Kyoto - Our house!

Of the two first times I went to Japan, I only went once to Osaka, and that, only at the second of my visits. I had the chance to stay at the apartment of two friends of Miyako's, for a couple of days (2 days, three nights or something?) and of those days, one was spent with them in Kyoto, drinking delicious matcha and visiting Kinkakuji. 

I realized that Osaka is a really big city (2M500K inhabitants) and it was a shame I did not actually visit for longer. Japanese people describe Osaka as a town of japanese-foreigner within Japan. People in Osaka are seem as a bit more crazy than the rest, and a bit more delinquent. My brother and I thus decided we'd spend a couple of days in hotels in Osaka.

However, in our Lonely Planet (that we used to book hotels according to the ratings and find interesting restaurants and visiting places) there was almost no hotels that were recommended.   On the other hand, Kyoto was filled with them, at cheap prices and good quality, plus, we were not in the high season yet, so there was big chances that there'd still be room, even if we ended up booking the day before we left Kyushu. 

We thus decided to stay in Kansai, but chose Kyoto instead of Osaka. After all, Kyoto is "là où tout a commencé et là où tout finira"... lolz

We managed to book a house on our own in Kyoto, in Higashiyama. the house was equipped with living room, kitchen, kitchen wares and electric appliances, a place to do laundry, bath and a second floor with two bedrooms and a balcony. Le paradis, en bref. 

Close to downtown, the house was in an alley right in front of a nice river, and near an outdoor market. It can accomodate up to 6 people without trouble and both has heating and AC included. The price? $450 for four nights. 

This was just a blessing from heaven <3

The alley in front of our house, and the door. It was very tiny, so doing the

panorama was harder and the alley looks really crooked, but it really was straight.

panoramic view of the small road un front of the river (the road was big enough for one car at a time)

 

The river, again. Wish we had been in the season, we'd have had those trees blooming with pretty flowers everywhere.

 

A bridge we had to cross to get to our side of the road, the house was up the right side of the river, maybe a little 200 meter higher. Down, we have my brother on his side of the river, getting home ahead to get some rest as I went to eat a little something and bought him a bento at the market.

Miyako

I've lived in Tamana for a whole year, and Tamana is full of memories for me: When I walk its streets, the smells, trees and streets all have a soothing effect on me. However, Japan, for me, can be put up in one word.

Miyako.

The first time I went to her place, was in summer: I was told that there was a family in Omuta who wanted to experience what it is to have an exchange student, without having enough time on their hands to actually have one a full year. I was told they had a young daughter of 8 years old, and they all had lived a couple of years in France. They had an interest in French even if they could not really speak it.

I had been having a hard time in Japan for I did not speak japanese at all, only a few words, and that, after a few months already passed. It was hard for me, as the school had its summer vacation almost right after the start of the semester and so I had had no time to make friends before it, and was spending most of my days in my bedroom, since I felt like I was being a bother to my host family and their habits (my host parents were 60 and 61, and already had their little habits in life, not really seeming to enjoy having them disturbed by a too lively 17 years old French Canadian, curious about everything, and needing a clear explanation about everything to be contented. 

So ultimately, that summer I studied Japanese language with my books for the whole summer, straining my brain from the learn, so much that I'd sleep most of the day (wake up at 2-3 pm and sleeping at 6-7). Sleeping that much, I almost ate nothing and ended up losing 15 kilos in 3 weeks. 

I think AFS got worried, and looked for things for me to do. Maybe this is why they introduced me to Miyako and her family.

Newly constructed bridge around Omuta: it was not there when I did my student exchange

Being introduced to someone who did not know me at all, and knew nothing about the level of my poor japanese, they were the best opportunity for me to try to practice and get them to understand me, without any fear. Knowing them, gave me a start: I figured out I knew more than I thought and that maybe, I could DO things.

Having traveled a lot, Miyako's family was really eager to listen to my stories, that I was craving to tell, and told me theirs. Sometimes I think that it seems a bit unfair to my actual host family that I love with all my heart, but I connected much quicker with Miyako.

Kumamoto Castle!

So I stayed my first 4 days at their place <3

Right after we got out of the airport, we went to Kumamoto castle (the airport being in Kumamoto, we thought it would be more meaningful to actually go visit the castle as soon as we got there, before going to the ryokan, as going to the ryokan, we knew we'd just go sleep right away. It was a chilly day but really sunny, so we hanged around outside and it was great.

sight from the top of Kumamoto-castle. Last time I went, they were restoring a big part of the castle, so taking pictures was not really rewarding, but this time we got to visit everything. I don't know what the hell I made of the CD with the pictures we took from inside the building but they had awesome pieces of art inside. I just love japanese architecture. I want a castle-like house when I become rich :)

My brother does not like japanese tea much, but being in Japan, I tried my hardest along the way to get him to taste many kinds, so he would at least know what he is talking about when saying he likes or not this or that taste. The first time I made him try it was the very first day, at the Kumamoto castle, with this lovely grandma <3 Isn't she lovely?

My brother's first legit Matcha. 

He actually liked it somehow. What he does not like about japanese "green" teas, is the "pond-like" smell it has, as he would put it. Freshly made Matcha at the right temperature does not taste to much of that pond thingy...

I love Matcha.

The feeling of looking like crap as you look like a hobo, just getting out of the plane
and going to take a picture with yourself in it, while standing beside someone who
actually looks kind of cute.... FML (ps, look up closely: naruto lense ha ahahahhaah)

The second day we went to pick strawberries in a random nowhere in the country side, where I saw the most amazing way to grow strawberries, so you don't even have to bend to pick them. 

And you don't get dirty. 

I love Japan.

hm hm hm.... which one should I pick....?

After the strawberries, we went to a factory to make ramen! The place was meant for little kids to try and make their very own ramen, but as we were on a weekday, around graduation time there was no other people, so we were not - as I had feared - surrounded by kids, being tall and awkward :) Isn't life just perfectly well made?

Making ramen is cool.

I want to make some back here in Canada. Like, legit happy hand-made ramens

After a hard time's work, eating our first tonkatsu ramen, yay! Kumamoto's special <3

 Our last supper with the Hasuo (Miyako's family), was at a French style restaurant, owned by a lovely couple of japanese who stayed in France long enough to actually speak a really decent French. My brother had originally intended to make then uncomfortable by ordering in french, but was met with a perfect Paris accent answer.... ha ha ha, he's such a mean boi: well deserved!

This made my day 

My brother was told in Italy how to see the quality of ice cream:
Vanilla ice cream needs to be yellow
Lemon ice cream needs to be white
Banana ice cream needs to be grey
They had awesomely delicious banana ice cream there miam miam

Fukuoka

Fukuoka...

During my exchange Kumamoto (the city) has always been synonym with shopping. An easy way for me to compare cities is with my very own hometown. My hometown has 45K inhabitants, about the same as Tamana. A bit bigger than Tamana, there was Kumamoto (700K inhabitants), that I compared to Montreal, even though Montreal has in fact more than the double of people. 

I compared Kumamoto to Montreal because the only times I went there was, as I said, for shoppping. Past half of my student exchange however, I visited Fukuoka. Fukuoka..... That one city can be compared to mtl for real, with its 1M5 inhabitants. The thing is that Fukuoka is awesomely made, well when it concerns shopping downtown. Getting out at the Hakata Shinkansen station, you get out right in Tenjin Core, the middle of the middle of the shopping district. I never thought about Kumamoto for shopping after Fukuoka....

People say that Fukuoka's women are the prettiest in Japan.

I understand.

I never saw so many shopping districts selling ONLY women clothes and accessories, with all the girls walking in the street looking like the mannequins in the display window. 

My brother wants to move to Fukuoka.

I am told that girls in Fukuoka are prettier than in the rest of Japan and renowned for that because there are many foreign people (other asians for example, a lot of koreans :P) so they are a bit more blended

Accessory shops. 

Why oh why did I think I'd get to buy more later on on the trip? Why did I hesitate so much and buy only few? That was stupid. I remember however that, when I took the picture, I had already planned to regret not buying more, and intended to keep the picture to remember what I had missed...

Am I masochist?

Dunno.

