Sapporo

Happy Valentine's Day! :) In Japan it's celebrated a little differently than in the US. Here, girls give the guys they like chocolates(not the other way around!). Of course, you also can give chocolates to your friends, but the focus is on the guys. But don't worry, girls get presents in return on March 14th, known as White Day!

I got back from Sapporo yesterday around 3, after a 10 AM flight and lots of train rides. It was a long day. And the weather is about the same here, surprisingly! It's snowing again (lots) - I rode home from my internship in this weather and got completely soaked. Hopefully it won't ice over tonight, as I need to go grocery-shopping sometime soon.

But back to my adventures in Sapporo! It was a pretty whirl-wind trip, but I had such a good time! Forgive the copious amounts of writing...a lot happened this weekend. ;)I started with lots of train travel. This is an eki-ben, short for "eki bento" (station boxed lunch). Each region of Japan has its own specialties, and it's a nice and portable lunch. Mmm!

The first night, I stayed with the Shiratori family, my homestay family from when I performed in the yosakoi festival 3 and a half years ago. My 3 homestay sisters have grown up so much! Mai(left) is going to be a senior in high school (and intending to go to college abroad), Yui(right) is about to attend a music conservatory for high school, and Kana is in 4th grade and incredibly tall. I love them. :)

We went to the snow festival together first - I was amazed by the amount of skill and attention to detail these builders had. My homestay mom actually works as an English guide for the festival, so I got my very own private tour of the place! It's huge! Odori Park, the site of all festivals (including the Yosakoi festival) is 12 blocks long, and every block was covered in ice sculptures. Some were small, like this cute little Toy Story alien. :3

And others were huge - this is sort of a tourism gimmick, as it has Hokkaido's wildlife as well as the Great Wall of China. o.0There was also a sculpting competition - all of them were completed in less than a week! How crazy is that? :)After chilling in Sapporo station to get warm, have lunch and do puri kura, I met up with my other friend Yoshi. We went to Maruyama, Sapporo's zoo. It's too cold for the animals to be outside, so they're all in one room. It was kind of weird.The highlight of Maruyama was definitely the huge ice slide, though.After that we had a small party with some of Yoshi's neighborhood friends. It was fun - they bought me a cake and everything! We had nabe, which is a type of large pot. You typically use it with a tabletop heater so you can cook everything as you go. Nabe can refer to a lot of different dishes, but we had shabu shabu, in which you just boil everything in water. "Shabu shabu" is the sound effect of swishing meat and veggies around in water. I love Japanese onomatopoeias!
I also had a pet dog for the rest of my stay - Chelsea! She's a little bitty papillon, and so so so sweet. :3

End full day one. I told you we did a lot!

We started out Saturday by going to Shiroi Koibito (literally "White Lovers") - a white chocolate factory. It is quite possibly the single most whimsical building I've ever seen.
We got there right as the clock struck eleven - there was a little puppet dance complete with music and bubbles. :D The factory also has a rose garden, though they were all buried under snow this weekend.I loved the museum - it was so cool. The guy who owns the factory just collects random things so we got to see all sorts of random things like chocolate drinking cups, old chocolate packaging, and more.
You can even look down onto the factory floor - and even the factory is pretty. AND the factory has an all-you-can-eat buffet of CAKE. Be still, my heart. I didn't eat there, but I didn't need to - it was just the fact that it was there that mattered!

After Shiroi Koibito, we headed to Hokkaido University to see some old friends. First we stopped at a popular restaurant for Sapporo's specialty, soup curry. So tasty!
We then toured some labs of some of my friends - one girl is doing research on cancer cells, so her lab setup is a lot like the one I remembered from when I worked in a lab. We whined about PCR together for a while. XD
Hokkaido University (Hokudai for short, here) is a lot like A&M, in that it's one of the largest schools in the country and has a big focus on science, engineering, and agriculture. I liked the campus. :)After Hokudai we went to Otaru, a town right off the coast of Japan, for another snow festival. This festival was more rough-hewn, but I really thought it was cool. We stayed until after sunset, which made all the candles really stand out. What a romantic setting!

