are going out borrowing for the first time, and the sound effects make me swoon. Also, there's another scene where the perspective is shifting back and forth between Arrietty and Shou, and the sounds also shift and...well, it was also pretty swoon inducing.

Also, Arrietty's father is pretty much AWESOME. As is Supira (a character who I don't remember from the original Borrowers series, so I bet he's been added).

Also also, the borrowing scenes? SO EXCELLENT.

Also also also, that movie made me even more terrified of crows than I already am. Seriously.**

It's a surprisingly melancholy movie. If you've read The Borrowers, you basically know how it's going to end, and the other main character (Shou), as he says partway through the movie, is "in the middle of dying." That said, it doesn't get overbearingly sad, although there were certainly some parts where I was getting a little bit teary. (Teary from the awesomeness, of course!)

Overall, not one of Ghibli's absolute best movies, but as a non-Miyazaki, it's phenomenal. I would say it's about on the same par as Kiki's Delivery Service or Ponyo. It's really short (92 minutes) so it doesn't have quite the time to develop its characters the way Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away (the two best Ghibli movies, in my humble opinion) do.

[/swooning over 「借りぐらしのアリエッティ」***]

So after that I rode the subway home and swooned a little bit more.

And then I got to eat at my host dad's restaurant. (He was kind of like, "Well, you came all this way, and it's your last weekend, so you might as well, okay?" which meant "DO IT.") I went really early (5 o' clock) before the normal huge wave of customers comes (because it's a really tiny restaurant), and IT WAS DELICIOUS. I think he is some kind of cooking wizard. But it was also bizarre, 'cause he kept using all the really polite service terms, and then switching into slangy Kyoto dialect, which kind of threw me for a loop. (はい、めしあがりください。無理しないでね。）So anyway, yes. I have now eaten at one of the hundred best restaurants in Kyoto. AND IT WAS DELICIOUS.

Tomorrow we're taking the Shinkansen (bullet train, for all you Japan-traveling n00bs) to Miyajima, where we'll be spending the night in a ryokan (traditional Japanese hotel). I have no idea if I will have internet access or not, so if you don't hear anything from me, don't assume that I'm dead. I could just be stranded in the middle of nowhere. I will definitely have internet on Tuesday, though, so if I go silent, it'll only be for a day.

Also, it is really hot right now. Auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. 9 o' clock at night and 90 degrees. This kind of heat should be illegal!

(Thank goodness for vending machines. Today I had C.C. Lemon, which one of the other program participants is probably going to wind up marrying, because he loves it that much. I must admit that it is pretty good. And apparently has the same amount of vitamin C as 70 lemons. SCARY.)

M'kay, well, I'm gonna go pretend that I'm not melting to death and answer some emails. (Okay, some email, no plural. But it's the thought that counts.) Write more later.

*Who I thought was a man for the first fifteen minutes of the movie. Then Haru used "kashira" (a super girly word for "I wonder") and I thought, "Oh my goodness, Haru is a gay man!" Then I realized Haru the gay man had breasts. HELLO, I AM A GENIUS.

Also, I spent most of the movie mentally calling her Hatsue and expecting her to start killing babies.

**Anime has made me scared of many, many things. Some things I have learned to be scared of because of anime:

Dolls

Blue butterflies

Johnnies

Yellow scarves

Knives of any kind

The internet

Freaky deer god things

Chat rooms

Black goo

DEAD LEAVES AUUUUGH

Ramen

Older sisters

Onsens

Bunny girls

...and more...

Points if you can actually identify what each of those comes from.

**Potential translations:

The Borrower's Arrietty

Arrietty of the Borrowers

Arrietty the Borrower

The Borrower Arrietty

Knowing the weird naming scheme they use, though, it'll wind up with a completely different title.

Bad at crowds but good at walking

This's gonna be a long post, so prepare yourselves now.

So this morning I woke up too early for living (6:30-ish) because it was HOT. VERY HOT. But that was okay, 'cause my host family was awake super early, 'cause it's a three day weekend (Monday's Umi no Hi (Ocean Day)). (The boys are at a boy scout camp right now, so they had to get up super early to get ready.) Anyway, I ate breakfast, packed a bunch of maps into my bag because I was actually smart and prepared today, and then asked my host mom the best way to get to Gion Matsuri. She said to take the Keihan railway, so I did, and she was right, it took me exactly to where I wanted to go.

Here's where the bad part starts.

I had heard that the parade would be crowded.* I did not expect that "crowded" meant "you are most likely to get crushed to death." I managed to find my group, fortunately, but we were all the way in the back of a mob of people, so even when the parade started I could barely see anything.

Then the pushing started.

All the people behind us wanted to see what was going on, so they started pushing forward, and of course the people in front of us couldn't move forward, 'cause they were already jammed in tight, so all that happened was that everyone was squished together like sardines.

If you know anything about me, you know that I really dislike crowds. Intensely. I also am really not okay with most people touching me. So there I was, squished up against a wall, and thinking, "Oh gods, I am going to be crushed to death here, and it's going to be like that football incident all over again, and what the heck are they going to tell my parents?"

Fortunately, two of my classmates noticed that I was curled up against a wall, hands up in a guard, and hyperventilating, and they asked if I was okay. I couldn't manage to get words out, so they dragged me between them through the crowd (seriously, they were the best body guards ever) and managed to make it into the nearest subway station where I literally leaned against a wall and made whimpering noises for five minutes.

