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Sunday 29 September 2013

Kinkakuji

Today we studied in the morning like the good students we are, but then I got bored so we went to Kinkakuji ~ That's the golden temple in the north west of the city, it's just up the road from my university. We ended up arriving at just about the perfect time to see the temple - it's covered in gold leaf so it looks really stunning when the sun's low in the sky and shining directly onto the sides.
 
It's a lot smaller than I imagined, but I quite like it. You just walk up a busy street, pay for your tickets in a courtyard, go through a gate and bam- there it is. I loved the way that once you're around that corner, all you can see are the mountains covered in trees, like you've gone deep into the forest rather than 3 minutes off a main road.


 

 
At the end of the walk through the temple's perfectly landscaped garden, there's a tea place where you can get some matcha green tea and a Japanese sweet for 500 yen. The tea was great ( but bitter!) and the sweet was really detailed.


 

This is the view from where we were sitting:

 
Everything was Kinkakuji-themed, even this phone box outside the entrance.


Now I've got to get ready for a whole week of classes... Anyone would think I'd come here to study...


Monday 23 September 2013

Downtown

Yesterday I met a friend of one of my senpai (a person in the class above you) and we went looking around downtown. First we walked over the Kamo river to the Shimogamo Shrine, a Shinto shrine that has been around since before the Heian period. It was a special day when you could pay extra to go and look around a part that's normally closed to the public. We... decided the shrine was nice enough without seeing a special room, but it was still really fun. Rumi showed me how to wash your hands before going into a shrine, and read the signs for me (because the Japanese was kind of tricky)


Then we had lunch by the river, where it was nice and cool (and not flooded any more) and I found some ready-made bubble tea in the convenience store!
 
After that we went along to the Yasaka Shrine through Gion. It was busy because today was a public holiday, so everyone seemed to be out and about having fun. They were a lot of people in kimonos, but I still don't know why everyone was dressed up.
 

Today was fantastic too, though sadly I don't have pictures. Someone at the dorms knows a real onsen not too far from here (10/15 minutes by bike) so we all went at about 9pm. It was like a spa! They have therepeutic pools, a sauna with a tv, and an outside onsen, where you can look at the stars. Even better, we all bought membership cards (for 100 yen), so now if we go on a Monday and show our membership and our student ID, we get in for 500 yen. That's about £4.50. I.e., it's awesome ~

 

Thursday 19 September 2013

Ritsumeikan

Orientation week has been busy! We have hour long lectures full of information and of course we're meeting new people from our course all of the time, so it's pretty tiring. But fun! I'm also really enjoying commuting by bike (they had a lot of safety lectures about riding bicycles today, actually, three different people warned us about being careful at crossroads and not crashing into pedestrians). Also the university canteen food is fantastic - cheap and tasty ~
So here's a picture of one of our safe cycling posters, I think it's cute, and some photos of the campus :)







Sunday 15 September 2013

Ryoanji

So before yesterday I hadn't visited a temple yet, and having been in Kyoto for almost a week, I decided that it was high time I did something about that. Ryoanji is a zen temple just across the road from university, so I took the train over and had a wander around.
To get to the main building you walk around the edge of this pond. You can't really see here, but there were some beautiful yellow flowers on the lilies.

This is Ryoanji's main attraction, a zen rock garden. You can sit on the wooden veranda and contemplate its meaning for hours (Apparently. I sat and contemplated for maybe 5 minutes)

And as a bonus, here's the view down my road as I arrived home. It's been very rainy yesterday and today (The dorm manager told me that it's a typhoon!) I've been enjoying the rain, it's much cooler than it has been.
 
*edit* So it turns out the river flooded across town! And my friends said they were all woken up by emergency texts about it last night (I don't have a phone yet). Hopefully nothing's damaged too badly! It's really ok up here though, in case anyone was worrying ~



Friday 13 September 2013

My new bicycle

... is fantastic! I rode it up and down the street outside the dormitory to get a feel for it, and I'm planning a trip to the 100 yen shop tomorrow to test myself out with something a little more challenging ~ But it seems like I have remembered how to ride it now, so that's good :)


Look at it! Isn't it lovely?!



Also check out the bike locks
 At first I thought everyone was just leaving their bikes unlocked, and was wondering if Japan is really THAT safe... until the landlord showed me how to unlock mine! (The dorm rents you the bikes people used last year, it's much cheaper than just buying one yourself ~ Also they insure it so that if something breaks, you can get it fixed at the local repair shop for free!)

 
So I'm planning to have lots of fun cycling around town (maybe when it gets a little cooler though...)


