...stupid blog service, not backing up my last draft. It was all written and everything, and I was having problems publishing. I thought that it had auto-backed up... but apparently I was wrong. Sigh. All last night's hard work gone. I thought I had saved it to my c&p clipboard, but I had accidently overwritten it with my united milage plus number. -_-;
Oh well, what can you do.
Yesterday I spent the day in Sakuragi-cho, Yokohama, because my friend had won an auction for two pre-showing tickets of Rurouni Kenshin, a live action movie based off a manga/anime series. It's pretty old (ie, mostly my generation or older know about it) but it's a fun series about a former assassin turned wandering samurai who does good to atone for all the people he killed. The main character is this dude named Himura Kenshin, and he's played by Takeru Sato (who also was in one of my favorite dramas, Mei-chan no Shitsuji aka, Mei-chan's Butler).
I was super excited to see the movie before I left, since it meant that I wouldn't have to rush around trying to worry about seeing the movie before I leave in two days (omg). There was a mention of maybe a cast member appearing, but we weren't really pegging our hopes on that.
But then, at 3:10, they announced that we were having a guest visitor. We were still pessimistic, that it would be like one of the side characters.
But no. Freaking Takeru Sato and the producer walked out on the stage, and part of my inside exploded into fangirly goodness. He's so. Freaking. Cute. Takeru, not the producer.
Sadly, we weren't able to actually get his autograph or anything, since he was up on stage the whole time and they started the movie right after, nor were we able to take pictures of him since I'm pretty sure we would have gotten kicked out. But oh. My. God. WE GOT TO SEE THE REAL TAKERU SATO LIVE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE~ ^_________________^
Kay, enough fangirling for now. :)
Sakuragi-cho also is home to the instant noodle ramen museum. So I mean, that was an obvious, must go to place before I left. It's pretty cool, with part of it being a museum complete with all the instant ramen Nissin ever made since its inception (complete with a huge amount of flavors from your basic chicken to cheese curry to BBQ flavored ramen, PLUS instant spaghetti which actually looked pretty good) along with an interesting animated movie (with English audio options!) about the history of instant ramen and how Momofuku Ando, its creator, came up with the idea for both than and for cup noodles (apparently, it's because Americans suck {or used to suck} at using chopsticks and eating from bowls, so they switched it to a cup with a fork). Really, it's a super interesting place.
On the third floor though, they have a place where you can make your own cup ramen by adding in flavors and so on, as well as an actual "ramen factory" where you can make the noodles themselves. Oh. My. God. Sadly, you need to sign up for a specific time slot for those, and all the time slots we could attend were full (and the factory was completely sold out). Oh well. Next time.
I also caved into buying a book about the history of ramen. It's all in Japanese. So help me god, I will learn enough Japanese to be able to read that book by the end of this academic year. But I mean, it's about the research Momofuku Ando did on the history of ramen. HOW ON EARTH COULD I RESIST BUYING SOMETHING LIKE THIS? The answer was, I couldn't, and yeah, now I'm paying to ship it back home lol.
That area is really pretty though, and I wish I had spent more time there. At night too, they light up a bunch of things and it's really really pretty. Stupidly, I forgot to bring my camera with me though. Need to get better about that...
We found this amazing American place called Bobby's or Bubby's or something like that that had American foods (Mashed Potatoes? YES PLEASE) along with sweet sweet pies. Oh my god. Pies.
My friend thought I wasn't serious about getting pies after dinner. To be fair, I'm not overly fond of sweet things, nor do I have an especially large sweet tooth. I can usually resist things like ice cream easier than I can, say, a super delicious steak. Mm, steak.
But pie? Especially banana cream, strawberry, or a good fruit pie? I CRUMBLE LIKE A PIE CRUST. This place also had a banana mocha pie (omfg?!) which they were sold out of (nooooooo) and then they sold out of the banana pie (extra NOOOOOOOOOOOO), but their apple pie and the crust were really tasty. Still kind of sad about the banana pie though. Still really want the banana mocha. They said the chocolate pudding was their most famous but yeah... I love fruit pies more.
Soon though. Soon the tasty pies shall be MINE. Japan has really nice cakes and sweets and parfaits, but I've missed the wonderfulness that are things like peach crumbles and banana cream pies.
Two and a half more days.
Holy cow.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Nara
Now that I'm homeless, I've been using my newfound free time to A) sleep a little B) travel a little and C) see some people and stuff. For a while, I was living at my friend's place (who was gracious enough to put a bunch of us up, though, we were put on the no-air conditioner-sweaty-diet {though really, it wasn't as bad as I complain since there was usually a nice breeze, just ohman humid} and I think at one point there were seven people). I feel like I've been doing a bunch of day trips, since finding a hotel or hostel or anything within a reasonable price range (ie, under $100ish a night) is pretty impossible even a week beforehand.
Today, I did a day trip to Nara, the first permanent capitol of Japan, and the capitol prior to Kyoto. Actually, yesterday I went roaming around Kyoto for a bit since that's where I'm staying, currently.
Before that, I did a day trip to Yamaguchi to see Akiyoshi-do, the longest cave system in Japan (and one of the biggest too, I'd bet). Like seriously, it's HUGE compared to the caves in Niimi. Quite magnificent too. They had explanations in English, which was an extra nice touch.
