New Job

Ok so after doing a little bit of research, I stumbled upon an in-progress translation for Jump Ultimate Stars that currently needs a lot of help in the translation department. A couple of the programmers changed the font so that it displays in half-width (8 pixels across instead of 16) instead of a true Variable Width Font. Subsequently after a little font hacking, the text looks really good compared to what it used to be. Anyhow, other people are going to be left to the graphic and programming hacking, while I will be the current lone translator on the project. Apparently all of the others lost interest and left. I also played around a little bit with the beta of the game and it seems that all of the main text is translated... But very badly. The grammar is pretty bad and there are spelling mistakes all over. I want to work on fixing that part up first, but the group leader is going to have me finish the parts still in Japanese. Cool. Introduction into the translation world!

In other news, I left my DS at home today. I don't know what I was thinking, but it must have been something along the lines of "Hey now that my camera is working, I'll take tons of pictures instead!!" Yeah, no. It didn't work out that way. I went to Anthro class in the morning which only had about half attendance because of Golden Week. It was also good because the class was only 2 hours long instead of the normal 3. For the rest of the time I chatted with Nick and "4 letter name guy" who let me join their group. After that I met Michael for the pizza buffet at Shakey's. For Japanese pizza it is pretty good. The price is especially good at lunch time, but way overpriced otherwise. I enjoyed probably 2 entire pizza's worth of food, along with 2 huge glasses of water, and many, many potato skins. Needless to say I walked out of there happy ^_^

We then planned on meeting Daniel and playing some DS when "OH NO!" I left mine at home... I instead exchanged money at the bank and went to the Igo club to ask about buying a board. Sadly the owner was not much help. He told me to ask the other club members. Gah! So Michael and I eventually met Daniel at Toyama Park and talked for a good 2 hours. At this point Michael decided to return home, I had some books to buy, and Daniel had different books to buy. We parted our separate ways.

So I finally got my Japanese books for this semester. One of them looks pretty decent. It is by the Japan Times entitled 中級から上級へ日本語 which means "from middle to high level Japanese." The other book is the continuation of the listening book which I absolutely loath. Maybe it will be better this semester.... Maybe.... After this I stopped by the local book off and picked up $20 worth of books (that's 20 books folks). Some of the notable ones were the original Japanese version of Haruki Murakami's "Dance Dance Dance" and "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World". I figure that since I have already read them in English, the Japanese version would be easier to read. On the way home I read a little bit of the first one, understood most of it, but there are still many kanji I do not know. Work work work right?

Oh yeah, yesterday I stayed home most of the day. My host family took me and Fabian out to sushi at this place that is apparently famous. It is called "Bidori Sushi" and I do not know the Kanji. It looked really expensive, but as expected was really really delicious!

Gasp!! Out of the House!!

I made it out of the house on Sunday and Monday! Sunday I wanted to check out Shimokitazawa because my group in Anthropology is doing a video about it. I figure that I should get my bearings and at the very least see what was there. Vaso decided to come along on my journey. We walked around talking and checking out all the little allyways filled with stores. I was on a mission to buy an Igo board and some sandals. I specifically wanted sandals because it is getting close to summer. Oddly enough, we stopped by a kimono store and I ended up buying some cheap traditional sandals. They are pretty sweet. I also wanted to get a belt for my yukata, but they cost way more than the sandals did. Come on! It is a long piece of cloth!

We wandered around and ended up at an okonomiyaki place that had a huge line in front of it. It had to be good right? We got in line and waited almost 40 minutes before entering the building. The waitress took our order while we were still standing in line, but we still had to wait another 10 minutes for them to cook our "all mix" okonomiyaki. It was really cool because everyone was sitting in a bar-like setting around a giant hot frying pan. The cooks made all of the food in front of everybody. I must say that our okonomiyaki was the best I have tasted outside of Osaka. It was more like Hiroshima okonomiyaki because it had soba in the middle.

Later on, we went to Shinjuku in search of an Igo board. I had previously seen one at the Tokyu Hands in Takeshimaya, so that was our first stop. After wandering the 13 floor department store for about an hour, we finally found the board game section. To my dissapointment, the go boards that they had were really cheap with plastic stones. Needless to say I did not buy one. I emailed a couple friends from my club and they told me to ask the owner of the go place next time I go. Good idea. Anyway, Vaso and I bought some candy then decided to go home. It was too dark to go to Yoyogi park and we wanted to get home for dinner.

Monday was a little more interesting. I woke up early and started on my laundry. Soon after I got an email from Sheung Sheung saying that her plans had been cancelled and she was free to hang out with me. The only catch is that she is lazy and would not be out of the house until 2pm. Fine with me.

I spent the morning researching rom translation. Over the summer I tried my hand at some simple text translation of the GBA game Mother 3. It was going fairly well as I had the bulk of the pause and battle menu translated. Then I ran into the problem of actually inserting other code into the game. There is this thing called Variable Width Text (VWF) which English uses and Japanese doesn't. It basically means that all Japanese characters fit into a 16x16 pixel box, while in English the characters will be closer or further apart depending on how big the character is. For instance, typing 3 "i"s will take up less space than typing 3 "o"s. This poses the problem that English text looks terrible when using the Japanese system. Anywho, I never got around to learning how to program and gave up on the project. I was also pressed for time preparing to come to Japan.

So this time around I have started the translation of a game called Jump Ultimate Stars for the DS. At the moment no DS translation has been finished. Also, I wanted to choose a game that nobody else has started on (the Mother 3 translation is well underway.) I spent all morning on Monday figuring out where the text is stored and the control codes to access them. This will pose a slightly bigger problem than my previous attempt because the game uses kanji. Not only is there the 52 roman alphabet, the 100 katakana and hiragana, but also the 2000+ kanji. There may not be that many actually used in the game, but after looking at the code they are all there. Hopefully I will be able to develop a pattern as to automatically fill in all the kanji instead of me finding the code for each one.

Anyhow, I made some good progress and this morning got to the point where I could insert my own text. Here is a screenshot of the first working English text insertion:



As you can see, each English letter is taking up a "block" of space making it look bad and not allowing very long sentences. My current goal is to get all of the text from the game dumped into a nice little text file for easy translation. Once that is done, I will worry about figuring out all the VWF stuff. This stuff is fun I swear!!!

Back to Monday ^_^

I met up with Sheung Sheung at 3pm in Harajuku only to find out that the Snoopy store is no longer there! It has been replaced by a clothes store instead!! Lame. We did not spend any time in Harajuku, but instead walked through Yoyogi Park and Meiji Jingu. It was nice and peaceful. After that we decided to walk to Shinjuku as Sheung Sheung wanted to buy a camera. Her old one is broken apparently. We walked all the way to the Yodobashi Camera and she spent the next hour browsing the different models of cameras, finally decided on a brand that I had never heard of before. I like my Cannon ultra portable cameras!

