more than a month's worth

hey again! i know it's been over a month since my last update... hopefully people haven't given up on me! i've got a lot of pictures and stories to make up for it, so here goes.

in february, i stayed with a homestay family for a weekend! i was really nervous at first, but it ended up being a really good learning experience. i was placed with an amazing family; their name was maekawa, and they'd been hosting international students for about 5 years. they had a student stay with them the year before who i'd actually met before coming over here, and it was funny to see him in the pictures they showed me. the family consisted of the mother and father, hitomi and fumio, their daughter mariko and their son-in-law shinsuke, and mariko and shinsuke's one year-old daughter ryo (who was ADORABLE). they live in minami-hikone, which literally translates to "south hikone." mariko, shinsuke and ryo lived next door to hitome and fumio, so it was cool to be able to see both their houses. japanese houses are pretty much like american houses with several big differences: the toilets and the bathtubs are in different rooms, doors slide shut rather than open and close with doorknobs, there are no garbage disposals in the sink, and instead of mattresses, people sleep on futons. the floors in the bedrooms are usually made of tatami mats, which are basically woven straw mats and are actually pretty comfortable. japanese baths are a lot different than american ones; in japan, baths are used for relaxation and showers are used for cleaning your body. the japanese shower at night, and when you take a shower you clean yourself and wash your hair before getting into the bath. a whole family uses the same bath water, which sounds gross, but really isn't because everyone showers before using it. the guests go first, then the father of the household, then the mother and then the kids. it's extremely relaxing.

my host family! from right to left: fumio, one of their family friends whose name i don't remember, mariko, me holding ryo, and hitomi. :)

the maekawa family mailbox.

fumio has been doing the ironman race for a long time now; he's been to korea, the states, switzerland and several other countries. their family was pretty worldly. hitomi showed me pictures of her snorkling adventures and she even had pictures of herself swimming with dolphins. so cool!

mariko and ryo at the ramen shop the family took me to! it was hitome's favorite restaurant. :)

ryo was so sweet. she even spoke a little english: if you asked her how old she was, she'd hold up a finger and say, "i'm one!" hitomi and mariko spoke some english around her, too, and they even had several bilingual dvds for her to watch. it's amazing how much english hitomi had picked up from her host students and the different books she'd bought. it was really convenient being able to speak english when i didn't understand how to say something in japanese.

they had a fridge in the floor!!

hitomi teaching me how to cut onions to make nabe.

all the different vegetables: mushrooms, onions, bean sprouts, and lettuce.

nabe is basically a big soup potluck. you boil the vegetables and meats in a big pot until they're cooked through, and you just pick out what you want. you can also put noodles in! it was easily the most delicious thing i've eaten since i've been here. hitomi threw in shrimp, beef and chicken, too.

yum! the differently colored dish next to me is from korea. it was different than any japanese food i've had so far, but it was awesome. the pink drink is actually alcohol; i'm legal here, so fumio was nice enough to buy me a cherry cocktail to have with dinner.

after dinner one night, hitome dug out her wedding photo album. these pictures are over 30 years old. japanese weddings are gorgeous ceremonies. the women wear intricate kimonos and hitome wore her mother's headdress. she said the thing weighed a ton! haha.

the last morning i was with them, mariko taught me how to make okonomiyake. it's basically the japanese take on pankcakes; they put fish such as shrimp and scallops, vegetables and batter into the mix, and fry the whole mixture until it's solid like a pancake. then they add mayo, dried fish and other spices on top! it was pretty interesting... but it made me miss american pancakes, haha.

the final product!

mariko and shinsuke's kitchen. this gives you a decent idea of the layout of the houses. they're pretty spacious for how small they are.

mariko's hina-ningyō collection. these dolls are given to young girls for the hinamatsuri, which is held on march 3rd and is called "girl's day." the dolls are supposed to be powerful enough to contain dark spirits.

hmm... what else?

we also went to byodoin & horyuji. i'm not quite sure of the historical significance of the last two places... but they had several beautiful shrines and temples. the weather that day was perfect, and we even spotted some cherry blossoms!

byodoin.

i can't wait for the cherry blossom season! hinami, or flower viewing, is a huge tradition in japan. people come out to view the trees in full bloom and have picnics with drinking and karaoke. the trees are usually in bloom from late may to march, so i'll be here in the middle of it! so excited!

