Kyoto with Adrian

I haven't been able to post in a long time because I'm so busy, but I figured that I should at least post some pictures of Kyoto and Adrian since people keep asking me about them. Adrian arrived on the 21st, a couple days later than planned, which is too bad because he missed out on sleeping in a capsule hotel. hah. So that night we took a night bus to Kyoto, which was kind of a terrible experience. It's just a really long, uncomfortable bus ride where they expect you sleep, and they stop every two hours at these really weird truck stop places that are always freezing because its the middle of the night. I feel like I'm an expert on them because I've ridden three of them in the last ten days. Anyways, we got to Kyoto station really early in the morning and it was really pretty. Kyoto station is massive, the architecture of it is amazing. There are stairsin the middle of it that are so huge that from the bottom they look like they go into the sky.
We stayed at a great little hostel that was only like $30 bucks a night per person. It wasn't the cleanest, but it was really cute. The little old woman that runs it would come in every morning and give us bread that we could toast in the little kitchen and tea for us to drink in the little porch area with a breakfast area and rocking chair. This isn't a very good picture.
Kyoto is really interesting because you can see a lot of new development but at the same time you can tell that they try really hard to keep the old, small, traditional buildings. So you'll find a huge Pachinko center right next to a little Japanese store where the Ojiichan and Obaachan that run it sleep on the second floor house above it. At first it's almost like being in some kind theme park of old Japan.
The first place we went was Kiyomizu Temple. It's one of the most famous temples in Kyoto. To get there you have to walk up a hill that is of course lined with stores selling Japanese fans, and mochi, and other omiyage things. The temple is at the top and has an incredible view. It's really stunning.


I ordered hot tofu in a bucket that you scoop out with a metal spoon and we ate it on this cute roofed porch thing that was on a small cliff so it was up in the momiji leaves. Pretty much perfect.At night we went to the Kurama Fire Festival. It's a really famous festival that they have once a year in a town called Kurama that people pretty much only know of because of the festival. What they do is the men of the town carry these massive torch things in the streets around the temple. Finally, they bring all of them to the temple and it creates an amazing massive glow from all the flames. They also carry huge pole things, I don't really understand, and the older men play taiko drum. The festival is hours long and really intense. They start the boys off young getting ready for it because the torches are so huge and heavy that you have to be ridiculously strong to be able to carry them. In the beginning of the festival they have all the little boys pretend to carry smaller torches while in actuality bigger men are holding them at the back. It's really cute. I assume that when they are of age, these boys will become the men carrying the huge ones. It was pouring rain and the streets were packed with people with umbrellas. There were all these guards in bright white waterproof jumpsuits that controlled the crowd. It was a really crazy experience. 




The next day we went to Kinkakuji, the "Golden Pavilion" which is a beautiful temple built in the middle of a lake and covered in gold leaf. It's especially famous because at one point a monk burnt it down and it cost the city huge amounts of money to rebuild it, gold leaf and all.

On our last day Adrian and I went to an adorable town that's famous for its bamboo forest called Arashiyama. There, you can walk around this rural area where people make their homes into shops and sell products that they make like ceramics and crafts of that sort.

As you walk around there are also many smaller temples. We went to a really tiny one called the Gioji Temple thats famous for its gorgeous moss. I wanted to live there, and sleep on the moss, it was so beautiful. 
After that we went to the Tenyruji Temple. That one is a lot bigger and has a really beautiful lake.

Another thing that Arashiyama is famous for is the Togetsukyo bridge. So pretty. 

Arashiyama especially seems kind of like a theme park. In a way it almost is, just because Kyoto is so centered around tourism.  Because everyone makes their money from tourists, it creates an atmosphere in which everything is easily accessed and seems to exist only for your enjoyment. Of course though, it has so much more charm than an actual theme park because it retains its authenticity and natural beauty so well. 

