Kyoto!!

Wednesday, May 13

Today I was going to Kyoto with Father!! But first I had to do what I was dreading, and move my huge ass suitcases out of the emergency housing, up the stairs, all the way across Nanzan, and then across the street to the dorms.

So I woke up at 6:45 to get dressed and then start. Thankfully the guy working at the dorm helped me carry the first, and biggest, suitcase up the stairs. Then I walked it all the way to the dorms. 

At the dorms, I lugged my suitcase down another set of stairs. Why is everything in Japan below ground level?? When I got inside, this cute old man was waiting for me. He was nice and gave me a dolly and showed me the ramp I could use instead of the stairs. Yay!!

So I used the dolly to bring over all my non-rolling bags. And then I returned one last time to get my last giant rolling bag and bonsai. The guy at the emergency housing was so surprised I was able to move out so quickly. He'd taken one look at my bags and thought it would take me 3 hours! I knew it wouldn't lol.

So we cleaned up my room quickly and locked it up and I gave him back the key. Then I heaved my giant suitcase up the staircase and rolled it off to the dorms. On the way, I passed the old man from the dorms, who was ending his shift. He laughed at the fact that I was carrying a bonsai, but also thought it was really cool!

At the dorms, a lady had taken his place. She was also super nice. She helped me get my last bag in the luggage storage room and then told me I could move into my room at 5, which I knew. So I dropped off my textbooks (Rafa gave me his Genki II, so I have two now!) and then left for Nagoya Station, where I was meeting Father.

I met him out by the long distance bus stop. He took me down under Nagoya Eki to a discount ticket store so we could buy the Shinkansen ticket, and then shortly after boarded the Shinkansen to Kyoto!!

It was a short 30 minute ride. On the way, Father helped me with the itinerary for my trip around Japan with my mom and sister. He's so great!

And then we were in Kyoto! We took a train in the direction of Nara, to Uji, which is a city outside of Kyoto. It's famous for a type of green tea, called ujicha. It's also famous for Byodouin Temple, which is where we went.

Kyoto is kirei :)

Humungo stone torii!

Entrance to Byodouin

When we walked in, I realized I'd seen pictures of this temple. I'd had no idea it was in Kyoto!

There were a lot of middle school students on school trips there as well.

So pretty!

I wish the weather had been nicer though... :/

Father told me it was the place that was pictured on the back of a 10 yen coin. So I got out a 10 yen coin and he was right!! Wow, sugoi!

The same!

There were koi in the pond!

Then we went through a museum of the history of the temple that had some artifacts and paintings as well, because entrance came with the price of admission. Outside the museum was this cool bell.

You weren't allowed to ring the bell :(

And then we had seen everything, so we went to find somewhere to eat on the way back to the station. On the way out, these middle school girls on a class trip all were like "hello" to me. I said "hello" back and then they were all like "kawaii!", "kawaii ne", and "cute" and gestured at my outfit. Haha it was adorable! I told them "arigatou."

Pretty mountains! This reminded me of New River in Blacksburg

Drain covers here :)

We ended up eating at a sushi restaurant. Father said he really likes seafood and doesn't eat much meat. It was good sushi! It was kaitenzushi, but not as cheap as Kappazushi or Sushiro. There were weird sushi as well, like hamburger sushi (a piece of hamburger over rice wrapped with seaweed) and sausage sushi (same but with sausage).  Father got a squid sushi and let me try it. It was super squishy and chewy!

After lunch, we got back on the train to Kyoto Eki and from there, we rode a bus to Toujiin Temple and got off at a small town where the temple was.

Father had been here before, but not for many years, so he got a bit lost when we first exited the station. I was really tired from sleeping on the floor in a new place and from lugging around all my bags this morning, that I dozed off a bit on the bus and Father asked if I was okay.

The temple was a nice place, really quiet and peaceful.

Outside were gardens that I walked around while Father sat and looked out at the scenery.

Such typical Japanese gardens. I loved it!

