beautiful even on a rainy day!

Hi everyone!  No, I am not talking about myself in the title.  oh ho ho!  Just wanted to get you in a good mood before I apologize for the month between posts.  Greetings from Japan where it is pretty cold and Christmas music is already a-playing in stores because there is no Thanksgiving buffer here between Halloween and Christmas.  Japanese people and their ability to grasp onto certain western traditions and take them to extremes.  *sigh!*

Anyway, as my mom was kind enough to remind me this morning, it has indeed been over a month since I last posted.  sorry, sorry, but as I think I mentioned before, my life here is just not as interesting as it was in my first year or even in my second year.  But, I did have some fun adventures yesterday, so I thought I would at least share some pictures and a bit of narrative.

So as you may or may not know, Kim and I lead a weekly English conversation class.  One member of our class is a really outdoorsy kind of person, so he offered to take us hiking, which we gladly accepted.  He is actually a trained hiking guide so he really knows his trails.  Unfortunately it was raining yesterday, but we went anyway, just on a different route than he planned.  He drove us to Togakushi, which is a mountain in Nagano.  It has a huge ski park and it's pretty well known for the awesome ninja house, but it also has some gorgeous shrines, one of which we went to see.  I should mention that in my rain-logged stupidity, I did not take any pictures of the actual shrine!  But it's ok because mostly the walk to the shrine was amazing and the shrine itself was pretty usual. 

tree hugging.  mostly to show how big the tree was.

Apparently these are 400-year-old cedars.

The snow up here is powerful.  It piles up and is heavy enough to cause the trees to bend like this,

Part of the shrine area, but not the shrine itself.  Sorry.

 Ok, then we got back in the car and went to a new place.  We were not sure what to expect, but we ended up at a waterfall!  It was really pretty.

Waterfall! 

sorta scary bridge.

 Then back in the car again.  Little further north into Niigata Prefecture and we ended up at Mt. Myoko.  Really pretty and also awesome for skiing/snowboarding.  We went once last winter and we will go again this winter.

This is Imori Pond with Mt. Myoko in the background.  You can see the parts that become the ski areas,  Imori means newt and the pond was named for the many many newts that live there.

Ducks!!

Imori!!

Taxidermy...  hmm.

I dream about creating a company that would prevent the printing of such signs.  But, then what would foreigners have to chuckle about when they visit Japan?!

This is on the way back to Iiyama.  We are above the clouds!

HOMG SNOW!!

And so ends our hiking adventures.

already dreading the big move...and it is not for another 9 months!

As I sit in my apartment and look around, I seriously wonder how on EARTH I am going to move everything back to America.  The clothes I can deal with...I can leave them behind if necessary.  I am talking about the things I have collected in the past 2 years and 2 months.  We are talking about things I am not willing to leave behind.  They HAVE to come back to America so that someday my grandkids can be cleaning out all my crap going "What the Hell is this, anyway?"  And then they will throw it away, completely ignorant of the fact that I carried it around the world with me.  Let's face it...I like to collect things.  I always have and I always will.  There is nothing I can do about it.    Just a list here for starters, then pictures.  Some things I have collected:

Manga (Japanese comics).  I have at least 75 to move back.  They are not your normal American comic books, either.  They are maybe 6x8 (I have no idea) and are on average, an inch thick.  That means I have 75 inches of manga to bring home.


Kamen Rider...It is a TV series that has been on in Japan since the 70s.  America gave it a try once, but I do not think it was the most successful show ever, so it stopped.  Anyway, I got REALLY into Kamen Rider, though the current series is NOT good, thank God (less things I will want to collect!) and as a result, I have a decently sized collection of random things: cups, figures, towels, McDonald's happy meal toys (don't ask), and one very large Kamen Rider head.  Yes, a head.  (see picture)

My toy shelf, though this barely touches on the toys.  The top has the Kamen Rider mask.  It is about a foot tall, if that helps to put things in perspective.

Stuffed animals.  Ah, I have always loved stuffed animals, and apparently, allergies and all, I still do.  They are really fun to win out of claw machines and I have quite a few.  My most recent addition is this guy,  Haro, a robot character from the Gundam series.

Haro!  Yeah, same size as my head.  Bigger, even!

Keychains/cell phone straps.  These are legit, because I have been collecting key chains FOREVER.  So, in keeping with tradition, I have been buying a key chain every time I go somewhere new.  I have a grand plan for these key chains, do not worry.  Now, cell phone straps...sometimes it is hard to find a keychain, so I have resorted to buying cell phone straps instead to represent certain places I visited.  But, once I started doing that, it opened the door to general cell phone strap collecting.  The result:  I have a small Christmas tree in my room that has the straps hanging on it like ornaments.  At this point, the tree is no longer visible...

