春休み！

I know I haven't blogged in a long time (2 months!) but I haven't really had anything to write about!

３学期 ended in early March and the next term doesn't start until like April 16th, so in other words, spring break is over a month long! At first, I just took a much-needed break from school and relaxed, watching TV or going shopping around Tsukuba every once in awhile. However, last week, I took a little vacation with my friend Zoe (also from OSU).

On Monday, we had a farewell party for our good friend Choi because he had to return to Korea, but unfortunately it had to be cut short for me since I was leaving early the next morning. Tuesday, I woke up at 7 and left with Zoe for Odaiba, in Tokyo Odaiba is a man-made island in Tokyo Bay. It was the first time I'd actually seen the water since coming to Japan. Around Odaiba are basically just a ton of shopping malls, but it was fun. Also had a good view of the bridge (looked like Skyarrow bridge from Pokemon BW) and Tokyo Tower! We ate at Odaiba Takoyaki Museum and I had some garlic-flavored stuff that was a different take on one of my favorite foods.

Before meeting up with my bestest buddy Jess, her boyfriend, and Hannah (another OSU buddy studying in Tokyo) Zoe and I also checked out the 科学未来館 science museum. They had some pretty cool stuff in there! Everything was bilingual, too, so that was nice. There's also a giant Gundam in front of a mall that we couldn't go in because it was being worked on. By the time we made it to the gundam, it was too dark to get a good picture.



Wednesday:

From Odaiba, Zoe and I took a night bus all the way to Nara. I believe we left at like 11 pm and arrived there at about 6:30 am. We had breakfast at Mister Donut (another American chain that evolved into Dunkin Donuts and doesn't exist in America anymore AFAIK) where I tried some sakura flavors. Then, after finding out hostel, we just wandered toward Nara Park, and stumbled upon this awesome student guide named Kaede who showed us around!

If you don't know about Nara, it's famous for its temples and especially famous for the tame deer that roam the city. They literally just walk around freely amongst the people. In various spots, old people sell bundles of senbei to feed to the deer. For me, this was a little scary, since I was sitting in a wheelchair, at eye level with a million deer. Deer will apparently eat ANYTHING and ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY so I ended up eventually having to just toss the bundle of crackers away before I got devoured. They also took a bite out of our map and stole Zoe's cookies.

After the park, we went to Todai-ji, one of the most famous temples, that houses a giant buddha statue. You can see some pictures on Google+, but I haven't received the good ones that my friend took yet,  so when I do, I'll shove them into this blog post.

After the temple, we were starving, so we stopped to get some Kakinoha sushi, a special kind of sushi you can only get in Nara that is wrapped in a persimmon leaf to both preserve it and enhance the flavor. They also gave us miso soup that was flavored with a darker dashi than the kind used in Tokyo, so it was a nice change of pace.

Soon, it started pouring, so our fantastic guide Kaede took us to a saka-ya (sake shop) where for 400 yen (I guess around $5?), you could sample like 5 different kinds of traditional sake! They were just shots, basically, but unlike wine tasting in America, you don't need to spit the stuff out. I'm not the world's biggest sake drinker, but some of the samples were extremely delicious. They also gave us some Japanese style pickles, one of which was SMOKED and really really delicious, as well as a low alcohol content chuhi-like carbonated drink that was super sweet. When we bought ice cream (yea, they sold sake-flavored ice cream as well) the shop owner gave us seconds because the flavors paired well together. We stayed in the sake shop for awhile while the rain died down and the shop owners kept giving us stuff. We even got to keep the sake cups!

We parted ways with Kaede and took a bus back to our hostel because it was still raining a bit. When we got off the bus, I coincidentally bumped into another pair of guys from OSU who are currently in the Hokkaido exchange program! This was absolutely insane. Nara and Sapporo are very far apart from each other, I had no idea they were even in town, and the chances of us actually seeing them there were super low anyway! As it happened, they were staying in Osaka in a hostel, which was where we were planning to go in two days' time, so we decided we'd meet up there on Friday.

