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