And koi!! I really liked the golden koi :)

Cute little bamboo fountain

After I walked around the garden, we headed back out. On the bus ride back to Kyoto station, there was a group of middle schoolers. A girl was talking to three guys and I was eavesdropping and discovered I could understand just about everything she said! It was awesome. :)

It was getting late, so we took a train to this town that I forgot the name of, where Father's sister lives, and we had dinner there.

We ate a restaurant on the top of a tall building across from the station. It was an all you can eat buffet place with a lot of different types of food. My favorite thing was the red bean and mochi soup!! It was the same one Yuko had made way back when that I had loved. It was SO SO good!! Father also got this golden beer, that this area is famous for, for us to share. I don't really like beer, but I still drank it. Man, I ate so much and I was super full, but it was all really delicious!

Then we went to another cheap ticket shop and bought tickets back to Nagoya. Father got off at Ichinomiya and I continued to Nagoya to stop and get on the wifi before heading back to my wifi-less dorm.

I completely forgot to mention yesterday, that while I was at Nagoya Station, after calling my mom, I was texting one of my friends when I GOT INTERVIEWED!! This guy came over and asked to interview me because he had to interview foreigners in Japan. He turned out to be from France, but his English was pretty good. He said he'd only been in Japan two days though, and knew no Japanese lol. 

He told me he'd have to take my picture at the end and it would go on Facebook. By now I was pretty excited because I'd seen that Facebook page, with interviews of foreign people in Nagoya and I always wanted to be on it! Sure enough, he brought the page up on his phone to show me, and told me he just started his internship with them.

So he asked me a bunch of questions and then took my picture! Yay, so exciting!!!

Anyway, I got to the dorms around 10:30 and apologized for getting there so late. But the guy from earlier was there and he didn't mind at all! He showed me my room and them helped me being my stuff to it. Then he taught me how to work the shower and bath and even took me up to find Taylor's room, since she said she'd lend me shampoo! We went up and she gave me the shampoo. And there was a towel in my room.

There was a bath!! Ahh, so exciting! I immediately took a nice, long bath. It was amazing. Then I went straight to bed, because I was so, so excited and tomorrow I have big plans! I'm going to Little World in Inuyama with Emma and Father, and then tomorrow night I'll finally be hitting up the clubs!

Sushiro, purikura, and karaoke!

Since class only started at 1:30 today, I got to sleep in!!

When I woke up, Yuko had just left to go do her duty as the flag holder (today was her day to do it), telling the kids when to cross the street.

So I went into the kitchen where she had left me salad and two bread rolls for breakfast. I put jam and honey together on the bread, which actually turned out to be good! (I can't do weird stuff like this when I eat with everyone else because I freak them out, haha).

Then I did my laundry. After I'd hung it to dry, I still had an hour before I met my friends so I finished getting ready and went out to look at the bike.

Now that I was looking at it closely, I noticed one of the spokes was broken. That's why the wheel was tilting to the side. Man, I was going to have to get that fixed now!

When I went back inside, Yuko had come home. So I told her what I'd found, and she came out to look at the bike too. Then she said she could take it to the bike shop with me Friday, but we'd have to walk there since Ken would have the car. But she said she'd call first and ask about it, because it might be cheaper to get a new bike. Ahhh... I doubted it!

So then I headed out because I needed to leave now if I was going to have to walk to the station.

Well, I ended up getting to Nishi Takakura half an hour early! So I sat down on the platform and read my manga for twenty minutes. Then I decided to head up and see if Emma or Minju was there yet.

And Emma was! Yay!

Minju got there a few minutes after 11:30, and then we headed out. It was a pretty walk to Sushiro. There was a large sakura tree in front of a shrine and all its petals were falling beautifully. We also saw little elementary school kids in their yellow hats!

Minju had been right about getting to Sushiro early. There was no one waiting when we got in, but after we were seated, a line grew! 