Next up was dinner. I wanted to go to Shin-Okubo to check out the Korean restaurants so we started walking. The Korean food was all really expensive, running from 1500 - 2000 yen a meal!!! That being out of both of our price ranges, we hit up a local Chinese place instead for some Gyoza and Noodles. Finally, we figured that since it was close, we might as well just walk to Takadanobaba as well. We stopped by the Mister Donut for desert and headed towards the station. We decided to play billiards along the way and I knew of a couple places right near the station. We chose a random one and got right in. Sheung Sheung is fairly good at pool. She beat me the first two games and I won the second two. At this our hour was up so we decided to leave it as a tie and head home. For being a student, we both got discounts, but because Sheung Sheung is a girl, she got an extra discount! Lame! I can pass as a girl right?

Waterlogged Camera

So I don't remember if I mentioned that after bringing my camera back home and charging the battery, it turned on! Well at least it still kinda worked. The screen was completely white, but I could still take pictures I thought. Being very careful (cause who knows what a waterlogged camera will do!) I locked the memory card and managed to extract all the pics to my computer. Oh what a sweet day that was! So then I put my camera away and started naming all the pictures...

So today I decided to take another crack at it. I finally found a screwdriver at home that was small enough to take out the screws and got to work. It was a simple operation really. After taking the casing off, I disconnected and then reconnected the cables to the screen. I found out that when I put it back together previously, I had not pushed the cables in all the way, hence the white screen. I turned it on and viola!!! My camera is back and working again! I am not exactly sure for how long it will work, but I will use it until it dies. When turning it on the gears to push out the lens make a slightly more screeching sound than they did before. It is like the gears are starting to rust or something. There really isn't anything I can do about that at this point. Let's just hope that it keeps working!

And here is the picture to prove that it is working again:

And Days Go Bye

First of all I will not let this weekend turn out like the last one. Although, it is already looking like it...

Friday was sadly just a normal day around campus. Before I got to campus I emailed all my friends to see who could hang out over the weekend. During the course of the day, replies trickled in. The majority of them saying "I am not free sorry." It's gonna be another weekend by myself.

In Japanese class I had to give a presentation about my hometown of Bryan. I found it to be really weird that we are doing them at the beginning of second semester instead of first. Anyhow, two people (John and I,) along with some technical difficulties took up the entire first hour of class. Kelly was supposed to give her speech too, but her powerpoint was not working. If it were me I would have done it anyway. During the end of class, Taiki showed up to watch the presentations. Since they were already over, we spent the last 45 minutes simply talking about the differences between Japanese and other schools. For lunch John, Taiki, and I grabbed bento and ate in the 22 lounge.

I also stopped by Michiyo's office to get my money for my teiki. It is depressing to think that I only have 3 months left here! I don't need to get anymore money for my transportation from here on out!

So I went to my other 2 classes and then over to Go club. This time I played a bunch of games on the 13x13 board, and managed to do fairly well with only a 3 stone handicap. I still need to learn more of the basics of expanding and protecting.

Saturday was sadly the same as last weekend... I have an excuse though! It was raining and difficult to get out of the house. Instead I tried finishing all my homework for the weekend (which failed btw.) I did get to play some games and watch some TV.

I will leave the house today. Somewhere around 1pm sounds about right.

Drink Drink Drink!!

On Wednesday I went to Japanese class in the morning, hung around the lounge during the afternoon, and eventually made it to Takadanobaba to meet with the Igo club. They were holding their yearly party to celebrate the new members to the club. I met up with them at 5:30 at the rotary. Once everyone got together, we went to the nearby Izakaya. There were a ton of people there! With about 10 new members and 30 existing ones, we took up an entire room and then some. One of the non-members who attended was this French guy who went by the name of Juan. He is in Tokyo for 2 weeks and apparently is really good at Igo. The bad part is that he does not know any Japanese above "hello" so I ended up translating for him a part of the time.

The party mainly consisted of people introducing themselves the entire time. Of course, this was not the normal introduction, but the drinking-game introduction. It went a little something like this. One person stood up and downed whatever was in their glass. If they drank it too fast they were poured another glass and forced to do it again. Next they said their name, hometown, major, and what they hope to obtain in the coming year. After naming one of those, for instance and engineering major, all the engineering majors stood up and had a toast. This went on until about 8pm. Needless to say, everyone drank too much. We toasted to world peace, getting stronger at Igo, graduating on time, living in Tokyo, having new members, etc. Pretty much anything and everything was made into a toast. There was also some pretty decent food like yakisoba and karage which I took full advantage of. Once we got kicked out of the place, I was extremely surprised to find that I was not expected to pay anything. I nice nomikai like this and I don't have to pay? They said that it is the only time that they all go out drinking so it is alright.

Next was the second party. In my experience, the second party consists of going to karaoke, bowling, puri-kura, ect. This time they wanted to go out drinking more. I figured what the hey? It is still early and I will probably never see all of them smashed like this, so I decided to tag along. The second party was the same deal as the first, but everyone sat around socializing (or sleeping). I was glad to see that there was much less alcohol and much more food. Also, nobody managed to get sick, which is amazing in my book. Once again they told me not to pay...

Finally 11pm rolled around and we had to get going. Some people opted to go to the 3rd party, which happened to be all night karaoke. Under any other circumstances, I would have gone, but I had 1-3 period classes in the morning. It was already bad enough that I would get home past midnight. If I went, there would be no way to make it to class.

Today I woke up bright and early... Hungover of course. I seriously thought about skipping classes, but because I opted out of karaoke, I made myself get out of bed. In class this morning we went to the library to watch video's on different matsuri around Japan. Everyone broke into groups of two in order to choose a matsuri and do a 10 minute presentation about it. John Bruggers and I chose to do a taiko drum matsuri that takes place in Fukuoka. We only got the first minute or so of the 8 minute clip fully understood when our time was suddenly up. It was time to get back to doing real class. We had three Japanese helpers come in to teach us about characteristics ad personalities. I was put into a group with a girl named Yosshi. She described herself as being shy but positive. I described her as a person who likes music.

After class was over, Ren, Yosshi, and I went out to lunch. It was more like we bought bento and found a bench outside, but still, lunch! I found out that she really does like music, mostly the heavier rock and metal types. I am more of a lighter rock fan, but am willing to listen to anything. She eventually invited Ren and I to go see a concert with her. Nice. We exchanged phone numbers before heading off to class.

Sakurai Sensei's class is still the best thing ever. They guy is really interesting because he tells stories of his childhood that relate to the topic at hand. For instance, "You ask a priest what [nothingness] is and he will respond: nothingness is nothingness!" Interesting stuff about Buddhism. A person who is enlightened is called a Buddha. Once that person dies, they become a kami (god) and float around... Or do whatever kami like to do in their free time. This is by far my favorite class.

I went to the lounge, played FFCC with Michael and Daniel for about an hour, and talked with people who came in and out. I was going to go home, but decided to go to Igo and play a couple of games instead. I got to play against a new member today who was stronger than me. With a 5 stone handicap I only lost by 5 points. If I would have played in the spot to create a "net" I would have won by a landslide. I lost a huge group of stones in the beginning which I was not able to make up for. I will get better at Igo! Kanpai!

