Pictures (part seven): Kamakura, Yokohama, and Tokyo

Well, this is it, you guys.

This is the last post.

You must be heartbroken, I know.

I recommend filling the void by going outside and doing something exceedingly awesome. Like hang-gliding. Or singing odes to semicolons.

You can, as always, read the correspond posts here (for Kamakura and Yokohama), here and here (for Tokyo), and here (for pictures).

Because people asked for a bigger version of the class picture from before, here it is.

Note that my male sensei (all the way on the right) looked like that approximately all the time. This would be why we loved him to death.

Okay, here're the pictures from Kamakura and Yokohama.

Here's the big Buddha.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's all you need to see of that.

Remember how I said that there was a crazy story associated with the shrine I visited? Well, since TWO whole people asked for it, you get to hear it. If you don't want to read my spazzing, you can just skip ahead.

Okay, so basically this shrine was built by the wife of Minamoto Yoshitomo. Yes, THAT Minamoto Yoshitomo.* While he was off fighting the Heike, she was wanting babies. So apparently she decided to build a shrine so that she could GET babies. In addition, she built the shrine so that it would help defeat the Heike.

How did she do this?

Well, there's an extensive garden associated with the shrine. This garden has two huuuuuge ponds with a bridge going over them. One of them is the Genji pond because it has white flowers, and the other pond is the Heike pond, because it has red flowers.** The Genji's pond has three islands, because the word for three in Japanese (三, san) sounds the same as the word for childbirth (産, san). The Heike's pond has four islands, because the word for four in Japanese (四, shi) sounds the same as the word for death (死, shi).

And that is the short version of the cool story associated with the shrine.

*The leader of the Genji, who overthrew the Heike. Also, he became the first shogun.

**The Genji's color was white, and the Heike's color was red.

Here's the bridge leading to the shrine.

Here's part of the Heike's pond, with the red flowers.

Here's the bridge from the side.

Here's the hand-washing place.

Kind of flashy, don't you think?

That's a stage which important ceremonies are performed on.

These are the steps up to the main shrine building.

This sign says to please not tie fortunes to the trees. I guess they must have had a problem with that.

Here's the Genji pond. It's kind of hard to see, but the flowers are white.

This was just awkward.

These were some really strange mannequins we ran across on our way back from dinner that night.

(There was also a mannequin that looked like it was seducing another mannequin. I started laughing hysterically, and no one else could understand why.)

THE CROSSWALK THAT TRAIN MAN WALKS DOWN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE. (It's the one under the overpass thing. AAAAHHHH!)

Here's the gate into Asakusa, a district of Tokyo that's supposed to be like Edo-era Tokyo (or Edo, as it was known at that point).

Inside a mall at Asakusa...

A street in Asakusa...

We couldn't figure out what all these guys were doing.

Then we realized that they all had some sort of portable gaming device and were having a tournament of some kind.

Akihabara at night!

I figured this would be a somewhat appropriate picture to end the blog with.

In any case, it's been fun, guys. Hopefully, it's been at least fractionally as enjoyable to read as it has been for me to write.

Overall, this entire trip was an awesome experience, and I feel like I learned a lot, thanks to my senseis and my host family and my language partner and all the random people who weren't afraid to talk to me.

If I wind up in Japan after I graduate (which I most likely will), I'll probably wind up writing a blog again, but until then,

This is Squid, signing off.

じゃ、またね。

Don't worry; I'm alive

I got home safely yesterday, but I was so jet-lagged and being smothered with my little brother's hugs that I didn't feel like writing anything even slightly coherent. So sorry about that. (Well, plus I kept switching back into Japanese accidentally, and on a blog that would have been pretty bad.)

Nothing particularly exciting happened on the way home, other than my watching all of Toy Story 2 on the plane (in Japanese) to keep myself amused. Oh, and reading more Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. And writing long emails. And pretending to sleep while the guy next to me invaded my personal space. And then I got home and gave omiyage to everyone in my family, so yay for that. And then I made my mum and my dad and my not-so-small brother watch the first episode of Durarara!! (which, by the way, all of you can watch online free (and legally!) here). Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. (The first episode made so much more sense the second time around, and now that I've been to Ikebukuro and KNOW what the heck they're talking about. Sunshine 60! I...didn't go there! But I know what it is now!)

