久しぶり！

That's 'long time no see' in Japanese, except that there's no verb that refers to seeing or meeting specifically, so it can be used for writing as well! Quite clever, isn't it. Anyway, I stopped writing for a while since I was preoccupied with the final exams and surviving the final school weeks, so I wasn't really feeling like going anywhere or doing anything interesting or worth writing about.

And then I thought that since there's only like a month or so left for me here, there's really no point in writing anymore... but then I got a sudden boost of inspiration - I guess it was the great day that I had today with Miho, thanks again! I wish we'd had more chances to hang out together, though!

I'm not going to write about today today, though (haha). I'm saving that for later, and instead I'll give you a brief recap on these few weeks when I was neglecting the blog.

The first snowfall came right after the first plum blossoms. Winter in Japan, you so weird.

In mid-January, there was a New Year's party at my friend's dorm. I know, a bit late for a New Year's party, right? Well, New Year here is like Christmas in Finland - people start preparing for it a long time ahead, buying or making decorations, preparing traditional New Year's dishes; and then you keep on wishing everybody Happy New Year until the 16th of January. I don't know why that exact date, but that's what our senseis were telling us.

So a few days before the 16th there was a party where we made rice cakes, had ozouni (a traditional New Year's soup), got wrapped in kimonos and were given a chance to participate in traditional New Year's activities, such as my new favorite card game, karuta! And the real version this time, where you actually have to know the poems and shit. I'd only learned around 10 poems by that time, but I managed to snatch a few cards, to everyone's surprise - it was obvious that the Japanese were not expecting a Westerner to recognize any of the poems by just their first verses. Haha.

Well, this is what I've been up to recently...

Making some rice cakes!

Not sure what to think of these fun and games...

A couple of weeks ago, there was an archery event at Sanjusangendo, which is a pretty cool temple where, if you go inside, there's a long hall with thousand statues of this deity called Kannon. Pretty impressive. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, photography was prohibited inside, so if you wanna see what it's like, google it!

Well, at least I've got photos of the archery event... Oh, wait.

Nope, the best views I got was through a smartphone screen that someone in the front row was shooting a video with. I was too impatient to stay there and wait until I got to the front, but my friend Dave, who arrived a bit later with his camera, got pretty amazing shots, so please, do go and see his blog post about it!

However, it was still a nice event, with amazing street foods and beautiful kimonos everywhere you looked.

Waiting.

And then it's time for a complete change of topic. Now, I was taking a walk around the Imperial Palace Gardens, which is where I usually go for a walk or a run, since it's right next to my dorm. I was just chilling and enjoying the cold winter's day, which really wasn't that cold for a winter's day, but anyway... And I saw this.

And it just made me so unbelievably mad! I also felt like throwing up, because I instantly recalled the pictures online in which you can see the stomach contents of dead birds - in case you haven't seen them, they're full of plastic and other shit since people are fucking retards and don't know how to properly dispose of their litter. I've got a piece of advice for you - whatever you do with it, don't leave it lying around where these idiot birds with brains the size of a peanut (if that) can get to it and mistake it for food. I mean, I hate birds more than anybody I know, and quite often find myself wishing them all dead, but I don't want it to happen like this - that's just wrong.

Well, got that out of my chest. Phew. The rest of the walk was enjoyable, at least, and if there's one place I'm gonna miss in Kyoto (well, of course there are many, but if there was just one), it would be the Imperial Palace Gardens. It's been really good to me, and I'm so lucky that I live right next to it - it's like an oasis in the middle of the city.

So now the exams are over, school's done with, and we even had a farewell party with these amazing people that I spent the past semester with. Thanks guys, it's been a blast! Still a few weeks left to explore Kyoto and surrounding areas, so I'll probs be writing a couple more posts to fill the days when I'm not traveling or meeting up with friends for the last time. Also, if you're a friend and we haven't arranged a date yet, (and if you want to, lol), please contact me! I really wanna see everybody once more and do fun stuff before I leave.

Another place I'm going to miss - Torikizoku! My favorite izakaya in Kyoto.

about things learned, sweets made and fun had.

