Saturday, December 22, 2007

Universal Studios Japan





For Mark's birthday (Dec. 14th) I took him to Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. We went in October when it was decorated for Halloween, but now it's "Wonder Christmas" season, so it was nice to see the park again with its new decorations. I haven't been to Universal Studios in America but Mark has and he says the American version is much bigger (maybe it seemed bigger since he was 8 at the time?). We managed to do just about everything in the park in one day, including Waterworld, which is a stunt show with lots of splashing (the seats in the splash zone were mostly empty this time of year). One of my favorite parts is the rollercoaster where you can choose your own background music! You can choose from a Beatles song, two J-Pop choices, an Eminem song, and something else I can't remember.

The pictures are Mark with a snowman, a different snowman giving a high five to a little girl (he was part of Santa's Toy Party), and me with a takoyaki sculpture at the "Takoyaki Museum." Takoyaki is doughy balls with octopus bits, and when they say museum they actually mean four restaurants and a shop.

We're off to America tomorrow, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Cate

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

England and Scotland 4: London and the Queen!







At the end of our trip we spent two days in London. Mark and I went on our own one day and the next day we drove in with Mark's parents (and here's something that surprised me about London: when you drive in you have to pay an 8 pound "congestion charge," but you don't pay at a toll, you can pay on the internet before or after your visit or they'll bill you! That's about 16 dollars, by the way.). The first day we went to The British Museum and the Tate Modern and the second day we saw the Queen in the morning and wandered around the rest of the day seeing some of the nice neighborhoods.

I loved the British Museum, which is huge but very well organized. The map of the museum even includes a list of highlights, so we made sure to see all of those even though we didn't have time to see absolutely everything. The Tate Modern was also very nice, though I can't say that I understand modern art very well, so some of the pieces didn't do much for me. It was a real mix of styles, from fairly representational to completely non-representational, so I'd say there was something for everyone. The first picture is Mark in the Tate Modern with his foot in a crack that extends the length of the bottom floor, starting from a tiny little crack on one side and getting deeper and bigger as it goes across.

The next picture is the Queen in her carriage! I have one picture that's a bit closer, but I like this one because it shows that this is a woman who truly travels in style! After that is me at King's Cross Station, pushing the trolley that's attached so it looks like it's halfway through the wall at platform nine and three quarters, and the last is a little barge on the Thames that I liked because it says, "I eat rubbish."

That's all for England and Scotland, thanks for reading!
Cate

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

England and Scotland 3: Scotland





On Halloween we left Mark's village for the 6 hour journey up to Scotland. We stayed in a hotel that was made to look like a castle (see the first picture on the left), which had been renovated to make self-catering apartments. We stayed right in the middle turret, which was cool.

The first day we visited a whiskey distillery and took a tour, and we also tried haggis, which is a meaty concoction traditionally made of the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep and boiled in the sheep's stomach. It looked and tasted like very peppery ground beef, and it was served with neeps and tatties (mashed turnips and mashed potatoes). The next day Mark and I went to Edinburgh and took a bus tour of the city (the second picture is Edinburgh castle taken from the bus). We also visited a few pubs and a really nice art gallery. On that last day we took a bike ride around a loch, which was beautiful, but Mark's mom fell and needed stitches in her knee.

The last picture on the left is a bagpipe player who was playing for tips just outside the station. Thanks for reading! My next post will include London and the Queen!

England and Scotland 2: Cambridge





Our third day in England we went to Cambridge where Mark's uncle and his family live. Before meeting the family we had some time to explore, so we went punting down the river with a tour guide and then visited a nice art gallery. Cambridge was beautiful, and it was a really nice day, though very cold.

The first picture was taken while we were punting and it's a bridge that was supposedly modelled after the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, though I don't think they look alike at all. The next picture is the quad of one of the colleges where they filmed a scene from Chariots of Fire (people try to run all the way around the quad while the bell is striking twelve and make it back before the last note ends - 42 seconds, I think - it's only been done three times). The next picture is on the streets of Cambridge, and the last one is Mark's parents and our guide while we were punting.

Thanks for reading, next post: Scotland!

