What is that? -Nothing, is from the wizard's tower.

Sorry about the lack of updates. The combination of my only being able to get online at school and all the stuff I've been doing making me extremely busy has made it a bit hard, but I've finally gotten a good chunk of time where I can sit down and type an entry.

Hmm... how far back do I need to go...? Oh, oh, two weekends ago. Asuka trip. That's the last thing I haven't written about. So we had a class field trip to Asuka, which is a very historical section of Japan. It was a big bike trip! It required me to take the train to Tambabashi all by myself, which was a bit scary, but I made it all hunky dory and ok, though I wasn't sure if I was going to make it on time, so I took the bus (of which this is *also* the first time I'd taken it by myself, but that's not really important). The day turned out to be quite wonderful aside from the fact that I had a horrible cold that weekend. The countryside was absolutely beautiful! Asuka is surrounded by mountains and forests, and all throughout it there are enormous rice fields stretching out with red flowers along the edges. It was so beautiful! Definitely had to be just about the prettiest bike ride I've ever taken! We went around and toured a bunch of different temples and shrines, then went to a historical museum. It was really fun, though more than a bit tiring, especially with the whole cold thing. Though it was really funny because Dave's in my class too, and he missed the first bus, so I was constantly texting him and trying to get him caught up with us, which including a number of very vague directions and a long winding road, but he finally made it. It made me laugh. I also met a lot of new people which was quite fun, especially since we had some interesting conversations about old anime shows like Ronin Warriors.

Anyway, the rest of that weekend was spent relaxing and trying to get over my cold, so not a whole lot of interesting things. I had a lesson test on Wednesday, which was not fun, but I think it went pretty well!! I've been doing good on my vocabulary tests, and I think I studied well for it. I haven't gotten it back yet though, so we'll have to see.

Anyway, the next weekend... included quite the exciting day out with my friends! We went to Kyoto to go explore and find some shrines and temples that we'd heard about. Unfortunately, we didn't *really* know where any of them were without a map, so it was quite the experience, let me tell you. We went to Heian shrine first, which was a huuuge Shinto shrine, and very pretty! We wanted to go to the garden in the back as well, but it cost 500 yen, and considering all the rest of the walking that we were going to do that day, we decided against it. I ended up getting a really cute Genbu charm for my phone though, and it made me happy. After that, we traversed to a huge Buddhist temple area that was filled with tons of trees and random small shrines. There was also this big bridge with an aqueduct on top of it that we decided to walk along until we got to this random house. It was really pretty walking, though really high up, as it basically dropped off only a few feet from the aqueduct. We explored for a little while further and then decided to find some food.

When we left, we took a random road hoping to get back to the station area, but we didn't really know where it went. We ended up finding ourselves in this really... rich part of town. Though it was kind of scary, actually, because we pretty much decided that it was probably a Yakuza area, which was both hilarious and frightening at the same time. But after getting lost in there for a while, we got back to a main street where we found the zoo and then were able to figure out where we were! We also found a huge little cafe that we ate lunch at. They had some delicious spagetti, let me tell ya.

Anyway, after that, we wanted to try to get to this temple called Ginkakuji, because Vicki had been there before when she came to Japan some four years ago. Unfortunately, it was quite a ways away. We ended up basically walking through Kyoto University, which was indeed, interesting to see, especially this really, random run-down dorm with tons of kids playing insruments outside of it. It was very strange, and none of us knew what to make of it. We walked... probably an hour. I can't even lie. It was a long time. We finally made it to this area filled with more touristy shops and small restaurants... and tons of foreigners, ahaha. But we knew we were at the temple. The only thing we hadn't counted on was the temple being under construction! We could still go in, but there wouldn't be as much to see, and it was going to close soon anyway, so we decided not to. Instead, we got some snacks at one of the small restaurants, including some delicious lemon ice and dango, and then did a bit of shopping around the area before making our way back to the station.

As it had gotten quite late by the time we got back, we began looking for a place to eat. Finding a place to eat is both fun and frustrating, I must say. It's really amusing, because almost all Japanese restaurants have these displays of plastic food outside with prices and everything. A lot of it tends to be a bit expensive though, which is the frustrating part. We found a restaurant that wasn't too bad though, and also had just about the most amusing name ever: Bikkuri Donki. Which... means Surprise Donkey. Or, as we put it... Surprise!!!! Donkey. It was highly amusing. And they had some good food too - it was all these different types of hamburger steak. Needless to say, the entire dinner was highly entertaining as we were all really tired but strangely hyper, and everything kept making us laugh, and when we got some dessert drinks, Vicki's turned out to be absolutely GINORMOUS. I got a drink called Wakaba Monogatari, which was a delicious green tea... milk... thing... not sure what it was, but it was good. I really do love green tea. In any form (even muffins! of which I had one at Seattle's Best the other day, yum). I will be quite sad when I come back and don't have all this green tea stuff anymore, ahaha.

The rest of this last weekend was spent doing homework whilst watching Return of the King on TV. Oh yeah, and I went to Tsutaya the other day, which is this awesome place where you can rent DVDs and CDs. It was so much fun. I found a CD of Captain Straydum that I didn't have which made me really excited, and then I found old VHS's of the original Digimon series, so I obviously had to get those because seriously... that's just awesome. I might end up renting like... the entire series before I come back simply because it's that awesome. I also got the first DVD of Ojamajo Doremi, my favorite show that I've never actually seen, which I'm also quite joyous about, although I haven't figured out how to get it to play on my laptop yet. I changed my region to 2, but for some reason, it's still not liking me. Hopefully I will figure it out soon.
Anyway though, it's pretty awesome, I can't even lie. I'll have to see what other kinds of CDs and such they have there!

Well, that's about it for now. I have to get headed off for class soon, so the pictures will have to wait. I've got a bunch from both the Asuka trip and the Kyoto trip though, so look forward to them!!!

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