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Published: November 17th 2008
Giant Ferris Wheel
This was near the Osaka aquarium. It was so impressive, that we decided to ride it, ahaha. It was pretty fun.First of all, sorry about the major lack of updates. I really am bad about keeping up with these things.
Secondly... I FOUND MY BRAVE FENCER MUSASHI MANGA. After many months of searching... and an enormous amount of Book-Offs... I found them. And I'm so happy now. Very, very happy.
Anyways, today will mainly just consist of a bunch of random pictures from the many things I've done the last couple of weeks. Pretty much just my favorites. I took millions more, so when I get home, everyone can see all of them, but for now, it would take me about 2 days to upload them all, so I'll just do this.
But to make up for it, I have a great story. Yesss.
Today was a field trip to a Buddhist temple… uh… I forget the name. Oh yeah, I have a pamphlet for it. Nishi Hongwanji. Anyways, it was in Kyoto. We got a message about it in our mailboxes since it’s actually for the Buddhism class, but since we were in the Religions in Japan class, Professor Kenney invited us to go as well, so we thought ‘what the heck’.
The day started off
Cute Penguins
They had penguins at the aquarium! They were so cute!! fairly normal, and aside from walking a bit too far and missing the station once we were in Kyoto, it didn’t take us much work to meet up with the group and grab a bite to eat from the Ramen Street on the 10th floor of the Isetan store. We then begin the short jaunt over to the giant temple. It was quite large. Well, the whole complex. The individual buildings were pretty big too, though not as big as the Todaiji Temple that we went to see in Nara on Tuesday. But that’s another story.
Anyways, we had two guides for our tour – one was an American guy originally from Minnesota who actually went to Kansai Gaidai, whose name was Henry Adams. The other was one of his friends who was attending the Buddhist priest… ordainment school (?) with him. Oh, and he was Japanese, though he had also attended Kansai Gaidai and was a pro hip-hop dancer before he decided to become a priest. And I’ll also add that he was rather attractive.
Anyways, it was fairly normal at first. They gave us a tour, we went to part of a service that was going
WHALESHARK
The famed whaleshark of the Osaka Aquarium. It's the only aquarium in the world that has one, and they have two. on there, and then we went across the street a ways to the ‘International Culture Center’ or something, where they were going to talk to us for a while and answer our questions and stuff (and it was mainly the American guy talking for most of the time). Again, fairly normal though pretty interesting. Finally, when he was done, he told the Japanese guy, who’s name was Saito-san, to come and talk to us. And that’s when it started to get hilarious.
Saito-san spoke pretty good English, but… it took him a while to think of what he wanted to say, and he didn’t always say things right. Or he just said hilarious things.
For instance, he was going through what his daily life was like in the dorm for the school…
(to Henry) When did you say you got up again?
Seven. I usually get up around seven.
Six. We have six. (jealous face – he writes 6:00 up on the blackboard) Ok, so at six, we wake up. (writes “Wak up.” on the board). Oh wait, that’s wak up. (changes it to “Wake up.”) After we wake up, we clean up. Wake up, clean
In the Ferris Wheel
Dave, Casey and Vicki in the ferris wheel. It went really high. up, service… holy shit! (is surprised by how much he has to do) Oh, whoops! Sorry, sorry. (turns towards the Buddha statue in the alcove) Sorry, sorry.
(laughing profusely)
This goes on with many other hilarious instances including him spelling everybody as “e’body”, explaining his time spent abroad as when he went to “the Canada” and he “didn’t know what the hell anyone was saying”, and then him griping about how many services he has to go to, and how he doesn’t know much about Buddhism, but he knows a lot about dancing!! Seriously, it was hilarious. And imagine all of this in rather broken English where I’m pretty sure he wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying half the time.
Anyways, after the lecture’ish thing, the trip was over, so Kenney just let us all head back home. A short ways from the center though, Casey, Ellen and I ran across a Lawsons (which is a convenience store in Japan… they’re everywhere, seriously), and were impressed because this Lawsons was apparently a Lawsons Plus, complete with a sitting area and a fancy-schmancy little garden. So we decided to stop and get a snack.
View from the Top
And a subsequent view from the ferris wheel. I got some amazingly delicious corn… mayonnaise bread… (trust me, it’s good) as well as what I *thought* was milk, because I really, really, really wanted milk as I haven’t had any since I got here. The carton was black and had what looked like milk on it, and it was called “New Sun King”. Not really sure about that.