Apparently I am really not good at crowds. It would have been nice to know this beforehand.

In any case, my classmates were super nice and waited until I was calm enough to not feel an intense need to punch everything in sight, and then they made sure that I was able to get on a train and get out of there. (They also fled the parade, because they were pretty freaked out by all the crushing and pushing going on there. In the words of one of them, "If something happens and you go down, you're going to be trampled to death.")

So I got on the train, rode one stop, got off, and then picked the direction that seemed the farthest from Gion Matsuri and started walking. And that actually worked out really well, 'cause I wound up wandering through a bunch of random side streets and ran into tiny, awesome shrines and temples! And it turns out that my sense of direction is actually pretty good, 'cause I managed to make it to a shrine that I had wanted to visit for a while (Heian Jingu) without using a map. WHOO. And after that I found this hole-in-the-wall shrine (seriously, I have no better way of describing it) which was AMAZING. (It was such a hole-in-the-wall shrine that it didn't have anything for purification. NOTHING.) It was, according to the sign, a shrine devoted to a certain fox god of music. However, you could tell that this was neither a terribly popular shrine nor a terribly popular god, because the protective charms were RIDICULOUSLY CHEAP. (100 yen? At Heian Jingu some of the charms were 800 yen. The ema at tiny shrine were 300 yen. At most shrines they're 1000 yen or more.) Also, there were a bunch of articles posted on the side of the honden (main building of the shrine) advertising the efficacy of the god that the shrine was devoted to. And in front of the shrine main office was a poster advertising a particular candidate in the recent Kyoto municipal elections.

I love tiny shrines. So much. So, so much.

Also, along the way I stopped at a vending machine ('cause it was a million degrees and I was afraid I was going to get dehydrated) and bought a thing that said it was "Pink Ginger Sparkling." And it was, surprisingly, super good! Like ginger beer, but minus the kind of weird aftertaste you sometimes get. And pinker.

Anyway, I had texted one of my classmates earlier to see if he wanted to watch the new Ghibli movie this afternoon, and he texted me back at this point saying sure, so I walked a bunch more and then took a train and met up with him. And we went and grabbed lunch at First Kitchen**, which despite being fast food (or "convenience food" as they called it) was actually pretty good. Then we went to the movie theatre...only to discover that it was pretty much the only movie theatre in Kyoto NOT running the new Ghibli movie. UGH. (So we've got plans to go tomorrow, now that I've looked up places that are running it. And we have two other classmates who will probably join us, 'cause they had other plans today.)

So then I walked home, which was about an hour walk. (Giving a rough estimate, I think I walked about 15 miles today. That might be a little bit low. Given my regular walking speed (about 3.5 miles per hour), though, and the fact that I walked pretty much continuously from about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and then I walked a bunch in Teramachi and also all the way home and then to the restaurant, that seems like a safe bet.) And I sat for about an hour, and then went out to dinner with my host mum at a super good hole-in-the-wall restaurant, where she proceeded to once again test what I'm willing to eat.

Today I ate fried bird bones. Which sounds utterly disgusting, but they were SO GOOD. (I have a sneaky suspicion, however, that despite my host mom saying that they were bones, they were actually cartilage, 'cause they were way too chewy to be normal bones. Then again, bird bones aren't exactly normal...) Also, some kind of sashimi and daikon salad (I have a growing appreciation for daikon) and stir fry and some kind of super tasty fried chicken thing with amazing sauce and champloo (which was really good). YUM. Also, water. Best thing ever on a hot day.

Also, during dinner, my host mom asked the fateful, "Is it true that all Americans have guns?" question. I THOUGHT I WOULD MAKE IT THROUGH THE PROGRAM WITHOUT FACING THAT, BUT I WAS WRONG.

So then I came home where it is currently 11 p.m. and 87 degrees Fahrenheit. WHOO.

Also, despite walking in the shade and carrying an umbrella (it covers more than just my hat), I have a sunburn across both shoulders and my right forearm and the right side of my collarbone. I am pretty sure it's going to be super painful in the morning.

In any case, tomorrow I have to do laundry and I am going to see that Ghibli movie if it kills me and I am also going to try to see Kitanoutenmanguu, because I mentioned it in my awe-inspiring presentation but have never actually been there.

Okay, I'm going to try to sleep now. G'night!

*Because I probably failed at explaining it yesterday, lemme explain a bit more:

Gion Matsuri is a big festival in Kyoto. One of the things it's most famous for is its huuuuuge floats. Go type "Gion Matsuri" into Google, and you'll be able to see pictures of them.

In any case, yesterday they were having the actual matsuri (festival), which is to say that there were stands lining the streets, and you could wander around Shijo (a section of Kyoto) and look at all the different floats (the roads had been closed for cars). Imagine a street fair, but instead of taking up a street, taking up 15-20 blocks. Most of the stands were selling food (so much good food!), but there were others selling various handicrafts/souvenirs/other random objects.

Today was the parade in which all the floats go through the streets of Shijo.

**Okay, so we totally went because of the name and because neither of us had been there before. What do I mean by the name? Well, in Japanese, lots of long names/words/phrases are shortened. For example:

Starbucks ---> sutaba

Personal computer ---> pasokon

Air conditioner ---> eakon

Sexual harassment ---> sekuhara

Family Mart ---> famima

And First Kitchen?

Fuakin.

Pronounced like...well, I'm pretty sure you can figure it out.

Needless to say, the name amuses foreign students endlessly.