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
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