i went back to nara for another field trip, which was cool because i got to see the deer again! we visited todaiji temple again and saw the 50 foot buddha. there is a pillar in the temple with a hole in it the size of the buddha's nostril, and if you can squeeze through it, you'll have great luck for many years.

i gave it a shot...

halfway!
tadaaa!

i also went to fushimi inari taisha, which is a large gathering of small shrines along a mountainside. the area is famous for the hundreds upon hundreds of orange torri gates lining the mountain, and i wanted to make sure i got to see it before i left. the weather was nice enough last sunday that i decided to make a trip out there. it's pretty close to kyoto and it was cool to go by myself and see how my navigations skills have improved.

the entrance to fushimi inari. there are hundreds of kitsune, or fox, statues all over the place.

there are literally hundreds and hundreds of these gates on the mountain. i didn't even try to count them because i would've been there the entire day, but they were a lot of fun to photograph.

didn't believe me? there were so many gates, they looked like tunnels rather than singular structures. the people/companies/organizations who donated each individual gate got their names/titles carved into the backside.

:)
there were several shrines where people could stop to pray, make donations and light candles or incense.

you could make a small donation and write your name and city/country of birth on the back of a little fox head to wish for happiness and good fortune. can you guess which one's mine? ;)

i climbed to the very, very top of the mountain. you could see all of kyoto from there.

we also got to try one of the many different japanese styles of fighting called naginata. it was originally used by the samurai, but became a very popular technique of self defense for women, and therefore it's mainly women who practice it these days. it was a lot of fun! the weapon is a long, wooden pole with a curved end. an expert came in to show us how to do the moves, and they were pretty easy to learn. there are specific ways you're supposed to move your feet when going left to right or back and forth, and certain verbal ques when you strike your opponent.

i've got some other pictures and stories to tell, but that's all you get for now because my head hurts from typing all of this out, haha. hope you're all doing well! i'll try to update again sometime before the weekend's over. ♥

monkey park!

hello again! i'm sorry it's taken me so long to write, things have been busy lately. i was also sick sunday and monday, so i've been slowly recouperating. i'm feeling much better now, though, so i figured i'd give you guys an update.

last friday we had another friday activity; this time we got to experience the koto and the wadaiko/taiko. the koto is a huuuuge japanese stringed instrument. a very talented japanese woman played a few songs for us and then taught us how to play a "snow song." you use a pick that wraps around the pad of your thumb to pluck it, and you push on various strings to change the pitches. it was fun to try since i used to play the violin, but the koto is so different--even the music is written differently!--that 8 years of violin didn't really do me much good. i forgot my camera, again (sorry!), but i stole some pictures from other people just so you guys could get an idea of what it looked like. i believe the koto we played around with was 180cm and was worth about $300-$500.

this was the song we played. for those of you who know how to read traditional music, the circles and dots are rests, and the various symbols are the string numbers.

anyway, few people have asked me for pictures of the building i'm staying in, so i figured i'd oblige a little!

the stone sign outside out dorm building. :) "japan center for michigan universities."

JCMU! this is our dorm building. it's right next to a chain restaurant called coco's.

we're in this classroom every week day from 8:40am to 11:40 am. i like sitting in a circle, you can see everyone's faces and it's easier to communicate with the teacher. you can't really see out the window, but from where i sit near the door, i have a perfect view of the mountains, lakes and trees surrounding the area. we often see huge hawks flying around looking for food. it's pretty distracting, but cool at the same time.

my room! nothing special, but it's my own little space, which i've really appreciated. i wish i could get a better shot of it, but it's so small there's really no good angle to shoot from. that's my space heater next to the bed; it saved my life the first few weeks we were here. those are my slippers in front of it, too. japanese people have two main sets of shoes: one to use outside the house, one to use inside. they really like to distinguish work from relaxation. usually they also have a pair of slippers for the bathroom, but we don't really use them in the dorms.

my closet!

the kitchen! we have a stove, pots and pans, lots of utensils, plates and bowls, and glasses. it was all here when we got here. a lot of students left dishes, towels and other little things when they left last semester, so we just reap the benefits. we'll undoubtedly do the same thing as they did when we leave, anyway. just spreading the wealth, y'know?

the bathroom--nothing too exciting. luckily the toilets here are americanized; i don't think i'd be too psyched to use a ceramic hole in the floor every single day. some toilets in japan have a bunch of buttons you can mess around with; some even spray perfume and heat the seats!

