2012-02-06T05:07:27Z Mareike Copyright 2012, Mareike SPHPBLOG http://www.avalon-lost.net/japain/index.php?entry=entry081008-233339 2008-10-09T00:00:00Z 2008-10-09T00:00:00Z
Now the question is, what do I do with this blog?

I still have pictures I could post, like the previously mentioned ones. But it would feel a bit fake, I guess, posting in my Japan blog from the States?

ANYWAY, what do YOU think? Who would be interested in reading about the stuff I haven't written about yet? ]]> http://www.avalon-lost.net/japain/index.php?entry=entry080529-162539 2008-05-29T00:00:00Z 2008-05-29T00:00:00Z
But yes, so now I've got my mom in Japan too!

But this means that my trip is almost over. "Trip"... is really more of a "stay," I guess. I'll be flying home on the 27th of May; my mom will be helping me transport all of this stuff that I bought.

Things that I did that I haven't shared yet:

- Heading out to middle-of-nowhere, Nara, to meet with my speaking partner and her friend (I went to Disneyland with them). It was a lot of fun -- I made Tortellini with Alfredo sauce, and then we watched disney movies.

- Hirakata Park with some friends. (It was crowded, but fun. My two friends also decided to make it a day of fanservice for me, lol.)

- Went to Eiga-mura with speaking partner&friend + classmate. That was fun too; we took a lot of silly pictures in "traditional" Japanese locations. But I'll be going back this saturday with my host family + my mom.

- Went to a doujinshi convention. Bought a lot of doujinshi. God, I'm such a nerd. D: I got a Shuuchishin doujinshi though, that's so worth it. (More on Shuuchishin later?)


I think those are the biggest things that happened.

It is kind of sad that I'm leaving so soon. I know I want to come back to Japan. I absolutely loved it here. And ooooh, Kansai food. D: OKONOMIYAKI. I've been informed by two people now that there actually is Kaiten-zushi in the states. but there is less of a chance of me finding Okonomiyaki, I think.

..... D: I want to have Okonomiyaki now.]]> http://www.avalon-lost.net/japain/index.php?entry=entry080514-205229 2008-05-15T00:00:00Z 2008-05-15T00:00:00Z



I wish they had it in the states. I will miss it when I go home.

Each plate is only 105 yen! ... but it does add up if you eat a lot.]]> http://www.avalon-lost.net/japain/index.php?entry=entry080504-233338 2008-05-05T00:00:00Z 2008-05-05T00:00:00Z Arashiyama on Sunday. It's in Kyoto prefecture, and is extremely beautiful. The weather was also very nice, although slightly chilly. There were a lot of people there though, I guess just because the sun was shining.

Arashiyama is also the home of the Monkey Park. It is, as its name implies, a park that houses monkeys. Not in cages or anything like that; they're free to roam around and such. They just tend to collect around there, possibly also because the caretakers feed them every day ;)

The monkeys hanging out at the Monkey Park are all one type, the Nihonzaru. (The name literally means "Japanese monkey"; the English name is "Japanese Macaque.") Don't look them straight in the eye, or they could attack! And while walking past one, make sure to look to the other side.

We did have to walk past several to get to the top of the mountain, where there was a shed with barred windows you could feed the monkeys through. They were pretty cheeky about it too -- even before they'd finished chewing the treats you gave them, they'd have their hand through the bars to ask for more. (Treats were available for 100 yen -- chestnuts, apples, or bananas.)

After that was feeding time. The park ranger (or caretaker, whatever) gave a short presentation about the monkeys. There are apparently around 150 living on the mountain, and all of them are named based on when they were born and who their parents are -- that means, no cutesy names like Momo or Koko, it's names like Ayu609234. The dominant male is the one that gets first dibs of all food, no objections. This was demonstrated by the park ranger holding up a bag of peanuts. One monkey came by, jumped for it, and scampered off, while all the other monkeys sat still.
And how can you tell a lower ranked monkey apart from the others? Well, the park ranger tried handing an apple to one monkey -- and immediately all the others scampered up and chased that monkey away. :X

Anyway. The park ranger threw food around, lots of monkeys started scrambling for it. They fought each other for the food too, but I guess that's how it is. Not all of them were violent though! (Video)

Because we came in spring, it meant that the young had just been born! And yep, we saw two mommy monkeys with lil baby monkeys. :) Although only one of them was nice enough to offer photo opportunities. (She also rolled over onto her baby's hand at one point, so maybe she just wasn't as concerned as the other one.)

Of course we also saw all the traditional monkey activities: cleaning, fighting, and sitting around doing nothing. (See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?)

All in all, a good day.]]> http://www.avalon-lost.net/japain/index.php?entry=entry080424-041008 2008-04-24T00:00:00Z 2008-04-24T00:00:00Z sakura season! Well, all right, Sakura season is mostly over -- the constant rain we've been having this past week hasn't helped.

Anyway, last weekend, I went to Kyoto for some Hanami, sakura-viewing. People traditionally go out for some drinking/food under the cherry blossoms. In some cases, the newbie of the company/group has to go out and reserve a spot for the group for later in the day. Blue tarp is a good way to do that. (So is sleeping there overnight.) You don't need to worry much about food, because there are a lot of stands selling a variety of things. Okonomiyaki, takoyaki, yakisoba, yakitori, hot dogs, dango, ice cream... It's hard to decide to eat just one.

