Last Couple of Posts Before Classes Start

It's the oddest feeling choosing classes for school next semester before even knowing what you're going to take this semester (which starts this Friday...)









Let me show you my greeeat kanji reading skills... Dai hon san(!?) Go koku Ji. Either way... Gokoku-ji (Ji=temple). If I understood my host mom correctly, it is where the mother of the 5th daimyo of the Tokugawa reign lived.




We went coincidentally on the day of Hana Matsuri or Festival of Flowers. Briefly searching it online, it seems to be the celebration of the birth of buddha and you bring/enjoy the sakura and other flower blossoms. At this little station you get the small laddle and pour "amaiocha" or sweet tea over the little figurine who is apparently (a?) しゃか or shakyamuni? or a buddha? I asked my host mom why it was sweet tea and she could only say perhaps the shaka loves sweet tea? Hm..




It looks like I borrowed their camera to take their picture for them. This is the entrance to the main part of the temple.




A painter/drawer/artist! Must be quite the serene place to draw.. The monuments that are fenced are apparently lit with candles at night or perhaps on special days. I'm not sure what other meanings they have.




Nice looking structure. I don't have any historical explanation. It was just pretty and I forgot to ask my host mom..




There were quite a few women in kimonos. I wish all the cars in the back of the picture would disappear...





A まつき (松木?) (Matsu ki) or a type of pine tree since it stays green through all the seasons. At another angle of this tree you would be able to see that it's leaning like the Tower of Pisa and those slanted sticks are actually supporting it.




The inside of the main temple (right next to the matsu ki from the previous picture). There's a little box before this entrace where you put in money and then wish for luck/happiness/help etc.




Another one of the shaka figurines. My host mom going through the ritual. I think here too you ask for good health/luck/happiness/ etc.





Eating crepes at a department store. Watching them being made as we wait to get a seat. This is what I ended up ordering too..




This one was made of butter and sugar. Haha sounds like the sandwiches my dad would make for my sister and I on saturdays when we were in elementary school and it was his day to feed us. How.. nutritious.. but I must say they were pretty good...




My lunch! Oh and apparently the flour to make this crepe is the same flour used to make the buckwheat noodles for soba!




The Korean wave hitting Japanese magazine stands. Yonsama (far left) is everywhere here. I even got a packet of tissues with his face on it. Winter Sonata still seems to be popular here and there are advertisements of it at the entrance of pachinko parlors for some reason... My host mom said that he was quite popular among friends of hers of around the same age....




Can you spot what freaks me out whenever I walk to the train station from my host family's house?




My first rain in Japan!

But of course, according to weather.com, it'll be rainy/cloudy for the next week and a half..




The person on the left of me came to pick me up at Narita Airport as part of the student pick-up service. She took me alll the way from NRT to the subway station of my host family's house which took more than an hour and a half. We had some nice conversation (with me struggling to remember the most easy Japanese vocabulary) but she was born in Shanghai until she was 10 when she moved to Japan. Thus she speaks chinese with her family at home but she's Japanese much in the same way that I'm Korean yet I was born in the states. The person on the other side of me is her friend and we are all at Sophia University amidst the club craze.




Omurice (omelet rice) in a cream sauce with shrimp, tomatoes, and avocado and some tomato sauce. Yummy. This was in Shibuya. I think the weather was too crazy- rainy and cold and we were too hungry to remember to take pictures of each other and shibuya!



Sign alerting for the special train segment during rush hour where only women ride- something about indecent things and being squashed like sardines during rush hour and... yea.