The long, cold of winter

Kendra here. Sorry for the long absence we've been very busy...Ahh who am I kidding. We've been bored. SO BORED! It's too cold to go out and do something, and it's too cold inside to do anything other than sit around the heated table. Plus we are trying to save up some money for all the up coming madness; Mid-year conference in Tokyo at the end of February, Mom and Jason coming to visit at the end of April, and trips to all over once it gets warm again.

We haven't done anything too crazy but here are some pictures.

Can you see the tiny little snow flakes? Yah, this was the "snowstorm"we had here in Kobe a week or two ago. Needless to say,nothing stayed on the ground. We've still had no snow. And of course, I am very happy about that.

This is a picture for Kate Binder. Look! I found a bakery especially for you! I'm sure you could have something from here...(just messing k8, miss you! have some corn chips for me...god I miss corn chips...)

AND I missed sub sandwiches...until! we went to the Subway on Rokko Island for the first time last week. I got a simple turkey on wheat while Aaron went for the slightly exotic Cajun Chicken. They actually had a lot of "normal" subway stuff on the menu, but they also had some really unique to Japan things, like shrimp, egg, and hot dog...yah...hot dog on a sub sandwich.

Here is Aaron getting all Samurai'd up in a traditional men's kimono. The nice lady putting it on it Tanigawa-san, the lady whose house we stayed at for a few days. She is such a cool lady.

Here we both are in our kimono at Tanigawa-san's house. My kimono that she let me borrow was soooo gorgeous. Mine all paled in comparison to this one of she had.

Here is Katherine's turn to put a kimono on. She had a pretty black and butterfly motiff. The lady in the picture is of course Tanaigawa-san.

Katherine looking....looking at something more interesting than me taking the picture.


Tomorrow I am going to go get a MRI of my brain to make sure nothing is wrong in there. The ringing in my ear has been going on 24/7 since August 2007. I really don't think it will ever stop now. I would really like to know why it happened even if they can't fix it. There is about a >1% chance that it will be something brain related but with the great insurance I have over here (back home and MRI easily would cost upwards of $1,000, here it is only about 10,000 yen-about $100) I have to take advantage of it. So yay! for insurance.

This weekend we are heading to Nara again to hang out, play some video games, lots of cool stuff. Really nothing too exciting coming up until the Mid-year conference. More on that later!

Peace, take it easy, KENDRA

Bumming around

Hey all. Sorry we haven't posted in a while. We've taken a bit of a break since the holidays ended. But, we brought it back into full swing this past weekend, taking a 2 day trip to the cities of Kyoto and Nara, which are basically the two older, "more cultural" cities in this part of Japan. On Sunday, we got off to an early start and made it to Kyoto around noon to watch a Japanese archery competition! I was thinking about Robin Hood constantly, with all the banners, bows and old-style attire. It was very interesting because this style of archery is very different from any other I've seen. These types of bows are much longer above the handle than below, and the archers have a very specific way of drawing and firing the bows.

Here are some of the bystanders, taking a rest along this buddhist temple. Nearby, there were many food venders. Kendra got a baked potato and I got a okinomiaki. I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right, but most of you wouldn't know anyway. It's basically a savory cabbage pancake with various meats and vegetables in it, covered in a brown tangy sauce, tuna flakes and seaweed. Trust me, it's actually quite good, despite the description.

Here are some of the women archers preparing to fire. They position the arrow, then lift the bow wall above their heads, hold it out in front of them and pull back the string as they lower it. When they fire, their arms snap straight backward. Katherine, our local fulbright friend, who has actually learned to do this style of archery, said that if they don't snap their arm back, the arrow won't go anywhere. You can't tell from this photo, but the targets are quite far away. I'd say at least a 100 yards. As I said, it reminded me of Robin Hood. Aren't their outfits beautiful?

Some of the women with bows, in costume.

Afterwords, we took the trains to Nara, which was about an hour's trip away. Nara is actually older than Kyoto and was the capital city of Japan before Kyoto and before Tokyo way way back in the day. Anyway, Sunday night, they had their annual burning of the mountain. There is a mountain that is covered in grass that they burn every year. According to our friend Andrea, who has a hell of a memory and is addicted to guide books, they do this to honor the end of a territorial dispute between monks back in the day. I believe it. Anyway, we watched the mountain from a large platform near a famous temple and pagoda in Nara. There were quite a lot of other spectators, but it wasn't cramped. They started the show with a fireworks display, which they began 10 minutes before schedule, so we actually missed a bit of it, but that's alright.

