Weekend fun

So it’s time for another post. We’ll see how long this one becomes. I have not really planned it out, so it will probably turn out long and unorganized (sounds like some old British guy writing a letter).


I went to Osaka yet again with some friends. We headed to a district called Den-den town (not sure if I’ve mentioned that place before) but it’s basically known for its large abundance of used game-stores. I personally can’t really buy anything because I don’t have any Japanese systems. However, my friend Amy does and she usually goes crazy when we go shopping. It’s a lot of fun though, we go look at games that I haven’t seen since I was 8 years old for the good old Super Nintendo. Anyhow, we decided to take a detour and we ended up finding a bunch of small stores that had a bunch of things that I have wanted to buy. I ended up buying a pair of Geta (the picture of the shoes are Geta). There are a lot of different kinds, and I’m thinking about getting a pair that has even higher “teeth.” Japanese high school students, especially male cheerleaders(?) are known to wear them since it gives them a bit of height and it looks awesome. So I’m thinking about purchasing that. However, first I need to practice in my Geta, which are a lot easier to walk in :D.


Then I also found several stores that sell Noren (picture of the red thing), That I would basically use as the entrance of my room when I get back to the states. It gives a nice feel to the room, but those things will range from $20 (the very cheapest, silky and you can basically see through them) to $500 if you want a nice hand-crafted one. I will probably not spend more than $50 for my purpose, but still, some are so pretty that I have to bring friends to carry me out of the store before I spend $200 on them :D.


Other than that we went to a place to try out all of Amy’s new-bought games. It is a place where they have a console connected and a TV that you can use, and they threw us into the smallest booth possible where we sat for a good six hours going at each other. It was fun though, and since I haven’t been playing games in forever, it was a good use of time. Afterwards we headed to a bar and meet up with some other friends. Had a few to many drinks but a great time, meeting new people and what not. Barely made the last train home though :)

Yesterday my host-mom thought it was so insanely warm outside (it’s about 26degrees Celsius right now) so she opened up her regular beer (that they have for almost every dinner) and asked if I drank beer. Since I have started drinking beer in Japan I accepted and then my host-dad joined us. Soon she asked me if I like “Umeshu” and I had no idea what that was. I said I’d try it and she poured me up (to my terror) a full glass. It turned out to be Plum-wine (which I should have figured out since I know both the word for Plum (ume) and wine (shu), but for some reason I did not connect it). So we had that, and then we started talking about different types of alcohol and I told them that I was very fond of the Japanese Sake, which surprised them. Upon which they broke out a new bottle of Sake and started serving (I guess at this point they though “Oh well, we started it, might as well just keep serving alcohol I guess”). It was a lot of fun though and they were surprised about the fact that I enjoyed Sake since most of the other foreign exchange students they’ve had has totally detested it :).

Oh well, that’ll have to be it for now. I have a presentation due in an hour and a half about Karaoke that I have not yet prepared for. So, time to do that.

Thanks for dropping by :D

One month later

Okay, so it’s been a little over a month since I last posted. I’d be impressed if anyone is interested enough to still be checking it. Nonetheless, sorry about all that. It gets difficult to keep the posts up when things begin to become routine.

Nonetheless, what’s been up? So many things, yet almost nothing at all. I visit Osaka and Kyoto almost every weekend now and usually we walk around, finding a game-center every here and there, a thrift store every here and there, and then the occasional sight-seeing. What’s fun though is that I’m almost always on the move. It’s rare for me to sit down for any extensive period of time right now and do “nothing” (that also includes studying :P). Just this weekend we went to a Zen Temple and had a presentation by a Zen caretaker in English, then we had meditation practice, which was a lot of fun. I have studied the religion for quite some time now, but there sure is a difference learning the academic version of it and then having a person actually telling his personal views/feelings on it. Fascinating to say the least.

After that we went up the mountains in Kyoto which are famous for their monkeys. You pay a small fee to get in, then you walk up a small (treacherous might be a better word) mountain path, and at first you just enjoy the beautiful scenery; until all of a sudden, there’s a monkey sitting like RIGHT in front of you, looking at you. Plenty of fun, no joke. They all just run around there watching us walking up our little path, some of them are just flatly lying on the path and cleaning/eating whatever they can find in each others fur. Really cute. We obviously took a load of pictures (until my battery died. Bought a bigger battery, but what’s the point if you don’t charge it, huh?). We all sat down sort of close to the ones that were lying on the road, took some pictures, but a friend of mine decided she wanted a really, really good shot and decided to get really close. It was sort of funny, we kept saying “ehm, you should probably back off – ehm, aren’t you a little close?” until “BAM!” it was just too late and one of the monkeys got pissed and jumped at her J. It didn’t actually touch her, just chased her around for a bit until she tripped and fell down, upon which the monkey returned with what can only be conceived as a victorious grin. We spent the rest of the trip up the mountains imitating her and reminding her of her carelessness, ah, good times. The view up there was amazing though, you could see all of Kyoto and probably a few of it’s nearby suburbs, not bad at all.

It was also determined over the last month that my friend from Sweden is coming here for sure now, which I’m totally looking forward to. We’re spending almost a week in the Kansai region (where I currently live) and then about 10 days in Tokyo, which I’m probably even more excited about considering the fact that I haven’t been there yet. We’ll most likely spend our time sight-seeing, shopping, visiting arcades, and partying. It will be a good time, no doubt.

Oh, I’m almost forgot one of the most amazing experiences. Hanami, or flower-viewing. The Sakura trees have bloomed this month and it’s sooooooooo beautiful. It is only around for about 1-2 weeks (and only about 4 days of those are full-bloom. We’ve traveled quite a bit in order to get to some amazing spots. I’ve uploaded some pictures on facebook (for whoever can check that) but I still need to upload some here. It’s so difficult to select what pictures to put up though, considering I have about 150 of them from like two days^^. And if you don’t know what Sakura Trees are, google it now, it’s truly beautiful, especially because they are all over the place.

The last couple of weeks have been midterms, so that’s been sort of rough. Especially because of the fact that all the courses that I take are pass/fail, so grades don’t matter. Meaning that I don’t really bother studying, so my grades are sort of sub par, but oh well, getting an amazing experiences instead and nothing is really lost in the end. Still doing Kendo on a relatively regular basis, but since I decided not to buy the armor set (since I’m only staying here for one semester), I can’t really participate in the school-club Kendo. It’s alright, a good cultural experience if nothing else. We go to Karaoke quite a bit, but I’m starting to run out of money for this semester now so I’ll have to start thinking about my expenditures. Especially since my friend is coming over. That’s probably a good thing though, planning ahead a bit more :D.

I said in my last post that I was intending to write smaller posts more frequently, and I shall make a second attempt at that, but we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully I will write more frequently than once a month at least. :D