Yesterday, as usual, the last class was on Japanese culture, and this time we studied about the history of Doshisha (that's the name of our university). I've been slightly confused every time I tell people I'm studying at Doshisha and they go all "Oh wow, you must be so clever!", but now I know why. So obviously this is a famous and acknowledged university, that much I knew; but it's actually so famous that there's even an effing manga made about the life and times of the founder, Joseph Hardy Neesima, and yesterday's lecture slides were basically just pages and pages of that manga, which, by the way, was pretty cringeworthy, especially with the English translations that were displayed beside the Japanese pages... I mean, just imagine a serious manga about, say, Obama. Just... no.

So the guy was apparently the first Japanese person to study in America - he went there to study Christianity and after returning to Japan, he decided to build a Christian university in Kyoto, a town that is famous for its Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. But that turned out a lot better than expected, and now people just assume that if you're studying at Doshisha, you must be clever and/or rich. As for me, I just said I want to go and my uni sent me... so yeah, doesn't really apply here!

At the end of the class, we had a campus tour with a volunteer to show us around and explain about the history of the buildings. We even got inside the pretty little church that's right in the middle of Imadegawa campus, and it was beautiful, with the stained glass windows and all.

Last weekend was also pretty great: I learned to make wagashi, which translates into Japanese sweets. Wagashi are the traditional type of sweets that are a crucial part of tea ceremonies, where they are enjoyed with matcha. There are different types of wagashi, but most of them are made with either mochi, which is the rice cake dough, or anko, which is the red bean paste that's so delicious that I devoted an entire post to it some time ago.

So, as someone who loves cooking and baking and eating wagashi, of course I signed up for that! And it was so worth it, too. We went to Kanshundo (甘春堂), which is a sweets shop that specializes in kyogashi - Kyoto-style wagashi - and were taught by one of the staff there. It was an old, quintessentially Japanese building, with the shop and a tea room down at the ground floor, and a classroom type of setting at the first floor. They had the pastes and doughs made ready for us, so our job was just to follow the instructions and mold them into the almost-too-pretty-to-eat sweets that their shop is famous for. Below are a couple of the ones that I made - one we ate at the end of the session with some deliciously bitter matcha. One of the most Japanese experiences that I've had so far, loved it.

Also, such a beautiful night when I left the place! So glad I went by bike instead of the subway.

Later that night, to balance it all out, we made some yogashi (that's the Japanese word for Western-style sweets): Oreo cookie balls! The original recipe was just a video I saw on my Facebook wall and I can't find it anymore, but I think by googling that you'll find loads of similar recipes. Had those, and some wine and cheese, and compared to the zen-like atmosphere we had at the wagashi shop, this process resembled My Drunk Kitchen, a YouTube channel that I strongly recommend for everybody to watch! So entertaining. Well, our balls may not have been the prettiest out there; however, the end result was delicious.

From there onwards, went to an izakaya and KARAOKE for the first time! Expensive but so much fun, since here you get a private room with your friends and get to sing as much as your heart desires until your time's up - and even then you can just request more time, which you'll probably end up doing since you're getting a bit drunk and there are a kazillion of songs that you just need to sing right there and then.

In these rooms they've also got a selection of instruments and shit, so while your friends are singing a song you don't know, you can for example accompany them on a tambourine! Noisy but fun. Plus, if you get the nomihodai deal, which I think is the usual deal, you also get to play with the drink order tablet as much as you want, and the drinks keep coming on the set price that you agreed to pay at the entrance. The Japanese people sure know how to party.

That's all for today, folks - I'll update later when I've tried out a couple of Japanese craft beers that I found at a store that I also think I'll be talking about later. Until then!

harowin!

...as in Halloween like it's pronounced in Japanese. Halloween has recently become a big thing in Japan, as far as causing trouble, apparently. I just stayed in Kyoto, and didn't even go out clubbing in central or anything, so I don't have anything to comment on that - I think it's more of a problem in bigger cities.

So what did I do for Halloween? Well, I evolved into Pikachu for the entire weekend, which was fun but slightly uncomfortable at times because it gets really warm in that outfit! I mean, I left home thinking that this is the most comfortable thing I've ever worn to a party before, and if I end up drinking too much and just passing out as soon as I get home, it doesn't even matter since I'm already kinda in my jammies. But then, since at parties you're mostly just inside all the time with a bunch of other people, wearing a fleece onesie is not the best choice for the night. Plus, as you're straining to carry on a conversation in Japanese, which requires tremendous effort and sometimes even feels like a physical workout... phew. There are two ways to get drenched in sweat while staying still - either planking (no, not that weird meme thing but the actual exercise), or dressing up as Pikachu for Halloween parties. Oh, and sauna, of course. Too obvious, almost forgot.