We chowed down right away. I was so excited by all the cheap sushi, I forgot to take a picture of the first thing I grabbed off the kaiten! (It was a tenpura shrimp-like thing and so so yummy!).

They also had matcha powder and a hot water thing, so you could make matcha! Awesome!!

And when you ordered fresh sushi, it didn't come in a Shinkansen like at Kappa Zushi. Ah well!

Round 1. Love the ikura (salmon roe)!

Round 2. Emma and I both got the inarizushi because we were enticed by the fact that it was called "Brown sugar inari." Yeah, it tasted just like regular inarizushi...

And then I saw this weird blue fish on the kaiten. And I was like, oh man, I have no idea what this is, but I gotta try it! Because it was such a weird color, ya know??

My reaction when I bit into it: "what the fuck did I just eat??"

I still have no idea what the blue stuff was and I don't think I want to. Emma and Minju thought maybe it was umeboshi. But when I ate it, it had a weird hard, plasticy-rubbery texture, not as squishy as umeboshi. And it was sour, but it was also a little spicy. It was freaking weird. I swear that stuff is going to haunt my nightmares.

But I ate all of it!

After that, Emma and Minju were getting dessert, so I decided to get something too to wash down that disaster.

I got another set of rolls, tuna rolls. And then a matcha parfait!!!

I loooooooveeeee matcha and anko and am going to miss them like crazy when I get back to America. So might as well eat a bunch of it while I can (that's how I justify buying matcha chocolate all the time). And this parfait was perfect because it combined both of them!

I just wish it hadn't had as many of those weird fat rice krispie things as it did. The pink (raspberry?) parfait had cake at the bottom, and I wished this one did too. Ah well! It was still amazing!!

Oh yeah, come to mama!

It arrived!! Matcha ice cream, anko, and matcha jelly things! And then whipped cream, rice krispies, and vanilla pudding underneath!

In Heaven...

Emma got the matcha jelly things too!

In case you were wondering, here's the damage I did:

Awww yeah!!

After we finished, we went to take purikura!! 

We figured we'd have enough time, but we spent way too long doing it and ended up being late to school! Minju called ahead to the CJS office to let them know and we rushed onto the subway to get back.

We only ended up being 15 minutes late, so that was good!

When I got into the classroom, each of my classmates was surrounded by four Japanese people and talking to them. The CJS Festa was apparently something for Japanese people to get to talk to foreigners.

I actually went into the wrong classroom at first and saw Yukari in that room!

But in my room, the girl Haruka, I had also met at coffee hour last week was there! I felt terrible because she'd given me her email and asked me to email her and I'd completely forgotten.

After I got there and Dylan arrived (he was even later than I was), Mutsukawa sensei split the Japanese people up so we each got two. It was so fun talking to them! They moved around in pairs, so I got to talk to a lot of them. Most were ichinensei, but one girl was a yonensei (senior). Most were studying English, as well. I talked a lot about movies and books and food and things, haha. 

Haruka told me she had looked up Chris Pine and agreed he was totally smexy! Yes, I'm converting all the Japanese to Chris Pine lovers! Hahaha.

Some of the people I had a little trouble communicating with, but most I was able to keep at a conversational speed, so that was really great!

When class was over, some of the girls exchanged Facebooks with me. 

Then one girl, who I hadn't gotten a chance to talk to, but I recognized from coffee hour, gave me a paper crane! She had made one for all of us, even those of us she didn't talk to. It was so, so nice! And she wrote her name, Serena, on it too, so we would remember her!! Awww!

Mutsukawa sensei came over and was all like (well, this is my translation of what he said, haha) "Biseru san, are you okay? I heard you got hit by a car yesterday!" Lololol. I told him I was okay, but my bike was not.

Then I left with the girl who was a yonensei. She told me we'd talked at coffee hour. I felt bad because I'd completely forgotten! I invited her to come to karaoke with me, Yukari, Sara, and Hotaru, but she told me she was busy. Ah well.

