Spring time

It’s spring! ♡

 

Believe me, the worst part about spring is that everything is wonderful, and that makes me really sad about leaving Japan.

 

“I wish I hadn’t said no!”, I cried today. “Do over! Do over!”

 

 

Today, I went up to Naruto to watch my school’s baseball team play. The sun was shining, the birds were tweeting, there was baseball, I had a friend. All was well with the world. Also, I was skiving off of work because it was spring break and I can do stuff like that.

 

Spring makes me forget that the whole year isn’t like this, and it highlights only the good things.♥

 

Ah well.

 

I am sad about leaving already.

 

 

Yesterday I went to Takarazuka to see バラの国の王子, The Prince in the Land of Roses. AKA, Beauty & The Beast.

 

It was ok. Actually, no, I didn’t like it.

 

They hit all the plot points (father, sisters, beast, evil queen, magic mirror, roses, father ill, magic ring, Belle saves the Beast THE END). But it was only a half show, 90 minutes long. None of the characters were particularly engaging or interesting.

When the Beast told Belle he loved her but she was all “I don’t know my own heart, and I have to go home to my sick dad”, and he gives her the magic ring anyway, the entire theater went “BOO HOO HOO!” en masse. So that was good.

But I just couldn’t get into it.

 

So that was a little disappointing.

 

I’ll go back again before I go home though.

BECAUSE I LOVE TAKARAZUKA.

 

 

Hoom, anyway, on my way back to the station I walked along the Flower Road, which is this gorgeous path between the station and the Takarazuka Theater.

Six actresses were set up with donation boxes for the earthquake. The ladies could queue up behind a velvet rope and approach one at a time, then everyone would bow, and people were taking zillions of photos, very exciting indeed.

On the flower road.

There were tons of older people setting up shop and painting the view. This guy was pretty good, but I was rushing for a train, so it’s only a snapshot.

Back in Tokushima, I rode the train out into the west.

For my first proper meal of the day.

 

Festival!

Let’s skip over Awa Odori for a moment and talk about some recent stuff.

Awa Odori happened of course, but pictures tell it better than words, so just hang on a bit.

First, here are some spectacularly unfortunate wedding dresses.
In Japan, when you have a wedding, you wear at least 2 or 3 different outfits; your fancy kimono, another fancy kimono, a fancy dress, another fancy dress… (also if you are young, you have to have the most hideous up-do conceivable but that is another story entirely)
There is this shop called “Bridal Core” that has a fantastic rotating window display. I think most of the dresses they choose to show are crazy (though the tartan ones were funny) but they do have very nice window displays. There are lots of extra props, the colors are always very good and the lighting makes it all show up nicely on my camera.

Anyway, these terrors were there last week:

lol

We had our cultural festival!!
I’ll show as much as I can… (we can’t post student’s photos online, so the only students you’ll see will be the sort of non-descript masses. Or the backs of their heads, etc. Sorry!)

Happily the only photos of me are with students, so I can’t post them. I had the stupidest hairstyle EVER that day, but didn’t realize it until I saw the photos. SAD.

First of all, here is English Club’s bazaar. Look at all that swag! Hot damn!

Thank you Maggie for all the donated candy. Thank you Terrina & James for all your country goods (Scotland and Canada each got their own special corners of the table)

Our courtyard was decorated all fancy with the class flags (made new each year. New paint spatters in the parking lot each year) and the school flag. This year’s theme is  ヒマラヤほどの城東祭　たのしいこと　たくさんしたい　(To the Himalayas! Joto Festival! I want to do lots of fun stuff!)

In the courtyard there was a stage where various bands played. They ranged from girls in yukata playing Jazz, kids dancing like crazy people, the requisite Blue Hearts covers, and my own favorite, a cute girl who sang cute songs in a cute voice but would occasionally roll on the ground and scream in a sort of death-metal way.

This is one of my favorite students, from the high level English class (third grade). She is leading me to her food stand, where I will buy delicious yakisoba (like lo-mein). The food stands are awesome because of the crazy names and themes students pick.

I also ate two kakigori and a fried-bread ice-cream (not pictured… it was not delicious. Sorry students! But there was too much fried-bread. I thought I was going to have a heart attack)

DID I MENTION, the students all design and wear these totally awesome t-shirts?!!?! They are so cool. Their homeroom teachers get one too, and I waaaaaaaaaaaant one so bad… but which class? I can’t really align myself with any one class. Not even the high level CE classes, because there are other classes that I genuinely LOVE (maybe a tiny bit more than CE but I never said that). This year I got the polo shirt that all the teachers can order. So that’s that.