That was also part of the reason I didn't go clubbing yesterday when a lot of others did - I'm pretty sure some people were even nuts enough to take the train to Osaka for an all-nighter at a rooftop party. I don't know if I'm too old or just lazy, but that was really an impossible idea for me from the start; after one nomihodai party, to endure an hour-long train ride to get to another, then stay there for the night at what is probably a very noisy club, then spend another hour on the morning train back home. Like, when I go out partying, I want to relax and have fun, instead of working my ass off just to get to a party and back. But I do hope that the people who ended up going had lots of fun! And it would've been cool - just look back at the pictures that I posted after visiting Osaka, and imagine partying at a rooftop club somewhere around there - but if I ever do that, I'm booking myself a hotel room for a good night's sleep right afterwards.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from this weekend's events. On Friday, I went to a Halloween event organized by SIED, which I think is like the ESN equivalent in this university. It was fun, we made candy apples and had snacks and bingo and stuff - sorta like one of those birthday parties you had when you were a kid. I made a bunch of new friends, and for some reason, whenever I told people I'm from Finland, the first thing they asked me was if I'd seen northern lights. Like, I don't think I've been asked that too many times before, and certainly not as the opening line of the very first conversation I have with somebody. But apparently here it's something that everybody gets excited about, and, in addition to Moomin, one of the first images people have when they think of the Nordic countries. Some people really just flipped when I told them that my family lives in the countryside where there's no light pollution whatsoever, which means that I've borne witness to several pretty amazing aurora spectacles.

Competing with the official Doshisha photographer.

The party posse.

So once again, thank you SIED for organizing such events, makes it so much easier to make new friends here! The good thing for me was that I went alone, with no Finnish or English speaking friends, so was actually forced to speak Japanese all the time. And it's getting easier, I think - this morning, after two days of using conversational Japanese, and having had a dream in Japanese as well, I felt like something's finally clicked in my brain. It's hard to explain, but somehow I've just started to understand the language, how it works and how people use it, so that I'm not just staring open-mouthed whenever somebody talks to me, but might actually be able to respond in the expected manner.

But yeah, about last night's party, I almost forgot. So if the Friday's event was a children's party, this was most definitely an adult one, with nomihodai and all. It was held in a café right next to my place, which I was happy about - a Halloween with no fuss at all, just get inside the Pikachu, walk a few hundred meters and you've arrived at the party venue. Then make the wise decision of not going through the trouble to get to Osaka and back, and get to bed before midnight, and happiness ensues. And, on top of that, Maija insisted on cooking me dinner before the party (thanks again, Maija, it was delicious as always!), so the biggest effort, really, was with the language, again. But it's an effort that really pays off!

Thank you So and Shin for organizing this party!

When I woke up in the morning and looked at my phone display, I realized it's already November! I've been here for almost two months now. I've got to admit that, while the first month just flew past, the past month's been a bit slow from time to time. I've got a busy schedule, which is why I like to get a lot of rest on the weekends, but then, when you're just at home alone not really doing anything, it gets pretty boring pretty quickly. But now that I've made some new friends here, and I'm actually expecting a visitor this month as well, it should be alright - despite the fact that it's actually starting to get colder now! Japan's not big on insulation, and since I've got huge windows/balcony doors in my room, the temperature inside is pretty much the same as outside... I do have the aircon, but I'm still a bit undecided whether I want to be using it all the time or not, since it dries up the air a bit too much. Would be too ironic, though, to come here from Finland where it gets as cold as -30 degrees in the winter, and then freeze to death in my own room, so in the end I might just have to make use of the aircon to avoid such a fate.

Well, this was all for today. The next post will probably include a shitload of photos around Kyoto, since the momiji season (that's when the leaves turn red) is reaching it's peak in a week or two. It's supposedly very pretty around here at that time. Mata ne!

fun times!

