This last Friday I skipped a class and took off for Kyoto with friends to attend the Jidai Matsuri, which turned out to be the quietest parade I have ever attended. In Japanese, Jidai means "age", so this is literally the Festival of Ages. What it consisted of was a huge number of volunteers walking through Kyoto to the Heian Shrine dressed in period costumes. I think it would have been more interesting if I knew more of the history behind it. It wasn't the greatest for taking pictures, but I'll put up a few below.
Jacky trying to see the ceremony at Heian Jinja.
Which one of these is not like the others?
AH! Foreigners! 外人！！
Relating to the Jidai Matsuri - I've finally found a period drama which isn't incredibly low budget and badly acted. It is an NHK drama about the events leading up to the Meiji restoration, and I was hooked from the opening credits. Here is a subtitled version I found on a French website. This is from the second season. I would like to, if I had time, to start from the beginning in Japanese with my dictionary, but I doubt that will happen. I can't remember the last time I actually finished watching a series.Ryoma Den can be found here.
On Saturday I went hiking near Kobe with some other exchange students. Once we found the trailhead, which in and of itself required some climbing, the hike took about two hours and was quite enjoyable. Did not get attacked by the wild boars the news devotes so much time to.
On the way up towards the trailhead, after asking for directions twice.
Watanabe Yoichi is a recent addition to the regular group of gei-nin who frequent Japanese television. His trademark outfit can be seen here.
He is always introduced as "The war photographer" or "The war cameraman." My limited understanding is that he has written a book and also maintains a popular blog about his experiences throughout the world, including covering conflict in Rwanda.
Within the last two weeks he has suddenly become a high demand figure for the type of Japanese variety show which dominates the airwaves. He appears to be popular in part because of his distinctive speaking style, which you can see below:
Don't ask me what he's saying. All I know is he's sharing a film which he watches often/likes. He mentions the English conversation and says that it is an important film. He may speak slowly, but I find his vocabulary difficult to understand.
This last weekend I went to a beautiful place in Japan and was reminded why I like Japan: Facebook Photo Album
It's almost been two weeks since my last post, so there is a bit more content here than usual.
School continues to shuffle along. Last weekend my host parents' daughter (technically my host-sister, I suppose) came to visit, along with her husband. It was refreshing to have different people in the house, especially people closer to my own age, although they are about 6 years older than I am. Because I need to leave for class soon, here are a bunch of pictures from the last two weeks and a video I took this morning. All the pictures were taken in the city where I live: 兵庫県の西宮市
Unfortunately, not much to say this week in terms of my own experiences. Went to Kobe on Saturday and Osaka-Nanba area on Sunday. More ugly Japanese city.
Now with more Rain!
and anime stuff I don't understand.
However, on Saturday a second stranger came up and asked if I wanted to meet sometime to help with their English. The first time was on campus, now while I was waiting at a stoplight. I'm the only one I know who this happens to. My theory is that it's because I'm the most stereotypical a foreigner can get: tall, blonde, big nose, etc.
Here are two random links about odd Japanese things:
At the close of my second week in Japan and my first week of classes, I thought it was time for a quick post before a bit of studying and then bed.
The first week of classes was not particularly difficult. I think it will get harder as the homework starts to stack up, but the only class that has so far offered the same amount of work as a UBC class would is one of my various Japanese classes. However, this work is doable, and much closer to my level than the UBC Japanese classes. In other words, the class is not designed to be challenging to Korean speakers (who already speak a language with a grammar often analogous to Japanese) and Chinese speakers/readers (who, despite many differences in the languages, have a leg up when it comes to reading and writing.)
But enough about my frustrations with UBC Asian Studies. This last Thursday was a holiday of some sort, so I took a day trip to Takarazuka, which is about 20 minutes to the north on the local Hankyu line. Takarazuka is known for the Takarazuka Revue, a musical featuring an all female cast which has five different rotating casts. Apparently they are well known, and I believe I saw someone in a commercial for a food product of some sort who used to be in the production.
Takarazuka is also known for the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum, devoted to the creations of the Osamu Tezuka. You may not know the name, but you would probably recognize his character (in English) Astroboy, if you saw him:
He also created a variety of other characters, and the franchises he created are continuing to release successful films, including this one:
The character was created long before Disney's The Lion King, but a film based on the manga was released several years after the Disney film. The adult lion is named Kimba, and the manga and Japanese film feature many characters and sequences that correlate to the Disney version.
On Saturday I wasn't feeling so great so I spent most of the day in the house. I did venture out to finally buy the newest Kamelot album, Poetry for the Poisoned.
I was also informed via facebook that Jardar bought the CD and was listening to it as well. We live in a strange globalized society where I in Japan and my second cousin in Norway buy the same CD by a (mostly) American band on the same day. But enough about that...
Today I went to Kobe-Sannomiya with friends. The day consisted of wandering through various stores, some more disturbing than others. (Creepy, super expensive dolls with big eyes and clothing that costs more than mine is all I need to go into.) It was a bit of a culture shock, to say the least.