In each classroom they students prepare… something. It can be a display, or an activity that you pay for, or a game or raffle or whatever. This year I tried my luck kicking a sandal at water bottles to win a prize. I was fail (and I accidentally hit the ceiling, the students, the wall, etc with my slipper. Oops).

There was a dress-up room, a fortune telling room (which didn’t make sense, because everyone was just sitting around playing Trump), chemistry club’s magic show, creature club (biology?) had animal anatomical models, a photo display, used clothes shop, and my personal favorite…

Alice’s Wonderland!!!

They made their class into a sort of fun-house that told the story of Alice in Wonderland.
Ok, it was a little bit budget.
OK, it was a lot budget.
But it was really cute and they had worked really hard.
Apparently at one point, they had a person inside the catepillar, making it wiggle on the floor and so on. I’m sorry I missed that.

Here is our shop at the end of the day: totally cleaned out. YEAH!

Pick & mix candy… started at 5 for 50 yen, then 10 for 50, then 20 for 50. Hahahahaha.

Two second year t-shirts. They belong to the second-year boys in English Club. How awesome are those shirts?!!?! The brown one is supposed to have stitching crossing the pink bit. The boys in that class wore wolf ears and tails, and the girls had red shirts with red (riding) hoods. How cute is that!?!

The running man on the blue shirt is an iconic image from Osaka. But his box head is all students.

La-de-da, what else.

Here is some student ikebana on display. They used a staple. Is that ok?!

OH
I bought these books from library club. On the left is stuff written and published by students. On the right is Romeo and Juliette, taking place in “Neo-Verona” with weird illustrations of Tybalt holding the reigns of a flying horse and magic swords and all sorts of crazy stuff.

Whaaaaaat.

The sky was lovely at the end of the day.

Osaka & Kyoto (June & July)

When we first went to Osaka (to see “Wicked”) we intended to go to USJ the next day, but got rained out.
So one spontaneous Friday, we bought bus tickets for a one-day trip to Universal Studios Japan!

Yar! Adventure!!

USJ is fraught with dangers, such as faux-British food at a fake Irish pub, or dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs with sponsorship deals.

And electric fences.

The main part of USJ is designed to look like USA, complete with retro streets and US flags.
Fake America made me miss Real America, which looks basically the same but the streets aren’t quite as clean.

Across a fake body of water, I saw San Francisco’s Ghirardelli sign, and busted a move. How often has Ghirardelli nourished my body and fed my soul with sweet sweet chocolate? The last day I spent in San Francisco, I had a Ghirardelli ice cream sundae for breakfast. The breakfast of KINGS!
Unfortunately the giant Ghirardelli sign was a BIG LIE, and all I got was this plaque.

The building that sported the giant sign was just a gift shop.
SAD.

Munchkin land was good because it was cheery and colorful.

James blended right in:

And they had this:

WHAT!

We saw a rather well-done short version of “Wicked” (skipping the politics and romance parts, and also the end) done in Japanese and English. I got all emotional just like I did seeing it a few weeks previously. It happened in an amphitheater that looks remarkably like the theater in Left 4 Dead when you have to battle off swarms of zombies while waiting to get rescued by a helicopter. I’d watch James play L4D at night and it made for some very strange dreams, even recently I had one taking place in a certain New Orlean’s mansion with swarms of running zombies… but I digress.

The best part of USJ (apart from every other best part) was the Space Fantasy ride, which was new, and super-good, and we rode it three times. It had a story about how you had to go into the sun, to sort of…. energize the weird little sun-children who live there, and that saves the particular sun system, or something. There was a princess. The IMPORTANT thing is, it was a roller-coaster in the dark with lots of glowing space-inspired stuff, and at the end you had to bang a button on your coaster chair over and over and doing that made the room you were in (presumably the sun) explode.

At least, we think you had to push the button. And the exploding room was so awesome, we were afraid to find out what might happen if you DIDN’T push the button.
It never got old.

Oh, and there were these people, a guy doing a really great silent pantomime show (well, there was music) of falling in love with this figurehead, who then came to life and loved him back but then turned into wood again. MORE SADNESS.

But very good acting (and costume: I think I want to be the Statue of Liberty for Halloween. Or Totoro)

There endeth USJ.

Then in July, one of James’ teachers won some tickets to see a Takarazuka performance, but couldn’t go. So we go the tickets. To see Romeo & Juliet.

