DELAY
Date: Jan 22nd, 2008 5:45:39 am - Subscribe
Mood: gelatinous
So the delay between updates has an explanation. Not a good one. But, an explanation none-the-less. Cause: the Kyoto trip, New Years with host family, sickness, and gray area. In that order.
Mazu (first), our trip to Kyoto. Over the FuyuYasumi (winter break) Maddy, Ken, David, Sue, Clay, Roxy, and I all went to Kyoto for a week. We stayed in this little hostel for an extraordinarily cheap price, the operator of which spoke in an amusingly high pitched English. We went to (via bus/foot/train), experienced, and performed our touristy duty at numerous temples, castles, and shrines in Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka, and had an amazing time bonding as Ryugakuse (international students).
Some of the highlights:
1. The night bus we took to Kyoto and back from it was, despite its name, impossible to perform nightly activities in. Sleeping was rendered impossible due to the extremely narrow seats, bumpy ride, and lack of anything resembling comfortable posturing. The Japanese passengers had no such problem however. By engaging some sort of hive consciousness, the entire busload of them became, concomitantly, inanimate as soon as the driver pulled the curtain closed and got under way. We were baffled by the abrupt silence but not deterred. We exchanged our Secret Santa gifts with each other (it was Christmas Eve), drank our small amounts of celebratory liquids, and tried to keep our voices below annoying.
2. Kyoto was cold. Massively cold. But we forced ourselves out of the hostel every morning and managed to see such places as Kinkakuji, Kyomizudera, and Osaka Jouen. Took a ton of pictures. Half way through the trip we compared and the average was about 725 pictures.
3. At one point when we stopped for lunch, Maddy (mom) pulled out her very hard to find, rare, precious container of Peanut Butter and made us sandwiches. We then decided to make the PB internationally conscious and wrote English, Japanese, and Korean (for each of us respectively). It then took on the honored position of Trilingual PB and remained with us for the majority of the trip.
4. David, our good Christian Boy, got fabulously drunk one night which of course had nothing to do with the rest of the guys who were NOT encouraging him…
Once he returned to the hostel, he proceeded to veer drunkenly into our, the girls room, fall on us, wave his coveted half-eaten apple around, and demand we make him a sandwich. Needless to say, we haven’t let him forget about it.
5. The ride home on a consistent with the first but different night bus. The only notable event involved a strange man, probably mentally handicapped, who was sitting in front of me who kept muttering to himself and occasionally letting his flatulence have free reign. I wanted commiserate with the people around me, but due to my non-japanese blood I remained the only person awake.
It felt good to be back in Tokyo, the morning sun rising over a sleepless night and a crooked horizon line of amalgamated buildings. Strangely enough, it felt like coming home.
At one point while waiting for a bus to some nonspecific temple in the bone chilling cold, Ken constructed a suedo haiku that expresses the general feeling of the whole trip. I managed to immortalize it in my notebook:
Rain mixed in with snow
Descending upon my soul
Where is the bus?
What makes this a haiku was the following expletive by Ken himself: Fuck!
He was really cold, as were we all, but this little piece of culture brightened our frostbitten noses.
I don’t have a lot of time right now since finals are approaching next week, and I have to write a paper by the end of January. Sorede, I probably wont update again until the Haruyasumi (spring break) starts up. Ill have plenty of time then to talk about the remaining events stated previously.
Sorry, hang on til then!
-Spork
Comments: (1)
anonymous - January 23rd, 2008 |