Good Weather = Good Day

The weather was absolutely gorgeous today! For me at least, it felt like t-shirt weather at a whopping 23 degrees! The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and most importantly there was no rain!

As usual, I was a bit late getting to class this morning. Ok well that is not entirely true. When I got to campus I spent a good five minutes talking to Steve in front of the Okuma statue. This became an every morning thing last semester, and looks like it will this time too. If I am late to campus, I am obviously late to class. If I am early to campus, I talk to Steve which makes me late for class. It is a win-win situation! Today was a rare day in Japanese class because I had to explain why I was late. I came to class 5-10 minutes late every day last semester and the teacher didn't say anything. She didn't even take it out of my attendance. So nice of her! This morning I also ran into none other than Shohei, one of the volunteers who helped us at the beginning of the year (Asuka being another one.) He is taking a law class which sounds pretty tough.

For lunch I met up with a giant group of people. The original plan was to have lunch with just Asuka, but from the looks of it, there were going to be 10+ people instead. Luckily, due to Steve's sister being in town, most of the group went with him. I stayed with Asuka and Sonja to have a nice and peaceful lunch. Too bad all the restaurants and bento places were packed. Asuka said it was because of all the new freshman... Figures... We eventually bought some snacks at the Coop and ate them on a bench in the middle of campus. Asuka taught me a little Miyazaki-ben (it is a small town way down in Kyushu). 食べちょちゃわ equals 食べている. Weird stuff!

Asaka went to class after we ate so I ended up talking to Sonja for the next hour. I had time to kill and nobody else was around. When she left for home, I read my book for another hour. Finally, Michael mailed me and asked if I wanted to play some Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles in the lounge. I did that for the next hour.

In the lounge I also got to meet some new people, namely this girl who goes by the name of Emily. She can speak 5 languages fluently (or well enough to communicate anyway), originally from Thailand, went to school in China, and now going to college in Japan. She looks and acts a lot like Shoko which I found to be comforting. I could almost predict what she was going to say about what I thought. Anyway, when asked about what I was doing in Japan, I gave her the rundown. Her response was simply:

"Well you chose the wrong country."

I chose the wrong country? Really? Sure Japan has its flaws, sure I hate Tokyo, but the wrong country? I suppose she is more able to say something like that because she has lived in other Asian and European countries before. It is just that she is the first person I have heard say that Japan sucks. Almost all other people hail Japan as being the capital of the would or so it seems. After that I pretty much decided that I needed to get to know her better. Really? A bad place? There has to be some deeper reasoning to that.

Luckily she wanted to go to the engineering campus and I happened to be there to take her. We walked, talked, got lost, and found the building she was going to. There I got to meet one of her Chinese Computer Science friends who could not speak English very well. He seemed like a pretty cool guy. So after this I told them I had to go to Igo club and departed. Before leaving campus however, I thought "what the hey?" and visited Yoshimoto Sensei in his office. Michiyo Sensei also happened to be there so I talked a little about the practicum. Fun stuff. I was told that I should visit more often to have fun and stuff.

Lastly, I made it to the Igo club. There were a surprisingly large number of people there. I ended up playing Tomo san a couple of times on the 9x9 board. I lost the first to times with a 0 and 2 stone handicap, but with 3 stones I managed to beat her. With that she told me that they were having a nomikai tomorrow and I was welcome to come. Cool, I may have to do that. Upon exchanging email addresses, I returned home.

Eyaaaaaaa!!!!

I finally made it out of the house today!!! This deserves a round of applause! *cue cricket noises*

.....Ok ok I guess it is not that big of news, but after a weekend of staying in, it was good to get out of the house. I have been chilling at home doing Japanese homework and playing on my beloved DS. I have missed quite a few games since January that I need to catch up on. There is also this book that Steve lent me called "Dance Dance Dance" by Haruki Murakami. I have made it about halfway through in the past few days. It involves this guy who is recently divorced, works in Tokyo, and trying to piece his life back together. Of course there are a ton of strange and obviously fictional events, but everyone needs to have a quirky side.

So today I got a load of laundry done (clean sheets!) and took a shower. I had been really lazy the past two days as well... I had previously emailed everyone to see what they were doing and from the replies I got made tentative plans. However, what I actually did for the day turned out to be completely different.

First of all I headed to Waseda and ran into Larisa and Eric. They told me that they were going to get some curry for lunch and I was welcome to join. Sweet. I was just going to eat at the Coop. It was the first time I had been to Malibar during lunch. The special is that you get as much Nan (bread) as you want as long as you are sitting in the store. Usually you get one piece per bowl of curry and then have to buy more if you want it. Needless to say I got my fill for the day. We finally got a chance to talk about what happened over spring break. I told my story about the daycare, they told theirs about the schools, and all was right with the world. It seems that everyone had a good time outside of Tokyo. Sad that we all had to return...

Anyway, the next thing on my agenda was to return two books to the SILS library that will be overdue soon. When I was maybe 50 meters away from the building, a large group including Steve, Kyle, Sonja, and Steve's sister Emily flagged me down. Emily is staying in Tokyo for the week to visit Steve. Their tentative plans involved going to Ueno Park and exploring that area. Sure why not? I've got nothing else planned for the day so I'll go! We headed for the local train station down the same path that I had just traversed the past 20 minutes. Not only had we just started when my favorite friend Asuka shows up going the other direction. I have not seen her in ages! Everyone spent a good half hour talking to her. The most interesting part was translating between Asuka and Emily. Some context really gets lost during translation. びっくりした！ and "I was surprised" just doesn't have the same feel from one language to the other.

Anyway, we got to Ueno and puttered around there for a while. The final stop on our journey was a large toy shop where Emily bought some souvenirs for someone at home. I jumped on a deal and bought a large stuffed pokemon named "Achamo". I don't know what the name is in English, but it is a fire starter that looks like a bird possibly from the advance series if anyone wants to help me out (Ed or Logan). From then on, Steve had to go to a meeting with his doctor friends. Kyle and I stayed around to "babysit" Emily. We went to Asakusa and checked out the thunder gate along with all those other little shops. An hour and a half later we met up with Steve at Ochanomizu and went out for Mexican food. I had a margarita and Enchilada which were surprisingly good. The only thing is, the portions were small and they were expensive. Ugh! I hate Japanese restaurants for that! I bought ice creme before heading home ^_^

Green Book

わかって使える日本語 is the worst Japanese grammar book I have ever used. Our teacher has been using it for the past year and I have just now realized what makes it so bad. One: The explanations are completely in Japanese, which would be perfectly fine except that the Japanese doesn't actually explain what the grammar is. All it does is tell you how to conjugate the said verb / adjective to go along with the new "grammar". Second: The exercises in the book are worthless. Instead of making your own sentences or having drills whether the new grammar works in a particular sentence or not, all you are doing is conjugating an already given verb in a pre-selected sentence.