England and Scotland 1: Stonehenge



Hello! Mark and I just returned from two weeks in England and Scotland! We went sightseeing and met Mark's relatives, and it was a very busy two weeks so I'll post about it in a few installments.

Our very first day we went to Stonehenge, which was top on my list of things to see. There's a fence around it so you can't walk amongst the stones like you could years ago, but you can still get close enough, I think. It was very cold and cloudy when we were there, but that only added to the mysterious atmosphere. There was a free audio guide, so we learned a bit about the stones while we walked around. The most interesting thing I learned is that no one knows who actually put the stones up (all this time I thought it was the druids for some reason).

The first picture is the stones (I took a lot of shots, and this is the best one for showing the whole thing without too many tourists in the way) and the second is Mark and his dad (can you see how cold and windy it is?).

Thanks for reading, more soon!
Cate

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The Sake Festival






Hi! Long time no see! Thanks for checking this, and I should be doing a few more updates soon because my time in Fukuyama is ending and soon I'll be moving to a town near here and then going to England for a two week vacation (!).

Anyway, last weekend we went to the annual Sake Matsuri (Festival) in Saijo, a small town near Hiroshima. Apparently the festival attracts 200,000 people every year, and it was pretty crowded. We arrived a little after 10 and spent the first part of the day wandering through cool old sake breweries and trying a lot of free samples. We had one of my friend's students as a guide, and he was really into sake, so that was a big help. We stayed about six hours just looking at sake breweries, trying food and sake (even sake ice cream!), and then sitting for a while to recover from the drinking and wandering.

The first picture is my boyfriend, Mark, our friend, Paul, and our guide for the day, Shintaro, with sake cups made from bamboo. The next shot is a display with flowers and sake bottles, and then some people testing the temperature of the sake they were about to serve. The last one is me and my co-worker, Chris, with a raccoon mascot.

Thanks for reading!
Cate

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Fukuoka and Kumamoto





Hi! Right now I'm just finishing a week of vacation for the Obon holidays. It's been nice having some time off and it gave us a chance to spend a long weekend in Fukuoka and visit a couple who used to live here but moved in April. We went to Fukuoka Sunday morning and spent the afternoon at Canal City, a big shopping center. We went to the ramen stadium there, which is a big, crowded area with many shops selling ramen. Fukuoka is famous for a special type of ramen called Tonkotsu where the soup is made from pork bones, I think, so it's white. The shopping center also had a "dessert museum" but it wasn't very impressive - just a few coffee shops with expensive cakes. That evening we traveled to Omuta where our friends live. The next day we went to a beach outside Fukuoka, which was a lot of fun, though I got a small sting on my foot from something in the water. Tuesday we went to Kumamoto to see the castle there. It's a really nice castle with lots of things to look at and English explanations of everything. We came back last night (Tuesday night) and I have one more day off before starting work again tomorrow.

The first picture is of the restaurant we ate at in the ramen stadium. We waited in line for maybe 20 or 30 minutes then bought tickets at a vending machine and then waited a bit more before being seated in the restaurant. Next is a picture of Kumamoto Castle from the outside and then an example of the English explanations they had (this is for the gun windows in the guard tower). The last picture is a view of Kumamoto and the guard tower from the top of the castle.

Thanks for reading!

Monday, August 06, 2007

Summer Festivals




Hi! Sorry again for the long silence and thanks for checking back, anyway. Not much has been going on lately, just trying to get through the unbelievably hot summer. There are lots of summer festivals and fireworks in Japan, and yesterday we went to the festival in Okayama, which involved stages at various places around downtown and a big parade. It was so hot and crowded that we couldn't really watch much of the parade (I'm not much of a parade person, anyway, and I couldn't help thinking how hot the performers must have been in their beautiful costumes so it wasn't such a big loss) but it was fun to watch the dancing.

Here are a few shots of a dance we saw at about two in the afternoon outside the station. I think it was about 110 (no joke) and very high humidity so I have no idea how the dancers all managed to look so cool and sweat-free, but they did it. We saw a few groups of dancers sitting in the shade later after their performances and they were starting to show the effects of the heat and exertion then, but they were all smiles onstage.

