Week 53a: Kyoto trip day one

Holy cow. I took a LOT of pictures in Kyoto, so I decided that the only manageable way to present them was to break them down by day! Here is day one of my trip, in Nara. 

My first stop was Nara park. The pond was full of turtles!

Nara is famous for being full of tame deer. They were pretty lazy when I arrived in the morning. 

Lots of people buy special crackers to feed the deer, and the deer are pretty demanding when they think you might have something for them.

This guy assaulted me because I was standing close to the lady who sold deer crackers.

He ate my map when I didn't feed him.

I visited Todaiji temple, where there is an enormous statue of Buddha. The deer here were even crazier than the deer in the park!

This is the Daibutsu, the giant Buddha statue.

If you can fit through the hole in this pillar, you can achieve enlightenment. Kids like to shove each other through. This guy made it with a little help.

Next, I walked through the Primeval forest on the way to another shrine. The deer were much better behaved!

Week 52: A series of fortunate events

Wow! I had an eventful week that was actually jam-packed with coincidences (now that I sit down and think about it). 

This week was Golden Week!! Monday-Wednesday was a holiday! I spent Monday and Wednesday pretty quietly, but on Tuesday I went with my friends to climb Mt. Moiwa!!

The weather was perfect for a mountain climb. It was sunny, but not swelteringly hot, and the scenery was great!

The mountain was steep, but we persisted!

We followed a path that led to a road.. and when we followed the road we found.. enlightenment!

It's Buddha!

Actually, this turned out to be a shrine that we saw WAY back when during our trip to the imaginary rose garden, which my extremely helpful blog post naming system tells me was during only my second week here!! At that time, we could see something mysterious in the distance and we really wanted to see what it was, but we couldn't make it through the forest to find it. We were happy to complete our pilgrimage, but unfortunately we created a new imaginary garden situation. As it turns out, you can't climb Mt. Moiwa by simply going to Mt. Moiwa; you need to go around to the far side of the mountain to find a path! Sooo our climb ended with Buddha and we decided to head back down and go to the park instead.

We had intended to head to Nakajima park, where I apparently went almost exactly six months ago! This week was really a trip back in time :P But actually, Odori park, which we needed to pass through to switch subway lines, was so hoppin' that we stayed there!

What really drew our attention was a dude jamming on an electric violin! He was really amazing.

Also, the mysterious bird man (who, ironically, we last saw on Mt. Moiwa!!) was in the park! He kept putting a cockatoo on the violin guy. The bird took a crap on the poor violinist, but the bird dude just wiped the poo off when the song was over and put the bird right back! I also had a visit with the bird but remained unsoiled. 

The other big news is that I moved!! My new place is downtown and it is totally sweet! 

My new digs! I HAVE A WASHING MACHINE!

The subway station is literally across the street (less than a 1 minute walk) and I'm about a 15 minute walk from the main subway and JR station. That's convenient because... this week I am going to Kyoto for a few days!! It should be a pretty good adventure for my Japaniverssary! :)

My Japanese has also been getting a workout because of all of the moving and the paper-signing and official dealings. I was feeling pretty proud of myself until about 5 minutes ago when the NHK man arrived to demand the standard payment for having a tv that is hypothetically capable of watching the national channel. It's a standard procedure, and I couldn't bluff and say that I am just a foreigner who doesn't watch tv because the tv was on when he came by :p But luckily (?) I couldn't understand any of his questions, so after enough "gomen nasai, wakarimassen"s he left. Huzzah! I think an English-speaking technician will be back :p

Finally, I enjoyed this useful item at the dollar store:

Hey, you! Don't cat!

Week 51: Happy Golden Week!!

It's the start of Golden Week!! I think they should rename Golden Week to "Golden Several Days" because actually it is only a three-day holiday! I am not knocking a three-day holiday. But calling it "Golden Week" when you only get three days off is kind of a tease in my opinion :p

Quibbling aside, this past Wednesday was indisputably Showa Day, a day to remember the former Emperor Showa who reigned during the "turbulent" period that included WWII. Awkward! But a day off is a day off! I used it to go apartment hunting with my prof, because I need to move in less than two weeks!

Apartment hunting was shockingly easy. My prof made an appointment with a real estate agency and they sent us out with some guy who showed us five apartments that were all great contenders, but in the end I went with the first place I saw. I definitely felt like I was on House Hunters International, except that I didn't decide to just ignore my budget for no reason and I didn't pick a garbage house. My move-in date isn't set, but I'll almost certainly be writing my next blog post from my new digs!! I should probably see about getting internet access..

Anyway, to kick off Golden Week, today I went to Maruyama Park with my friends. Maruyama Park is supposed to be a primo place to view cherry blossoms, but I guess it's a good thing that we were there last week because the blossoms were pretty much already toast!! Even still, the park was jam packed with people barbequing and drinking and playing games, and we had a great picnic on a baseball field despite an overabundance of spiders! 

The chipmunk made a triumphant return!