rainy days, grave yards and lots of karaoke

The rain came again, I was fooled into thinking it might have gone for a while, but no, the sun only lasted a few days and the rain came back with a vengeance

Hiding out
Monday night I went to karaoke with an incredibly random group of people... A girl named Amika who had contacted me off an online traveling network and three boys we just started talking to downtown from Seattle... 

(Tuesday is missing because yes, of course, I got food poisoning from the chicken, and slept the day off, I feel a little better now but Sam and Melinda who were with me are still feeling the pain. Lesson learned: When in Japan don't always do as the Japanese do)

Wednesday was the first day of classes for the majority of the Seika students except for the four exchange students in the Textiles Dept, we dont start till Monday

This is just a small taste of the mass of bikes that surrounds Seika when school is in session (it makes me giddy at the amount of people who ride their bikes in Kyoto)
As many know, the Japanese love to package everything; apples are wrapped in styrofoam and then saran wrap, cookies and crackers are individually wrapped inside their packages, and today I went shopping and instead of umbrella holders stores had single use umbrella bags for people to use while they shopped

Here is Chelsea holding an individually wrapped hard-boiled egg
Besty eating a kabob, which is something more like a chicken gyros with a sweat mayo topping (everything has mayo on it- pizza, salad and many traditional foods, even sushi)
Last Night: Karaoke Take Two with a group of people from my exchange program- here is Sam belting out the Backstreet Boys

This morning I went on a walk around my neighborhood

Below: Wabi-sabi and kawaii all in one (Cute beautiful impermanence-click to see the character in the shed) 
View of the neighborhood from the top of a graveyard near my dorm.  The dorm is to the right, downtown is straight ahead past those mountains
From the the middle of the graveyard looking up into the forest
Up close shots of the beautiful moss on some of the older gravestones