Takarazuka is an all-female theater troupe that was founded in the early 20th century in response to a. depression, and b. Kabuki/men-only theater. It’s famous for having super spectacular sets & costumes & song & dance numbers, in the style of Vegas or Broadway or the Rockettes.
It’s also famous for the fact that the women who play men are super-dreamy.
Takarazuka actresses train for years in an academy, and are destined to only play male or female roles in their careers. Some of the more famous productions (despite, or perhaps because they have been running FOREVER) are impossible to get tickets to see.

Romeo & Juliette is a French musical from the 90’s. I had to listen to it in French class in high school, but I didn’t realize it was the same thing until we got to the theater. Pleasant surprise. It had a lot more songs than I expected, some of which were rather unnecessary (as James says, Who cares, really, what Juliet’s dad thinks about the whole thing?) but I was happy all around because I could understand a lot more than I originally expected to.

Everything was very visually stunning. Montague and Capulet were color-coded on stage, and the set was a giant revolving puzzle of a building that could have pieces removed or added to change its shape. The ball scene in particular was my favorite; an ensemble dance, with Juliet’s parents trying to shove Paris on her, Romeo looking for Juliet, Benvolio and Mercutio trying to avoid Tybalt & co, and Tybalt chasing after everyone. In dance. Oh and Juliet’s Nurse was there too.

My eyesight is really bad (even with newish glasses) so I bought a pair of seeing-eye binoculars to get a better view. Wow! That was great. I also use them to look at the moon now, and spy on my students when they wander past my apartment.

It was completely satisfying.

Afterwards we ate a bagel lunch and hopped on the train to Kyoto, to try and get to Ginkakuji (silver temple) before it closed at 5. Long story (train and infuriating bus when we should have caught the subway and a taxi but didn’t know better) short, we didn’t make it. I made us go all the way there anyway, and we had to walk the Philosopher’s Walk back to civilization/the station.

The last time I was in Kyoto, I went to Ginkakuji, and it was closed for renovations (this was in 2008). I’m NEVER going to see this stupid temple!!

Flowers along the philosopher’s path.
Also, it was raining.

Hanging around Kyoto Station, we decided to go up nearby Kyoto Tower. Of all the structures I’ve scaled in Japan, Kyoto Tower ranks in the top, because it had free telescopes you could use, it wasn’t crowded, and you could see right into people’s houses and watch them eat dinner.

Then we rode the train back to Osaka, and the bus back to Tokushima.

THE END

Moving on Up

I took three days holiday this week, to help James clean house (and to have my own mini-break… in Tokushima helping James clean house). It’s amazing to realize the amount of stuff one accumulates in 3 years. I’m looking at my own stuff right now, in a half-hour break I have before dinner. Will I keep most of it?

The pack-rat in me says that of course I will want to hold on to and treasure each little thing. A fan in my bookshelf, for example, was given to me by an old lady in my dance group. She’s very kind and friendly and talks with me all the time. It’s a nice fan. I have a memory attached to it. But is that enough to warrant a space in my bag home? Well… I don’t know. It’s a decision to be made in time. Usefulness, sentimental value, and packing space. Luckily I have another year to consider it all.

The other thing that happens when folks move away (besides all the pondering and cleaning and saying goodbye… which I guess is three things, making this number four) is that they give away lots of stuff. Or sell it. I got two plastic drawer units today from Rex, which have greatly improved the tidiness of my bathroom. One lives in there, and the second is in my bedroom, currently waiting more things (I think non-seasonal clothes and my growing collection of kimono/yukata paraphernalia will live in there). I’ve also picked up a giant bed-covering mosquito net, a PS2 and a few games, a DVD player (and copy of “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds”) and most importantly, bits and bobs that my English club can sell at their bazaar (cute notebooks from Scotland, Canadian stickers, and so on). Oh, and another external harddrive (James and Ada have been very kind to me)

I finished up my farewell gift to James this afternoon. Frantically working in his room while he cleaned in the other room, then finally I bundled it all home this morning and finished it up, tied a ribbon round it, and popped it in the EXTREMELY swank Doctor Who carry-bag that I made (Trust me. It’s EXTREMELY swank. I am very good with fabric crayons). So that’s all taken care of.

Tonight is Rex’s farewell dinner at an Izakaya, and tomorrow is Patrick’s (and by association, James, since they are leaving the same day) at the same Izakaya. Oh man. I’ll need Thursday to recover, dinner-wise… luckily, my shamisen teacher canceled my lesson. Hooray.