Limestone caves in Japan. Who would have thought.
Nara though, is where, really, I got a sense of enormity and the scale to which Japanese palaces used to be built. I made the mistake of walking to the palace grounds, so when I got there the primary thing on my mind was distance, but oh man! I went in through the Southern Gate - the Suzaku (tee hee, Fushigi Yugi) Gate, and the main palace was nothing but a small house in the distance. And the main palace, is quite quite large. I mean, there's a *train line* that goes through the palace grounds beyond the Suzaku gate.
My face looked a little bit like this: ；▽； ("Oh god, that's so far away. I should have taken the bus here. At least I'm getting all these steps in my pedometer...")
Seriously though, this place was huge. I'm probably exaggerating a little bit, but it felt like I was walking for a good ten to fifteen minutes at least! Then I got to the main imperial palace (reconstruction) gates. There was still another massive courtyard inside! I was like HOLY FRIGGIN COW THERE'S MORE?!
Yes, there was.
I had just been walking straight too. There were actually grounds to the east and the west that had things like gardens and museums, but I decided to forgo those due to time and holycrap they were far away.
It really made me marvel though, at just how big the palaces were back then. Seriously, that was a lot of space. You could fit a small village in there (and they probably did).
Needless to say, I took the bus back to near Nara Park. And then I had *more* walking to do, since there were a lot of world heritage sites in the park area. I don't think I even hit them all.
I'll get the names of them later, but I think I managed to go to three of the WHS, including, of course, the famous Giant Wooden Buddha. That was pretty awesome. Again, the scale to which both that and the building that housed it was amazing. I mean, these were built ages ago! How did they manage to build things that high? Blows my mind to look at things that tall.
There was also a gorgeous candle light kind of lantern festival that loads of people in yukata came out for. It was really pretty. I wasn't planning on staying until the evening in Nara, but it kind of ended up that way when I saw them put all the lanterns out. I killed time at this awesome little restaurant that had pretty tasty curry, an unlimited drink bar, and a fantastic (working) model train set. I felt like a twelve year old boy. It was pretty freaking sweet. I took so many pictures. :)
Today, I say bye to Kyoto though and make my way to Tokyo! I'm super excited. I'm supposed to meet up with two sets of relatives. :D Yaaay fun! I was also supposed to meet with two friends, but one turns out to be busy instead so hopefully we'll meet again in California.
Here we gooooooooo.
Today, I did a day trip to Nara, the first permanent capitol of Japan, and the capitol prior to Kyoto. Actually, yesterday I went roaming around Kyoto for a bit since that's where I'm staying, currently.
Before that, I did a day trip to Yamaguchi to see Akiyoshi-do, the longest cave system in Japan (and one of the biggest too, I'd bet). Like seriously, it's HUGE compared to the caves in Niimi. Quite magnificent too. They had explanations in English, which was an extra nice touch.
Limestone caves in Japan. Who would have thought.
Nara though, is where, really, I got a sense of enormity and the scale to which Japanese palaces used to be built. I made the mistake of walking to the palace grounds, so when I got there the primary thing on my mind was distance, but oh man! I went in through the Southern Gate - the Suzaku (tee hee, Fushigi Yugi) Gate, and the main palace was nothing but a small house in the distance. And the main palace, is quite quite large. I mean, there's a *train line* that goes through the palace grounds beyond the Suzaku gate.
My face looked a little bit like this: ；▽； ("Oh god, that's so far away. I should have taken the bus here. At least I'm getting all these steps in my pedometer...")
Seriously though, this place was huge. I'm probably exaggerating a little bit, but it felt like I was walking for a good ten to fifteen minutes at least! Then I got to the main imperial palace (reconstruction) gates. There was still another massive courtyard inside! I was like HOLY FRIGGIN COW THERE'S MORE?!
Yes, there was.
I had just been walking straight too. There were actually grounds to the east and the west that had things like gardens and museums, but I decided to forgo those due to time and holycrap they were far away.
It really made me marvel though, at just how big the palaces were back then. Seriously, that was a lot of space. You could fit a small village in there (and they probably did).
Needless to say, I took the bus back to near Nara Park. And then I had *more* walking to do, since there were a lot of world heritage sites in the park area. I don't think I even hit them all.
I'll get the names of them later, but I think I managed to go to three of the WHS, including, of course, the famous Giant Wooden Buddha. That was pretty awesome. Again, the scale to which both that and the building that housed it was amazing. I mean, these were built ages ago! How did they manage to build things that high? Blows my mind to look at things that tall.
There was also a gorgeous candle light kind of lantern festival that loads of people in yukata came out for. It was really pretty. I wasn't planning on staying until the evening in Nara, but it kind of ended up that way when I saw them put all the lanterns out. I killed time at this awesome little restaurant that had pretty tasty curry, an unlimited drink bar, and a fantastic (working) model train set. I felt like a twelve year old boy. It was pretty freaking sweet. I took so many pictures. :)
Today, I say bye to Kyoto though and make my way to Tokyo! I'm super excited. I'm supposed to meet up with two sets of relatives. :D Yaaay fun! I was also supposed to meet with two friends, but one turns out to be busy instead so hopefully we'll meet again in California.
Here we gooooooooo.
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