This shop has the most awkward name I ever saw. I haven't
actually entered the store. I think I was intimidated by the name

It is in Fukuoka that I had my brother try his first Kaiten Sushi: trays of sushi rolling in front of you so you can get only the ones you want. The color of the plates determines how much you pay for each. I love those. The only thing is that I always end up paying a lot because I eat the expensive ones ha ha.

Plate price chart (130 yen is approx $1.50CAD)

My plates <3

I don't know why japanese are crazy about this actor/singer, but he was LITERALLY everywhere. My best friends would have been happy ha ha ha.

My brother when he saw the picture he said, had he not the sideburn, he'd have thought she was cute. Poor boi :p

Can you think of a weirder name for a bar? Oh dear
japanese people, you never cease to amuse me

Walking by this building we told ourselves we'd visit it the next morning,
but weather the next day was incredibly unhappy, so we gave up the idea

Both the Fukman bar and the traditional building were right in front of the business hotel we stayed at (Etwas). The hotel was awesome in that it was right in the middle of Fukuoka's downtown, right in the shopping district. They have a very basic breakfast included in the price and if you are not satisfied with it, you go out, turn left and get right in the Korean food district. The only thing I did not really like is that the hotel room was stinked with the horrible smell of cigarette. Everything in the room was really smelly and that, even if I sprayed the room freshener all around every 15 minutes. 

What was funny about the room is that, it was probably meant for two businessmen having to stay overnight: long manly large shirt as pj in the room, stuff to help put on men suit shoes, shoe shiner and the like. I kept on trying to imagine two awkward japanese businessmen sleeping in a double bed, smoking their cigarettes while feeling shy in their man pj... LOL

If you want to look tall, feel tall, be told you're tall and realize you are tall, go to Japan.

My brother's 2 ramen in Japan. Tonkatsu ramen from Fukuoka Tenjin.

This is a picture of the menu, cuz I wanted
to remember the name of the food we got
there, as it was insanely good (the first one)

 We were told to go at one very tasty sushi restaurant at the very top of a building in Fukuoka's downtown by my host father. Everything we ate there was really tasty, even the weird living fish they gave us as we sat in the restaurant, as appetizer. I really had no clue what they were...

After a look around, I saw that other customers also had had it, so I figured that they did not give these to us only to make fun of us foreigner.

I was a bit relieved.

I say a bit.

Then, the lady explains me how to eat it. It is a small bowl with small worm looking fishes, transparent, and alive. Very much alive. As she brings the plate, they are moving a lot in the water, but as the water gets still, so do the fishes. I wonder if they are dead. 

She tells me I need to pour vinegar (a brown vinegar, don't remember the kind) in the bowl, put my hand over it, and slurp them, just like that. She tells me to try. I start pouring the vinegar, slowly thinking how I can avoid eating those, or if I can just try a bit instead of getting the whole lot in my mouth...

But life is never this easy.

As soon as I put the vinegar in, the fishes start moving like crazy - I probably would too, if I was a fish bathing in vinegar - and then the realization comes to me: I would have to eat it all, without a second thought, for if I waited they'd be like awkward dead small fish, and if somehow felt even grosser to think eating them as they just died suffering. 

So I did.

As soon as I realized that I had to eat them, there was no doubt in my mind, so I did not even looked grossed out or anything and just got it as if I did that everyday.

Result: it tasted like vinegar. They go in too fast to even touch the texture of the fish on the tongue, so basically it just tastes like what you pour onto them. Lame. 

Now my brother, how doesn't understand japanese, watching me doing that as if it was all good and normal - I did not really translate anything before I ate mine - was thinking about how bad his pride would be hurt if he actually did not follow the lead. Awww big brothers....

So he ate it.

And I filmed it.

So in the end, Fukuoka was for me - and my brother - both a shopping spree and the testing of new things food-wise. My brother bought a full suit with shoes (was really fun to shop that with him, suit shops are amazing) for around $500 total, and I felt I had to spen just as much: only, as I did not buy anything insanely brand-like, I bought a lot more stuff to reach that teh he~~

Happy Belated Easter!!