Next was Kobe's Chinatown. Kobe's Chinatown is essentially a tourist trap designed to trick you into buying somewhat Chinese (inspired) street food and various apparel featuring pandas. Needless to say, Vancouver's Chinatown, or Richmond, or UBC club days, is a much more authentic Chinese experience. Because of the proximity of the Autumnal equinox we were able to witness a bit of the Tai-Chi performance, in which my friend Jacky participated. (Guess which one is a Canadian student)
We then took a limited express bound for Umeda, detrained at Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi where I separated and walked home for a teppan dinner: Okonomiyaki and Yakisoba.
I also watched most of a program about a family in Okinawa which has something like 12 kids, which is pretty much unheard of in Japan for the last hundred years or so. The father lives in Aichi prefecture (north of Nagoya and south of Tokyo) while the mother cares for most of the kids in a big, old style house on Okinawa in what appears to be poverty. Kind of strange, especially for a country like Japan which generally doesn't mix home life and public life. Needless to say, there was conflict which makes these sort of programs interesting.
Lastly, my friend who is pictured above keeps a videoblog of his time in Japan. I appear semi-frequently in the videos. We have different focuses but if you are interested the link to his channel is here: Youtube Channel Jakumi
This last Saturday I took a trip with friends to Osaka Umeda, which is probably the central hub of Osaka. There Osaka Umeda station is located there and Shin Osaka Station is nearby. The trip was surprisingly easy. I walked to the nearest station, which luckily is a hub for the Hankyu trains. I met my friends there, and then boarded and Limited Express for Osaka Umeda. The trip took about 12 minutes and cost a little more than 200 yen. It can add up if you commute or have to make multiple transfers, but I was surprised at how cheap it was to travel between cities.
The next day I traveled to the complete opposite of the concrete jungle which is Osaka. With a small group of friends I took part in a trip to Nishitani village. It was essentially a rural sightseeing excursion put on by a "fieldwork" class interested in economic revitalization projects for the city of Takarazuka, Hyogo-ken. On this day trip we took the train out to the meeting place, then boarded a bus which took us up and out of the lower lying cities of Kansai into the "mountains." (We would probably call them hills.) As soon as you get out of the cities the roads start to wind around mountains and rice fields start to appear. (Well, they appear more frequently than they do in the city, although I do pass several on the way to school.) The style of houses becomes more traditional and the houses triple in size. It also, luckily, cools off a little bit. We visited several two shrines and Buddhist temple which is part of a Kansai area pilgrimage. We had a translator so I now understand a little more than I did before about the religions.
This trip also provided a chance to practice my Japanese. I found that when trying to explain complicated subjects, I easily confuse both myself and the person I am trying to speak to. This is probably because English grammar and Japanese grammar are structured in almost the opposite way. If this wasn't complex enough, when you support a statement (using the equivalent of "because") the "because" part of the statement comes in a complete phrase before the actual point you want to make. I find this to be counter intuitive.
Yesterday was my first day of class at Kwansei Gakuin Daigaku. I only had one class so it was a bit underwhelming, but it was fun class and I like the people in it. It is the speaking, listening, and composition component of the intensive Japanese program. Assuming I find my way to school again, today I will have the reading and writing parts of Japanese, followed by a Japanese history course. For the lunch break between I will meet up with one of my "Nihongo Partners", a student who volunteered to meet with me and help me work on my Japanese.
Today it might rain but the internet still predicts a temperature of 34C (93F). Luckily, on Thursday it's supposed to drop down to 26C (78F). I for one am looking forward to it.
I've been on the ground for almost one week now but haven't really adjusted to the Japanese/Exchange student lifestyle. Hopefully that will start to happen soon.
As mentioned in the title, today we finished up the orientations. Tomorrow we are going on a field trip of sorts to Nara, which is east of Osaka.
I had some extra time today so I wandered with friends around campus. For some reason I still haven't gotten my bearings in the city yet. It is layed out in more of a grid in the south near the station so I have very little trouble there, but anywhere around campus I am completely lost. Part of our explorations today were to attempt to find where our classes, which begin Monday, will be located. I also noticed the view for the first time:
It is always surprising to look around and realize that you can see the Umeda district of Osaka from school. The campus is very beautiful (rated the most beautiful in Kansai by some survey.) It looks like I always have imagined universities in the southern parts of California to appear: Mission style architecture with some palm type plants which don't survive in Washington or BC.
We also took a walk out to one of the stations near the school.
As the sign suggests, we were on our way to Nishinomiya Kitaguchi station, which is the main station in the area, although it is privately owned and operated by Hankyu, I believe. To the south of Nishikita (or whatever the slang used is) lies a large, new shopping mall called Nishinomiya Gardens. (I think). Anyway, it is a really big mall but there were a shocking number of exchange students from Kwansei Gakuin there. We visited two stores as most of us were going home for dinner. The first was called "Loft" and carried a variety of home goods, books, accessories, etc. (Phil - you should start watching One Piece because you can buy One Piece everything and I haven't seen ANY Naruto yet.) Next we went to a department store with an electronics section my friends are looking for cell phones. I took this last picture on the way home. I tried to improve the colors but gave up because and just made it black and white because then I know it isn't purple.