my wall of pictures! send me more! :) i've already added more since i took this picture, including my little brother's senior picture.

last weekend, jamal, kevin, the two juans and i went to arashiyama, which is a small city outside kyoto famous for a monkey park atop one of the mountains there. i'd heard about the monkey parks before coming to japan, so i really wanted to check it out. we hoped the train around 8--and accidentally got on the wrong one! oops--and made it to the park around noon.

quick shot of the passenger car. most of the public trains don't look like this, they look more like a public bus on the inside, but we didn't mean to get on this train. it went a few cities past arashiyama before we realized we'd made a mistake. luckily the conductor wasn't mad and didn't make us pay the extra fee. whew.

the train tracks in arashiyama just after we got off the right train. the weather that day was gorgeous! we were lucky, it'd been snowing in hikone all morning, but it was pleasant and sunny in arashiyama. the weather here is so inconsistent, a lot like michigan but with less snow. ;)

the oi river intersected the main street in arashiyama; the water was clear and beautiful. i've found that my favorite cities in japan are those with large bodies of water in them. arashiyama is a neat little town full of shops and restaurants. there was a large bamboo forest with a few shrines off the main street, but we were hoping to get to kyoto to do some shopping that day, too, so we didn't stick around for much more than the monkey park.

a sign for the monkey park! too cute.

this is the toori gate leading to the monkey park. there are more elaborate toori gates in kyoto (or maybe it's osaka, i'm not sure), and i really want to see them sometime in the next three months.

the monkeys in arashiyama monkey park are "macaque monkeys." there are about 170 of them in the park, and they roam around freely grooming each other and digging around for food. they're anywhere from a foot to a foot and a half tall, and though they're accustomed to humans, they're still wild and therefore very territorial. there were a lot of mother monkeys with their babies when we went, so we had to be extra careful around them. the park workers advise people not to make eye contact with the monkeys or to try to touch them, but of course jamal had to try to get a close up shot of one of them and it lunged at him with it's teeth bared. we climbed to the top of the park, where there was a building with open-fenced walls in which you can feed monkeys peanuts and apples through the fences. they climb up and stick their hands through the chain links; it's pretty cool.

babies!!

the view from the summit was gorgeous; i got some more amazing panoramic photos, which i'm planning on getting blown up and framed when i get back to the states. hopefully i'll have a whole series by the time i get home. after the monkey park, we headed back to kyoto where we met up with dylan and headed to teramachidori, which is a gigantic outdoor mall. you think summerset and great lakes is big? you haven't even scratched the surface of big.

back alley in kyoto during the day...

just inside the mall. i'm going back again tomorrow, so i'll be sure to take bigger pictures. it's hard to remember to take pictures all the time when i'm constantly seeing things of interest and want to investigate them. my group of friends here moves quickly and it's easy to be left behind.

a few nights ago, i watched the most beautiful sunsets i've ever seen. since our dorms are right on lake biwa, it definitely creates an opportunity to see some stellar on-water sunsets. i wish i'd remembered to take a panoramic of this, too. i sat out on the stone ledge lining our side of the lake, listening to my ipod and just appreciating the view for about an hour. so amazing.

very exciting news, too--i'm doing a weekend homestay next friday! i got the information about my family yesterday. their last name is maekawa, and they have three kids; two girls named mariko and rio, and a boy named shinsuke. i don't know how old they are, but i'm hoping at least one of them is somewhat my age just because it'd be cool to make a friend i could travel around with. the mother's name is hitomi, and the father's name is fumio. the father has actually participated in the iron man race, which is a world famous long distance triathlon. it should be a pretty interesting visit; i'll make sure to take pictures with them. :)

other than that, though, nothing's really been going on this week aside from homework every day and our weekly test earlier this morning (which i feel very satisfied with). i didn't participate in the friday project today because they were teaching ikebana, and i already tried that a few weeks ago, so i figured i'd find something else to entertain myself with.

oh! before i forget...

LYDIE SENT ME A CARE PACKAGE!!! thank you so much, lydie!! i was so happy to get some more mail. :) i've been eating peanut butter, cap'n crunch and bagels nonstop. it really made my whole week. i've also gotten several cards and letters from my family back in michigan, as well as a card from some family in arizona. thank you, everyone! it always makes me smile when i get mail. i actually went to the post office yesterday and mailed some letters and packages of my own, so there are definitely a few people who should keep an eye on their mailboxes come next week.

♥ sarah