Shopping

So I had a big day today. We got the train across town and went shopping in the Kawaramachi area of Kyoto - it's the big shopping district. We thoughts we might visit some temples and Gion at the same time, but it was really tiring! And very hot (again). But luckily it only takes about 45 minutes to get there, so it'll be very easy to go back ~
Anyway, here are some pictures of our little expedition:

My local station

This is a Lush shop! In Japan! Those are real plants! It was a pretty cool shop :)
 

This last one is an advert with one of Japan's most famous boybands aaaand Tommy Lee Jones. For a second I thought they'd acquired a new member... (In the advert, they kind of do, actually xp)

Today was a lot of fun!

Thursday 12 September 2013

Fridge!

Celebrating my new fridge AND my first successful shopping trip (I went yesterday but got kinda overwhelmed, bought a ready meal and some coco pops and ran away) This time, a really nice SKP buddy (the people who help foreign students get settled in) happened to be going at the same time as me so she showed me around ^.^ I'm not sure I'd have managed without Sen-san ~ 
Anyway, look at all the vegetables - I promise I'm eating healthily! 

ps also got my bike today, have all but forgotten how to ride but I'm free tomorrow morning, so I'll practise and put up a picture of it then~

Shaved ice

Today's dessert at the sushi restaurant :) Matcha flavoured shaved ice with azuki beans and mochi~ It was really tasty ~

Friday 6 September 2013

Things I'm going to miss

So a friend just went to Japan to visit some expat friends, and was surprised by all of the things they'd asked her to bring with - is it really impossible to get proper porridge oats in Japan? (Apparently, yes) - so she suggested that I write a list of all the things I think I'm going to miss about Britain, and then see how it matches up with how I feel in 6 months time.

Well, I needed some way to write an introduction and this is as good a foray into my psyche as anything else ~

  1. Tea. I don't want to be stereotypically British but TEA. I know - I know that there's green tea there in abundance and I'm up for a matcha latte as much as the next Japan-obsessed 20 year-old, but where am I going to get my proper stand-a-spoon-in tea from?!
  2. Porridge. Specifically, instant porridge. What else do people eat when you get up on a winter morning and it's dark and cold and miserable, and you have to be in uni by 9am *gulp*?
  3. Knowing what brands are best. I am such a consumer. But it's true - there's a comfort in knowing, for example, that supermarket-brand cleaners are basically water so it's best to fork out and get some Domestos, or, the other way round, that you don't need to spend £2 on some fussy biscuits when the 55p custard creams packet is delicious. That's all a kind of rug that's going to be pulled out from under me in a new culture.
  4. Being able to read. 2 years of kanji in, I still have to stand squinting at labels in Japanese to work out what it is that I'm buying. I'm going to guess that this will get better very quickly, due to necessity, but still, that's going to be a painful process...
  5. Christmas. My New Year's break starts on the 26th. Just digest that for a minute. No Christmas.  (Still, at least because of the time difference, I'll be able to skype my family just as they're sitting down for Christmas dinner, because it'll already be the evening for me) But still - for me, the most gorgeous thing about Christmas is the food! Maybe it will taste even better in 2014 if I miss ut this year...? (That's no consolation.)
  6. My friends and family. Sure, there's skype, but everyone knows it's not the same as really seeing someone. (Still, at least there's skype. Imagine doing this kind of year abroad even just 10 years ago!)
And because that's going to bum me out if I just leave it there, I'm going to write a few things I'm really looking forward to about Japan. Then I can write what I'm really going to miss when I'm about to leave Kyoto, and we'll see how it matches up ~
  1. The FOOD. Takoyaki, okonomiyaki, most things ending in -yaki...
  2. The new friends I'm going to make. Not only the new Japanese friends, but all of the people from all over the world that will be on my course. Of course, SOAS is pretty international too, but I'm really excited about making friends who don't speak English at all - I like the idea of Japanese being our connection.
  3. Kyoto. It's just so pretty! I like the architecture of Japanese suburbs, the equivalent of London's terraced houses. And from what I can glean from Google Streetview, my new neighbourhood looks just like that.
  4. The nature. So I love living in London, but I've never lived somewhere so close to the edge of a city, where you can actually walk out and be in the mountains within half an hour.
  5. Learning Japanese. The level I can speak now is about the same as where I got with French and German before, but I've never been truly fluent in another language. Well, we'll see about truly fluent, but I'll definitely be better than I've ever been ~
So, next time I write it'll be from Japan! Wish me luck!

~Miranda~