After two more days of work I have a week off for the Obon holidays so we're going to visit friends in Fukuoka, and I'll write an update after that. I hope you're all enjoying the summer!

Cate

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Takamatsu and my birthday




Hi Everyone! Sorry for the long silence, I haven't been doing much that's worthy of a blog update, just enjoying the warm weather (which is already starting to get uncomfortably hot, unfortunately). Also I've been busy because my boyfriend, Mark, had an accident when we were playing a game in a park two weeks ago and knocked a few teeth out and injured his jaw, so I've been busy helping him.

Anyway, these pictures are from Ritsurin Park in Takamatsu, which is a town on the smallest of Japan's four main islands, Shikoku. The park is not one of the "big 3," (the park's considered the three most beautiful in the country) but apparently there is a campaign to change that. The park was lovely and it was a perfect day to see it. The theme of the day was "The Amazing Race" because we'd been watching that show a lot, so Mark had set up a treasure hunt in the style of the show.

Ok, enjoy the pictures! I hope you're all enjoying the summer,
Cate

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Vietnam 2: Halong Bay





We arrived in Vietnam late Sunday evening (I think it was around midnight when we finally stepped into our hotel room) and spent Monday and Tuesday exploring Hanoi, then Wednesday morning we left for Halong Bay. We were picked up at our hotel at 8:30 or so and rode in a van for about three and a half hours to the dock in Halong. The trip of course included a stop to buy souvenirs (which they pretend is a bathroom break). There were four couples in our van, so when we stepped out at the souvenir stop, four Vietnamese employees attached themselves to our group, and then as the four couples started going to different parts of the shop we each had one employee shuffling along behind us.

Anyway, one other couple from our van was on our boat (the other two were on another boat), so the four of us got on the boat and sat on the deck drinking sweet tea for maybe half an hour until another van of people arrived. Eventually we set off and had a big lunch while we sailed into the bay. After lunch we saw a floating fishing village and some amazing scenery, and at four Mark and I set off for a kayak trip. We were the only two going in the afternoon, so it was just us and our guide, which was really nice. We kayaked for about two hours and the best part of that was going through a little cave into a lagoon where we were the only three people (that's where the picture above was taken). After kayaking was dinner and then drinks on the deck.

The next day after breakfast we got out to see "Amazing Cave" and then before we knew it we were back at the dock and on our way back to Hanoi. We have tons of pictures, but I didn't want to overload this post with images, so I hope you get the idea of what it was like. The first picture is our boat, the Dragon's Pearl, and then it's Mark and me in our kayaks, then two pictures of Halong Bay, one around sunset, and one at five in the morning when we got up for sunrise (though as you can see, it was too foggy to see anything).

Thanks for reading!
Catie

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Vietnam 1: Hoa Lu and Tam Coc




Hi Everyone! We just arrived back from Vietnam yesterday (at five in the morning) and now I've just finished my first day back at work. I want to write a lot about Vietnam because it was a really great trip and I'll start with a day trip we took to the old capital, Hoa Lu, and Tam Coc, a place about two hours from Hanoi with really amazing scenery.

Mark and I were the only two people signed up for the trip, so it was just us and our guide, Binh. We started with a two-hour car trip out of Hanoi (punctuated with a stop at a souvenir shop, as always). Then we went to a temple dedicated to the first king of Hanoi and then a temple maybe 200 yards away dedicated to the second king. It was a smart area to have the capitol of the country because it was all surrounded by amazing limestone cliffs so it was well-protected. They moved the capitol to Hanoi in 1010 so in three years there will be a huge celebration in Hanoi for the millenial anniversary of becoming the capitol (I plan to go back for that, who's with me?).

