class trip, kyoto, nara, osaka, tokyo, okinawa.

Although pricey, the class trip was really fantastic. previously I had been to the Tokyo airport for an hour, and then just in Hokkaido doing pretty much zero traveling. Now I've been to most of the most famous places in Japan, all in one week.

I don't even know the names of most the places I went and their was often no English information available. Regardless everything was breathtakingly huge or made of gold or really really ancient. there was a fountain outside one temple that my teacher told me was 1,200 something years old, that's much older than my entire country. It was a little bit surreal being in these places that were of such historical and cultural importance, places kings had lived, battles had been fought...we don't have that so much in Canada.

Once again I regret that there is a 5 pictures per post limit, and I took 500 pictures during the trip.

First we went to Kyoto, I took the train with some friends and we got on the plane together, the first day we saw this really famous ancient temple, part of which was 60 metres tall an built without nails. i was surprised by the amount of foreigners I saw there, I asked a couple if in English if they knew who was ahead in the American election, but they were unfortunately Russian, and very confused.

That night on the news, in Japanese, we found out Obama had won, and we slept on straw mats and hard pillows and got up at 6. the second day in Kyoto was a free day, me and my group must have seen 10 different temples and landmarks that day, we used a map and the bus routes to get around and even saw the old shogun headquarters palace thing, after lunch we got on a train to Osaka, were we saw the famous Osaka castle and had a fantastic dinner.

Day three the class went to Nara, a city outside Kyoto that is most famous for its Edo period style architecture and many important Japanese cultural heritage sites. there were tame deer everywhere that could be hand fed, and one had either been trained to bow at everyone who passed through the temple gates, or had something wrong with its neck.

I should say that in my personal experience Japanese (high school kids at least) like to rush through a museum, aquarium, castle, what have you, as fast as they can so they can buy garbage at the gift shop. Actually maybe its just my group of friends.

That night we flew to Okinawa, When I got off the plane, the air was so hot and wet I thought I would be dead within minutes, but the bus was air conditioned and our massive expensive hotel was as well. There was a fantastic view of the ocean and the beach and I even won the largest bed in the room by Japanese rock paper scissors.

Okinawa is a place I knew little about, it is quite unique from the rest of Japan and I was surprised how dark skinned the people were, being kind of rushed through everything and having very limited reading ability in Japanese, I still knew very little about places we went to after we left. I will include some Wikipedia links to things I've been too at the bottom of this post.

The Castle in Okinawa was being restored, it smelled like wet paint and all the colors were really bright, apparently Americans blew it up in world war 2 and they've been putting it back together from photographs and memory since the early 90's.

It was pretty awesome to see but there was a kind of falseness to a lot of stuff there.

the aquarium in Okinawa was really cool, there were animals I'd never seen, including whale sharks and manta rays. The tank for them was so huge. We went snorkeling after the aquarium and I saw a lot of the things I'd just seen in the aquarium but now in their natural state. I feel i should add that all the coral was gray and dead and I had the feeling the exotic fish were only surviving there still because of the bread given to them by tourists every day. I am a much stronger swimmer than my classmates, and a lot of them cant actually swim at all, i did not expect that. I've never been anywhere tropical before, and that day was really a lot of fun.

The next day we climbed down into a cave that had been used as a shelter in the battle of Okinawa, the guide told an hour long story in Japanese as everyone huddled together in the dark, I'm sure it must have been a pretty interesting story, but all I understood was to watch my head, and that many many people had died there.

That night we flew to Tokyo, driving through there at night was pretty breathtaking, I'm sure you've seen pictures of Tokyo at night, but going through it is something entirely different, there were so many raised highways I don't think we touched the ground once from the airport to the hotel, it made me think of the Jetson's a little. We ate a buffet style dinner in a hall with a view of both the downtown and the harbour.

The next day was Tokyo Disneyland, it was so busy we only got to go on two rides. one was a mistake, it had the shortest line but turned out to be a slow train ride through a very crummy old west, which included extremely red faced native Americans moving robotically and living in a bamboo forest. the other ride was an hour and a half line up, but by far the greatest roller coaster I've ever been on, and almost entirely in the pitch dark, it was called space mountain and was beyond illin. Again they spent massive amounts of money on massive amounts of junky Disney memorabilia. there are other places I would like to have seen in Tokyo, but this was a really fun day with my friends regardless of the waiting and crummyness and disneyness, and that roller coaster was honestly almost as good as Obama winning the American election on Japanese TV in the hotel room. those are two things I shall not soon forget.


I've taught English in a few times to a few classes, I enjoy it and it goes over well, but I think I taught the most English on this trip, and learned more Japanese, but also more about Japanese people, and feel a lot closer with my classmates.

thank you to my parents for their massive contribution, and thank you to superstore for the tiny paychecks that made up the rest.





Here are some wiki links to places I went.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todai-ji


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkaku-ji


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiyomizu-dera


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_Castle


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryoanji


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nijo_castle


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_Aquarium


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuri-jo

this is just what I could find from names on ticket stubs and pictures I recognize in my book.

Thanks to anyone who reads,

and you don't have to sign up with this website or anything to comment on my posts, I appreciate knowing you're reading, and having your input and criticism.

Alex,

student abroad

sunday

I climbed another mountain yesterday with my host family and some of their grandchildren. This was a much higher more difficult climb, and the view of the sea/city/other Mountains was spectacular, the changing leaves were also pretty cool.