WORTHLESS

I refuse to do any more homework from that book, graded or not.

Kyushu Trip

I finally got it all done. I spent a good chunk of yesterday finishing up writing my blog, and all morning today putting it up with pictures. It was way too much work and I hope never to have to do something like that again. My entire blog was longer than any research paper I have ever written! 15+ pages single spaced!

The weekend has been pretty slow. Friday I almost didn't go to class because it was raining so hard. When I got near Waseda the wind was so strong that it was not worth using an umbrella. Classes were boring as usual. That night nobody was around so I ended up going to Igo club and then coming home afterwards.

Saturday I stayed home all day because it was raining. I got caught up on everything except homework. I am now finally ready to sit down and get some good old fashioned studying done!

Tuesday, April 8 - Hakata / Fukuoka

I failed to set my alarm and ended up sleeping until 10:00. Since the room is almost pitch black, it was really easy to sleep in. I was lying there debating whether or not to get up, when I heard rustling from up above. Vaso had gotten up so I guess I should too. Check out time was 11am, which meant that we still had an hour until we had to get out. Since we payed for it, we decided to hit up the bath before leaving. It was just like any other hot springs. They even provided aka-sleeves, razors, and toothbrushes. No other hot springs does that! We freshened up and headed out.

We had previously decided not to spend too much time in Hakata because it was a big city and there was not too much to do here. We went to the information desk to grab a map and ask what there was to do around Hakata. Apparently there is a castle just like in every other city. That sounded like a perfectly valid option. We hopped on a train and went to Fukuoka castle. Sadly it was merely the castle ruins, but it was still pretty cool. Vaso and I split a bag of cotton candy with Doremon on it as a snack. We saw the castle ruins which were just a couple of walls and some stairs leading up to them. I don’t exactly know what happened to the castle because there were no signs explaining it, but it was interesting just the same. The sakura were still in bloom so we got to see a lot of pretty flowers.

Vaso and I found some benches near a lake that had swan boat floating around in it. I could not convince Vaso to go with me on one of the boats. “But it will be fun!” I kept saying. We ate our cotton candy and watched the Koi swim by when the unthinkable happened.

Vaso and I decided that it was time to head out and check out this “Fukuoka tower,” the tallest building in Fukuoka. I grabbed my bag and stood up. Just then I heard a small “splash” and looked into the lake to see a small silver object sink into the abyss. It took me a couple of seconds to take in what happened but once I realized, I turned to Vaso and very calmly said “My camera just fell into the lake.”

My camera had just fallen into the lake.

He responded with “Well it’s gone now.” I countered with “No, it’s not that deep, I can still get it.” Finally he told me “You better get it then!” At this I rolled up my sleeves and plunged my arms into the water. The water was only a couple feet deep, but I could not see what I was doing. I felt along the rocks until finally I latched my left hand around my beloved camera. After salvaging it from the water, I immediately took out the battery and the memory card. “Screw the camera! I want my 1500+ pictures that I have taken on this trip!!!” I thought. I dried off the memory card and battery and shoved them into my pocket. Now how am I supposed to dry the rest of my camera?

We walked along looking for a hardware store where I could purchase a small screwdriver. Instead of that, we ran into a photo printing place. I charged inside and asked if I could borrow a small screwdriver and canned air. They obliged, and I was hard at work opening up my camera to dry it off. I got most of it apart, and by using the canned air got most of it dry. After an hour and a half or so I put it back together and tried turning it on.

IT TURNED ON!!!

Sadly though, when I tried turning it off the lens would not retract. Yay, a dead camera… Once I got back to Tokyo I tried turning it on and it worked. It would take pictures with the flash and everything, but the screen was completely white. I need to get a small screwdriver and open it up again. I think that I did not get the screen plugged in all the way, which is why the screen is white. There is still hope!!!!

After that depressing moment, I decided that it was not worth pouting over and we headed towards the Fukuoka tower. Along the way we ran across a large stadium with people sitting around waiting. On closer inspection, a lot of them were wearing towels that said “Orange Range” on them. Are you kidding?!?!? There is going to be an Orange Range concert (one of my favorite bands) in Fukuoka, and we happened to stumble upon it? What luck. A passerbye tried to sell us tickets, but due to our flight leaving at 9pm, we could not attend the concert. Sucks!

We ended up at a bus stop and took a bus headed for the Fukuoka tower. It was much farther than we originally anticipated. We arrived and bought tickets up. It was really weird that the building is exclusively for sightseers to climb. It looks like a normal office building from the outside, but there is nothing on the inside but structure and empty space. It was similar to Tokyo tower, but without the tower part. It was a good view in any case. Sadly I could not take any pictures of the city. On the floor under the observation deck there were sofa’s on each of the four corners. I secured one of these and spent about an hour just sitting and looking out towards the sea. On that same floor there was a compass in them middle that supposedly grants good luck towards love. You face the house of the person you love and make a wish. It is supposed to come true. I faced towards Tokyo and made a wish that has yet to come true.

Back on the ground Vaso and I visited the beach. I took a walk by myself along the sea. Barefoot and with pants rolled up I walked along the shoreline as the sun went down. It was very relaxing. Shortly thereafter, Vaso and I decided that we should head back to the airport and check-in as to not miss our flight. We got the airport a little before 8pm and checked in. The person behind the counter said that planes were running late due to bad weather in Tokyo. She asked us if we wanted to be bumped up a flight and we said yes. We got put on the 8pm flight which was delayed until about 9pm. The security for domestic flights in Japan was very lax. We did not have to take our shoes off and did not get scanned even though we were obviously foreign. Vaso was still carrying his wooden sword which was considered a prohibited item. The took it from him and gave a voucher to pick it up once we arrived in Tokyo. Before departing we ate at a small Udon/Soba shop.

We arrived in Tokyo at about 10:30, it was just enough time to catch my last train home. Of course my host family was worried about our flight being delayed, but it is alright now. I made it home to Tokyo in one piece.

Monday, April 7 - Nagasaki Day 3

I was not planning on staying in Nagasaki this long, but there were still things I wanted to see. I grabbed a sandwich and onigiri for breakfast from the nearby conbini. It was raining outside and I was glad that my umbrella finally came in handy. Vaso woke up by the time I finished my breakfast. As he was out getting food, I asked Shingo what else there was to do in Nagasaki. He recommended that we go to the local island called Ioujima. I took his advice and informed Vaso that was our plan for the day.



The first stop on our list was the peace museum. We failed to make it their our first day in Nagasaki because it was pretty late by the time we arrived. We took a streetcar to the peace park again and headed straight for the museum. Compared to the museum in Hiroshima, it was not that great. The place was small and had little to no exhibits. Still, it got the job done of warning everyone how bad a nuclear war would be.



Next up we headed to the harbor. Shingo warned us that there were not any restaurants on the islond, so we bought lunches to take with us. Ioujima island had a special deal going on during the “winter” season that $10 gets you a round trip ticket to the island and access to the hot springs once there. The catch is that you have to go to the hot springs in order to receive your ticket back home.



