Wanderings and Musings

Not too much to report. Last night, Nancy and I decided we wanted to go see Yasaka Shrine in Gion at night. When we got there, there was hardly a soul around, which was so wonderful. I've been there during the day, and while the Shrine is still beautiful to wander around, at night you can hear so many new things without the background noise of kids screaming, college kids gabbing, elderly in conversation, and so on and so forth. The lighting of the Shrine too is very different in the night. There is definitely that tranquil feeling to be experienced when walking around Yasaka. From Yasaka we decided to make our way towards a Buddhist Temple up the way a bit. I haven't been there yet in the daytime (and it's closed at night), but the skyline was absolutely gorgeous.

I know my picture is a tad bit blurry. Hopefully I can snag Nancy's when she uploads it. Seriously, the view from this mountain top is amazing. From here you could see Kyoto Tower, which was south west from the mountain, and dozens of other high rise buildings in the northern part of the city.

Tonight, we actually met some other students studying abroad while we were out and about. One girl went to Wellsley, another went to Occidental, and I forget where the other two were from. However, they were just finishing up school, having arrived in Kyoto in late August and staying for the entire school year. I asked Abbey (the girl from Wellsley) if she had become fluent in her time here and she shook her head and replied emphatically that she could basically get by but was in no way fluent. They're leaving in a few weeks, but it was still nice to meet them.

I need to pause for a moment and comment on a fashion/pop culture trend that is everywhere in Japan. Cell phone charms. Japanese people, especially the younger generations, LOVE cell phone charms. You can get almost anything as a cellphone charm. We were actually talking about this today in Religion class: shinto shrines and buddhist temples sell cell phone charms (of course that is a whole other discussion about whether selling protection is "okay", if this commercializes religion etc.). Now, as my parents, especially my Mom, know, I love to collect things. Thus, the cell phone charm trend (despite the fact that I do not currently have a cellphone, though I hope to be getting one this weekend) is a dangerous dangerous thing for me. Anyway, I made the mistake (or perhaps wonderful discovery depending on how you look at it) of buying a beverage the other day at the convenience store before class. This beverage was "milk tea" and around its top came a little cell phone charm of a cute cake. There were 8 in all. Instantly, I was hooked into buying milk tea for the next few days just so that I could collect all eight of these charms (as seen above). They currently hang on my Stanford lanyard, which its size would cause my Mom to have a seizure (or at least tell me I was weighing my shoulder down by keeping it in my purse -- I won't lie, it does carry a great amount of weight). But they are absolutely KAWAII!! I don't regret my "milk tea" binge (especially since they were each 100 yen for this 160z water bottle size of milk tea -- good deal). I will try to avoid such gimmies later on though...

Tomorrow morning I will move into my new host family's home. My host father is a doctor at Kyoto University. My host mother is a house wife. They have a 22 year old daughter who attends Nursing school in the area. There is a 14 year old boy in the house and the 80 year old Grandfather. I'm really really nervous about tomorrow, but seeing as there is nothing I can do to delay the inevitable, i'm going to just avoid thinking about it and go to bed promptly after I finish this. I will really miss my room here and living right next door to Nancy. But getting a host family as inevitable.

On a lighter note, Golden Week is coming! I'm excited!