While I waited for everyone downstairs, I looked at the kanji the Japanese students had written to summarize the past school year. They were so cute!! They wrote things that had happened last year on the right in English and it was adorable, omg.

The guy with the "study" kanji wrote about getting a girlfriend and celebrating her birthday!!

The girl on the bottom in the middle wrote about losing 8kg! (How?!?)

Then Yukari and Hotaru showed up. A few minutes later, Sara came over with her friend Yuka. But Sara and Yuka left quickly to go turn in money for something or other.
While I waited, I decided I'd start interviewing Japanese people for my project work project. I saw these two cute Japanese guys (well one was really cute, the other was maa maa). But I was too shy to go over, so I made Yukari come with me.
And I asked them my questions (in Japanese)! I'll put what they said. Well, Yutaro, the cute one, was the main one answering. Takashi just kind of repeated Yutaro's answers, haha.
1. When you hear "America," what's the first thing that comes to mind?
"Big"!
Takashi asked me if I wanted long or short answers here, but I didn't know what he said, so I just kind of laughed and said "hai," but Yukari told me later what he was saying. Aghh, I felt so bad!
2. What do you like about America?
"Nature"
3. Who's the current president of America?
"Obama"
4. Do you know of any American singers, songs, or movies?
Yutaro - "Monsters Inc."
Takashi - "Back to the Future"
5. How many states are in America?
Yutaro was like, "50... no, 40!" lol.

It was adorable. Then Yutaro started talking really good English to me! He told me how he's been to California and stuff. He was wearing a Hollywood shirt too. And he told me the two of them are graduate students at Nagoya University, but they were over here for some seminar. They told me they wanted to practice English with me, so Yukari was all like "Do you want to exchange numbers with her?" haha. So they gave me their emails and I emailed them later tonight along with Haruka, finally!

After that, Sara and Yuka came back, so we all headed to karaoke. At the entrance to the subway station, we ran into another friend of Sara and Yukari's. Her name was also Yukari and she was also half Brazilian, half Japanese! We talked to her for a while and then headed off to karaoke.
I was planning on taking everyone to Joy Joy in Aratama Bashi, where I'd gone with Taylor that time. So when we got to Aratama Bashi, we said goodbye to Yuka and then headed out. But then everyone decided they wanted to go to the place across the street instead. So we went there.

I hadn't said I wouldn't be eating dinner tonight, so I knew I had to be back home by 7. Therefore I had to leave at 5:30 and since everyone had taken so long leaving school, that only left us with one hour of karaoke.
But I was able to drink a glass of melon soda, a glass of hot chocolate and sing "The Beginning" and "Forever & Always" by T-Swift. But I queued up "Nagareboshi" and "Miss You," but didn't get a chance to sing them. :(
Ah well, it was probably for the best because everyone else was SO good at singing and I suck so hard at singing haha. There was such an awkward difference when I sang from when they sang...

The parfaits you could order. Salivating... I totally would have gotten the pink one had I not already had the matcha parfait earlier. I didn't want my stomach to explode!

But Hotaru got this waffle! She only ate it after I left, though.

Me, Hotaru, Yukari

After the hour was up, Yukari and I left. I really didn't want to leave, but I had to go home. :( Yukari came too because she wanted to see her mom. Her mom works at night, so she usually doesn't see her when she gets home. We talked a lot on the way home. I learned that Yukari is actually really good at English! I always thought she was bad because she would act like she didn't understand Sara and me whenever we talked in English and would never speak to me in English, but we had a whole conversation in English!

She rode with me to Kanayama, where we both took JR trains going opposite directions.
When I got home, a few minutes after 7, the house was empty.
No one got home until 7:40!! I was pissed. I easily could have stayed the extra half hour that Hotaru and Sara decided to stay! Man, oh man.
And then to make things worse, when Yuko and Miya got home, they told me they'd already eaten. So Yuko whipped up some curry rice for me and I ate alone. I should have just stayed at karaoke!

Setsubun!