After arriving on the island, the first thing that I noticed was the utter lack of people. It was like Miyajima, but without all the tourists. The only people there were the inhabitants of the island. Near the dock, we found a place to rent bikes for 300 yen for 2 hours, and we jumped on that. The island is rather large and you can’t see much of it by just walking. We followed the signs to the local beach, Costa del Sol. As expected, there was no one as far as the eye could see. It was especially weird because I felt like the island would be a great vacation place. There were playgrounds with no kids, roads with no cars, and houses with no people. It felt like a dead island. Anyway, we found a nice place along the beach to eat our lunch and reflect on our journey thus far.



Let the biking begin! We started off on the main roads heading up and down various mountains. We ended up walking through a bamboo forest and taking our bikes off the beaten path. The air was clean and refreshing. The forests were untouched. The view was once again amazing. After biking around until our 2 hours expired, we headed to the hot springs for a nice bath. I’ve got to say that it was one of the nicer hot springs I have been to. They had a sauna, inside and outside baths, and a very clean wash room. Inside there were 3 different baths to choose from: one made of bamboo, one wood, and one stone. Each gave the water a unique color and feel. Outside there was the normal bath as well as 3 barrels with a little faucet of water flowing into them. Very original. I had a good time there. Vaso also started talking to this local Japanese person as well. He got me going in on the conversation and before long we had made another friend.



Upon returning to the hostel, we decided to head back towards Fukuoka. We said goodbye to Nana and Shingo, getting our picture with them.

Vaso and I agreed that it would be cool to explore more of Kyushu for the final day of our trip. We took the train to a stop called Tosu, which is about 30 minutes from Hakata. From there we were planning on taking a bus in the morning to a different city. The problem was, we could not find a place to stay. We checked out a couple of the business hotels, but they wanted a ton of money for a room. Vaso and I were not ready to pay that amount so we headed back to the train station. Vaso worked his magic on the train station guy and managed to get our tickets back. We continued our trip to Fukuoka. At Fukuoka we called a couple youth hostels, but it was too late for us to start checking in. We instead went out in search of cheap housing. By this time it was 11pm or so at night. Finally, we ended up staying in a capsule hotel. I was all ready to pay the $40 per night, but they mentioned that they had a student discount. It turned into a $30 capsule, complete with the bath. If one has not tried it, I recommend they stay in a capsule hotel at least once in their life.

We went upstairs and found lockers for all our stuff. The lockers were really small, but after taking a couple things out of the front pockets of my bookbag, I was able to fit everything in. We stripped naked and put on the yukata that they provided for us. By this time Vaso and I have become “Hadaka Tomodachi” (literally naked friends). It is nothing sexual, just that we are close enough to go to the hot springs together. Anyway, we were dead tired so we headed up to the capsule room and went right off to sleep. It took a while to get situated. Of the 6 floor building, only the top floor was where everyone slept. The first floor was reception and pachinko, second was lockers, third was the bath, fourth was a restaurant, fifth was a massage room, and the sixth was the capsules. Vaso and I got Capsule that were right on top of each other. The entire sixth floor is kept dark 24/7 so that people may sleep whenever. Each capsule had a little green light if it is reserved and no light if nobody is there. This helps the workers know which ones they can clean I guess. Inside the capsule was surprisingly spacious. I could sit straight up without hitting my head on the ceiling, and most importantly I could lie down without my feet sticking out. Instead of doors, the capsules had shades that you pull down to keep light and sound out. I always pictured doors, but that would be bad for breathing. Finally, there was a small television mounted on the ceiling, and a control panel for it mounted on the wall. The panel also had a clock with alarm and a radio. I fell asleep almost instantly and slept extremely well. It was that good.

Sunday, April 6 - Nagasaki Day 2

Upon waking up we found out that the Akari Hostel does not offer breakfast. We had to go scrounge out our own. Shingo gave us the rundown on how to get to the kite festival before leaving. Vaso and I jumped on a streetcar to the station and decided on the local Royal Host for breakfast. Japan has these things called “family restaurants” which are basically any restaurant you find in America. A menu with a bunch of different things on it, and most importantly a drink bar where you can get all the drinks you want. After we walked into the Royal Host and sat down, our friend Juan from the Hiroshima hostel showed up. We talked a bit, exchanged numbers, and he said he had a plane to catch. Yet another person that we just happen to run into again! Anyway, Vaso and I had pancakes which were actually pretty tasty. For drinkage we both had a ton of orange juice. The machine was full when we got there, and almost empty by the time we finished. I love unlimited drinks!

We asked our friends at the information desk (I say friends because we asked them how to get somewhere every time we came to the station) how to get to the kite festival. They gave us the number of the bus and we were off. The festival was held on top of this giant mountain, which the bus had quite a time climbing up. Even when we got to the bus stop, we still had a ways to climb by foot before reaching the summit.

We saw kites everywhere.



Kids, adults, men, woman, everyone was flying a kite. It was probably the coolest kite related thing I have ever seen. The professionals were battling in the preliminaries for a spot in the final tournament. Now you are probably thinking “kites? Tournament? What?” so let me explain. Kite flying came from the Dutch way back when, and so did this tournament. Basically, the pros use normal, diamond shaped kites with one string and have a one-on-one battle. The trick is that the first 50 feet or so of the string is coated in fiberglass! You literally try to cut your opponents string, sending his or her kite fluttering helplessly to the ground! It is the coolest thing I have ever heard of in the world of kites.



Anyway, Vaso and I wandered around taking in the sights and wondering where we could get our own kites to fly. Out of nowhere this nice old lady shows up and hands us two kits from her bag. She said that they were giving them out at the beginning of the festival for free and grabbed extra to hand out to people. What luck! Free kites! We spent the rest of the day flying, watching the shows they had on the stage, and flying some more. Along the way we got interviewed by a lady from the Japan Times and were told that we would be on American TV sometime. We will see about that. Shingo and Nana showed up a little after 1pm and flew kites with us. They proceeded to give us a ride down the mountain which was really nice of them.



We were dropped off in front of the Glover Skyway. Nana and Shingo said that it would be a good place to spend the rest of the day. We got into this huge elevator that took us up the side of a mountain. At the top we could see where we flew kites from on a nearby mountain. We took the opportunity to get some nice pictures of the city as well. A little further up we came across the Glover Home. This guy Glover started up trade with the port town of Nagasaki in the beginning of the 1900’s. He built his house on the side of a mountain facing the port so that he could oversee all the ships going into and out of the harbor. I guess eventually he became pretty famous and expanded his property towards the bottom of the mountain. The Glover Mansion is home to the first paved road and tennis courts of Japan. He was a pretty influential guy. Vaso and I wandered the grounds checking out all of the buildings. There were apparently a ton of servants for the Glover family and a bunch of guest houses. Some of the guesthouses turned into permanent residences for friends of the family. The compound was huge.



