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.

Arashiyama Adventures

So today we went to Arashiyama, but I don't have pictures to show you, so you'll just have to make do with my lousy narrating abilities. Sorry.

Anyway, we hopped on a train early in the morning and rode to Arashiyama, which, if you don't speak Japanese, means "Storm Mountain," and it really is a mountain. Or a bunch of mountains, really. Anyway, first we rode the train through the mountains, and then we got off and walked through rice fields for about ten minutes to a second train called the torakko (which, for some reason I don't quite understand, was also called "The Romantic Train"), which went on a scenic route through the mountains to the actual town. And WOW. There is no possible way that words or even photographs could capture how gorgeous it was. It was kind of misty and drizzily out, and the train ran along side this massive ravine with a river at the bottom and mountains all around and...yeah, I'm not even going to try, 'cause I hate describing landscapes. Suffice to say that I swooned. A LOT. Pretty much the whole trip, in fact.

So then we arrived in the actual town and went to eat lunch, 'cause we were all starving. I went off with one of the other students and went to get katsudon, because I love katsudon so much it's probably illegal. Anyway, we went into this little hole in the wall restaurant, and the waitress showed us to our table and then said, "Ryouu reddy to odaa, yes?" And I said, "あのう、日本語が話せますが。。。" And for some reason she was really shocked. But anyway, we got katsudon, and it was delicious and cheap, which is why hole in the wall restaurants in Japan are excellent.*

Anyway, then the waitress brought over some little slips of paper because it'll be Tanabata on the 7th, and said that if we wanted we could write our wishes on them and then tie them to the bamboo outside.** So we did. We both wrote super geeky things. OH WELL.

Anyway, after some omiyage (souvenir) shopping (including some giggling/face-palming over naked woman ear-cleaning sticks and golden poop cellphone straps) we met up with the rest of the group and headed over to Tenryuji, which is a Buddhist temple with a gorgeous garden. We walked around there for a while, and then we went to one of the buildings which is famous for having a 9-meter dragon painted on the ceiling (I'm pretty sure this is the temple you were thinking of, Meab). And that was pretty darn awesome.

So then one of the guys said that he knew of a really good ice cream place, so we all went over there and got weirdly flavored ice cream. There were four flavors, and you could get from one to four of them (same price, same amount of ice cream), so I tried all four. So I had vanilla (okay), matcha (super good), houjicha (super good), sakura mochi (kinda weird) ice cream.

And then we went to the bamboo forest nearby and walked around in there for a good long time. But by then it was getting to be late afternoon, so we decided to head back to civilization, and managed to get spectacularly lost in the process. But we finally managed to make it to the train station and got back to Kyoto.

For dinner I went out with my host mom and my little host brother to an okonomiyaki restaurant in the area. It was very yummy. Also, did you know that there's such a thing as corn tempura? It's pretty awesome.

On a completely random note, Durarara!! ended. And it was beautiful. BEAUTIFUL. There will be much forced, erm, PERSUADED watching of it when it comes out on DVD.

In any case, I'm going to go to bed now, because I have forty thousand pounds of homework to do tomorrow and I'm too tired to wi-

*is attacked by pun ninjas before she can make references that no one will understand*

*However, hole in the wall restaurants also tend to allow smoking, which makes me sad and asthmatic. Why is it that about 50% of my katsudon eating experiences have involved my being on the verge of an asthma attack?

**Tanabata is a festival that takes place on the 7th of July. It celebrates the one day a year that the cowherd (Hikoboshi) and the weaver (Orihime) (represented by Altair and Vega,*** respectively) are allowed to meet. (Normally they're separated by the Milky Way. The reasons for their separation are a long and complicated story, so if you're interested, I suggest looking it up.) One of the main activities surrounding the festival is writing your wishes**** on slips of paper and then tying the paper to bamboo (usually put up in front of shops) so that they'll come true.

***If you've ever seen Bakemonogatari, the ending song mentions the myth.

****My favorite wish that I've seen was written on a paper slip hanging on the street right next to my host family's house. It said, "I want to become a kamen rider." (If you don't know what a kamen rider is, imagine a power ranger on a motorcycle, and you'll be in approximately the right general area.)

Edit: Oh yeah! I forgot to mention our residential director getting weirdly hit on when we went to visit a marriage/fertility/success in entrance examinations shrine.

Our residential director got weirdly hit on when we went to visit a marriage/fertility/success in entrance examinations shrine.

It was weird.