There is a limit on the number of pictures i can include in a post, but ill give you the five best from yesterday, they will be difficult to choose.

day zero

At the Calgary airport, my family, my counsellor and three of my close friends saw me off. The flight was over so fast, and then I had a two hour wait in Vancouver.

Before I even left the Vancouver airport (where there are by FAR more Japanese speaker pages than English ones) There was this little kid running around, I kept noticing him because he was in all lime green. I thought he was lost, he was miles from anyone, and then later at our gate I saw him with his dad talking about where he had gone in Japanese. If I was in an international airport at that age, my mom would have had me like tie to her leg. I guess Japan is just really safe.
The plane was serious business; let me tell you I’ve been on my share of planes, but I've only ever been to Canadian destinations and the north western US. This was very new for me.

I should add that my original flight plan was Calgary > Vancouver > Osaka > Sapporo
But THE DAY BEFORE I LEAVE Air Canada calls and tells me they're canceling the Osaka flight, instead I’m going to Tokyo, but my dad got me bumped up to first class for the trouble, so it went

Calgary > Vancouver > Tokyo Narita airport> Sapporo.
Now, I have extremely mixed feelings about first class air Canada. Maybe I'll make a list to save some time.
Good:

-HUGE seats, more leg room than anyone could ever need
- Three windows to myself
-The seat lies down like a bed all electrically

Now this is all exceptional, but

Bad:
- Everyone looks at you like, hey what is this kid doing up here with these fancy business men.
- Everything is glass and ceramic instead of plastic and you have to grab onto it when there is turbulence.

All the Japanese people want to sleep. If you want to look out the window for the whole 9 hours and 10 minutes, you're out of flippin luck. The stewardess will ask you to shut your window, and when you open later she will just walk up and shut it, and you will watch a bad movie. I did get a few glimpses of tundra though

Coming in to Tokyo was nuts. We we’re going through these 1000 foot tall clouds, and there must have been 5 other planes, so close to us, I guess it’s busier than in Calgary. Then I could see huge ships going out to sea, and miles and miles of industrial compounds and buildings.

Oh yea, I should say that when I got to the airport everyone was wearing like doctors sanitary masks. I guess just because we’re foreigners, but for a minute I thought there was like some outbreak and I was going to die. Especially when they made an announcement that anyone with flu like symptoms should report to some desk immediately.

Next I went to immigration. It all went smoothly despite the man knowing no English and being muffled behind his mask. I walked away and picked up my baggage, which came like first because I was first class priority. And I realized I didn’t have my boarding pass. I almost died on the spot, but I ran back up an escalator and there it was on the table I had set it down on. Close one. I actually got on a bus that took me to my plane, that was really different, and when the plane from Tokyo to Sapporo was loaded I was pretty much the only white person. After my two hour flight through a huge purple lightning storm, (which would have been more frightening if I could have kept my eyes open,) I picked up my luggage and went through a glass door into the main airport, and that’s when i really started to feel like I was in somewhere brutally and completely different from home.

japanese giant hornets?

Hey kids, 10 days to go.

Just got my wisdom teeth out two days ago and I'm still pretty much out of commission.
Here’s something interesting, but I’m just putting it here to scare my mom/give me a chuckle when she starts reading this once I leave. See, she doesn’t like bugs.

Japanese Giant Hornet (vespa mandarinia japonica)





From: Japan, obviously.
Why you must fear it:
It's the size of your thumb and it can spray flesh-melting poison. We really wish we were making that up for, you know, dramatic effect because dang, what a terrible thing a three-inch acid-shooting hornet would be, you know? Oh, hey, did we mention it shoots it into your eyes? Or that the poison also has a pheromone cocktail in it that'll call every hornet in the hive to come over and sting you until you are no longer alive?
Think you can outrun it? It can fly 50 miles in a day. It'd be nice to say something reassuring at this point, like "Don't worry, they only live on top of really tall mountains where nobody wants to live," but no, they live all over the place, including outside Tokyo.
Forty people die like that every year, each of them horribly.

More scary stuff:
Here's how the Japanese hornet treats other insects (and would presumably treat us, if we were small enough). An adult hornet will fly miles to find something squishy to feed to its children. Often times, it finds its food in, say, a hive inhabited by thousands of bees.
What to do? Well, Vespa japonica sprays the nest with some of the acid/pheromone and brings in reinforcements, usually consisting of 30 or so fellow hornets. They then descend upon the beehive like an unholy plague of hell-born death engines and proceed to make this world a scary place. This is maybe 30 wasps against 30,000 bees and the 30,000 bees do not stand a chance.



:D

42 days!

This is gonna be quick.


What I wanted to say is that my friend Allen, another outbound, left for India today! India was one of my top choices, he is going to have such an awesome experience, completely different from mine I think.

august 20th is getting closer, but I think I will be one of the last of us to leave. Most of my friends leave for their countries late in this month.

I've started buying lots of Canadian flags and touristy stuff to give away, but there are a million more things i should start working on. I pretty much completely gave up on my online Japanese studies about 4 months ago. that was probably not a good idea. i'll see if i can get a tutor for the next couple of weeks. I've taken more hours at my job so i can have spending money, and so i can buy a laptop, and maybe a low end DSLR camera.