Happy Easter! Easter is a family celebration in Canada - I say that cuz I don't actually know much about other countrie's Easter LOL So spending time with my family took the first priority, thus explaining why I write my Easter blog a bit late.

Actually I lied.

I do know of other countries' Easter celebrations. 

In 1999-2000, we had an exchange student from Germany who stayed at our house for a year with the student exchange program ASSE. At the time I had just gotten in Junior High first grade, so she was like a big sister to me. She was more of the age of my older brothers so she got very close to them and their friends. A very bright and open-minded girl. She is the first person who made me realize that I really HAD to do a student exchange myself. So in fact, the first place I had wanted to do a student exchange to was Germany. This is how good an impression she made on me.

In time I ended up choosing Japan, but well, that is another story. 

Now let us get back to the point.

The year after she went back to Germany, we went to visit her and her family in Germany, both of my parents and I, and it was around Easter time. There, we had a glimpse of the German way of Easter. Germany is really a pretty country in Spring. While it is not particularily warm, it is sunny and very green. The grass is green and tons of bulbs like tulips and the like grow in the grass, at random spots (more or less one every m3) so it makes everything colourful and bright.

In the trees, they all hang tons of plastic eggs and do the same in the indoor plants' branches. Because of the cold weather, in Canada we do our chocolate egg chasing inside, but in Germany they do it outside: they do it with real egg shells, chocolates, or really big decorative eggs (there is a castle somewhere in Germany where people go hide beautifully decorated eggs the size of a small melon; I don't really remember how it worked though, did they hide their eggs and get any other one, for the next year? Did they exchange them for Chocolate eggs, trying to find as much as they can? I relaly need to ask out my mommy to see what was the exact story....bothers me that I was so young at the time...I forget everything...).

Germans also gather together with traditional food they eat with all the family, and some with the extended family.

I love Easter. I love Chocolate.

I had not been doing anything with my nails lately, for I think I have a bad quality polish that put them in a really bad shape last fall, and was waiting for them to get back top shape but at last, here is a happy easter nail <3 Nail polish by ESSIE, "navigate her", new green of the spring.

Wearing clothes I got from Japan. 2012's Spring colors: mint green, salmon pink and beige. I'm so happy they have mint green stuff. Always loved this color but they never sold it anywhere, always a shade to green or too dark. Nut yes, 2012 is a happy time.

Camera whoring <3

Woke up yesterday to go help my friend with another photoshoot for her university work and dressed up in "Spring" colors, but in the end, the weather was so cold I ended up changing completely of outfit, which you'll see when I get the pictures of the shooting. Shame. At least I had taken pictures beforehand, which I usually never do.

Today I recieved the parcel my brother and I sent ourselves because we had too much stuff to bring back in the suitcases. Japanese post is amazing. Fast. Safe. I love Japan. So picture of the day's "coordinate" just because I feel like it :) no make up, no judging.

Tamana

Overview of a small part of Tamana, from the rooftop of Tamana Girl High oh, pretty Kyushu mountains...

Tamana...

Tamana is probably the most nostalgic place for me to return to, and the place I have been for the longest time, far from both friend and family, so returning there is always a must for me, whenever I return: I have a soft spot for the place, as I have been such a lost child walking around its small streets, speaking no word of the language.

We went there two days in a row, my brother and I, not sleeping there so we'd not inconvenience my former host family, but we shared a meal and tea, in company of my host sister and her two sons, adorable littles boys. She'd have been the pride of her mother had she been born hundreds of years earlier, I often think, as she only gives birth to little princes :)

Street of Tamana, in front of the house and shop of my former Japanese teacher, Suzuki sensei

We went to Tamana on the third and fourth day of our small trip, and the weather, that had been announced to be cold and rainy, was warm and sunny. That made the walk around town much nicer. When I visit Tamana, generally I go along the riverside and go see the flowers and the rock bridges, so particular of the place, but this time, surprisingly, we did not take the time to do so, instead, we walked around town and up to the High School I used to go to, Tamana Girl High School and, luckily, it was open: even my former homeroom teacher was there this time (last time I went to Japan with my childhood friend, he was not there so I was not able to meet him) and we went to one of his English class. 