After that we walked up the road to get our bikes and while Binh and I were in the bathroom (or the 'happy room' as our guides liked to call it) Mark was accosted by village ladies trying to sell him things. The people in that area all studied French for talking to tourists, so we were monsieur and madame all day, which was interesting. The bike ride wasn't too challenging, even for me, and I learned to ride a bike less than a year ago, though we did get stuck in mud once and had to change our route a bit. It was rough going when we first got out of the mud but we passed some villagers who were cleaning motorbikes so they gave our feet, sandals, pedals, and wheels a power wash. After that we rode for maybe an hour and a half enjoying the amazing limestone cliffs, traditional villages (with children who asked for candy and one little girl who spat at us when we didn't give her anything), and wild animals (I nearly ran over chickens twice). Then we stopped to eat lunch and dry off and cool down a bit before a quick cycle to a dock where we got on a sampan rowed by two women (well, one rowed while the other stood and steered with a big stick). The boat ride was about an hour and a half and included a ride through a cave where the women stopped and tried to sell us crafts. Finally we had another short bike ride and then packed back into the car for Hanoi.

It was an exhausting day but really fun and a great way to get out of the city and see the countryside. The first picture is me and Binh on our bikes, the next one is the scenery on the bike ride, and the last one is from the boat ride.

Thanks for reading!
Cate

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Visiting Uncle Ho

Hi Everyone, I'll write a lot more about Vietnam when we get home (right now it's the end of day 2) but for now I wanted to quickly write about the surreal experience of seeing Ho Chi Minh before I forget the details. Also this is our last night in a place with a computer and internet in the room so I wanted to take advantage of it. Tomorrow we're doing a trip to Halong Bay, which includes a night on the boat and then we have three more nights in Hanoi and we're staying in a different hotel.

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum is a bit far from where we're staying, so we took a Cyclo, which is a little cart that's pushed in front of a bike. It's a good way to get right into the crazy traffic while still feeling relatively safe (and we took a bunch of pictures during the ride that I'll put up when we get home). When we got there we saw a huge line of people waiting to get in but as we were walking toward the end of the line a man told us he could get us past the line to a special shortcut only for foreigners if we'd slip him five dollars (turned out to be five each). I'm not sure what the deal with that is, though we ended up in a line with all the other foreigners and it was much, much shorter, so he wasn't lying. I suppose he makes a deal with the guards, and I'm guessing the reason he said it was 'only for English, Australians, and Americans' is because the Vietnamese wouldn't be willing to pay that.

Anyway, after lots of waiting and passing through a metal detector and then more waiting to check cameras we made it into the mausoleum building. There were lots of guards inside and they shush you and push you into two lines and herd you toward the room with Uncle Ho himself. The room is a big square with the casket in the center and four guards standing around it. You walk on a narrow little path around three sides of the casket and then back out and it all happens very quickly, though you don't really need any more time because all you're doing is looking at a body. The guards grab your elbows and keep you moving along and they also pushed the children to a center track for walking around so that they can see, which is nice. The whole thing felt a little strange and it felt like a lot of hubbub for such a short visit but, hey, how often do you get to see the body of a national hero? Apparently you're supposed to watch the faces of the Vietnamese people in there because they're so reverant but I forgot to do that because I was too busy looking at Ho Chi Minh.

Ok, that's it for now. We've been keeping very busy walking around and seeing things and eating ice cream. This place is pretty fascinating and very different from anywhere I've been before (and an interesting change from Japan). Thanks for reading!

Cate

Monday, April 23, 2007

Kyoto and Nara





Last weekend I went to Kyoto and Nara with my parents and Mark. We left Monday morning and that evening we visited the Golden Temple, kinkaku-ji, which is in the bottom picture. It was originally a retirement villa for a shogun, but now I guess it's a Zen temple (thank you, wikipedia). It's covered in gold leaf, so it's a really striking structure, and I enjoyed seeing it again (I also visited it last time I was in Japan, three years ago).

The next day we went to Nara, which is famous for its big Buddha statue and herds of tame deer. The deer are actually pretty pushy and as soon as they saw me going to buy food they surrounded me and put their pushy little faces in my bag. One of them even bit me, which surprised the heck out of me, but I guess they know an easy target when they see one. They are all trained to bow their heads for food though I didn't know that at the time so I didn't get to try it out. The picture above the Golden Temple is of the building that houses the big Buddha and that's me lighting incense before going in.

