Kyoto #2 – photos!

I visited Kyoto with my dad a few weeks, I stole his camera and took these pictures, the complete Kyoto view on his website

Update

So I promised to blog a little bit more! That was a big fat lie but I am going to try to keep up a little bit more. I am planning a bigger update soon but this one will have to do for now.

I am fun over here, living a lot more healthy then I was a couple of weeks ago, cooking my own food and using vegetables and stuff haha. Been doing a lot of working out and playing football. For some reason I have not been sleeping well at all in Japan. No matter how tired I am I always wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning which is just awful. I do manage to go back to sleep but it just messes with me.

Anyway this is it for now. Expect a bigger post soon.

Current mood: Tired but feeling good
Music : Reflection Eternal ofcourse…

Kamakura

I wrote this for one of my classes, thought it would fit on here as well!

We visited Kamakura on a nice Sunday. This is an area near Tokyo where they have accumulated a big number of shrines. The day started out with us all gathering at Machida station.

On arriving at kamakura we were greeted by our guides for the day. They were very friendly and properly guided us through the entire day. The first thing we witnessed was what seemed a simple road. But the road was build by the shogun to pray for the safe delivery of his first son. The road is special because it is very wide at the end and small at the beginning. This makes it possible to see down the entire road without much trouble.

At the beginning of the road, here is a huge Shinto temple. At this temple we purified ourselves and saw a 1000 year old tree that unfortunately fell over about a month before we got there. Still the temple itself was impressive especially the approach. It sits up top of a hill which makes it look even bigger than it is.

After seeing this nice temple we went to see 大仏(DaiButsu, Big Buddha), which really is big. This really impressed me especially after realizing that there used to be a temple surrounding him which got destroyed in a tsunami. We got to enter him and see how they constructed this big Buddha. With the help of a wooden frame they were able to make this big bronze Buddha in the 13th century.

After that we went on to see the Hase Dera, which is a very nice looking temple.  With a nice cave with a lot Buddhist gods which all stood for things like doing well in love and financial fortune.

Random Observation; In Japan it is either dry, or it rains all day

First Post… Kinda..

Okay so I have not updated this in a while… Meh I have been busy!

Busy doing what you ask? Well let me tell you that right now…

I left you with me going to school for the first time. School proved to be quite the challenge. The subjects I took come with a lot of reading and my Japanese teachers give me at least 3 pages of homework everyday. Not complaining at all, because it is really quite enjoyable. I enjoy studying Japanese here more than I did in Holland. It all goes a lot faster here because you use it everyday. It makes you remember words that you do not really need in class. I believe my confidence in the language has gone up a lot.

Other than studying I have of course not been idle. Not as much clubbing as before, hehe. But we still manage to have fun.
There has been a lot barbequing thanks to the lovely weather we have been getting over here. Nice weather over here is 25~ degrees Celsius not like Holland where 20 degrees is a lovely day. Either that or it rains all day…

All right let’s go to the fun stuff! We went to Yokohama and rode the elevator up the Landmark tower,  if you remember the other elevator this one was even faster! That was basically the most entertaining thing about that tower, Yokohama is fun. But it is not the most impressive looking city from the sky. We also went to China town which was fun.

Even though I was kind of looking up to going on field trips with school, so far they have all been pretty good, on the first trip we went to the Japanese Diet, which really was not that interesting at all. It was all in Japanese and really hard for me to follow.

The second trip was a lot better on this trip we visited Kamakura which hosts the biggest Buddha in Japan. This was a lot better for us, since we had an English speaking guide to help us find the way there. This was a lot of fun.

I hope I caught you up a little bit now and I promise to keep you updated more

Random observation: If you are going to live in Japan, better like Cabbage. They eat it more than fish

Listening to : Reflection Eternal – Revolutions per Minute
Mood: Happy!

Oh Yesterday

What a good day indeed. Eelco and me were asked by Simon to watch him skate, maybe not the most fun ever. But the weather was kind of good. (Sun still cold). So we decided to join him.

The skate park he took us to in Otamachi had a very laidback vibe. I grabbed my books and learned some kanji whilst Simon did his thing and did some tricks and failed a couple of times.

Afterwards we went for a beer and some takoyaki. Which was pretty good, it is still funny to me how impressed people seem to be as soon as we say we are from Holland. They pretend to know where it is and then when we ask them if they know. Most of them say “Yea, ikitiai!”. So The Netherlands is definitely popular in Japan. For reasons that are very easy to guess.

After this nice and relaxing afternoon we left Simon behind and went to Ueno to meet up with Annette and Linda at the fake sakura tree. After some walking around we finally found it. We went to see the sakura trees in Ueno Park. Which looks  totally different at night by the way. The Trees do look really nice. Definitely going to see them again in the day time! Hope we can get a cool party going over there. The Zoo is closed so we could not go in there. But really nobody wanted to anyway because we were all really hungry. This was the last day of our holiday.

Because today we had to go to Narita airport for the airport pickup. We are currently in this huge Hotelroom provided by Oberlin and we are just waiting for dinner.

We met some of the students already for this semester and they seem to be nice enough! We are going to Machida tomorrow by bus. Two and a half hours in a bus. Looking forward to that one already.

Currently Listening: Nothing battery is dead
Mood: Kinda Exited.

Back in Tokyo

Yay! Back in Tokyo, did enjoy Osaka really. The clubbing was good. The sights were awesome. I am definitely going to miss some things about Osaka.

Back in Tokyo we arrived in the nicest Hotel so far! The room is really spacious. Chisun hotels are definitely recommended by me!

First day back, in Tokyo we went to the Tokyo Dome. To watch the Yomiuri Giants play the Yakult Swallows. Both teams are from Tokyo so the rivalry is strong. We for some reason favored the Giants. They got whooped though. 5-10 to the Swallows. Still the atmosphere in the Tokyo Dome is awesome.

In more ways than one. The Dome is actually pressurized to keep the roof afloat. Exiting the dome literally blew me away. However we got to see some nice homers. Eat some fast food and drink Meron Soda.

Today we went to Odaiba. It is where that statue of liberty is placed. Apparently they had one on loan and it was so popular they made a new mini statue of liberty. It is placed in the beach area of Tokyo. The train there is a rubber wheeled train guided by concrete walls. Very cool indeed. The entire the bridge is pretty awesome.

Odaiba has one of the coolest buildings I ever saw. The main office of Fuji TV has got a big round sphere (are they always round?), anyway it looks really cool. You can actually enter the sphere via an elevator and look at the sights. Bad weather sucks for taking pictures though.

Current mood:

Currently Listening to:  Önder – De Kassier

Playing: Tetris DS

Osaka part 2

Oh dear, my blogs are being written so slowly for some reason. Anyway here goes.

Osaka is a nice city, it has good architecture at some points and the surrounding towns have the best castles and temples. We went to Kyoto, without a real plan. That is kind of our style, but I do not think it quite worked for Kyoto as it was way bigger than we had imagined and the traveling inside the city is not as well organized as it is in Tokyo.

However it does have something Tokyo does not have so much. Temples. So we went to our first temple, by bus. Which was a mistake. We got to see the city sure. But it took for ever to get anywhere. Not blaming the bus driver but the congested roads in Kyoto.

The first temple we went to was.

Right? Kingokuji was our first stop. That temple is just amazingly. Gold.

Afterwards we went back to the station to see a huge Temple. I was very impressed by all the gold here as well. And the size of the place. It was really just huge. It had a nice dragon shaped fountain.

To last thing we did in Kyoto, was visit a castle at night. This was kind of cool, but also kind of a bummer. The castle itself was not opened. Just the gardens. However it was all very pretty and the lightning on the trees was just really awesome. Could not get a good picture of it

We also went to Nara. Which is just the prettiest tourist place you ever walked into. It is all very well maintained though. Looks good and some of the buildings are very impressive indeed. It boasts the biggest wooden building in the world. It is pretty huge.

The prettiest castle we saw was Himeji-jo. It is just huge, and feels very real. The steps are super steep. The tower itself gives you a view of the entire area. It was stunning.

Osaka part 1

Right, I have not written a blog post since I left for Osaka, that has to reasons, mainly being busy and somewhat being lazy. Ah well here it is again though.