This morning I was texting back and forth with my parents about the Super Bowl. I'd completely forgotten about it! Unfortunately I couldn't watch it or the Doritos commercial created by a Hokie because I had school. :( Lame. Who schedules school during the Super Bowl?? Oh right, Japan.

Breakfast was really good this morning! Obaasan had bought a shit ton of fruit yesterday and gave it to us, so we had orange slices, bunny apples, and a half a banana along with toast and marmalade. I was a happy camper! :)

I decided to finally dump some of the water out of my poor drowning bonsai.

I went outside and dumped it in the grass and Yuko let me leave the bonsai outside while I went to school today! :) So it got some fresh air and sunlight (even though it was super cloudy all day).

As I was walking to school from the station, I saw Emma so I ran to catch up to her and asked about her weekend. She told me yesterday she'd gone to see a Setsubun demonstration at Osu Kannon temple and they threw beans! But she didn't catch any. I told her about the mochi catching I did and she thought that sounded way cooler lol.

Class was meh. I had a test second period that was a sinch. I finished in like five minutes lol.

This girl, Natalia (the one who was supposed to go to the onsen with me but got sick) brought us all these muffin things she made. They were really good!

Then we got out for lunch ten minutes early! So I went to Dagane and quickly downed some food.

(Mmmm so good!)

Then I went to the computer lab because I wanted to send some emails.

Next, I had calligraphy. Ugh, calligraphy turns out to be kinda boring. Like we sit there for an hour and a half and write the same freaking word over and over and over. Today we wrote "shiba inu" in katakana and mine got progressively worse and worse.

I wished I was in programming class instead. Jk, no I didn't. Not even for a second!

I took an artsy photo though! Lol.

Then was sadou! Yayyyy!! Tea ceremony is definitely my favorite class. We went around and did introductions. We had to say something we liked about Japan, so I said I liked temples and shrines and talked about visiting Atsuta Shrine. 

Then we did the same thing we did last week, but we had different wagashi.

It was really cute wagashi. I'm so mad I didn't get to take a picture because sensei was watching what we did today and was watching me closely since I was one of the first to go. :(

But I googled wagashi and found one like it! It's called namagashi. And sometimes kuri (grass) namagashi because it looks like grass. Ours looked like this one except it was white with little black dots (so it looked gray) and instead of the kuri on top, it had a little white and pink flower thing made of the namagashi. Inside was anko, just like the ones last week! It was sooo good!

After class, I went home. When I got home, I checked on my bonsai. Dumping the water out must have done it some good, because now it has ten full flowers!! Double what it had yesterday! So of course I subjected it to another photo shoot lol.

I'm such a good mother, guys. Raising plants is the first step to raising humans ya know.

I went online to see how often I have to water it and the website was all like "it's difficult to know for sure. It takes most people three years to figure it out." I was like are you fucking kidding me?

But then it said to just look when the top quarter inch of the mulch stuff is dry and that's when you need to water it. But you need to check every day because both overwatering and underwatering cause illness in the plant. Ugh, taihen desu ne!

Yuko came home and then I sent a few more emails until Miya and Ken got home a little after 7. I asked Yuko about Setsubun because I knew it was today, and it turned out we were going to celebrate it, yay!

So for dinner, we had long sushi rolls! Emma had told me that morning that on Setsubun you eat those long sushi rolls that are sold in konbini, without cutting them!

But we made our own. :)

(The table all set up)

(Fillings. I really liked the hot pink one!)

We all went around and made our rolls. I went last. Ken took lots of pictures of me making my roll and rolling it up!

(My roll)

(All rolled up!)

(Making my roll)

(All done!)

Then we all had to face a certain way and eat them in one sitting without speaking while we were eating, haha.

It was hard! Ken took lots of funny pictures of us with the rolls in our mouths. 

(Facing the direction we had to face)

When we were finished eating them, we used the extra seaweed to make mini handrolls.

