Memiors of a Gaijin, cont.

I promised that I would explain the photo of me dressed up as a geisha. I've been putting it off because I kind of doubt whether anyone besides my parents is interested.

It was probably one of the most awesome Saturdays of my life. My good friend Saki offered to show me around Kyoto in order to make the most of my ever-diminishing time left in the Land of the Rising Sun. Kyoto is about 2 and a half hours away by bus, so we left on a Friday evening and stayed in a hotel. We got up early the next morning and headed out towards Gion, an old district of the city and perhaps the only place in Japan where real geisha and maiko (a geisha-in-training) can still be seen.

We had made reservations at a shop where you can pay to dress up like a maiko, with the fancy kimono, makeup and hair. About eight other women and one man were doing it as well. It was quite a process. Saki described it as kind of "a maiko factory" because the employees' efficient system of transforming customers into maiko was much like an assembly line. Makeup. Next. Wig. Next. Kimono. Next. At the end we had professional pictures taken. For a higher price you could take a walk outside in your costume, but Saki and I chose not to. I think that was a good idea, as our kimonos were a little old and, well, I just looked...extremely unusual. Maybe a little scary. Saki was barely recognizable.

It was a super fun experience. I will never get tired of playing dress-ups. Never. Getting all that white makeup off wasn't easy though.
Saki and I did a lot of things that day, and I'm sure you probably don't want to hear every detail. But I'll tell you about Kiyomizu-dera because I've got some awesome pictures I want to show off, like this one of high schoolers on a field trip lining up for a picture. Little did they know of their impending doom.

Kiyomizu-dera, being one of Kyoto's biggest attractions, was very crowded! There was at least one high school field trip going on at the time. Kiyomizu-dera is a huge old temple constructed of wood on the side of a hill. Thus it commands a wonderful view of the city, and must be truly packed when the cherry blossoms or fall foilage is in full bloom. You can see in the picture below that the very large building has a roof made of thatched grasses.

Interestingly, behind the Buddhist temple lies a Shinto shrine. This shrine seemed to be particularly dedicated to the spirit of love and relationships, with amulets and fortunes to buy for luck in love, marriage, and conception. There were two special boulders set a couple yards away from each other. I saw a group of high school girls giggling as they lead their blindfolded friend through the crowds from one rock to the other. Apparently this is a ritual believed to bring luck in love or something. The whole area was packed with women of all ages, which just goes to show that girls are the same all over the world.

On our way home, we picked up some freshly-baked soymilk donuts, which were hot and fluffy and light and delicious. I wish we had them in the US.

Saki and I returned home that evening, and I was very tired but very happy too.

Thank you Saki!

Makes a good wallpaper:

Is the semester over yet?

Next week is finals week, and thank goodness. I think everyone, students and teachers alike, are sick and tired of Japanese class. Eight hours a week together is just too many. Blazer Sensei's fuse was particularly short today- and it was first period! Usually it takes us at least two periods to wear her down.

This morning I walked into the classroom.

The bell rang.

Knowing that 2 out of 10 total homework points hung precariously in the balance, I positioned myself squarely in front of the Pink Box of Doom and set my backpack in front of it so the professor would understand that I was in the process of submitting my homework and would mercifully keep the box open five seconds longer.

And as I opened my backpack to get out my homework, Blazer Sensei closes the Box right in front of me.

Dirty little...

In a move of unabashed rebellion, I opened the Pink Box and slipped my homework inside. Blazer Sensei undoubtedly saw it, and will probably mark my homework as late nonetheless. Sayonara, 2 homework points.

I guess it serves me right for being late to class.

Oh wait.

I WASN'T.

Yes, I think everyone needs winter vacation badly.

Dragons, ganbatte!

You really have to hand it to Nagoya.
They've solved one of the world's oldest questions: how do you get girls interested in baseball?
Nagoya's plan is so deceptively simple. Every time the local baseball team, the Chunichi Dragons, win a game, nearly every store holds a victory sale. So the Dragons have all the girls in town rooting for them, including me.

Brilliant.

Unfortunately the Dragons don't seem to win very often.

Memoirs of a Gaijin

Too tired to write about this. I'll explain later.

And other American activities

The other day my host mom offered me some gum.
Me: No thank you.
Host mom: Okay. You don't chew gum much, do you?
Me: Nope.
Host mom: It's funny, we Japanese think of chewing gum as a very American thing.
Me: Why's that?
Host mom: Well you always see American baseball players chewing gum.
Me: Uhh...I don't think that's gum...I think it's tobacco.
Host mom: REALLY??