We even got to contribute to the festival as part of a tour around the city. It was really cold, but I enjoyed it.
Our last big activity was a party at my friend Shio's house. 12 of the Yosakoi festival staff came, and we had a lot of fun together. We had nabe (a different sort this time) and caught up on each other's lives. Everyone's really busy because graduation is next month for them(as are national exams for med school and the like), so I was really touched that so many people came just to see me. Most of them are moving on to other places for careers and grad schools so I'm so glad I came when I did. It was a great ending to a fantastic weekend.

Which brings me to Sunday. I basically just traveled home, baked a cake, played 42 and crashed. Awesome, awesome day. :)

We're not doing a whole lot tonight...celebrating a friend's birthday (with another cake I made - pictures to come next time) and then watching a movie. I'm glad to be relaxing - definitely needed a vacation from my vacation. Enjoy your Valentine's Day - celebrate all the love in your life! <3

Snow Festival

In case you were wondering, I did in fact make it to Sapporo safely(and mostly uneventfully, even!). After 3 30-minute train rides, a 1.5-hour flight, 2 more 30-minute train rides and a short drive, I made it to the Shiratori family's house. I spent the night with them, and then went to the snow festival with them. After that, I met up with my friend Yoshi and went to Maruyama, a nearby zoo that had some cool winter activities (including a giant ice slide). We had dinner at his house, a bit of a welcoming party. And now I'm completely worn out from a long and busy day, so I'm just going to post pictures! Explanations can come later.

Tomorrow is going to be just as busy. I'm going to Shiroi Koibito (a white chocolate factory - otherwise known as heaven in my book), Hokkaido University, Otaru (a small town near Sapporo), and another party with my old friends. Should be fun! Have a wonderful weekend.　

Spring Break!

I am officially on break! Hooray! We had our last class today, and we have a 4-day weekend. I'm choosing to go to Sapporo to visit some old friends. My flight is tomorrow afternoon and I get back on Sunday around noon. I'm staying with an old homestay family part of the time and spending the rest of it with a Japanese friend and his family. I know we're going to see the Snow Festival as well as Otaru (a small town not far from Sapporo), but other than that I'm leaving it up to my hosts! Should be fun.

Speaking of fun, getting to an airport in Japan is a bit of a production if you don't have a car. For example, here's my route tomorrow. I first take a shuttle bus from the hotel near JCMU to Maibara Station(it has a much larger train hub than Hikone). From Maibara, I take a train heading to Ogaki (a largish town between here and Nagoya), change trains, get off at Kanayama (another town close to Nagoya), then switch to another train to get to the airport. Total travel time from Hikone to Chubu Centrair Airport: 2 and a half hours. My flight time is only 1 and a half. XD Thankfully, there is enough time between trains that I should be able to catch them with no worries. It will be weird traveling with a suitcase, as well as by myself - it's my first trip through the subway stations on my own. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Monday was the first day of my internship at Johoku Elementary. Normally, I'm supposed to help teach English for an hour and then join in with club activities for an hour (I'm in the science club, of course). However, the English teacher was absent on Monday so I ended up just attending a science class instead. They were using little scales to find the mass of various objects. After that I went to a sort of club meeting - the older students in the school join an organization that does school service, and volunteer for that. I didn't do much besides sit and listen, though I did talk some with the teachers in the teacher's lounge. Hopefully next week it will be more exciting. :) I also got to see the after-school dismissal speech. All the students get together and get a short speech from their principal at the end of every day. It's cute. :)

I also have a conversation partner! I met her briefly on Monday - her name is Naomi Tanaka. She's from Otsu (a large town about 2 stops outside of Kyoto) and works in a department store. She also loves cooking, apparently! We'll have to cook together sometime. She's very nice, and we've agreed to have our conversations half in English and half in Japanese so we can both practice. And, thanks to her I now have a nickname! "Kelsey" is very difficult to pronounce in a language where all consonants are separated by vowels, so she just calls me "Keru-chan". I call her "Nao-chan" in return. :) I look forward to getting to know her! We have our first full meeting next week. I also met her friend Azusa, who has conversation partners as well. We'll probably end up getting together in the larger group because it's more fun that way!

