on holiday!

And so begins year 2016 with zero motivation to study, although I prayed my first prayers at the shrine dedicated to gods of study. Dunno, it just feels so dumb to have a holiday just four weeks before the entire semester will end. Two tests tomorrow, and I'm just like... who cares. So instead of grammar and vocab revision, let's just relive the past week, since it was all way more fun.

Now, it's been a busy week for the camera, too, so in order to keep this post short enough to scroll through in less than an hour, I'll keep writing to the minimum and let you guys enjoy the pictures. Also, since Eve won't be getting the entire bunch until Easter, this functions as a sneak peek for her, too, and to anyone she might be wanting to show these.

Arashiyama monkey park!

Tourists were advised to stay a minimum 2 meters away and not to point their camera straight at the monkeys... He looks like a professional though, I guess he knows what he's doing.

A big Totoro thumbs-up for Arashiyama.

Finally a photo of me in Japan, and got photobombed so bad. Don't know what to say. 

So much moss that it inspired us to create a gif.

Coffee and chocolate (she brought me my favorite!) to take us through the New Year celebrations.

Are you ready for the year of the monkey?

Hatsumoode at Kitano Tenmangu Shrine - since it's the shrine for gods of study, it's pretty popular...

Although I'm not a shintoist (is that even a word?), it was pretty cool to engage in the traditional activity of the first prayers of the year, right after midnight.

Even got a fortune - so little luck that we hung them up on the strings for unwanted fortunes.

Kinkakuji on a winter's day - since you've seen the pics from before, here's just a cool (or not) reflection of it.

Why, hello!

Nijojo, the castle with a funny name.

Eve and the fish.

Not impressed.

The Japanese are really good at gardens.

Since Eve loves Japanese sweets, half of our diet for the week consisted of wagashi.

And the other half was just traditional Japanese foods. This was okonomiyaki Osaka-style - they seem to like cheese a lot!

Out with the old, in with the new. 

Sky Garden in Osaka and shining shoes.

Looks like a great day for soaking in an onsen!

Afterwards, unagi (eel) for the first time! 5/5, would eat again. 

Aqueducts, Eve, and generally just a pretty cool scenery in Kurama. Such relax, much wow.

In sum, it was a week full of fun; izakaya, karaoke, onsen (twice, haha), monkeys, and last but not least, moss. Also a big thanks to my friends Miki and Ayame for introducing us the proper manners for visiting a shrine, and for good company in general!

The fact that Kyoto pretty much died after New Year's Eve pooped some of our great plans, though - a lot of the stores were closed for a few days. In fact my coffee shop is still closed... I lived on instant coffee for a while, but now I'm out of that as well and really not going to buy another pack of that shit, so please please please be open tomorrow will you?

Oh, and wanna hear about the time when Kyoto finally woke up? Well, that was when I was seeing my sister off to the airport, and left my bike in front of McDonald's next to the subway station. When I came back, it wasn't there! So during those two hours that I was gone, they'd come and cleaned up the spot, since it was forbidden to park there. To get it back, I need to take a train to the middle of nowhere and pay 2300 yen for the bike, so not really going to do that, seeing that I paid only 5000 for the thing in the first place, and I'd be using it for another 3 weeks. Keep the damn thing, you fuckers.

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!