We walked all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. Thereafter we decided to check out the “Sky Ropeway” which was marked on our map. We ended up taking a bus over there. The ropeway is this really cool cable car that takes you up to the biggest mountain in Nagasaki. We hopped on and rode it up. At the top we came across another stunning view of the city. There were some old run-down buildings as well as another 2-person ropeway like thing on one side of the mountain. In the middle there were a couple television broadcast towers. On the other side was a big cylindrical building which you could climb. We of course walked up the stairs and were greeted with the best view in Nagasaki. Vaso and I spent some time trying to fly our kites, but for being on top of a mountain there was hardly any wind. We gave up and descended back down.



I really had high hopes for the skyway, but it was a pretty big letdown. We found out that there is also a small road that leads all the way up the mountain which defeats the purpose of the ropeway. Secondly there were the old abandoned buildings that looked like they used to be restaurants. It was sad because we would have eaten on top had there been any kind of food. Lastly, there simply wasn’t anything there. I feel like the owners had big plans for it, but for some reason the ropeway just didn’t catch on.



We caught a bus back to the station where we went shopping. Vaso ended up buying a pair of shoes. While he was looking I wandered the other stores, kite in hand, while getting a ton of weird looks. We were planning on going back to the hostel and chilling the rest of the night when we stumbled upon a movie theatre. Hey let’s see a movie! We checked the times and concluded that we would be able to return, take a shower, and make it back in time for the movie. That is exactly what we did.

We saw the movie entitled “Mongol”. It was a very odd experience in that the people were all speaking Mongolian and the movie had Japanese subtitles. It felt weird by only having the Japanese link to the movie and no English. I could read enough to understand the general idea of what was going on, but I am sure I missed out on a lot of the juicy details. Anyway, it was pretty, and bloody, and had a lot of running away in it. That night I slept like a log.

Saturday, April 5 - Nagasaki Day 1

We woke up and ate the buffet style breakfast again before packing up our things and heading out. We hopped on an early train to Hakata and made it there before 11am. At the ticket gate, Vaso started to freak out when the gate did not give him back his ticket. “We made it man! This is the last stop on the Shinkansen!” I told him. We thought about staying in Hakata, but decided that it would be best to head to Kyushu right away and come back when we are finished. It is much more difficult to travel Kyushu as there is no Shinkansen, and it might take more time than we think to see all the sights. We bought tickets to Nagasaki. There was this 4 ticket pack from Hakata to Nagasaki for $100. This provided Vaso and I with cheap transportation there and back. While waiting for the train, we spent an hour at the local McDonalds with some cheap coffee and snacks. We got on the train and found ourselves two seats. The train had leather seats! It was almost as good as the Shinkansen, but much slower obviously.



It took a little over 2 hours to get to Nagasaki. The train ride let Vaso and I duke it out in some Advance Wars. I finally was able to convince him to play it with me. As soon as we arrived, Vaso called up a local hostel and made us reservations. There was a jazz band playing at the station which we wanted to listen to, so I ventured out by myself in search of bento. Right by the station I ran into a bunch of high school students who were doing a survey about the atomic bomb in Nagasaki. Of course I obliged and filled out the form. The kid I was talking to was stunned that I was living in Tokyo studying at Waseda. I asked him where I could find some good food around the station and then snapped a picture with him.



Back at the jazz band, they were ending their act so we went upstairs and found a nice steak restaurant. Of course we ordered pasta, but that is besides the point ^_^ Check in time finally rolled around so we headed over to the hostel, by streetcar. Yes Nagasaki has streetcars as well, and they are much more convenient than the ones in Hiroshima. They actually take you where you want to go. On top of that, it is only 100 yen to go anywhere on the streetcar line.



The couple that owns the Akari Nagasaki Youth Hostel was really nice to us. The girl Nana graduated from Waseda . Once again we made more connections! After dropping our stuff off on our beds, we asked Shingo about the local kite festival in Nagasaki. He looked it up on the internet, found out when it started, how to get there, what to bring, and finally said that he wanted to go with us! We found plans for Sunday, that is for sure!



Nagasaki was also had an atomic bomb dropped on it three days after the one in Hiroshima. We decided to visit the peace park for the rest of the day. The peace park in Nagasaki is much more like a park than in Hiroshima. We both decided that it was much better laid out and had many more things to do. We saw the hypocenter of the bomb, peace statues, peace fountains, and many cherry blossom trees that were planted in remembrance of the bombing. We also visited a nearby Christian church that was destroyed and rebuilt after the bombing. We walked and walked and walked! We passed a graveyard that has this guy named “Glover” buried there. At the time we did not know what significance he had, more on that later.



We walked all the way back to the youth hostel and asked where some good places were to eat. They pointed us to the nearby Chinatown, which we also decided to walk to. The specialty in Kyushu is this thing called Chanpon.



It is like a ramen dish, but comes from China, uses noodles that are a bit thicker, and has a milky soup. Vaso and I found a place that had a super big size for only 1000 yen and decided to eat there. I am not going to lie, the Chanpon was amazing. Quite better than Okonomiyaki in Osaka. The rest of the China town was pretty lame. It was all small restaurants with only a few souvenir shops scattered about. We got lost on our way back to the hostel, but eventually found it. Sleep was good.

Friday, April 4 - Hiroshima and Miyajima

That morning after a fairly decent sleep, I got up and headed to the breakfast room. I found out that Vaso had gotten up before me and already eaten by the time I got there. Breakfast was buffet style with eggs, salad, toast, pasta, sausage, and fruit. Since it was all-you-could-eat, I grabbed a plateful to make sure it tided me over until dinner that night. While I was eating we talked to this student from Okinawa (the resort island of Japan). He told us that we could come and visit any time we like. I love all these connections that we are making!



We decided to go check out the peace park. Ever since arriving in Hiroshima, I have been wondering how much of the city was leveled 63 years ago. It seemed like a nice normal city on the outside, but most of the buildings have been built after the bombing in 1945. After passing an art museum on the way there and seeing that it was closed, we decided instead to check out Hiroshima castle first. We figured that at least the gardens would be open.



The castle was just like any other, a giant moat on the outside with giant walls surrounding the castle grounds. There were lots of trees and paths that all eventually converged and went to the castle. I thought it was interesting that the only real building left was the castle itself, positioned on the north-eastern end of the garden, right beside the moat. That seems like some bad planning on their part. If I were to build a castle I would put it in the middle of the grounds, not by the edge of the moat. Anyways, we spent quite a bit of time there taking in the scenery and taking pictures. Two things of note were 2 trees that were around 700 meters from the atomic bomb when it was dropped. They were re-planted in the castle grounds and are still living after everyone thought they would wither. This was just one of the many things that reminded people all over the city of the bombing.



Inside the castle was a museum with various exhibits from Hiroshima. The coolest thing was the ability to wear classic Japanese armor and clothes for free. Vaso and I jumped on that opportunity, making a lot of natives turn their heads when they saw us. The rest of the castle was not terribly interesting, but it offered a great view of the city.