After our little tour through Maruyama park, my friends and I went to Kiyomizu Temple for the light-up Sakura. As you can expect of my crappy camera, the pictures didn't turn out well (especially without a tripod). But I tried! I tried using walls to steady myself too -- if only it weren't crooked. :X

So, that took us a while. We had met up with some other friends there, and they wanted to see Maruyama park too, so back we went. We stopped for some food, and as we were eating... somebody called out to us. Did we want to sit with them? ... Sure, there were five of us, and there's safety in numbers :P Anyway, the guys who called out to us were all very nice. One of them had lived in NYC and spoke fluent English; the other guy worked in advertising design and was really outgoing. It was a lot of fun, and we spent around two hours sitting on the tarp with them and just chatting.

We cut it a bit close on leaving though, because we ended up on the last train. :X Ick. ]]> http://www.avalon-lost.net/japain/index.php?entry=entry080413-003743 2008-04-13T00:00:00Z 2008-04-13T00:00:00Z
The problem with the Fukuoka trip is that it was raining, a lot. I thought I'd make it more interesting by turning it into a survival-horror tale, and that requires a whole lot more photo-shopping than I realized I wanted to do (I did make three creepy pictures though.) Why a survival-horror story? Well, because Fukuoka is scary!

My friend and I arrived in Fukuoka on a Tuesday morning, by Shinkansen. We checked into the youth hostel (it was green), dropped off our bags in the very tiny room (with an alcove about as wide as I am, with a window looking out to the building a mere two feet away from ours), and headed to a park. The purpose wasn't the park, actually, but the historical site of Fukuoka castle, which supposedly is a national treasure and there are ruins and everything.

For some reason, we couldn't find them. We did get attacked by birds though. We were going to make our quick escape, but an elderly woman handed us bird food and we were FORCED to feed them, with them massing all around us and being generally scary.

So we walked around the park, and despite the bad weather it was kind of nice. Some older Japanese men helped us find the historical site we were looking for (very nice, although they didn't seem to understand that I could speak Japanese!). Like all historical anythings in Japan, it was haunted. The charred remains of an old house that was used for the torture of little children. I'm sure that's exactly what the sign says. We saw blood stained stairs (or maybe that was moss) and gravestones (or it could have just been random rocks lying around). We did eventually get to the wall that was still preserved, and then we grew bored of the place.

So we continued walking towards another shrine, where some kids kept saying "hello! How are you!" to us. It was eerily silent otherwise. The building next door was just as creepy. It wouldn't have been creepy if there had been more people around. Although I also wish we'd come at a time when they were filming something. Oh well.

After that we went to a large shopping mall, where I got to dine with a Moomin. (Moomins are strangely popular here. I can hardly remember them anymore, but I know I read the books as a kid.)

On the second day, it was raining hard-core, and our plans were kind of ruined. We went out to Fukuoka tower. You can see Argentina from up there. (Well, there was a sign that said Argentina was in that direction.) We also stopped by the robo-center and saw an Aibo show. Aibo's are Sony's robot dogs, and they are kind of cute, although I don't know why you would want one.

After that we just did some more shopping, and the day was kind of uneventful. (We had planned to check out the library, probably "the largest in all of Kyushu," but it was randomly closed.)

The third day we were going to be leaving, but we used the morning to head out to Nokoshima, which supposedly had a beautiful flower park. It did, but -- aside from that field, there weren't that many flowers. And it was cold, and the weather was shitty. :( After that we headed back home via Shinkansen.

OKAY. And that's basically what Fukuoka was. My friend and I are convinced Fukuoka isn't really a part of Japan though, because there was no Karaoke (okay, just one creepy looking one that offered "second wedding parties,") and every other vending machine offered Mountain Dew. Don't tell me you've seen Mountain Dew in Kansai, I KNOW it exists, but it's nowhere near as prominent as it was in Fukuoka. :X Yeah.


In other news, I got new camera batteries! Hurray!]]> http://www.avalon-lost.net/japain/index.php?entry=entry080409-185547 2008-04-09T00:00:00Z 2008-04-09T00:00:00Z
Because in this case, "Jero" refers to an enka singer. He's currently very big right now, and released a song called Umiyuki.

You should probably click that link before you read on, but I know most of you won't. ;) If you did, you might have noticed something strange: instead of a Japanese man in a suit, it's a young black guy in hip-hop wear. Yep, Jero is in fact American, and has actually garnered Japanese attention. Personally, I think it's the novelty; how many non-Japanese people sing Enka at all? And he's young and "hip" at that.

So why is it that almost everybody at Kansai Gaidai has come to dislike Jero, or at least be really sick of him? Well, in class, we've been watching a lot of interviews with him in them. (I now know that his grandmother is Japanese, and that he got to like Enka because of her, and that his dream is to be on the NHK Kouhaku utagassen.) The school is very, very fond of Jero.

Because he used to be a student here. That's right, I am now somehow CONNECTED to a famous person, lol. He was apparently at the school a couple of weeks ago, and one of the interviews takes place in the student lounge here. It's sort of interesting, I guess. If I ever see him, I can call him "sempai" (senior).

(Although right now, Jero is only slightly higher on my list than Jello. XD)]]> http://www.avalon-lost.net/japain/index.php?entry=entry080403-034039 2008-04-03T00:00:00Z 2008-04-03T00:00:00Z