christmas "holidays"

My sister just arrived here for the winter holiday, and I had already given up trying to write this post since I wouldn't have time to do it while she's here, and after it would just be so terribly delayed that I wouldn't even have bothered. But after a nice meal of bento and mochi ice-cream, she pretty much just lost consciousness... So I do have time to update after all!

Looks like she'll be fine for the next couple of hours...

So, about the Christmas holidays. Well, in reality, we only had Christmas Day off, which is only because Doshisha is a Christian university. For the rest of Japan it's just another day at work or school. On Christmas Eve we had school from 9 to 3, and also there are no such things as Boxing Day in England, or the Second Christmas Day in Finland; but since Christmas Day was a Friday, we had a long weekend. After school on Christmas Eve we went to an onsen in Arashiyama, and it was amazing! They had two saunas, one "traditional" and one steam sauna, two different types of baths inside, and outside a traditional one plus a cold one. After soaking in the baths for about an hour, every muscle in my body was so relaxed that it felt impossible to drag myself back to town. Again, no pictures from the onsen; since people get naked in there, it wouldn't be very appropriate.

In the evening, I ate a fuckload of chocolate with some shitty red wine and a movie that was supposed to be really sad and moving but wasn't. Boyhood, that was.

Not a bad way to spend Christmas Eve, though!

On Christmas Day, there was an international party at my friend's dorm - I think the idea was originally hers, and she also made nearly half of the food, although it was a potluck party. I also took the opportunity to use the big kitchen before the party to cook the traditional Finnish carrot casserole, which is an essential part of the Christmas dinner for us.

One hungry goat.

Secret Santa! 

Doing kendama.

On Sunday, it was about time to go out and burn some calories, since for the entire weekend all I did was eat, really... No, I'm kidding, we had been planning this for a long time so it wasn't just for the guilt - a climb to Kibuneyama! First we took the Eizan line to Ninose station, crossed the small village and headed into the woods.

Ninose 

The station and its master.

Into the woods.

The woods.

The climb was pretty steep, but not too difficult. The path was pretty small but clearly visible, and the signs were alright - I mean, from time to time you were reminded of how long you still had to walk to reach a certain point, so it's not like we felt lost at any time... But going down, it got pretty difficult at times! At one point, instead of a path we were walking down a dry river bed, and it got pretty slippery at times. And where there was path, it was very narrow and there were spots where you might've just fallen down the slope if you weren't being careful. Also, some pretty interesting sets of safety ropes were set up at the trickiest spots. But it was all fun as hell!

This was the easy part.

It snowed!

Mostly it was just forest so there were no good views, but we were high!

Creatures of the forest. 

Slippery slope

To prevent landslide, I think?

Walk back to Kuramaguchi station.

Swallowed by a tree

At the end, we paid brief visit to Kibune shrine.

So I do recommend this trail for everybody who are up for a bit of a challenge - not that it was too difficult, still good for a beginner, I think. If you want more info, check this out. It's all in Japanese but you can see the route on the map there. All in all it took us around 4 hours to climb up and down, and according to the original plan, we should've continued down all the way to Kurama station. So whoever came up with that route is fast as hell.

That's all for now, now it's naptime before heading out for some beer and good food at our favorite izakaya, Torikizoku. Next week I might post some pictures about the adventures I'm planning to take my sister to - until then, sayonara!