Lastly, we went to a crazy monkey park up in the mounatins. There were monkeys. It was fun. 
That night Adrian and I took the bullet train back. We actually left the hostel late and had to get off the bus early and run with all our bags to the station through some little streets that cross between buildings and then through the huge station only to find that our train had already left. We went to the ticket office to see what we should do, and of course we got the cashier with mild down syndrome and a ridiculous speech impediment... but we figured out that we could actually just use our tickets for the next train....that was great because we didn't have to pay again, but I couldn't help being pissed that we ran so far for no reason. sigh.
Before Adrian left I took him to some of my favorite places in Tokyo. He was stoked that he found a huge ass bottle of Ramune in Shimokitazawa. We also went to Shibuya and Inokashira park where we rented a paddle boat. hehe.

Freie Fujino Steiner Waldorf Schule

So I guess I'll finally talk about my school. First of all, its far away in Fujino up in the mountains so it takes me an hour and a half every morning to get to school. Fujino is a really tiny town outside of Tokyo, but it is really beautiful. Pretty much the only reason why people go there is to hike because other than that there's absolutely nothing to do there. In fact if you forget your lunch, you're fucked because there are no stores less than a 20 minute walk down a hill away from the school. Going up the mountain, the school bus can hardly make the turns on the narrow roads. The best part is there is a gorgeous lake that you cross twice on the way up and down the mountain. When it rains it's so pretty, I feel ike I'm in a Miyazaki movie.
After the lake the ride really reminds me of going up Tantalus, except somehow more Asian... Fujino is also an art community so as you go up the mountain there are all these modern art sculptures tucked into openings in the foliage. It's kind of bizarre. They're pretty cool sculptures but I can't get any good pictures from the bus. Here's one of the less cool ones that I passed when I was walking down one day (different route than the bus.)

Also, far up towards the top of the mountain there is this huge metallic love letter settled onto into the trees. Nobody told me about it, so when I saw it one day from the train station I freaked out. I imagine it's enormous, apparently you can hike to it. I was even more freaked out though, when I saw that the mountain top across the valley has a huge creepy pair of eyes that make it look like its alive, almost definitely by the same artist. Anyways, I couldn't get a good picture, but I found some on the internet.

Fujino is really the perfect place for a Waldorf school. The campus is all up in the woods. It's super quiet. And the town was really just asking for a Waldorf school to be built there. There's already all these art center things and natural healing centers and hot springs and "lotus house"s and crazy hippy shiet.
The school itself is so intensely Waldorfy. I never realized how mildly Steiner our school was before, but over in Honolulu we definitely have it easy. Here, not only is the school made completely out of wood, it's also like a crazy dodecagon thing... it looks like a turtle. They built it completely themselves too, of course. The whole building is basically round and the roof is a dome with windows arranged into a pentagon and pentagon shaped lamps. All the desks are wooden too, like the ones in our lower school. And all the mainlesson books they use are actual bound books with silk paper in between pages and everything. The highschool only has two classrooms, a small sink area next to the one stall bathrooms, and then a big loft.



There's a couch right below the window in the loft and I like to take naps on it, but because the roof is a kind of dome, the acoustics are super crazy so that if you are in the loft, whoever is talking across the room from you on the first floor sounds like they're right next to you. The first time it really freaked me out. I was sleeping and it sounded like somebody was whispering in my ear so I jumped up and looked around but there was no one there. Turns out it was two girls in my class whispering to each other across the room from me. Weiiirrd.


Outside the school there's this huge scupture thing. I've asked students about it but nobody really knows why it's there... The big white building in the back in the lower school. It used to be a regular public school so it looks pretty normal until you go inside where it is definitely a Waldorf school. The building is pretty sweet though, three stories equipped with a really nice wood working room, a big chemistry lab, and a really nice gym with a stage and errthang.

There are 7 other students in my class, all girls. They're all really different from each other but they're all bestfriends. It's really interesting. Everybody at this school is so nice and polite to each other all the time. It doesn't feel like high school. Everyone treats each other equally, and you hardly ever hear people talk badly about anyone. It's really....pleasant. The students are all really diligent too. The Waldorf fair is coming up and here it is run completely by the students. This year specifically the girls in my class. It's pretty amazing how the teachers have almost nothing to do with it. The students all stay after school on their own and get together and get shit done. The girls in my class all have huge responsibilities too. For example, Lidia is in charge of making all the flyers and pamphlets and the program for the entertainment. That also makes her in charge of the entertainment too, though. So she has to find people to perform and schedule them and make it work. The crazy thing is that they do EVERYTHING by hand. They make everything so much more of a pain in the ass so that its perfect and Waldorfy. Another girl in my class is in charge of all the shifts for all the booths. Another girl is in charge of designing and creating all the elaborate flag thingies that they put around Fujino and a huge billboard that they put up for the fair. They put me in charge of making the class shirt that we wear during the fair... :/ uh...
yeah.