Next we headed to the peace park. Our first stop along the way was the Genbaku-dome (Atomic Bomb Dome). It is the closest building to the bomb that was still standing after everything was said and done. It used to be an art exhibit place where various treasures of Hiroshima were stored. The building was eventually marked as a national treasure and is now a symbol of peace.



We moved onto the peace park and came upon a giant plaza. The eternal flame, which supposedly has been kept burning since the bomb in 1945 was the first thing that we came upon. I thought it was interesting that we could not find any signs about it.



A little further down was the A-Bomb Cenotapth which contains the record of all of those who perished from the bombing.



Finally we went to the museum. There was no picture taking allowed, but most of the museum was exhibits with a lot of reading. They also had video’s playing all over the place of the bombing. Among the more interesting and sad things were pictures of victim’s wounds, destroyed belongings, and their stories afterwards. There were life size models of what it probably looked like just minutes after the bomb hit of people covered in blood, clothes tattered, and buildings in shambles. It looked like a picture right out of a zombie video game. The hardest thing to believe was that this happened 63 years ago. During that time, there were no computers, nobody had gone to space, Einstein was still alive, and my parents were not born yet. Even so, the destructive power of that one bomb is stunning. With the advent of technology in this day and age, I do not even want to think how the destructive the bombs are these days. All the people in New York or the 12 million in Tokyo could be dead in an instant if a bomb were dropped today. Needless to say, it was a really humbling and sad place.

Vaso and I did not talk much at all during our visit to the peace park.

We met outside and decided to get bento for lunch. The nearby place said that it would take them 30 minutes to make the rice for our lunch, so we ordered and went for a walk. We picked up some drinks, sat by the river for a while, and discussed what we were going to do next. Grabbing our bento, we returned to the spot beside the river.



We decided to go to Miyajima. It is an island a little off the coast of Hiroshima that has the famous red gate built in the middle of the ocean. When the tide is down, you can walk all the way to the gate, but when it comes in, the gate is inaccessible and makes a stunningly beautiful place. The fastest way to get to the island was a speedboat from one of the rivers in Hiroshima. We headed over there and asked about it. They told us that since it was Sakura season, they were giving cherry blossom tours during the day and we would have to wait until 6pm to go to Miyajima. Luckily, they were nice and told us another way to get there. We were supposed to hop on a train to a stop called Miyajima and then take a 10 minute boat ride over. Upon wandering around for a bit and finally stopping to ask someone, we found out that there is no train. There is a streetcar. Much like those of San Francisco, a little one car train runs on tracks in the middle of the main streets in Hiroshima. Cool. We hopped on one and took it to Miyajima. The ferry to the island was super cheap and owned by JR. A one way ticket cost 170 yen! ($1.70)!



The island was absolutely beautiful. It is extremely under-populated. Most of the people there are tourist who like to stay on the beaten path. Vaso and I being the adventurous type, decided to wander off into the mountains. We arrived on the island and the first thing I noticed were deer. Yes there are deer wandering around trying to get food from the local tourists.



They are so used to people that you can go up and pet them, but are still considered wild animals. Anyway, we visited the gate in the water and the 5 story pagoda, then headed up a road to the mountains. We took a nice walk and found some sweet overhangs with views of the entire city.



Upon returning down the mountain, we stopped at a souvenier shop where I bought some trinkets. Vaso bought a wooden sword. Really? I could not believe that he was going to lug that thing all the way down to Kyushu and back. We found a nice bench overlooking the gate and sat there and talked until the sun went down. When it became dark, a boat traveled through the center of the gate, turned around, and traveled back out to sea. We got a bunch of cool pictures of the gate.



By this time we were starving, so we returned all the way back to Hiroshima station and grabbed some Udon for dinner. Then we headed back to the hostel for some shut eye. I did a load of laundry that night and went to bed.

Thursday, April 3 - Osaka and Himeji

Before leaving Osaka in the morning, we decided to check out a place called Namba. Apparently it is supposed to be the fun / party district of Osaka. We checked out, went to the station, and shoved our stuff into a locker. Namba was a pretty cool place. There were two streets that ran down the district with a really nice river between them. A trip to Namba and a walk down the river would be a perfect date for any young person. Much better than the sights of Tokyo. Namba felt a lot like Kabuki-cho, but without all the creepy people. Of course, it was pretty early in the morning. The only people out were probably those who didn’t want to go home after partying all night. We walked and walked, eventually ending up in Shinsaibashi. There was shopping, shopping, and more shopping all the way from one station to the other and beyond. It was pretty crazy how much there was within that small span of city. Just out of pure coincidence, we ran into Taiki, one of the kids from the youth hostel. We talked for a bit and exchanged numbers. He is heading north while we are heading south. Shortly thereafter we returned to the station and bought shinkansen upgrades to Himeji.



We arrived at Himeji around noon-ish. The locker this time was not big enough for my umbrella, but I really wanted to ditch it as the weather was clear. Using my super powers of tallness, I reached up and shoved my umbrella on top of the stack of lockers. We grabbed a map and departed for the castle. Himeji really doesn’t have anything else besides the biggest castle in Japan. You could see it from miles away towering over everything in the city.



In front of the castle there was a huge grassy park with kids playing and families picknicing. We laid down on the grass and gazed up at the castle for a while.



A small girl went running by, stopping dead in her tracks staring at us. Vaso waved and said “konichiwa” to her. She went running away. Vaso turned to me and said “I think I scared her”. We turned around and looked back to see the little girl run up to her mother and let out a high pitched cry. “I just made a little girl cry just by saying hello!” says Vaso. I just laughed and said that I made my fair share of kids cry at the daycare for the same reason too.



The castle was really cool. The inside of it has been preserved so it is just like it was 300 or so years ago. Everything is built out of wood. The floor creaks, it is really dark, and a little cold. We climbed up 7 or 8 flights of stairs all the way to the top. There was a little shrine and you could see the entire city by looking out of the little windows. I love high places in Japan.



As there is not much else to do in Himeji, we grabbed bento and ate it back at the park. There were some kids playing soccer nearby whom I almost joined. My opinion of kids has completely changed since Niigata. We decided that it would be best just to head on over to Hiroshima while it was still daylight in order to find a place to stay. This time we bought a non-reserved ticket for the shinkansen. There are 3 cars on every shinkansen where the seats are a free-for-all. Whether you can get two together depends purely on luck. It is also cool because you can ride on any shinkansen towards your destination, not just one at a specific time. We first found two seats next to each other, but upon sitting down realized that it was the smoking car. I hate Japan for still allowing smoking indoors. I went on a reconnasance mission and found two seats all the way in the front. Vaso was super pleased because there are also electric plugs in the very front and back seats of each car. He was finally able to charge his phone.