And I found out about my homestay family (all in one day!). Next weekend we get to go and stay with a random family for the weekend. Mine is in a town called Kusatsu, which is a stop on the way to Kyoto. They're an old couple, the Ishisakas. I don't really know much else about them but I'll be staying with them for 2 nights. I will definitely be putting my Japanese to the test!

Yesterday was far less full of running around. I got my caramel apple bread fix from Vidal (best bread I have ever eaten, by far) and also visited the recycle shop in Maibara. It's basically a pawn shop the size of a Walmart. It's FULL of stuff! They have models, manga, music, menswear, and more (I couldn't resist the alliteration, sorry! :P). My favorite, though, was the stuffed animals section. I need to bring my camera next time to show you how full it is. But I found Chiffon!This is a picture of Chiffon. She's a friend of Cinnamoroll, a character created by Sanrio (the Hello Kitty people). And she's a cocker spaniel. So, when I found this plushie, I couldn't resist.
She's SO CUTE! And has an innertube! :3 I am a sucker for such things. My stuffed animal collection is growing more and more the longer I am here.

Anyway, the trek to Maibara was fun! Really long, though - 4 km each way. But there are a lot of things I saw along the way I'd like to go back to - a really pretty set of wedding chapels I'd like pictures of as well as a little shrine that would be fun to visit.Last night we made chicken pot pies as well! Mmmm, so delicious. Japanese food is good but sometimes American food just sounds best.

Today was pretty much an ordinary day of class, except for last period. Our normal teacher is in America for the week, so the level 1 Japanese teacher subbed in for him. She's hilarious! She came in and first asked us (in Japanese) if we preferred strict or easy-going teachers. The first student said "strict" and she said, "Oh! You are my student!" Then, the second said "easy-going", to which she responded "Wait for your normal teacher, then." XD She was hilarious, and made class a lot of fun.

Tonight we're celebrating my friend Jade's birthday! It will be a nice way to kick off the holiday and relax. So, enjoy the rest of your week, stay warm and I'll see you in Sapporo. :D

Music and Dancing

Hello! We have embarked on our first short week of the semester - we get Thursday and Friday off as our spring break. I'm going up to Sapporo, but I'll wait on all of that info until later.

We went to Nagoya on Saturday! The Matenrou Opera concert was on Saturday, so we got all dressed up and headed to Nagoya. I felt much less like a foreigner because I was dressed like the typical Japanese girl dresses (and rode my bike to the station in said outfit as well).Note the short dress(shorts can be substituted), boots, and tights even in cold weather. I still don't know how they do it.Our main sightseeing stop was here, at Nagoya Castle. It's huge! It's famous for its "dolphins", big gold fish at the top of the castle.Lunch was a Nagoya special known as kishimen, a noodle soup bowl with really wide noodles. Mmm.

After lunch we headed over to Electric Lady Land, the site of the concert. But first, we managed to find a cool shopping area to wander around in. Hooray for following random alleyways!

I wish I had pictures from the concert, but all cameras were practically confiscated so I kept mine hidden. Japanese concerts are so different from American ones! For one thing, everyone stays in their own bubble - no one tries to get in your way. And the fans are so polite! Yelling is kept to a minimum, and after ballads you clap. CLAP. My favorite part, however, is the hand movements. Depending on what's happening in the song, you perform certain dance moves. You might move your hands or pump your fist or headbang sideways - it's all choreographed by some obsessed fans and you just follow along with them. So much fun! The best part was that it was at a tiny venue so the band actually lined the exit so you could shake hands with all of them. Really awesome.Dinner afterwards was equally delicious - Katsu Curry. It's a pork cutlet covered in curry - 2 of my favorite things means you can't go wrong. :D