You can see the pagoda on the right. It was very impressive--huge and lit up. After the fireworks, they lit the mountain, and you could see a long line of fire slowly moving across the blackness of the mountain. It was interesting, though we were a little far away, and we couldn't get any pictures to turn out. We spent the rest of the night at a local soba house, and then at our friend Abel's apartment. We met his French, Australian, and New Zealander friends and played some nintendo with them. It was fun. Monday, we returned to Kyoto for some site seeing with some other fulbrighters. We went to see the golden pavilion, a famous structure in Kyoto. It is coated in gold, though it is a replica of the original building, which a crazy monk burned down back in the day. Those crazy monks. The gardens were marvelous. Here are some pics.





Beyond the fence, you could toss little coins, trying to get them into the cup in the middle. It's for good luck, and is also a way to give alms. I took video of all of us trying to get a coin in. Amazingly, Andrea got a coin in the cup, but right after I stopped taking video. So there's no proof.

At the shrine, Mana and her friend Ryan partook in a religious ceremony. They lit incense and rung the bell.

In Japan, there is a holiday, which was this past monday, in which everyone who is going to turn 20 years old dresses up and goes to the shrine. It doens't have the most religious significance anymore, but it is an excuse for Japanese girls to get all gussied up in expensive kimono. So we went around Kyoto to see them.


At night, we went to an izakaiya, which is like a bar that you can buy various snacks at. We got a set meal, which came with all you can drink for an hour and a half. It was fun. We stopped to take a picture of this ridiculous window front. Oh Japan. What fun. Until next time.

Happy New Year 2008

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2008

the year of the Rat

(aaron is a rat)

For New Years, which is one of the biggest holidays here in Japan, Aaron and I went with some friends to stay with another Fulbright fellow, Andrea, in Kyoto. Kyoto has hundreds of temples so we had lots to do that night. We started out by having some soba (buckwheat) noodles. Eating these on New Years eve is supose to give you luck in the New year. All these traditions really focus on bringing luck in the new year. People are very careful not to do anything that woukd bring bad luck on this night. After the noodles, we got some famous Kyoto green tea sofuto aisu, soft serve icecream, but way better.

From the left Katherine, Aaron, Ben S., Andrea, and Hannah
At the Shinto shrine, you get paper fortunes and you tie them onto special posts or trees. This one was covered witht them.

Ben is going back to America soon for a while to do his medical college interviews, so he was really trying to get a lot of luck on his side. This rope thingy on fire is like a lucky fire that you bring from the temple and use to light your house's hearth fire with...but not many people heat their houses with a blazing fire anymore, but it is stil a lucky thing to do.

Katherine is interested in Andrea's rope it seems.

After a stop back at Andrea's to refuel on junk food, we went to a Buddhist temple where we had to remove our shoes (it was freezing out, but shoes must come off), then sit till all our legs where numb.But the service is beautiful and I found it peaceful. Oh, then we shook a giant prayer bead that went all the way around the room. The picture above shows us all sitting around passing and and shaking this giant prayer bead.

Then we went back outside to wait to ring the GIANT bell. Huge bell. Everytime it rang my camera went out of focus. Weird. The bell is suppose to ring 108 times, to rinse away the 108 sins of humanity, or that was what we kind of figured out from the monk's explanation. But since there was more than 108 people there, it rang way more than that. You had to get a kind of ticket in order to ring the bell and it had a number on it. We were 123, and 124 in line... we waited in the freezing cold for about 1 hour 30 min to ring it, but it was so cool when we did.

Then the party! Back to Andrea's for junk food and, no joke, Moet E Chardon Champagne with real gold flakes in our cups. Felt rather posh. Here Hannah is demonstrating how one drinks such a posh drink...two at a time.

Junk food round 2...chocolate explosion.

I am pretty sure she is pointing at Aaron for doing something silly.

Here is 0ur video of our Kanpai toast and Happy New Year.

Hope everyone had a safe and hangover free New Years.

Cheers.