Once at Hiroshima we called up the local hostel and found out that it was only $23 a night. Cool. We soon found out why. It took us about an hour to find a bus that headed in the right direction, then when we got off soon found out that we were on the wrong street. A nice girl working at a nearby cell phone shop pointed us in the correct direction. We once again got lost. I ended up trusting Vaso’s judgement of climbing up this massive hill which ended up being correct. So this hostel is in the middle of nowhere and on the top of a mountain. The instruction sheet said nothing of that sort! They should just say “take a taxi to the hostel.” Anyway, we checked in and threw our stuff in our room. This time we were rooming with an old man and a guy from Germany who was not very social. We asked the girl at the front desk (who was pretty cute and became a topic of conversation later on) where the nearest place to eat was. She told us Okonomiyaki was the only thing around the area. Blah! Hiroshima really is like living in the country! We decided to deal with it and had okonomiyaki again.



The place was really small and everyone seemed to know each other. We got caught up in conversation with the little old lady beside us and got pictures with everyone in the store. Then two of the businessmen told us to sit down and drink with them. We obliged and stayed until the store closed. We talked about all sorts of things from school and where we live, to the recent politics of Japan and the USA. They ended up paying for our drinks and more food. I love Japanese people! We hiked back to the hostel and got some shut eye.

Wednesday, April 2 - Osaka

Today when I woke up, D had already left for school. It was already close to 10am. Weird considering that we returned relatively early the previous night. In any case, Vaso and I packed up our stuff and headed out. Vaso left a 1000 yen bill with a message written around the edges as payment for the two nights. We took a bus to the station and had Mister Donut for breakfast. We piddled around the station for a good hour waiting for our train to arrive.



Then we departed on the local train for Osaka. It took only about an hour to get there. Once again we ditched our stuff in a locker and headed to the information center. Because we did not have a guide here, I figured it would be best if we grabbed a map first. The first thing I noticed was the weirdness of Osaka compared to Kyoto. There were a bunch of interesting art things and most importantly, poster-boards of various things with the heads cut out.



We decided to hit up Osaka castle first. It was fairly close to Osaka station, but we took the train anyways. The castle was huge and had a fair amount of children playing around in the garden area. All around the outer moat sakura trees lined the grounds.



There were two moats to cross before coming upon the castle. It was a lot of climbing up stairs and walking. The castle has been changed into a museum for visitors, which was pretty lame. There were a bunch of old artifacts and video rooms which were not very interesting. I did however get to wear traditional armor and helmet and pose with a sword for pictures. This random guy took a ton of pictures of my outfit. He must have felt that a foreigner wearing samurai armor was a rare sight.



The castle grounds and the outside of the castle were amazing. The inside had more to be desired though. Vaso and I split some takoyaki while gazing up at the castle. In the grounds there were also a bunch of those wooden pictures that have a hole for someone’s face. We got our picture taken at a few of those. Being all castle and templed out, we decided that a trip to the local aquarium and I-max movie theatre were in order. It was on the corner of Osaka by the sea.



The aquarium was a bit pricy, but well worth the money. The fish tanks were enormous! They had more than just fish too. There were dolphins, penguins, otters, and seals as well. It was more like an aquatic animal museum rather than just an aquarium. We spent a lot of time sitting down and staring into the tanks. It was really relaxing.



That night we grabbed a 100 yen sandwich at McDonalds and returned to Osaka station. Once there we grabbed our stuff and sought out a youth hostel. The first one that we called was close to Shin-Osaka station and only cost 3000 yen a night. Dinner was already over, so we hit up an in-station okonomiyaki place for dinner. It was cheap and filling. Definitely the best okonomiyaki I have ever had. It took a little while to find the hostel. It was on the top three floors of this fairly large business building. The rooms were like a really nice hotel aside from the fact that there were 4 bunks. We roomed with another Japanese person traveling Japan. In the ofuro we talked with some of the other youths there. Everyone had a different story to tell.



Sleep that night was amazing. I don’t think I moved an inch the entire night!

Tuesday, April 1 - Kyoto Day 2

We woke up late at around 9 or so as D had to go to school then. He told us of this really cool onsen to check out up in the mountains. It is a ways away, but Vaso and I decided to do it anyways. Not knowing the area very well, we hopped on a bus to Kyoto station to get directions to the onsen. We took a subway all the way to the last stop called Kokusaikaikan and then hopped on a bus the rest of the way. We made a mistake on the bus and got off only about half way there. Stopping at a conveniently located convenience store, we bought lunch and drinks and asked for directions. They said we should have stayed on the bus. Back at the bus stop, we ate our snacks, hopped on the bus, and took it all the way to the last stop, Ohara.



Now this was countryside. There were mountains towering on either side of us with a rather large river running down the middle. There were very few houses and even fewer people walking the streets. This is Japanese nature at its best. We ran across a couple temples which we checked out. It started drizzling so we figured it would be best to hit up the onsen soon. There was a package that included food and bath which is exactly what we did. The onsen was great. We met these 2 Taiwanese guys on vacation and talked to them for a while.



Rested and ready to go, we took the hour and a half trip back to Kyoto.



I slept a little on the bus and on the train. On the train these two random girls showed up and Vaso stood up to let them sit down. They giggled and sat down beside me. There was no way I was giving up my comfortable seat for some youngins. I listened in on their conversation and learned they were talking about how to start up a conversation with us. I did the favor for them receiving two astonished looks. I didn’t get to say much as they got off at the next stop. Anyway, we contacted Ayana and planned on meeting up at Kiyomizu temple. Vaso and I hopped on a bus and walked up to the temple. We met these Chinese people who are attending college in Japan and got our pictures with them. Ayana showed up and we entered the temple grounds. The sun was starting to go down at this point. Today happened to be a special day for the temple. A pitch black hallway was opened up for visitors to walk through. Best 100 yen I ever spent. We walked through a black hallway. I constantly ran into Vaso, and the group behind me constantly ran into me.



The temple was absolutely beautiful at night. A beam of light shone from the mountains across the city, the trees were lit up with lights, the sakura were blooming. We went to the main area of the temple which was 3 streams flowing over the roof of a building. Ayane said that each one had a different meaning. Each one represented love, school, and a long life. They were not labeled, but I was hoping I drank the one for school.



After the temple we went out for Okonomiyaki back in Gion. It was the best okonomiyaki I had ever eaten. The Kansai area is famous for its okonomiyaki and takoyaki.



Afterwards Ayana suggested we go out for karaoke or something. Vaso detested and I suggested we go play darts or pool instead. Pool it was. Ayana had never played before so we got to try and help her out. We are by no means good teachers, but we can usually hit the ball in the direction we are aiming. We were also forced to buy a drink at this place too, but they also had ice cream and soda to choose from rather than just booze.



Back outside we ran into other study abroad students from Waseda. There was a fairly large group of about 10 of them visiting Kyoto for the week. None of them are particularly close friends, so we talked for a few minutes and then escorted Ayana back to the train station. She gave us both hugs (rare for a Japanese person to initiate it) and departed for home. Vaso and I did the same, but because we did not know Kyoto at all, we got lost and once again split a taxi back to D’s place.