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

stone foxes of inari-san

Melinda and I ventured to the southern part of the city today to see the Kobo-san market where I got two beautiful silk kimonos for 400 yen (about $4), a 1950's book of Kabuki photos and prints and a brass belt buckle of the Sakura... I wish that I could have bought the whole place though... oh and that is a temple in the background, they are everywhere you turn here

Here is another shot of the Kyoto Tower, this time with the Kamo river and the Sakura
Next we traveled farther south to Fushimi-Inari-Taisha, a shrine dedicated to the gods of rice and sake.  The pathways to the some 40,000 shrines  scattered over one mountain are lined with orange torii (gates)... impressive to say the least.

Here is a pic of one of the many stone foxes in front of the first of the gates


And everywhere I go I see the most interesting use of the english language... this little sign says "The Clean Water, Do Away with Washing hand or Face etc in the JAR!!!"
Sunset over Kyoto on top of the mountain at Inari-san

club days

Monkeys live in the woods around the school, this one is outside the front door to my dorm 

Here is the chef from a yakitori restaurant by our dorm, we just pointed at the menu and got a whole bunch of random items, one being chicken shashimi (is that the right term sayab?)... didn't know that raw chicken was ok to eat but i feel fine...

This weekend was "Club Days" at school where all the music and dance clubs put on shows, served food and made sure there was lots of booze to go around 

"Big Boss" of the "Folk Music Club" showing off her snarl (by folk they mean rock and roll and punk)

Kampai!

A serious round of "Hold me tight, Osaka Babe Ruth" 

The rules being that you have to yell louder or do something crazier then the last person

Drummer at the club house

Sakura and Shopping Malls

The many costumes of Japan (more to come...)

People have been slowly trickling into the dorm over the past few days and I have been meeting people from all over the world..

Marthe and Ward from the Netherlands (on campus)

Studios, motorcycles and vending machines are everywhere
Here we are today on the Philosophers Path about to go to the Ginkakuji Temple (starting on the top left) Melinda from Australia, me, Sani and Besty from Indonesia, Ning Ning from Thailand, Suhku from China, and Metdom from Vietnam
Heian Temple 
Dorm life

Dorm mother (okaasan) and Ning Ning partying late with us

its for happy life

my first few days...

Thursday: 

Lost on a bicycle for most of the day

trying to find a 100 yen store.

Found a temple instead

Friday:

Lost on my bicycle again, 

this time looking for the Imperial Palace 

to see the the Sakura (cherry blossoms)

Face Masks. 

I see them everywhere. 

Does anyone know what they are all about? 

Creepy is all i can say.

People were not only taking insane amounts of pictures of the blossoms

but of everything else as well

Kimono

Nishijin Textile Center. Basically a tourist trap.  

But this girl doing tapestry weaving was pretty cool 

(in that dorky textile way)

Today: 

Decided to ditch the bicycle because it started to rain and so I had my first adventure on the subway, which wasn't so bad because many of the signs were in english.  And the ones that weren't i just had to assume didn't matter...

I went downtown and was swarmed by thousands of overly fashionable people (not pictured below), most of which were wearing skirts shorter then I would care to discuss (sorry Sayab, I was too shy to get you any good pics, next time I promise) and boots that seemed larger then they were.  

Sorry. Maybe this is just my conservative American side coming out.  But I can't say I didn't enjoy it at least a little bit...

Some sort of festival

One of the many walkways of a sprawling inside/ outside/ underground mall.

I had hear rumors that the bottom floors of department stores were huge markets filled with every type of Japanese cuisine, but I still couldn't believe it when I saw it. Everything imaginably Japanese was there.

Outside portion of mall

Best kind of vending machine I have seen thus far.  Put in your money, pick your item, it gives you a ticket and you give it to your waiter when you get sat.  Easy as pie.  Or maybe ramen.

Only a little taste of the great expanse of the Kyoto Station.

More creepy masks.

Kyoto Tower.  Not the best feature of the city.

Tomorrow: Manga Museum...