This past weekend we had a Yukata Kai, or meet-up. Everyone wore their official yukata, except for myself and one other lady, and a bunch of old ladies who just wore regular clothes. I was confused about one, because my teacher says I’m going to borrow her official kimono for the concert next February, but if she has an official kimono why doesn’t she have an official yukata? And why isn’t she wearing her official kimono and taking part? It made me extremely nervous, because I got the profound sensation that this older woman really doesn’t like me. And I’m borrowing her clothes. Urk.

Oh, and also, when I was changing out of my yukata, I tugged too hard while untying a string, and my hand punched through a panel on my teacher’s sliding paper door. Awkward. If it was old and patchy I wouldn’t have felt as super-embarrassed, but the whole side was one giant sheet, so I was the first one to break it. I apologized like crazy, but she said not to worry, she punches through the door when she’s cleaning all the time. But that room is her room, the closet is full of her instruments and tapes and things, and it’s where I have my lessons. I felt really bad, but I suppose… sitting and playing next to those doors every week… being a big awkward person… it had to happen eventually.

She sent me home with a milk carton of yogurt, after explaining how to clean and cut a milk pack and then make your own yogurt by mixing yogurt and milk, and letting it sit out, so that the bacteria can cultivate (then you put it in the fridge, and start another carton). I think this is very interesting and neat, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t imagine myself continuing it. I’d probably poison myself, for one. For two, I don’t eat that much yogurt. But still, it’s interesting. It reminded me of in Little House on the Prairie (actually, this happened in By The Shores of Silver Lake), when they made sourdough bread, but they would keep a bit of sourdough in a jar and just add more and more water and flour and the original sourdough would make the rest of it sour, so you always had that bacteria just waiting for you in a jar. Or a milk pack.

Food is science!!

And now I’m about to go enjoy the science of Izakaya.

Riding Bikes

I’m watching a show on TV right now that’s focusing on a family that travels around to get water from various places in Japan. The dad is super obsessed with water, and has tons of bottles in his house, and takes his family on long trips to get water from different springs and taps and waterfalls, where he sips the water and pats it into his face. All the while, his wife is in the background, holding a bottle/the children’s shoes/the children, and looking long-suffering. Every time they go to a place, the dad will say something insane, like “Here are more bottles, and we are going to another spring by bus!” and the wife will go “Eeeehhh~, can the car carry that much water?!”

Then they cooked a meal with the water, which took ages, while the kids were in the background shouting that they were hungry (at 9 pm). Then they all ate dinner and the perky TV host went “Uwaaa!!! OISHIII!!!!” which is the reaction they always have whenever they put anything in their mouths. There is not much that I hate on Japanese TV, but food shows always get a frowny face in my book, unless the people tasting the food are super insane. Oh Japan.

Here are some photos from lately!

You know him, maybe. I’ve been hanging out with James a lot. He is often thinking and sleeping these days. I imagine he can do both at once!

James took me to Osaka last weekend. Can you see in the building? There is a poster…

We saw Wicked!!!

Of course, you knew that already.

But let me say again how great it was!!

After school the other day, we met up in the park and went out for soft cream ice cream. Delicious! soft cream is like soft serve. They make it by taking a pack of ice cream and shoving it through a machine that softens it and makes it into a swirly shape. I wasn’t so impressed by this particular shop, but it was a nice day and I’m not complaining.

Today, James finally gave in to my near-constant shouting “Hey hey hey let’s ride bikes!” and we rode our bikes out to the mouth of the Yoshinogawa, and sat with our thoughts, watching the water.

It was a good day to be out in the sun and wind.

Midnight Onsen

Oh, and this happened also: I went to see Avatar again (shut up, it’s totally awesome). I also like listening to the soundtrack on youtube, where people are bickering pointlessly in the comments about how planets and alien life would form. Hahahahaha.

At any rate, after eating decent Chinese food (still missing from my life: cream cheese wontons) and seeing Avatar, Ada and I went to Kawauchi Onsen, which is just north of the big river Yoshinogawa. It’s very very good. For 500 yen you get run of the place plus a big towel. We did the salt scrub sauna and the massaging baths (ouch) and sat on the hot bench that just runs hot water over your butt, and sat in the collagen (WHAT?) bath outside. Ada went in the freezing cold bath, but I opted out. The best part? They are open until 1 or 2 in the morning, so you can bathe ANYTIME and then go home all relaxed and snug and sleepy. I slept very very well on Friday night.