The Nagoya trip was almost completely successful, but with one exception. We had to change trains 3 times on the way home, because trains run less after 9 pm. The plan was to go from Nagoya to Gifu, Gifu to Maibara, and Maibara to Hikone. We got to Maibara at 11:20, but the last train for Hikone left at 11:05. We ended up just taking a cab back - luckily Maibara station isn't far from JCMU. Lesson learned, though! :)Yesterday was pretty uneventful, with the exception of samurai kenbu. It's a ceremonial dance performed with swords. We actually got to dress up in costume and everything. It was sort of luck of the draw, but mine thankfully matched. XD Wearing the costumes really made it awesome.We did a dance, which was fun(though I was no good at it). And then we took lots of pictures!

I also had my first internship today and met my conversation partner, but I'll save those for later. I'm tired. XD Apparently I'm still not used to being busy all the time. Have a good week, and I'll talk to you all on Wednesday. :D

Setsubun and Kyoto (again!)

I skipped a day! D: Probably you all don't read this that often anyway, but I was doing so well with my every-other-day streak. Last night I got back too late and was too tired to feel like posting, so I'll make up for it by posting this morning. :)

Starting with Thursday. It was mainly uneventful, though we had Setsubun! Setsubun is a tradition performed to scare demons away from your house. It's sort of a new-year cleansing ceremony. You have people dress up as onis, and then toss soybeans at them to drive them out of your house.

Intimidating, no? I think the boxers are a nice touch. Once the demons have been successfully removed, you eat 1 soybean for each year of your life. They're pretty tasty, though lacking in a little salt. Think of really crispy peanuts.
And yesterday we went back to Kyoto! My friend had her passport stolen last semester, and needed to get a police report in order to apply for a new visa. But, of course life is never that simple. We went to one station (where we were told we could just pick up the report and move on), but were instead told to walk 20 minutes to another station. There, we waited an hour and a half for a little sheet of paper with a handwritten note and stamp on it. We hightailed it back to Kyoto Station to get to Otsu, a large town 2 stops away from Kyoto that also has the immigration office. We made it to the immigration office with just 10 minutes to spare (before it closed), and we successfully got her new visa. It was sort of a frustrating afternoon and we didn't manage to do any sightseeing or get the crepes/Arabic food we planned to scout out. However, it's now taken care of, and I actually enjoyed just walking around the city a bit. Here are some of the things we saw. :)A random building I thought was neat. Each of the white emblems is an insignia of one of the daimyos (the ruling families during the Warring States Era).
Traffic closings are so much cuter when they're supported by red pandas! :D
Toji Temple. We didn't go in, but we walked all the way around it to get to police station #2.

Because we were on such a tight schedule, we didn't end up getting lunch until we reached Otsu at 4. (I had tendon, short for tempura donburi. It's basically a tempura rice bowl)
So, before that, we snacked. And Japan has really weird foods. We collectively decided just to get random things and try all of them. So, I had green tea oreos (which taste surprisingly good), black tea Kitkats (which are growing on me), and salad-flavored pretzel sticks (which taste nothing like salad but are delicious). My favorites, though, were the canned drinks we got out of vending machines. You can actually get corn soup out of vending machines - I was a little skeptical but it's delicious. My favorite, though? This!Yes, it is a pancake-flavored hot drink. It's sort of like a maple syrup explosion. I'm a huge fan! It's a shame we don't have stuff like this in America.

Today is the Matenrou Opera concert in Nagoya - we're going to go do some sightseeing in Nagoya first. :) It should be crazy - I've heard visual kei concerts are an experience. So, I'll have lots to tell next time. Enjoy your weekend!

Back to Class!

Let's start with a fun subway icon. :) These are on the special reserved seats you're required to give up for the various people on the squares.

I have more kanji fun for you today as well, though it is a little morbid. The characters for euthanasia are 安楽死. These characters are in the words 安い(inexpensive), 楽しい(fun/enjoyable), and 死ぬ(die). So, together it means "cheap fun death"! In actuality the first character can also mean "to ease" and the second can mean "pleasurable", so it really means "to ease death/make it more bearable". Kanji is fun, right?