It was funny. Maybe you just had to be there though.

Grey

Lately I've been noticing how the area I'm in is pretty ugly. Both Nagoya, the town my host family lives in, and all the towns I commute through in between. They're just so...grey.

1. For one thing, they seem so haphazardly thrown together. I don't know if there's zoning laws here, but it kind of doesn't seem like it. Walking down the street, I'll pass a Mom and Pop hardware store, three houses, a bicycle parking lot, a Japanese-style house, a tiny community center, a Western-style house, a sparkly Pachinko parlor, two more houses, a barber shop, etc.

2. Where are the trees? I live in the countryside in a town with less than 40,000 in the population, and where are the freaking trees???

3. Where is the grass??? Why isn't there any grass here??

4. Next, people don't have much in the way of front yards; their front doors are often adjacent to the sidewalk. If they have any at all, a lot of people don't seem to take especially good care of them. Front yards often have bicycles and random junk strewn all over them. Like curb appeal just isn't a big deal here.

5. Japan doesn't bury power lines, as you can see in the photos above.

6. It seems like some people who live in traditional-style Japanese houses can't afford the upkeep. I see a lot of the old-fashioned wooden houses that must have been lovely forty years ago...but need a major overhaul now. There's tape over the windows and wires running along the outside of the walls and the rain gutters are falling off the roof. I don't think I live in a ghetto area...but I kind of see a lot of these houses...

I'm not saying that Japan is an ugly country. I've seen some of its beauty first-hand.

But basically, a lot of the Japan that I see every day...just seems like no attention was given to aesthetics whatsoever. There's no loveliness anywhere except for the occasional temple or shrine which retains its traditional style. Everything is grey, efficient concrete, slapped down wherever the closest open spot was and squished as close together as possible. I have yet to see an apartment building in Japan that doesn't look like it was made from grey legos. Far away is my suburban hometown where houses in spacious neighborhoods sit on neat front lawns and people play basketball in their driveways. Or *gasp* in their backyards!!

Osu Kannon

Note: Right now Blogger is having technical issues and if you click on any of the pictures, a download box might open instead of the image becoming full-size. Just hang in there and hopefully they will fix it soon enough.

It's high time I introduced you to my favorite place in Nagoya, Osu Kannon.
Osu is an older section of the city, so it has a lot of character. When you first walk into the heart of it, you see this fantastic temple. Often a priest can be heard chanting inside.

The temple is surrounded by concrete apartment complexes, hotels, and other very grey ugly buildings.


This section of Osu Kannon is sort of an outdoor shopping mall with lots of funky little shops. Most of them are cheap, and a lot of them are consignment or thrift stores. There is a "per gram" store where the cost of the used clothing is determined by how much it weighs. One gram = 30 yen. Many of these thrift stores have kimonos in them, but they're pretty old and yucky, and the ones that are nice aren't very cheap. There are some goth/lolita stores here too.
Today two of my friends and I went to a cafe we had heard of. It's called "Dear Alice" and has an Alice in Wonderland theme. The front door was so short you had to bend over to get in. Inside was a cozy little cafe full of Victorian furniture, playing cards and checkerboard patterns. Waitresses dressed in Alice-esque maid outfits served us cakes and tea in fancy china dishes. Check out the Christmas tree drawn with caramel sauce on my plate. It was awesome.


Osu has a lot of surprises. Here the giant lucky cat is decorated in glorious gaudy Christmas "illumination," as they call it here.

My friends and I went to an arcade and spent money trying to win prizes from crane games.

The Barbie pink "woman ahead" sign was in front of a section of the arcade dedicated to purikura, or tiny photo sticker booths insanely popular with Japanese girls. So popular in fact, that only girls are allowed to use them, I guess. (If anyone can explain what the Japanese says on the sign, please let me know.) My friends and I decided to take a few.
Now, a good rule of thumb to remember in Japan is that anything the Japanese set their hand to, they take to the extreme. So these are not your ordinary photo booths. They're huge, they're well-lit, they talk and play music, they have a million different settings and options, and the stickers they print out are high-quality, full color and sometimes sparkly. After you take your pictures, you can use the touch-screen and stylus to draw hearts, stars, bunnies, text, or mustaches on your friends. Then the stickers are printed out with all your modifications. Girls put them on their cellphones, textbooks, cameras, pets, anywhere.

Outside the arcade we found a bunch of capsule toy machines. Right next to ones for children were a few that contained figurines that were most definitely pornographic. Yes, pornographic capsule toys. Right there on the street. 300 yen. As if breast pudding wasn't enough reason to worry about this country.