Shamisen Day

I have photos to go with this… they are coming. But I want to do the writing part while it’s fresh in my brain.

Today I had a shamisen meet-up. It was a gathering of students of the Iemoto, who is the head of the group. An Iemoto (that’s an “i”, not an “L”) is the head of a school of traditional arts: dance, music, and so on. The students of that school of teaching, once they reach certain levels, take on the name of the school/get a new name. I’m a student of a student, so I joined it.

I went to my teacher’s house at 10 am, to get dressed. We got done early, so we drove to the center where we would play… it was like a club, almost, with a restaurant downstairs, and sort of banquet-hall type rooms upstairs. We practiced for a while, then we folks started showing up at 12, we talked with them, and drank tea and so forth, served by guys in black suits, and then at 1, we started playing.

It was a long room, with tables at one end for the shamisens, then two long tables running the length of the room, where we sat. At the other end was a Japanese stage, which is just a low platform that we covered with fluffy blankets and then bright red cloth, backed by a giant gold folding screen. Photos to come.

We all had programs, and so it was like a mini-concert… but with room for tuning up and rearranging and making mistakes. I played in 3 songs, and luckily, the hardest one was first, so afterward I could completely relax. I sat and drank tea and ate snacks and admired my souvenir ceramic hot-pot rest (you know… the thing you put on the table when you’re going to put a hot pot or something on top of it… what is that thing called?).

It was nice to sit and listen to good (and complicated) music and singing for 4 hours… but it got really tiring. For one, I was in a kimono, which was pretty comfortable, but also unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. For two, I had to be “on” the whole time. Everyone was really nice and friendly, but making small talk in a second language with people you don’t know for almost 9 hours… it’s exhausting!
The nice thing was… everyone was so relaxed and friendly, that they would come up and yank on my kimono if it was out of place, or press me with more tea or information about a song, and that made me feel better and less out-of-place.

After we played all the songs, we ate dinner in another room. Japanese-style big dinner, which was just dish after dish of food on a big rotating wheel in the middle of the table. There was cold soba (gross), sushi, sashimi, tai fish (just severed down the middle and fried! I took a photo of its scary head) crab, raw fish with salad, radishes, a nabe pot, some sort of lasagna, fried chinese-style veg, steak with weird potatoes, fruit… I quit towards the end, and picked up again when the fruit showed up.

They also had a karaoke machine, so all the ladies were getting up and singing enka songs. People were asking me about English songs, but as I am crap at Michael Jackson, I sang the Sukiyaki Song:

Then I got some other ladies to sing “UFO” by Pink Lady, and I did the dance (because I know it. It’s a brilliant thing to have in your arsenal, because everybody in Japan knows it):

After that I listened to the ladies rocking out to enka songs (which to tell god’s honest truth, every song sounds exactly the same, so if you can see the lyrics you can sing along to anything and everyone will be very amazed). I have heard enka described as such:

The most typical form of Japanese pop music for the last 100 years was, with uninterupted success, Enka. For proper musical ethnologists and watchmen of good taste, it is a pure horror, not even worth mentioning.

Classy. Click here for a typical example. They play stuff like this on TV all the time.
Definitely you don’t have to watch the whole thing of that, but do take a look at Jero, a part-Japanese American, who is making “hip” enka.
It’s still enka, yo.

Not to rip on it too much, the ladies were choosing peppy songs with lots of clapping and chances to sing along, but since, like I said, they all sound the same to me, I used the time to zone out a bit and plan my classes for Tuesday. Heh. I was tired, OK?

Aaaaaannnnyway.
We finished around 8, and I was in my teacher’s house with kimono off, drinking coffee, by 830 (that’s 10 hours in a kimono. YOW). Then I biked home, crawled under my kotatsu, and here I am!

I need a shower.

Where did my weekend go???

2009 – the past 4 months (!!)

Oh my GOD I’ve been so lax. 600-odd photos are FINALLY on my computer, ready to be shared and perused. This post is image-heavy, but I want to show off what I’ve been up to last year!

Let me tell you about me right now, first. I am experiencing what people in books about the olden times called “ague”. As far as I can figure, it means malaria, which I do NOT have, but I am experiencing a stupid degree of pain in my skin, head, and organs. It’s awful. I can’t decide if I want to be hot or cold, all my clothing hurts my skin, and I can’t eat anything. Lunch was a power bar, mikan, and two yogurt drinks, to get vitamin C and also help adjust my bacteria levels (Hi microbes!)

So that is me.

And this was me back then!

I went to Tokyo!