On Monday I met with my internship supervisor and went to the elementary school to get a weekly schedule figured out. The school I'll be working at is called Johoku Elementary (which literally means 'north of the castle'), and I'll be working on Mondays for 2 hours a week. The internship actually only lasts 4 weeks as classes end for students in March (and the new school year starts in April!), which is sort of a shame but it should be a fun few weeks. Another girl is doing the internship with me, and we're going to be at the school for 2 periods: one period in which we help teach English, and another in which we participate in club activities. I'm joining the science club. ;) I'm a little nervous about starting on Monday because I really don't know what's going on besides when I should show up, but it should probably all work out in the end!

As far as interesting adventures, not much has gone on this week. We've mainly been watching shows (my count of shows-in-progress has now reached 7) and studying (because preparing for class every day is becoming lots of work!). However, we did make blueberry bread on Monday. Fruit is expensive here, but it's totally worth it because the bread was so very tasty. I now am master of the convection oven, and have figured out that a half-batch of bread (ie 1 American loaf pan-worth) makes 3 Japanese loaves - great for sharing and using as incentive to get kitchen helpers. :D My friends and I have decided to make this a weekly thing! I think we're going to give apple bread a try next.

I also had Indian food today! The main shopping thoroughfare in Hikone is called Bell Road - it's about a 15-20 minute ride away. They have lots of stores and restaurants along it, including an Indian place called Sapna. It had the best naan and chicken curry I have ever tasted. I'll have to get a picture the next time I go because it's so so so good.

As far as life in general in Japan is going, it's going well. It's amazing how quickly the weeks fly by. I can't believe tomorrow's Thursday! The weather is starting to warm up a bit...we haven't had snow in almost a week! This is making it a lot easier to get around town, so I'm biking more. I'm getting used to classes and hanging out with people lots(42 and study parties - almost feels like home). I was a little homesick earlier in the week, but it's easy to not worry so much about that with so much going on! It sort of feels like life at home is on hold while I'm here - I keep forgetting I have to worry about things like class registration for next semester and figuring out grad schools when I'm here in Japan. I'm sure it will hit me once I'm home again. :)

Anyway, I hope you're having a good week. I know there's a "snowpocalypse" blanketing the US right now, so stay warm! Also, in case you've heard anything about the volcano eruption in Japan, don't worry! Kyushu(where the eruption is occurring) is a completely different island, and very much south of us. Take care!

A Tale of Eggplants, Kimonos, and Crepe Uncles

Kyoto story time! :D But first, our cultural activity from Friday. We played the koto! It's a traditional Japanese instrument. The instructor played a complex piece for us, then let us play a little song. :)

It's actually easier than it looks! You play with something like a guitar pick, and you can modify the notes by holding down different strings. The "bridges" on the instrument set the pitch for each string, and if you hold down the string on the other side of the bridge you can modulate the pitch. Pretty cool, huh?

Now, to Kyoto. I went with my friends Addie and Jess - we left JCMU at around 9:15(AM) and got home around 9:30(PM). The train ride took about 45 minutes, and once we got there it was a little overwhelming. Kyoto Station is huge! It has a long-distance subway hub, a shinkansen hub, AND a local hub, not to mention the shopping mall inside. XD However, we managed to get a bus pass for the day (by far the best deal for Kyoto transportation...pay 500 yen to ride all over the city, and within 2 rides it pays for itself!) and find out how to get to Inari station (home of Fushimi Inari).