Anyway, here's the last batch of pictures-that-are-not-my-pictures. I mentioned this a million years ago (back in June), but my camera doesn't connect to my computer, so the pictures I've been posting on here were not taken by me. They were taken by my classmate, Hu-san, who kindly agreed to let me post them.

(That's Hu-san in front. I'm just behind her making weird faces, like I always do.)

In any case, I think I'll get MY pictures sometime soon. Probably in the next few days. So you'll be spammed by lots of pictures of tiny shrines then.

Until then....here's some Yokohama-Kamakura-Tokyo trip.

Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunch.

I am 99.9% sure that the orange stuff sitting in the middle of the blue flower is uni (sea urchin). I had it at my host dad's restaurant, and it was SO GOOD, so I thought that it had to be something else, because I'd always heard that it was gagtastic. Then I had it at the restaurant in Kamakura and...I had trouble swallowing it, that's how gross it was. (I ate it anyway.) Conclusion? My host dad is a cooking wizard. Obviously.

Guide: Let me teach you something. You have to purify yourself when you visit a shrine or temple. Here, let me teach you the correct way to do it in an incredibly slow and condescending fashion.

Me: [attempts to look politely interested]

Pictures of the giant Buddha at Kamakura!

Guide: This is a shrine gate. You know what a shrine gate is, right? Do you know the difference between a temple and a shrine?

Me: [attempts to prevent herself from bashing her brains out against the guardian lion statues]

Here, have a shrine. It was actually a pretty cool shrine with an awesome story behind it. At least, I think it was awesome. I think it would bore other people to death. (If you are interested in aforementioned story, let me know and I will geek out at you. It has to do with the Genji and the Heike and BABIES.)

After this point, the photos get kind of random, so sorry about that.

Me looking worried while leaving a taxi!

Chinatown in Yokohama!

Maid cafe! (No, I didn't go.)

Pictures from our final party!

All the girls!

All the boys! (This is what they look like ALL THE TIME. Except sometimes I-san (all the way on the right) is singing enka* and B-san (all the way on the left) is pretending to be a Japanese girl.)

The men and our senseis (the last three people on the right). I only had two of them as senseis (the guy and the woman all the way on the right).

Giving omiyage to the teachers! (We all pooled money and bought gifts for them in Tokyo.)

When it came time for the teachers to leave, they bowed, and we bowed, and then all of them exited. All of them but our awesome male teacher (who apparently really likes gunpla**).

Teacher: [bows]

Students: [bow]

Teacher: [bows deeper]

Students: [bow deeper]

Teacher: [bows even deeper]

Students: [bow even deeper]

Teacher: [is reaching startling low bowing levels]

Students: [bow even deeper than he is bowing]

So then my host mom and little host brother came to visit.

Host mom: Handshake.

Little host brother: [quails]

HM: Come on, that's how you say "goodbye" in America.

Me: ....?

LHB: [sets jaw]

[HANDSHAKE OF +14 EPICNESS]

Whoo, everyone's gone! Time to be weird!

Time for random shows of strength!

This can only be solved one way: arm wrestling!

OH, THE PAIN! THE PAIN!

(Except I think I-san won the next round.)

Duel to the death...round two!

Well, that went...well...

So then all fifteen of us (fourteen program participants plus the residential director) crammed into the same elevator, just 'cause we could.

Our residential director shows her true colors!

(And she wasn't even voted Person in the Program Most Likely to Be the Antichrist. It was someone else.)

Guys, we need to do this more often!

*Enka = traditional Japanese style of music. Imagine country. Just in Japanese. And with less of a tune. Same general subject material though.

**Gunpla = a mishmash of "Gundam" and "plastic." They're robots...you can assemble. I bought two (Gurren Lagann and King Kittan). My bro and I will be putting them together. WHOO. I am a geek.

@Opal: No, the Atomic Dome isn't radioactive any more. The radioactivity in Hiroshima reached safe levels decades ago. (I think the exhibit at the museum said that it took a couple of months.)