So we get our stuff, and I proceed to have a rather humorous conversation with the cashier:
England? Are you from England?
Ah, iie. Amerika kara kimashita. (No, I’m from America).
Oh? Jyōzu! Nihongo de jyōzu! (You’re very good at Japanese!)
(embarassed) Iie, iie. Heta desu. (No, no, I’m bad.)
Where in America?
Iowa-shu. (Iowa)
Ahaha. Potato?
Er, uh, iie. Ko-n? (I don’t know how to say corn in Japanese) Corn.
Ah, corn. Corn. (hands me my bag of things) Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Right…
Anyways, we sit down and enjoy our things that we bought, except that I really don’t like the drink. It’s definitely not milk. In fact, it tastes really strange, and none of us are able to figure out what it
Tenrikyo Main Headquarters
On a field trip to Tenri for my religions class, we visited the Tenrikyo main headquarters, which is one of the new religions we learned about in class. It was quite large. is. So we were there for about… five… ten minutes maybe? And guess who should walk into the store? Why, Henry and Saito! How strange is that? They come in and see us and wave, then they walk around and get food. I was expecting them to get their food and walk out, but they actually decided to sit down too. They were a few tables away from us. So the three of us are laughing because how random is that? But in the end, we finally decide that we should leave to get back to our host families for dinner, so we pack up our things and make our way to the trash can by the door. On the way though, the two of them wave towards us, and I get this really random urge, so I walk over with my carton of unknown liquid and ask them if they know what it is. Of course, this makes Casey and Ellen laugh and then both Henry and Saito scrutinize the carton because they’d never seen it before. Henry’s attempting to figure out exactly what the kanji on the front of it means when Saito just reaches out and grabs
Festival Time
The weekend of the school festival! It was extremely crazy. Basically, there were people everywhere selling food, and they would constantly run up to you and try to get you to buy it. And what was really funny was when they tried really, really hard to use English. Then you just felt like you had to buy some because they tried so hard! it from me and takes a drink from it. He agrees that it’s rather strange, but ‘definitely not milk.’ Ahahaha. It turns out that it’s some sort of yogurt drink (which would explain the rather sour taste it had), and apparently, the front kanji read something along the lines of ‘White Bacteria Reducing Drink’ or something, LOL. What is that??? Saito explained that it’s apparently a Japanese thing, much like the breathing mask thing he was wearing (which indeed, is a very Japanese thing, especially since foreigners look like absolute idiots when they wear them).
But anyway, I thank both of them amidst laughter from my friends, then we say goodbye and leave.
Whereupon I take another drink from my yogurt liquid, because who can resist? It’s a second-hand kiss, muahahahaha. We’re then laughing about THAT for quite some time. Seriously, what are the odds?
We then proceed to walk back towards the station, when we randomly get accosted by this old Japanese man who spoke pretty good English, but seemed adament on explaining us random history lessons about America. America. He asked what state we were all from, then asked Casey if she knew why New
Tenpura Ice-cream, anyone?
I had to take a picure of this sign at the festival because it was so insanely adorable. York was called the Big Apple. He proceeded to tell us. He also asked if we knew why Wall Street was called Wall Street. He proceeded to tell us. Then he had us read some random dictionary that he was apparently writing to check for errors in English. He was so weird! He just kept talking… and talking… and we’re like… trying to inch away… then he was asking us how much Japanese we knew, and told us that we would definitely have Japanese mastered by the time we left. Uh, sure. WHY DO WE ATTRACT ALL THE WEIRD PEOPLE??? I don’t know. It was so strange. So. So. Strange.
As if to top it all off, the train on the way back home was jam-packed. Absolutely jam-packed. As in I COULDN’T MOVE. Plus, I was surrounded by high-school boys in school uniforms. And they were pretty cute. But apparently, they were talking about us, ahaha. I was simply doing my best not to fall into any of them or the random man leaning on the bar I was gripping on for dear life. Needless to say, it was a very long train ride.
That’s about it, though.
Band Concert
I went to Eriko's band concert during the festival, and it was so much fun. Strangely, it felt... exACTLY THE SAME as band concerts in America. Seriously. Even the same music. It kinda made me miss band. T_T It was quite definitely one of the most random days ever. And I’m glad we decided to go on the field trip, because we didn’t think we were going to at first. XD
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