Kanji (this is sort of a stretch as far as "collecting" but.. well, just read on)  As you may know, I have gotten really into kanji since coming to Japan.  I love studying kanji!!  LOVE IT!  As a result, I have accumulated quite a few study books which I would like to have back in America so I can constantly review the kanji I learned.  In addition, I want to continue learning new kanji, so I want to bring books full of kanji I have yet to study.  We are talking 10-15 books here...not too big or anything, just heavy.

Along with kanji study are the kanji notebooks.  They are all pretty and gridded with little spaces to write readings.  And then they have extra boxes to practice writing kanji.  I am not sure if I can get these in America.  I plan to research that, but if it seems to be a no, then I will need to bring a few of these pretties home with me.  Or I could figure out a way to get creative with excel, I guess and print my own paper, but it is just not the same as the beautiful notebooks with cute pictures of baby animals on the cover.

Movies.  Another legit collection (have you seen my DVDs in America?)  I love movies.  I have gotten quite a few over here, too, most of them Japanese movies that I will not be able to get in America.  The problem with that?  I need a region 2 (or region free) DVD player.  A problem to deal with later.  For now, I have to get all the movies back to America without breaking any cases or disks.

Ok...are you seeing the problem here?  Moral of the story...next summer, I am going to be stressed about this.  I think I will start sending boxes home now, but even so...it is going to be a challenge to get everything I want moved back to America.  *sigh*  There is a lesson in all this...from now on, I will not be such a collector of random things.  The keychains can stay, but everything else has to stop!!!!

Osaka and Kyoto~2011 style

Well, well...It has been about a month.  Sorry about that, but there is nothing exciting in my life worth posting about.  Until now.

Last weekend, Kim and I took advantage of some national holidays and went to Osaka!!  Yay.  This is the second time I have been to Osaka, and it was just as fabulous as the first time, except there was no Sarah to visit :( .  We found some new things to do and also went back to a few of the places from last time. One such place that deserves more repeats in the future, Yogurtland!! 

YOGURTLAND!  Or...as it is now called, PartyLand.  Either way, the best frozen yogurt. 

 One new and really fun thing we did was go to the Instant Ramen Museum!  It is not too big and clearly all the information is in Japanese, BUT you can pay 300 yen and make your own cup noodle!  You get to decorate the cup and then choose flavors and toppings.  Very fun.  I am excited to eat mine, which I should make sure I actually do because I am prone to forgetting and then food goes bad.  Anyway, it was fun.

my cup!

of course I drew a giraffe!

We stayed in Osaka for 4 days, so one day we took a trip to Kyoto.  Only 30 minutes by train, so it is quite convneient.  I finally got to see a few more of the famous temples and things in Kyoto.  I want to take this moment to congratulate whoever designed the bus system in Kyoto.  It is amazing. AND they have this wonderfully designed easy to read map.  It is brilliant.  Of course, there is traffic and the busses take time, but it is cheap and convenient and definitely my recommended way to travel around Kyoto.  We went to see Kinkakuji which is a golden temple and Kiyomizudera which is up higher in the hills and looks over Kyoto.  Walking up to Kiyomizudera, we went through Gion, one of the more famous Geisha areas of Kyoto, so there were lots of women in Kimono and we did even see a few geisha. 

Me and Kinkakuji

Kinkakuji without me.  It's so glorious

Gion...and geisha!

Kiyomizudera

 Back in Osaka.... We also went to an observation tower called Tsutenkaku.  It is in a cute area with lots of shops and such.  You go up the tower and the views are pretty good (the tower is not exactly tall, but it's tall enough) but what is more important is the statue of Billiken.  If you rub his feet, he brings you good luck!  So, one foot rub and cheesy tourist shot later, we were ready to face the world with all our good luck. 

There is the tower!

Rubbing his feet!! 

What else did we do?  Purikura (those photo booths where you get small stickers) and UFO catchers (aka claw machines).  I got a few awesome things from claw machines but also had some moments of extreme frustration at the complete unfairness of certain set-ups in the machines. Some of them are impossible!!!  Like these ones where if you knock a box down you get to pick a prize.  However, the boxes are weighted and the claws are just not strong enough to move the box.  grrrrrrrr.  lots of money and 20 minutes of frustration for absolutely nothing.  The good news is, at this one game center, one of the guys working there was really nice and he gave me a prize because I was trying so hard.  I had gotten a few from the machine already (it was one where you have to line up a pole perfectly so it goes through a slot and pushes a box down), but there are 40 varieties and I wanted a specific one and could not get it.  So he gave it to me!  how nice!!!!!!

 Once, in a train station we came across some awesome trick art!

Oh, yeah, we went to a concert, too.  Tackey and Tsubasa, if you are wondering or care.  It was fun.

Alright, that is all.  We did not do anything so amazingly fantastic that it merits more than this much writing.  But anyone reading, you got a few pictures out of the deal, so no complaining.