Ha, I finally found fish for sashimi use at the supermarket! I've been wanting to have a simple meal of sake don, as in uncooked salmon on a bed of rice, but for some reason, I haven't been able to find a pack of fish that says for sashimi use. I knew that in Japanese it should say 刺身用 (sashimi yo), but there just seemed to be no such option available anywhere. Everything was labeled as お造り用 (otsukuri yo), like the package in the below picture. But then, in the last supermarket I went to on my search for sashimi-safe fish, I realized that the ready-made sashimi portions next to the unprepared fish all said お造り, and after a brief dictionary search, it became apparent that sashimi in Kansai dialect is otsukuri. So I'm guessing that my inability to understand a lot of the stuff here is not only because I suck at Japanese, but a lot of it might actually be due to the fact that Kansai dialect is not the kind of Japanese that I've been learning before coming here. Another thing I've noticed now is how in stores, restaurants, and such, the staff always thank the customers by saying ooki ni, which is the Kansai equivalent to arigato. No wonder I've been so confused.

So that was probably the most enlightening moment this week. But what have we been up to, really? Well, on Thursday there was finally the Jidai Matsuri, which I wrote about a month ago when we mistakenly went to watch it a month ahead of time... But now it was for real, and our teachers took us all there to watch it, since the parade started at the Imperial Palace which is right next to the university.

Eagerly waiting to go; and Rachel absorbed in her favorite pastime: chucking pens at Dave.

Record-breaking ghosting.

A few hundred meters later Maija finally noticed.

There were so many people, though, that I hardly saw anything except for the flags that they were carrying, and the people that were riding horses. I also had to leave after a short while since I had one more class that day, so I didn't even get to follow the parade. It's quite a long walk that they do, I think it was 2 kilometers, from the palace all the way to the Heian Shrine.

So this is probably the best shot I got of the actual parade.

Yesterday, that was Saturday, my friend wanted to go skating as she had bought a skateboard a short while ago. She's also just a beginner, and I only remember one time before this that I've even stood on a skateboard - and even then I nearly tripped. HOWEVER, for some reason I was really good this time! I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and learned how to turn, even at a standstill, like when you have to lift the front side of the board to change direction... I'm bad at explaining this, probably there is more specific vocabulary for these things. In addition to Japanese, I'm gonna have to start learning skating vocab to gain some street cred. I wonder if I'd be able to do a frontside ollie at the end of the semester? (And oh my god, I was just gonna link the original song, but when I searched for it on YouTube, I got an automatic suggestion to search for 'frontside ollie in japanese', and that's what I found... I don't even.)

Here I come!

...and there I go.

In the evening, there was a friend's birthday party - well, a friend of a friend to me, actually, since I hadn't even met the guy before last night. First we went to have some okonomiyaki with Maija, and since we had some time in our hands before having to get ourselves transported downtown, bought pre-drinks at Fresco and listened to some good music at my place. The drinks were pretty interesting, to say the least. Sparkling sake was exactly as promised - a sparkling wine that tasted like sake. I still don't know if I really like it or not. Just plain sake is very good, once you get used to the taste, but I'm not sure whether or not it does it any good to sweeten and carbonate it... And umeshu was pretty nice, just very, very sweet. I wouldn't be able to drink a whole bottle of it. Kinda reminds me of Passoa or some other fruit liquor that has way too much sugar in it.

Sparkling sake & Umeshu

The party took place at a nice izakaya in Shijo, and we had a reservation in a private room downstairs, with nomihodai - drink as much as you can. A concept that would never, ever work in Finland. I think that there was actually an attempt to introduce a buffet kinda deal for drinks at some nightclub a while ago, but it goes without saying that the proposal got the red light. Nevertheless, in Japan, you get this offer everywhere, and the price of last night's nomihodai was 1200 yen for two hours, which is less than 10 euros.

Tried hot sake for the first time - and, quite surprisingly, liked it better than cold!

Pouring a beer for Jesus.

So that was a fun night, albeit detrimental... Nearly made it to karaoke afterwards, but as it was quite expensive, and I was about to die, anyway, we ended up going home quite early. Still had to take a taxi, though, since the last trains go before midnight. But fortunately it wasn't even expensive, only 700 yen! And there was three of us, so that made it like 230 yen per person. The train would've been only 20 yen cheaper (~10 cents), and a lot more troublesome. So there is something here that is cheap, after all! Anyways, had great time, thanks to everybody and congrats to Maiki, who's birthday it was. Next weekend: Halloween party and a chance to wear the Pikachu onesie! Yay! And tomorrow: Monday, lessons from 9 to 5, and a vocabulary quiz. Ugh.