So ever since I was in America, I've heard people complain about natto and how gross it is. Many Japanese people don't like it either. So of course I've been wanting to try it. So when I saw natto on the table, I made a grab for it. Yuko and Ken freaked out and made me eat just a bean first, since most foreigners hate it and they didn't want to waste it. 

Yuko went and got a tissue in case I needed to spit it out haha. Everyone was so amazed when I chewed it and swallowed it lol. And then when I decided to have a bit more. Yuko said the fact that I thought the umeboshi was too sour, but I ate the natto was "new" because usually with foreigners it's the other way around!

Yuko asked if I liked it and I said I didn't like it, but I didn't hate it lol. It definitely tasted weird and kind of rotten, but it wasn't gross. The gross part was how it looked like the beans were held together by snot!

(OMG I'm eating natto guys!)

While we were eating dinner, a postman came to the door with mail for me! I got my ATM card for the Bank of Nagoya and A PACKAGE FROM MY MOM!! My mom had written four notes on all sides of the box, one for each of us. Yuko, Ken, and Miya all read their notes and mine out loud. They were all really excited to have been included. I was surprised Ken was so good at reading English since a lot of the time Yuko has to translate what I say for him (he always gets all quiet and sulky when she does and says she's so good at English and she thinks it's funny. Lol it's cute)

Yuko and Ken also got a package today from their previous host student so they opened that first. She sent hot chocolate mix, chocolate marshmallow Santas (I love those things!), and ranch dressing and hot sauce for Ken because Ken loves Ranch. She sent a letter in both English and Japanese too. Miya read the Japanese outloud.

Then I got to open Mom's package. She sent so much!! I love her! And she included all these little sticky notes that everyone tried to read but had trouble reading her handwriting so I had to read it for them haha. Miyabi loved how my mom had written her name on things!

Mom sent all my favorite stuff like pink cake mix and pink icing and golden Mega Stuffed Oreos and pancake batter and peanut butter and jelly and raisin bread and Dove chocolate hearts and rainbow marshmallows and ughhhh I want to eat it all!!

(Miya and me with the bounty!)

And then we celebrated the next part of Setsubun! Where you throw beans! Miyabi explained to me in Japanese the reason you throw beans is because oni doesn't like beans. Oni is the monster. So Ken put on a mask that came with the peanuts Yuko bought and he was the onii. Then Miya and I each got a bag of peanuts and chased Ken around the house throwing peanuts (I guess we were using peanuts instead of beans) at him. Only in Japan, guys. 

I was literally pelting him with peanuts and it was okay because I was supposed to. Like what the heck haha.

We had to shout "Oni wa soto!" (aka "demons out!") and "Fuku wa uchi" (aka "luck come in the house"). It was fun! Yuko took pictures of us. Then Ken fought back a little, throwing peanuts back at us. When we were done the floor was covered in peanuts!

Then we had to eat our age in peanuts. Since they came in pods of two, I just had 10 peanut shells, which equaled 20 peanuts. Yuko asked me if we could buy peanuts in shells like this in America and I said yes, that's what people eat at baseball games. She didn't know that, but Ken did! Then we cleaned up all the peanuts from the floor. Maple (the dog) helped us find any that were hidden.

(My 20 peanuts that I only ate 10 of)

Afterwards, I couldn't take it any longer, I cracked open the Oreos and offered them to everyone. They really liked them! I explained about all the different flavored America has (Japan only has original and not in the package like this). Although I told them about some years back when Japan got limited edition green tea and red bean Oreos and America didn't! But they hadn't known about that.

We all had two Oreos except Yuko. She said they were choto amai (a little too sweet for her). Lawlz. Then I doubt she'll like the cupcakes I make.

Then I did my homework and wrote this post. I saw them talking about the Super Bowl on tv. They kept showing shots of my lover (Peyton Manning) and saying things in Japanese about him. Idk what though.

So yeah, exciting day! I completely forgot about Setsubun this morning and expected today to be super boring, but what with that and the package from my mom, it was far from it!