Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Dog Cafe

    It is stereotyped that Japan is crowed and cramped and has no space.  Of course, that's pretty much true.  People don't have big homes in comparison to the US and they work a lot more due to the group mentality of the culture.  The lack of space and time in Japan means it's difficult for a lot of people to keep pets.  Thus: the Pet Cafe's were born.
    Claire informed me of their existence via cat cafe's but when discussing this phenomenon with my host mother she promptly told me she had been to a dog cafe and printed out directions for me.  No offense to cat-lovers, but why would I pay to be ignored by egotistical cats when I could go get some puppy love for 5$ an hour?
This guys is hanging out with the target dog.  I love his smile!

This dog was so freaky it didn't know what to do with me
and I had no clue what to do with it.

Doggies!

Some of the dogs were wearing diapers.
One of them crawled into Sara's lap.
It promptly went from kind of gross to adorable.

PIC OF THE DAY.
This little guy looks like he is ready to die from happiness.
Notice:  There were three doggies that all looked like this so
the cafe dyed their tails to tell them apart (blue, green, pink).

Basically the Pet Cafe's are a win-win-win situation.  Dogs and cats get love and a home, people get fill their pet-quota and the cafe makes a bit of money.

Maybe I AM in a movie....

     Well, this one weekend my friend Scott called me at some ungodly hour in the morning on Saturday and invited me to the Fushimi Inari Shrine.  This shinto shrine is most well-known for the scene in "Memoirs of a Geisha" that if you saw you will recognize this:

Fushimi Inari is always described as having hundreds of these red shinto gates but it was more like thousands!  There were so many including little paths through bamboo forests to weird gravyards such as this one.

In this particular graveyard there was this statue of an old Japanese God.  Now I don't know his name or really what he even stands for but I do know this guy must beat up on smaller weak little gods cause just LOOK at him!  Sword, rope, fire, angry-looking face to make you whimper in fear.
Awesome shinto god.  

This shrine was really not much but orange gates, I am sure there is some fantastic history to the place that Scott, currently taking Japanese art history should have been able to tell me, but alas, I was just there to take pictures.



After Fushimi Inari, Scott and I headed to a temple (a shrine means it is for the Shinto religion, a temple means it is for Buddhism) with a garden famous for it's Rakudan.  Rakudan are stone sculptures of people who have achieved enlightenment and followed Buddha's path.  I was expecting all happy, smiling little men but one of the first stone figures you see is this guy:
Mr. Grouchy fittingly has bird poop on his head.  Is he angry because a
bird pooped on him or did a bird poop on him because he was being grumpy?

     There were hundreds of creepy little stone guys in the garden, it was really something from another world.  Since women cannot achieve enlightenment according to the buddhist faith (don't get me started), the only female statue in the garden was of Buddha's mother.  At first Scott and I couldn't find her but thanks to Scott's art history class, he remembered that Buddha was born from his mother's armpit (no joke) and we promptly recognized her as the statue with one arm raised.  Other figures included a cow and his farmer, how the cow became enlightened I don't know.
Enlightened cow...

This dude was just enlightened and chilling before
Scott came up and started mocking him.

Other than the rakudan, the garden was really very pretty but totally not made for hot days, and tall, tired americans.




     Wish I could tell everybody more about the history of these two places, but unfortunately that's not quite my forte as some of you know.  Extra bonus post dedicated to Claire Little after this!

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Later on, there will be no good and bad experiences...There will just be things that happened

     Well!  It sure has been a long time since I have updated!  A lot has been happening for me, most of it not good: getting sick (again), having more host family issues, etc.  The host family coordinator wanted to put me in another host family for the last 4 weeks because even she thinks my parents are crazy!  Everything is all worked out now though, I confronted my host parents about things and we worked everything out.
     I have exactly 4 weeks until I come home to the states and realized that means I only have 3 weekends left to go crazy in Japan!  I no longer have internet at home so I am sorry, but I won't be able to post pictures until thursday.  But look forward to it!  I went to the Fushimi inari Shrine aka the temple with thousands of red shinto gates as featured in one stunning scene of "Memoirs of a Geisha."  See everyone then ^_^

Friday, April 10, 2009

Hanami: The Perfect Picnic

"Hanami" is written with the characters 花見 literally meaning "flower" and "to see." So when all your friends say, "Do you want to go to Osaka Castle and go Hanami?" your only reply can be "yes!"
Enjoying the flowers around sunset.

The Sakura (cherry) trees in Japan are just beautiful, and the best part is they are not just on one street in the city, they are everywhere! Unfortunately, once they bloom, the blossoms have about 2 weeks before they are blown away by seasonal winds. That is why everybody and their Grandmothers go out and picnic in early April.
David snacking on his fried chicken Lunch.


The classic picturesque sakura blossoms.


I thought these blossoms looked like fireworks!


Sakura on one side of the river, skyscrapers on the other.


I cannot fully show you how gorgeous this was, the flowers just twinkle in the sun, the grass is green, the weather had just got warm...I literally have about 100 pictures from a mere 3 hours of this day and I cannot begin to explain how hard it was to choose pictures for the blog. I hope I picked a few good ones!

You just can't help but smile~

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Finally, It's Spring! School and Other Activties

The weather is getting warmer, the sky is getting blue, the cherry blossoms are blooming and soon the official Japanese school year will start. That means the campus will be getting much more lively. One of the events to ring in the new school year is to have club festival!
Here you can see the Rock Band and the Karate Club showing off in hopes of new members.

The cheery active atmosphere on campus in addition to the beautiful day meant one thing to me: a huge sudden craving for cookies 'n cream ice cream, which they don't have here. But I got the next best thing.
I gave into my craving and my 4-year McDonalds abstinence
and got an Oreo McFlurry with my friend Ashley. Saying it was the best
ice cream of my life would be a severe understatement.


One of the good things about good weather is my half-hour bike ride to school is much more pleasant. Except for this part:
This hill so far as been a great way to warm up on the chilly mornings,
I am only now realizing that when it gets warm, this guy will be
the reason I show up sweaty and nasty to my morning classes.


Since the cherry blossoms are blooming the entirety of Japan will be going Hanami (literally meaning flower viewing) I will also partake in this tradition. Basically it is the quintessntial Japanese picnic under the cherry trees. I attempted to do this on saturday but we got rained out, but this coming tuesday I will be heading over to Osaka Castle to eat and drink and celebrate the blossoms. I will post on that soon! A teaser for you of the pictures to come: