Tateyama 立山 :: One of Japan's Three Holy Mountains

The same three day weekend from my previous post, I also went hiking with my host family to Tateyama! Tateyama is in Toyama Prefecture, so it took around one and a half hours to get there by car. It's one of Japan's three holy mountains (the other two are Mt. Fuji and Hakusan, which is in Ishikawa!)

Throughout the year, Tateyama has some fantastic views, especially in the autumn and winter. In the winter, Tateyama becomes a huge skiing destination, and there's even a snow passage that the buses go through that can pile up to 20 meters high! The snow on the passage never really goes away, but by this time of year, the snow isn't that high (although the fact that there's still snow at this time of year is kind of crazy). Actually, for some more info on Tateyama, look here. 

The snow corridor in all its frigid glory. Really wish I could go back to see this.

We took the cable car and then a bus up to Mudoro, which is where most people start the hike. It's also the site of Japan's highest hotel. The cable car and the bus were quite expensive at around 24USD a person.

The view from Mudoro

The hike itself was pretty easy until the last 300 meters. The only thing that was a bit tough before that point was that there was still quite a bit of snow laying around that started to melt later in the day, so the mile or so of snow that we had to go through was slippery and precarious. Especially if you slipped the wrong way, you would go tumbling down the mountain and into the valley. Coming back was even more slippery since all the people going through had trampled down the path into a smooth trench, and because it was midday, the snow had really started to melt. So we basically just slid down the path like we were skiing. Sort of.

The path was quite well maintained

Beautiful views as far as the eye could see

Juri-chan and Otou-san forging on ahead

Plenty of places to take a rest and watch everyone else struggle up the slope

The snow brought back some painful memories of New Haven winter

The last 300 meters were very, very scary. But also fun. There wasn't really a trail up since it was all rocks and steep slopes. On the way up I had to use my hands to pull myself up quite often, and in a lot of places the rocks were all loose so it was difficult to find footing. Going back down was even scarier, since 1) I'm scared of heights and 2) Momentum.

View from the top of the mountain. In the distance, you can see the one of the rivers fed by the melting snow from these mountains

Stone marker at the top!

Oyama shrine at the highest point of the mountain

If you squint, you can see hikers eating cup ramen. Yep. Cup ramen at 3015 meters above sea level.

We started out the hike by the lake in the mid-left of this picture

Shrine near the beginning of the hike, after we got off of the mountain. People stack these rocks for good luck on the hike! Far far away on the top of the peak, you can see the building and Oyama shrine!

This iced over crater lake has a name, I'm sure. Right now I'll just call it pretty blue cold water. 

Okay. I'm very behind on blogging. Right now I'm writing this blog on my last night in Kanazawa, so look forward to all the backlogs of blogs that I should (want to) write. This may happen after I'm back in America. Till next time, thanks for reading, and DFTBA!

Read More

Caw-caw Rawr! :: 親切な人

Alright. So this week, I went to my last two extracurricular activities, koto and oshie. Koto being a wooden stringed instrument born from the Chinese guzheng and oshie being a cloth craft that creates very beautiful not quite 3-dimensional reliefs. So like squashed stuffed animals. Some interesting stuff happened at oshie with a comedy group called テツ＆トモ that came to film a segment for their show at the International Lounge. They mostly goofed around, interviewed us, became enamored with Claire's sass, and taught us their theme song, 「なんでだろう」. It was an interesting experience and I can now say that I have been on Japanese television. Whew time to cross that off the bucket list (and also add it to the bucket list so I can actually cross it off). The same day I went to oshie, I also finally went to this cafe that I've had my eye on for the longest time. It. Was. Magical.

I want my house to look like this.

If you're ever around Musashigatsuji in Kanazawa, stop by this cafe called Book Cafe (or is it Life is Good?) and get a sandwich. Or a kabocha scone. Or soup. Or any of the other delicious things that the owner makes from scratch. Also props to his music taste. And decorating taste. And book taste. And well everything.

And then on Saturday I turned into a Wilderness Explorer

So today, I decided to get well and truly lost in Kanazawa. I don't know why the urge hit me, but I've had a slight feeling of panic slowly growing in my stomach from not actually getting out much and actually exploring this city that I've been living in for two months. Which in reality is a bit silly of me because I've been to all the major touristy places and shopping centers and also go to a bunch of different places through PII and extracurriculars and I also try to go to new places every time I go running...so yeah. 

My first stop was Omicho Market. I'd been there a couple times before but never when all the stores were open and when I had time to go through the whole market. It was quite fun and I left with a very growly stomach. 

Look at how friggin big that octopus is!

Mmmm oyster. (I think it's oyster?) They also had GIGANTIC crab and sea urchin.

Omicho Fish Market also sells veggies! And Tsukemono! And clothes. And souvenirs. And it has delicious smelling food for sale

Fruit that costs more than tuition. Just kidding. Sorta.

After that, I somehow found myself in a part of town I'd never been in.

Very pretty. Also the moat for Kanazawa castle. How I ended up a good 20 minutes away from Omicho I'll never know.

Road lined with naked people statues I wandered onto

And then I was hungry so I got some soft serve. Sakura flavored and matcha flavored soft serve to be exact. I was so excited I started eating it before I remembered to be a good blogger and take pictures.

Went all through the tourist shops lining the way to Kanazawa Castle and one of the entrances to Kenrokuen and found giant golden poop (and smaller golden poop) for sale. The temptation to buy was strong.

Also went to Kenrokuen once again and spent a lot of time sitting around people watching, fish watching, and Japanese plum tree watching. Afterwards, I decided that today was the day that I go and spend money to see the non-free parts of the 21st Century Museum. Definitely, definitely, definitely worth the 800 yen. Especially since I also got access to their new exhibition on transparency and reflection. 

Leonard Elrich's Reflection Pool. It looks like a real pool from the top and from the bottom, but there's really only 10 cm of water in the pool.

Sideways staircase. Just as disorienting and cool as the pool was.

Have I ever told y'all how much I love clouds? I love clouds. And the sky. These made me happy :)  From the front they looked like very realistic clouds...

...but from the side you can see that the affect is achieved through painting layers on glass! I really want to try this now.

Cool hallway thing

Another exhibition to mess with perception. Mirrors split this exhibit up into three different greenery environments, so it looks like the scene is complete changing as you move around the exhibit. From this angle you can see how the left third of the thing is different from the other two thirds.

From there, I wandered over to Higashichaya, but before I got there, I found a set of stairs that looked interesting. So I went up.

Adventure! Wilderness! Exploration!

Shrine and temple at the top of those stairs

And past that temple was another set of stairs.

That led to Hanashoubu-en. It's an iris garden with hydrangeas that bloom in June and early July. So unfortunately, most of the irises had already finished blooming. I can imagine how beautiful it is in full bloom though.

It was pretty large. If y'all wanna know how it looks with flowers..

Sensing a theme?

I accidentally wandered into mosquito territory. They were very unhappy with this encroachment and launched a 4-pronged attack on me. One of them landed a hit on my nose. ON MY NOSE. Yes, the shakiness is due to my haste in trying to leave before angering more mosquitoes with my presence.

Large statue to some important person

I guess getting a mosquito bite on my nose was worth this view

Park on the top of the mountain (whose name is Utatsuyama...I think)

Once I got to the top, I realized just how ridiculously lost I had gotten myself. I couldn't find the stairs I had come up the mountain on, and found way too many different roads and crossroads leading...who knows where. So I asked a car parked nearby for directions, and after a while, they lady got out and offered to give me a ride to Kanazawa station. In the US, I would probably turn down this offer because, well...stranger danger. But at this point it was nearing 7pm and I had honestly no idea where I was and I was desperate to get home and to food, so I took her up on her offer. And holy amazeballs, she was so fabulous. Interestingly enough, she had no idea that I was a foreigner until about 15 minutes in when I told her that I was an exchange student here, and she almost didn't believe me! Gave myself a little pat on the back for being able to pass as a Japanese person...at least for a little while :) This 親切な人 went far beyond simply giving me a ride to the station, and actually drove me all the way out of her way to where my host home is. This was a good 40 minutes out of her way, but she did it with a smile on her face and even gave me some candy to take with me (yes, yes, I know...never take candy from a stranger...or get into a stranger's car...). I was so surprised at how amazingly nice and helpful she was to a complete stranger, and if it wasn't so impolite in Japanese culture, I would've hugged her. I'm definitely looking forward to paying this forward. 

Thanks for reading, and DFTBA!

Read More

焼けた :: In Which Kat is Burnt Out

Surprisingly, I'm not actually procrastinating on any homework or projects at the moment. I am writing this blog of my own free will and not because the instant gratification monkey in my brain is making me. Whew. Originally, I meant for this post to be a bit of a review on how classes have changed for this semester and what I think of classes now, but fair warning, it may just turn into me complaining about class and homework and regular work and ugh.

So this "semester" we're learning from Tobira, which is mostly long passages of reading on a topic (like food or sports) and various shorter passages, conversations, graphs, etc on the same topic. Tobira itself is set up quite nicely, with a short intro, the reading, a vocab list following the reading, the extra reading, extra vocab lists, and grammar, but there are some things I feel I prefer Nakama (the textbook from last "semester") and JSL. For instance, grammar explanations, while in English, are generally...nonexistent. There are a couple sample sentences and two or three sentences of explanation for each grammar point, and sometimes that just isn't enough. I'm having a bit of a hard time now figuring out if I'm conjugating a verb correctly or if I'm even using some new grammar point correctly. Another little peeve of mine is how the reading of new kanji isn't given okurigana (hiragana reading of the kanji) when the kanji/word is introduced in a passage. It really gets tiring trying to flip back and forth between the vocab list and the sentence I'm currently reading.

Here, have some crazy English to ease the pain of reading about my classes

Besides general complaints about Tobira, the one huge problem I have with this semester is how we do the homework and learn the grammar for a chapter before we actually study the material in class. I feel like I'm not learning the material as well as I should be because there isn't really homework for me to practice the new grammar points on. For me, it just makes everything take a bit longer to actually sink in (if it ever does sink in). However, I do like how the kanji and vocab are now combined for our quizzes, which definitely helps me keep on track with both (last semester they were separate quizzes and I had the problem of forgetting everything promptly afterwards).

The awkward English continues. 

To continue on this general chain of rambling, we just finished writing these terrible speeches (terrible in my case, wonderful and skilled in other cases) that were supposed to be 3-4 minutes long. Apparently this translates to 1.5 - 2.5 pages typed up, but almost everyone went over the time limit. I chose my topic on traditional ink painting. Not the most interesting of subjects, and certainly not the easiest to write about using the limited vocabulary that we have learned thus far. Other people chose topics that were much cooler than mine, such as group dating, Japanese variety shows, and otaku culture. It was definitely fun to listen to everyone's speeches (with the added bonus of no class!!!!), but memorizing the speech was...not fun. And I didn't even manage to memorize it all. I'm definitely happy to be done with this, and I surprised myself a bit at how much better I could articulate myself when writing the speech.

Me too, t-shirt, me too.

We also just started reading a Japanese folk tale called Momotaro based on a boy who was born in a giant peach. Yep. Giant peach. So that is great fun, and there are plenty of pictures (always a plus). Class right now feels like it gets longer and longer, and even though we are learning and reading about plenty of fun things, my heart is just not in it anymore. I need a break. A long, long, break. With plenty of sleeping and lazing about and not worrying about a quiz or homework or class or debates or speeches. I am very burnt out. At least there's only one more week to power through! (Ohgodthere'sonlyonemoreweekleftintheprogramIdon'twanttoleaveJapanatall)

Words cannot express how much I wanted these chicks...

Or these gigantic fluffy rabbits

I feel like the end of this program has come on far, far too quickly. There are so many things that I want to do and so many new, amazing places that I am just discovering now. I'm going to miss so many things so much. Bleargh. Oh well, back to homework and back to studying! Thank goodness there's a long weekend coming up.

Thanks for reading and DFTBA!

Read More

Noto Trip :: Omotenashi

So, this past weekend all 47 of us PIIers, teachers, and IFIE staff members went to the Noto penninsula to have fun, see the sights, and frolic. We left early in the morning on Sunday, spent the entire day going from sight seeing place to sight seeing place, and finally ended up at Kagaya ryokan around 6. There we spent the night, had delicious food, went to the onsen, and wore ridiculously fancy yukatas. Monday morning, we left bright and early after a huge breakfast, and did more sightseeing until we finally got back to Kanazawa around six.

For every place we went to, a group of people did a short presentation so we would have a vague idea of what we were getting ourselves into. This means that we all had to write up a report, but it was pretty low key and low pressure. Not nearly as strenuous as I thought it would be.

Day 1, Stop 1

Our first stop was Myojoji Temple, which is the head temple for a certain Buddhist sect in the Hokuriku region. All the buildings in the complex are quite old, with most of them being built in the 1600s. There's a 35 meter tall 5-story pagoda that immediately catches your eye, but I think I found the nearby graveyards much more beautiful. 

The pagoda!

Graveyard protected by old trees and bamboo. So beautiful and serene in person.

Day 1, Stop 2

Our next stop was Kesha Taisha, a 2000 year old shrine to Okuninushi, the god of finding true love. All the ema (wooden plaques where people write their wishes and tie them up) had hearts or arrows, so it was a bit like walking into a Valentine's day themed shrine. Not really my jam, so I mostly just contented myself with exploring a bit of the sacred forest behind the shrine and enjoying the old, old trees and moss.

No idea what this kanji is, but here's one of the few ema hanging around that didn't have hearts or arrows on them.

The shrine's main building where wee got to see some sort of exorcism? I think?

Day 1, Stop 3

Next was lunch at a restaurant that was set next to the ocean on the Chirihama beach drive, a really long stretch of the beach where cars can drive (due to the very small grains of sand or something like that?). It was fun and I mostly spent the hour and a half running in and out of the ocean, picking up sand dollars, and playing frisbee with friends. The beach was probably my favorite place to go (besides Kagaya ryokan). 

Lunch consisted of sukiyaki, miso soup, some odd seaweed stuff, and noodles! Quite a lot and all very delicious

I was very surprised that cars could just drive down the beach, PC Claire Willliamson

I was having a LOT of fun! PC Claire Williamson

Day 1, Stop 4

After lunch and frolicking in the ocean, we headed to Ganmon, a natural "gate" worn out into the surrounding rock formation. It was quite rocky, and also looked a bit like a scene from Porco Rosso.

Rocks! And bigger rocks!

More rocks! 

Kagaya ryokan

Around 6, we finally got to Kagaya ryokan where we were greeted out front by a line of the workers there. After a brief tour, we went to our rooms which were in the traditional Japanese style. There, we were served matcha and wagashi, and then the workers dressed us in very beautiful yukata. Kagaya ryokan is well known as the best ryokan in Japan with the best customer service (omotenashi). To be frank, it was a bit uncomfortable how deferential they were, but I could definitely see in all the little things and big things that they did for us how their omotenashi is number 1 in Japan.

The outside of the ryokan

The room we stayed in

Complete with a stunning view!

We went to the onsen soon afterwards, and wow. Just wow. The onsen was fantastic. 

A side note for all you non gender binary folks out there: My gender identity is butch, or masculine, or really anything but feminine. My gender expression is quite masculine. So when they came out with all the different yukatas for us to wear, I had quite the moment of panic. As beautiful as the yukatas were, I really felt only dread until it came time to put on the yukata. And as beautiful as everyone else looked in their yukata, I felt wrong. Like I was squeezed into a skin that was not mine, and however much I tried to pretend that I was okay with it, it just didn't feel right. And didn't look right. There was another dude here who felt the same as me, so after getting out of the onsen we went to the senseis to ask if it would be okay to change into the men's yukata. I was a bit hesitant at first because the gender binary is something I feel is protected and enforced in Japan (there is a whole rant that I can go into about this, perhaps for another day) and at such a traditional Japanese style hotel, I felt like asking to change into a men's yukata would be quite rude and not very respectful. However, I realized that not asking for the sake of not being rude and offensive was not a good reason to make myself unhappy. So we went to ask the sensei if it would be alright to ask the staff to switch. The sensei was very understanding of our situation and went right away to ask a staff member to see if it was ok. There was a bit of trouble at first with the staff member saying that the men's clothes were for men and women's clothes were women, but eventually they did allow us to switch. I must say, the moment I put on the men's yukata, it felt like a great weight was lifted from my shoulders and I was right in my body. (Side note on this side note, the men wore black socks as opposed to the white socks the women wore, and their yukata came with pockets. Pockets) I am thankful that the Kagaya staff were so understanding of us and allowed us to switch. I can't imagine that this request comes too often, and a testament to how great their omotenashi that they would let s wear men's yukata even though they follow very traditional Japanese ideals.

So thankful for the solidarity!

After the onsen, we went to a welcome party where they outfitted us with ridiculous light up ears and fed us snacks and drinks. Dinner was fabulous and long and quite the feast (and you can see what I ate in my previous blog).

Us Yalies working the blinky ears

The next day, we woke up very early and ate yet another feast for breakfast. After that it was goodbye to Kagaya and onwards to a very tired day

Day 2, Stop 1

Our first stop this second day was the Wajima Morning Market, an open air market that sells traditional Wajima lacquerware, other souvenirs, and seafood. It's got a lot of history and has stuff to fit any budget. It was quite interesting to browse and see all the beautiful lacquerware, and I walked away with a small lacquerware sake cup that I am proud to call my own!

Day 2, Stop 2

After that, we went down the road to the Wajima Lacquerware Museum that showed the process of making lacquerware and the huge amount of work and artistry that goes into making lacquerware. There were also several different exhibits with lacquerware from all over Japan on display. (Bit of a frustrating side note, they separated us based on gender to go through the museum which I found quite ridiculous. Very ridiculous. They didn't even let us mix groups on our way through the small museum.)

Day 2, Stop 3

The third stop was yet another museum. This time it was the Kiriko museum, a museum on kiriko, giant lanterns that are carried around and lit on fire in the summer festivals in Noto. They can weigh over two tons and go up to 15 meters tall. 

PC Claire Williamson (Yep, continuing the tradition of stealing pictures from friend to make up for my laziness)

Day 2, Stop 4

This stop, we went to the Senmaida rice fields, named so for the thousand-plus rice fields built into this hill. It was a bit smaller than I thought it would be, but still quite breathtaking. Apparently in the winter they light up the fields at night with LEDs, which I can imagine being very, very beautiful.

Day 2, Stop 5

The last stop we went to was the Okunono Salt Field, where they still produce salt traditionally. We watched a documentary on the salt making process there, and it looks quite complicated. Very, very complicated. We also went into the house where they boil off the concentrated sea water to get salt out, and it felt like a sauna. It was pretty cool and interesting to be able to see the process of making traditional crafts in person.

------

The second day was a battle against exhaustion, and by the time we got back to Rifare, nearly everybody was sound asleep, dreaming of their beds back home and not thinking about the homework due the next day. 

Thanks for reading, and DFTBA!

Read More