The classes here are all really long. The school days are as long as ours but we sometimes only have three classes a day including mainlesson. It gets really tiring and boring. Especially when you can hardly understand what's going on....It's pretty easy though because they hardly get any homework.
Fall break is in a week and Adrian's coming and we're all going to go to Kyoto and stay in a hostel.

I still havn't learned the morning verse in Japanese yet, but I am determined!

Shimokitazawa

So on Saturday Lidia and I skipped PE again, and went to Shimokitazawa with our friend Fune. It turned out to be probably my favorite place in Japan that I've been so far. Its just a small area without too many large buildings. Instead it has narrow streets with really interesting shops tucked away in them; lots of great thrift Stores, "Flea Markets", little restaurants, Cd shops that actually carry good Indie music, book stores filled with mint condition 90's music magazines, used record stores, used Kimono stores, huge everythingthatisawesome stores hidden in basements (Village/Vanguard), and more awesome thrift stores. We also went to a "Dagashiya" or I think that's how you say it... "junk food store"..? Basically a tiny shop run by an ogiichan or obaachan that sells traditional (but not too traditional) Japanese candy and snacks. It also has an assortment of old toys and trading cards left over from their era or popularity. It's really the most enjoyable thing ever. I should have taken some pictures but I was seriously too enamored by everything that it completely slipped my mind. I probably would have filled a huge bag full of treats but stupid me forgot to put money in my wallet when I left the house so I only had 2,000 yen with me. That's like 20 bucks, which would be fine if we were in Hawaii but everything in Japan is super expensive. I was lucky that we were in Shimokitazawa because a lot of things there make it a point to be super cheap, its like their charm. But I did by a little jello pop that (that was delicious) and a Make-Your-Own gummy candy sushi set. Its pretty fucking fun looking, I'm excited to say the least. hah.

So one of the greatest shops that I mentioned was Village Vanguard.

I don't really know how to describe it but awesome. Its a book store but sells basically everything, in the best sense. From fake boobs for your amusement

to Pickle flavored Pringles

to swimming panda toys!

They also sell great DVDs such as this one that they were showing a trailer for.

I could spend like a day in there, not to mention lots of money buying relatively useless things....

Anyways, here are some other pics. I'm being kinda lazy and putting them all at the end today.

A fun costume slash hat store.Street Musicians! "Flea Market" Pretty much an indoor garage sale.Fune and Lidia
Okonomiyaki!

Good shiet.

Shibuya

So today Lidia and I skipped Saturday PE and went to Shibuya instead! We met Naoko for lunch at this Italian cafe but even the Italian food tastes like Japanese food here. Then Lidia and I went shopping, of course.

We went to this glorious boot store that was packed with every kind of boot that you can imagine. 

That is just the display on the outside, which is nothing compared to inside the store.

After we went shopping for a long time, we went and did Purikura. I'm still not very fast at it, my goal is to be pro by the time I leave, but its hard when you can't read the kanji on the screen. 

After that we got crepes. I really wish that they had the kind of crepe stands that they have in Japan, in America because they're delicious. They have like a million different combinations of ingredients too! I stick with the normal strawberry, chocolate, whipped cream, but Lidia opted for the Chicken Curry. I was actually kind of jealous, hers smelled really good. 

Then we were tired so we met back up with Naoko and had Udon for dinner. Yum. 

Shibuya on a saturday night is kind of mind blowing. The sheer amount of people is ridiculous. And when you step out onto the street everyone is going somewhere, its constantly moving. At times it's just like a sea of people. 

(On the left you can kind of see a "standing sushi bar". The food is cheaper if they don't have to buy chairs, makes sense I guess...)

The craziest thing to see, of course, is everyone crossing the huge ass cross walk in Shibuya. Here, if you look closely you can see eberyone waiting to cross.
...and as everyone is crossing.
It was a tiring day.