We left on Monday for Osaka, we decided to splurge and buy a shinkansen ticket, because we felt we needed to do that at least whilst we were in Japan. The shinkansen was everything I thought it was. Fast. Comfortable. Fast. Easy. Fast. Did I mention this train goes really fast? After my last experience with high-speed trains in Europe, I was a little bit scared about going by train. (I was stuck in a ICE train from Cologne for 3 hours)  This however shows the world how it is supposed to be done. Trains every 20 minutes or so if not more and they are always on time, and fast.

Arriving in Osaka it was a switch. Literally it is a switch from left to right whilst standing still on escalators.
We are staying in this backpackers hostel, which does not have the biggest rooms but probably the smallest, we are sleeping on futons trying to integrate into the Japanese culture.

So another step into that direction was visiting Osaka castle, which is just one of the most prettiest buildings I ever saw. The inside was a bit of a disappointment. I joked outside “Let’s take the elevator to top floor” expecting there would not be an elevator in an ancient building (even though it’s a reconstruction). However there was an elevator.. and Everything was just so modern…. We raced through the museum (We could not read the Japanese descriptions anyway) and hurried back into the garden. That was just absolutely lovely and relaxing.

Overall impression of Osaka so far is pretty good, highlights for me are definitely Namba Parks shopping centre, I love the laid back vibe there and the shops are pretty decent. (You know I had to buy myself some new gear)

You’ve been busy here!

Yeah, Kind of, doing all kinds of stuff! I finally met up with Simon in Tokyo… That just took way to long for some reason. I saw him walking down Harajuku with a friend of his. Imagine that 12 million people in this city, and I see Simon walking! It is still a bit crazy to me.
So to celebrate the fact that we ran into each other me him and Eelco went for Korean bbq, that stuff is just to good! It’s unreal. After that we once again went to Vuenos. I’m really starting to like that club, good vibe, nice staff, clean, good music!

Spent a lot of time in the arcade this week, geeking it up. It’s in me, can not help myself! Playing this game called border break. It is an online third person shooter with a joystick and a mouse! Which works great, controls are good, you can buy this card, which keeps a record of your stats and keeps a rank. Lots of fun.

Also Finally met up with Annette and Linda, which was a fun night aswell!

This week a lot of shopping/eating/partying.

Really starting to enjoy the hiphop scene over here.  The atmosphere at parties is really good. We’ll see what the scene is like in Osaka!

Let’s get high!

Well yea, literally, wow. Just wow. Today we went up the Mori tower. We got up nice and early as usual, seeing as I still have not quite found my rhythm also known as getting up at 6 in the morning and fainting at 10 pm. I guess that is a normal rhythm for some people but I don’t like it at all.

We planned to go to Mori tower and Tokyo Tower today, Mori tower was on the Agenda first. We got there nice and early. The tower itself is just ridiculously tall and quite nice looking.

We had such awesome weather today it was unreal. Nearly no smog and no clouds to be seen. The first special thing we encountered was the elevator to the sky view. This thing is pretty darn fast! I recorded a video on the way down. If you listen closely, you can hear two Japanese ladies giggling about their ears popping..

Pretty fast huh?!

The sights from the top of the tower were just amazing. Everywhere you look, it’s nothing but Tokyo and then you think, lets look the other way maybe there is some end to this city! But the only thing you see is city, oh yea you also see Fuji-san. Really awesome view, just past Shibuya, you see Fuji-san. Really cool, though hard to see on the pictures. However after looking down upon the Tokyo tower, it kind off felt moot to go up the Tokyo Tower.

However this left us with quite the conundrum. This meant we had the entire day ahead of us, with no idea about what to do. We(I) realized we have not yet been to Shinjuku yet. So we kind of decided to walk to Shibuya to catch the train, not the best idea, quite the long walk.

Shinjuku is really cool, it has got all the things that make Tokyo cool, the tall buildings, the arcades, the malls. It had a nice vibe though. A bit more relaxed than Ginza and a lot quieter than Akiharaba. Somehow we wondered into Shinjuku-gyoen. A huge park. We sat down to enjoy the weather.  Wondered back into Shinjuku to have a meal. Oh yea we also saw one of the first signs of spring. Eavesdropping on the local Japanese, it is very early.
Good day, awesome weather!