No need to say that it was really funny, seeing my brother walk in my all girl school, with all the little girls wearing uniforms and staring at him :P Stupidly enough, we actually did not take any pictures with the people there: feeling the pressure of our intrusion in the school at the busy time of graduating ceremonies approaching? Maybe. 

Anyhow, we still went to my personal favorite place of the school, the rooftop. 

Another picture taken from the rooftop

I think I must have read too many mangas in High School, but go chilling on the rooftop has always been for me a really "typical" random thing to do that has this "japaneseness" feel to it. Not really into socializing with people who thought I could not communicate with them (which was actually true for the first 6 months) I was alone most of the time at school, and even if girl groups kept me a spot to eat with them in the classroom, when you don't understand the conversations going on it's not really appealing to stay seated there. Result: I'd go eat and chill on the rooftop quite often when the weather was nice enough to allow it (just so you know, in the end, I did end up hanging around with a Korean-loving student in my class, and the Korean exchange student of my school, the former, with whom I still communicate through letters; the latter of which - sadly - I have gotten no news from since I left Japan). 

Pretty house right beside my old school: such a nice architecture japanese style has...

Another nice one... we had wanted to take pictures of the inside of the garden,
but no one seemed home and so we could not ask for permission: shame

We went to a Shinto temple and a Buddhist temple while walking in Tamana. I had never realised how different the feel of both temples were: never wondered how to differentiate them before. Well now I can. 

To put it bluntly, Buddhist - that are supposed to be basing their beliefs on the non importance of the wordly riches - have grand shiny golden altars with gold trinkets suspended from everythere, and their guardians are big bad tall figures at the entrance of the temples.

Shinto temples, however, have animal guardian (mostly dragons, but in our trip I have seen boar guardians and fox guardians as well so I don't know what is the norm...) and the temple's site and constructions mostly rely on rock carving work, wood, and usually have a source somewhere. I don't know how many Shinto temples there are, but I daresay I think they are more common than Buddhist ones, or at least, I saw more of them.

I learned something really interesting this time about Shinto temple and beliefs. At the door, as I mentionned, there are always animal god guardians. What is special about them is that the right one always has its mouth open, while the left one has it closed. 

Little parenthesis on the japanese language: Japanese language is formed of syllable phonetics (a, ka, sa, ta etc.) and it begins with "A" and ends with "nn".

So basically, the guardians of Shinto temples are guarding against ALL evil: from "a" (open mouth) to "nn" (closed mouth). Isn't it just awesome? Well whatever, when I did learn it it made my day. Hope you like the idea as well :)

Shinto temple in Tamana, main entrance

Purifying water well in the Shinto temple

I personally prefer Shinto temples as they have a feel of old religion to it, sacred and natural. Not that I don't like the buddhist temples: after all, they have tons of shiny golden stuff, which I love <3 it's just that it feels too constricted and the main area in Buddhist temples is the inside, whereas Shinto is outside: I like outside. 

Always loved those monkeys. <3 (still in the Shinto temple, back of the site

 Coming up are pictures from a Buddhist temple. We were in a hurry to meet up with my host family right after so we did not get to visit the Buddhist graves but they are another mark that differs from shinto temples. I like japanese buddhist grave style.

Entrance door

Walking around Tamana, I went to my "Budoukan", where I practiced Kendo with Master Kakizoe. A very lovely old master, that my japanese teacher introduced me to when I studied there. He gave me classes for almost nothing in return, giving me all the equipement for free, plus the whole armor his daughter used to use for practice, giving me a Bokutou as a gift as we parted when I came back to Canada. 

Going there, I hoped to see him, and maybe get my brother to practice a bit of Kendo with him. Alas, the morning class had just ended and Kakizoe sensei had left for home.

Tamana's Martial art gymnasium

 After this non-fruitful excursion, my brother and I went to meet with my Japanese teacher, Suzuki sensei, to have tea, and when we told her we had gone to the Budoukan and missed my master, she brought us to his store and home, where we had tea and talked for a while. He has a really nice store that has a very cosy feel to it. There we bought a mini shinai, for a gift back home, made exactly like the real-sized ones.