Fushimi Inari was our first stop, because it was where we all REALLY wanted to go. And it was awesome! It's like most Shinto shrines, except that it is dedicated to kitsune, the fox gods. Normal Shinto shrines have lions flanking the entrance, but this shrine has foxes everywhere. There are about a million paths you can take once you're inside. There are the main paths flanked with the giant red gates (or torii), and there are also a lot of side paths that lead to little shrines. You could probably spend all day there if you wanted. We didn't get very far up the main path because we took all the side-routes, too. I'm definitely going back to do more exploring. :)

One path in particular was really really long - we walked it for a good 10 minutes. It was a beautiful little mountain path! There was an old woman walking along it who passed us when we stopped to look at a small shrine. Oddly enough, we never saw her again though she was definitely a slow walker and there were no other paths to take. It was like she had disappeared! She was a really friendly old lady...we've decided she's a spirit. :)

After leaving Fushimi Inari, we did some shopping at the next street over (which is conveniently FULL of goodies), and I got suckered into buying a kimono!
Isn't it pretty? It was really inexpensive, too. I was sort of eying it and the shop owner waved me over to a mirror to see how it looked. I was expecting her to just slip it on so I could see it briefly. Instead, she whipped out an obi (the traditional sash), and cinched me into the kimono within an inch of my life, obi and all. And it was so pretty I caved. XD I don't have any pictures of how she tied it because my camera was kind of trapped in my jacket (which I was still wearing), but this will have to do for now. :)
We also had lunch nearby - I wanted to try some of the cuisine the area is famous for. Apparently people in the Inari area eat sparrow, and this restaurant served it. I wasn't quite brave enough to go that route, so instead I had kitsune udon, a noodle soup with strips of fried sweet tofu. It was delicious!
After lunch we went back to Kyoto Station (and saw some crazy characters), then got on a bus to go to Ginkakuji, the silver pavilion that is not actually covered in silver. I really liked walking around the garden - the golden pavilion (Kinkakuji) has a garden as well, just not as pretty. I didn't realize how high we were until we got to the top of a hill and got to see the entire city of Kyoto! What a beautiful view.

On the way to Ginkakuji is a little strip of shops that have lots of souvenirs and things. My personal favorite shop? The bunny store. :3 I'm not sure if this is always here or if it's just because it's the Year of the Rabbit, zodiac-wise. But they're all adorable so it's sort of irrelevant.

After Ginkakuji, we headed to Gion, a famous shopping district in Kyoto. Geishas also work here, and you can sometimes see maiko (geishas in training) walking the streets. We saw no maiko, but quite a few people in kimonos! More than normal, actually...I don't really know why.

And I found this! There is a story about this eggplant coin purse. When I first visited Japan 4 years ago, we went to Gion and saw a little shop with a lot of cute little stuffed animals and things. And they had this coin purse. I really liked it at the time (especially the little eggplant charm!), but decided not to get it. I later wanted to go back and get it, but we never did. My dad came to Kyoto on a business trip and I sent him on a quest to find it, but he was unsuccessful. And then, walking through Gion, we happened to stumble across the shop. And, lo and behold, right where it was 4 years ago, I found the coin purse. :D It's sort of a silly story, but I was so excited to find it.

We headed back to Kyoto station after that, in search of dinner. We were all craving American-ish food, so we found a little pasta place.

This was so delicious. I can't decide whether I really liked it or if I just missed pasta so it tasted amazing.

We spent our last few hours in Kyoto at a big mall across the street from the station. I didn't do any shopping there, but I was introduced to the wonders of Japanese crepes.

It's Crepe Ojisan! Which literally translates to "Crepe Uncle". As you can see, they have about every type of crepe imaginable. Most of them are sweet (chocolate, fruit, gelato, etc.) but they have a few savory ones as well. Their current special was Chicken Pot Pie. o.0 I ended up getting a hot apple pie crepe. Best crepe I've ever tasted.

After munching on crepes for a while, we finally boarded the train. It was a very successful day! I look forward to traveling again. We're planning trips for Osaka and Nara next month (and of course I have Nagoya this weekend and Sapporo next weekend).

As far as life here goes, we're back to normal. :) We had lots of snow last night so the roads are treacherous once more. Classes are going well - finally got an A on a Japanese exam here. Hooray for study parties. :) Japanese is getting less intimidating now, thankfully! Class is done for the day, but there's a lot still going on. I had an internship orientation, and now I think we're baking. :D Hooray for ovens, even small ones.

Sorry, I know this is a super-long post. But I hope you enjoy it. :)