We returned to our hostel, which turned out to be more like a minshuku, a kind of Japanese bed and breakfast. It was very Japanese-style and the family that owned it was extremely nice. They made us a nice little western-style breakfast in the morning and let us shower and do laundry. That night, Zoe and I went to dinner at a place that was pretty much a bar, but had really great food and drinks for cheap!

Thursday:

The next morning, we took the JR to Kyoto. Kyoto, once the capital of Japan, is a really old city and some people say it's more "Japanese" than Tokyo, but my impressions of the city were that it's just a huge tourist destination. We saw more gaijin than I've ever seen in one place in Japan. It's really weird to see white people when you're not used to seeing them and I could tell most of these people were straight out of other countries and just there for sightseeing. The sakura trees are supposed to be really beautiful, but because it hasn't warmed up yet, they haven't really started blooming. :(

In Kyoto, we went to two shrines, Ryouanji and Kinkaku-ji. Both were really pretty, but I didn't get many pictures personally, so you'll have to wait on those as well. Kyoto does at least have far more natural beauty than Tokyo.

We went to check in at our hostel, but since it was booked from a third-party site, we didn't see the thing about advance notice for wheelchair-users, so they wouldn't let us stay BUT MADE US PAY ANYWAY. BULLSHIT. Luckily, by then, we met a former neighbor of Zoe's from America who was an old Japanese lady with many friends in Kyoto. She arranged a homestay for us, which was a HUGE lifesaver! We went to Kunio-san's cafe, where he fed us delicious pasta and a lot of beer. After, we took the subway to Uji, where his house was, and his wife made us more food! For a grandmother, she didn't look a day over 40 and their house was one of the nicest houses ever, complete with two giant LED TVs, a toilet that automatically opened and turned itself on when you entered the room, a bath that drew and heated its own water, and of course a traditional Japanese-style tatami room where I slept on an extremely comfortable futon! It was fantastic, and I cannot even express how thankful I am to have meet those people. Japan has some of the greatest people I've ever met in my life.

Friday:

In the morning, they drove us to the station where we took a train to Osaka! We met up with Hannah (the friend from Monday) and went to the Osaka Pokemon Center. It's much bigger and nicer than Tokyo's, but it shares some space with other stores, so they don't play Pokemon music 24/7. I got an exclusive charm there that I might use as a gift if I don't keep it myself. Also a Piplup plush. I couldn't buy too much though because I just didn't have space in my bag.

Before going to Osaka Castle, we met with my good friend Tyler (the random encounter at Nara). Osaka Castle was super beautiful from the outside, but we were upset that the inside was just a lame museum/tourist trap. At least the view from the top was nice.

After the castle, we looked around some shopping streets and ate at this place that served some food famous in Osaka. It was really good. We sat in that place for a long time while Tyler talked about his trip to Korea and told us things about Sapporo which made me decide that that is definitely going to be my next trip. I haven't been to the north side of Japan, after all.

When we finally left, we met with the other OSU Tyler (also from Sapporo) and sat in the square in the middle of Osaka, just chatting and watching people amidst all the lights and tall buildings. Then, out of nowhere, a fellow Tsukuba student randomly ambushed me! Unfortunately, by then, Zoe and I had to leave to catch our night bus back to Tokyo. We got to Shinjuku around 6 am Saturday morning.

That's basically all I have to say about my little vacation. I'll try to post more pics when I get them. Today, there's a penis festival in Kamakura, but I'm not going because I'd rather celebrate my friend's birthday than a bunch of dicks. Besides, I'm tired from all the running around.

I still have a couple free days' worth of JR travel, so I might go somewhere else again before school starts. I definitely will go to Hokkaido, too, but obviously I need a plane ticket for that and can't take the train.

I don't update Google+  very often, but there are still pics and videos there that I take from my phone. Look me up on twitter if you're really curious as to what I'm up to, since I likely won't blog about every little thing.