Tokyo had a bunch of cool stuff, and I went twice — once for Disneyland (and frankly, the photos of that aren’t that interesting, although it was a very enjoyable time) and once for Awa Odori. Since all the Awa Odori people wanted to go to Disneyland, it gave me a free day to roam Tokyo by myself!! So I went to Harajuku, of course! They have the best store displays ever!

The “old team” (40′s +) ladies and I decided to go to Tokyo bay to see the GIANT GUNDAM ROBOT. Oh my goodness yes!

Did I mention the shop displays? Nice job, H&M!

B-b-b-back in Tokushima, it was time for the School Festival!!

I know, I am totally awesome.
English Club set up a Foreign Goods shop with various nonsense to sell. I hung out for a while, but mostly I roamed the halls, taking photos (which I’m not allowed to share here because there are students in them) but this one I think is OK:

I still have a bracelet that I bought there! It’s a embroidery floss bracelet and when you tie it on you make a wish and when it falls off the wish comes true (STILL ON = LAME)
Oh, and James and his friend from England visited and told all my students that I was his fiance/wife/etc (we were not dating) and I found out yesterday that the girls in 104 homeroom really believed I was married, and felt legitimately betrayed that I’m not.
A month or so later, I went to the festival at James’ school, and now regret not similarly messing with his reputation.

Next I went to Osaka and Wakayama prefecture with two lovely ladies, for some reason the photo of them didn’t upload properly. Oh well, the important part is Wakayama, with the magical 8-lotus mountain where Kobo Daishi brought back important Buddhism from China, and then he went wandering around Shikoku and visited 88 temples which is why we have the pilgrimage today (more on that later). It’s a super holy place and has over 200 temples.

This is the biggest rock garden in Japan (the World?!). It’s supposed to look like a dragon.

It was really hard to tell if this was a temple or palace, but Daishi spent heaps of time here and they had his writing desk and tons of beautiful rooms and basically gorgeous architecture. What can I say? Japan knows its minimalism (just as well as it does it’s pack-rat tendencies).

They also had a giant winding graveyard, with famous samurai and old important families and normal folks and company graves. This was the best one. If you die in service to your rocket-making company, your ashes can go here.

Biggest stupa in Japan (the World?!?!?)? Don’t mind if I do! Going inside strongly reminded me of being inside the Taj Mahal, for some reason. I should go back to India.

Ok, for some reason half my pictures didn’t upload properly, but this is the next one:

I love pudding. I love love love pudding. Or “purin” as it’s called here. This is the best one (and believe me, I’ve eaten a LOT of purin in Tokushima). It’s called Kokoro Odoru Purin, “Dancing Heart Pudding”. It’s this great purin that the bakery uses in it’s regular purin (which comes in a glass bottle with syrup at the bottom) but it’s been brule’d. It’s a creme brule, or as close as I’m going to get to one in Tokushima. FANTASTIC.

I went on an amazing 140 kilometer bike trip! And there was a giant dinosaur, WHY NOT, in the middle of nowhere. Oh, Japan.

In Hiroshima, the end/midway point of the trip, we stayed in a tiny waterfront town. Boats!!

Later, Rogakko (deaf school) had their school festival. Again, I’m not allowed to post photos of students, but here is some of their work displays:

Calligraphy by 3rd grade junior high (9th grade)

Remember the 88 temple pilgrimage I mentioned? Well, my good friend Ada and I started doing it. We did 5 temples (and haven’t been back since, HA!)

Biggest koi fish I have ever seen in my life. Seriously. They were bigger than the average weiner dog. I could have watched them all day!!

They had a panda statue. I don’t know why. But did I mention I’m going to CHINA??? More later.

These pilgrims were really nice. We saw them all day, because you do the temples in order so you see the same folks at each one. They had their little dog go up to every place and pray with them (to do the pilgrimage properly, you have to say about a gazillion Heart Sutras. Spell check didn’t correct me on “gazillion”, but it did on “sutras”. WHY?)

Oh and did I mention it was a beautiful day with amazing colors?

That’s my special temple book I’m holding. You take it to each temple and each temple has a special page and the monks or trainee monks or whoever puts a special stamp and calligraphy on the designated page and charges you $3. You can buy the books in various levels of fanciness, or just get a blank one that can work at any temple (pilgrim route or no).

COLORS!

Later, I went to Kyoto for Autumn Leaf Viewing. It’s Very Serious Business.

PHEW. I’ve got heaps more photos, but I’m pretty tired and hungry and need to go eat before I get sicker!