That afternoon Mark and I went to Kiyomizu Temple, one of the most popular temples in Kyoto. It's on a hillside supported by big stilts (you can kinda see them in the top picture) and it gives you a really nice view of the city. The second picture shows three waterfalls coming from the hill that you can drink from. You can get one of three things, depending on which fall you drink from: money, beauty, or wisdom. We didn't know which was which but found out later that I drank from money and Mark drank from wisdom.

Thanks for reading! Next week we leave for Vietnam and I can't wait for that! I'll post pictures when we get back.

Cate

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Tokyo





Here are a few pictures from Tokyo, which I visited with my parents the weekend before last. They arrived in Japan on Saturday and I took the train to meet them on Sunday. That day we went to dinner with my old host family in Tokyo and met their two current students, which was a lot of fun. The next day we mostly just walked around a few of my old favorite neighborhoods and enjoyed people-watching and window-shopping. The first two pictures are from Harajuku, a neighborhood that is popular with young people for great shopping (and is now very famous thanks to Gwen Stefani, I guess). The bottom picture is Shinjuku at night, which I like because it's got all the neon that people expect of Tokyo. That picture was taken in Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku's red-light district, though it doesn't feel as sketchy as other red-light districts I've seen (still, I wouldn't walk there along late at night)

After Tokyo my parents came back to my town, Fukuyama, and they did some sightseeing in the afternoons while I was at work. Then Monday we went to Kyoto along with my boyfriend, Mark, and I plan to post pictures from that little trip soon.

But that's it for now, thanks for reading!
Cate

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Osaka




Last weekend Mark and I had to go to Osaka to get our tourist visas for our trip to Vietnam, and we decided to see the sights while we were in the big city. We went up Sunday morning and spent most of Sunday afternoon wandering around an area called American town, which is the hip, young shopping area. It reminded me of being back in Tokyo and shopping in Harajuku, actually, so that was neat. There wasn't actually anything very American, unless you count lots of t-shirts that say USA or have random states or confederate flags on them, and you see those everywhere, but there was a statue of liberty on top of a building (the second one I've seen in Japan; there's one on Odaiba, too). We had some beer tastes and edamame at a Kirin restaurant when we got tired of walking (the first picture at the top). That evening we had okonomiyaki, which is like a big pancake with cabbage and seafood. Osaka is famous for food, so I wish we'd had more chances to eat out, but we didn't have a lot of time.

Monday morning we checked out of our hostel (nothing stinks like very old tatami mats, but you can't beat 3000 yen - about 25 dollars - for a night in Osaka) and went to find the consulate. That was a fun adventure because addresses in Japan are not sequential. Every city is divided into wards and then each ward is divided into numbered boxes and then the boxes are divided once more, so you find the ward, then use the zipcode to find the area, which gives you a square block and you just have to find your place. After that we went to Osaka's famous aquarium, Kaiyukan, which is one of the world's largest. That was fun, though it actually wasn't the best aquarium because the displays didn't look very natural and a lot of the tanks seemed too small, especially for the dolphins and penguins. We had a good time discussing which would be the worst tank to be dropped into - the giant crabs with huge skinny legs or the creepy, crawly jellyfish.

Finally we stopped by Namba, Osaka's entertainment district. I've heard it's also the place with the highest concentration of love hotels anywhere in the world. We had fun looking at those, though I've read that love hotels are in the process of going up-market and are therefore getting less interesting (it's getting more difficult to find a hotel shaped like a whale or a spaceship, for example). Anyway, the picture at the top is the sign at one called Bali, which I took because it shows the options - you can go for a "rest" (from one to three hours) or stay longer. The next picture was a hotel called Mickey Cookies which had an all-pink room. Surprisingly the area is not too seedy, though I imagine it changes a bit at night.

Thanks for reading!
Cate

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

New Year's Resolutions





Hi Everyone! So, around New Year's we asked students to write their New Year's Resolutions on little paper hearts and then used those to decorate a bulletin board. Now that it's Spring we rearranged the hearts to make a cherry blossom display (the top picture).

I thought it was pretty so I wanted to share it with you all, and I also included detail shots of my favorite resolutions. I hope you can read them on these pictures, because they're pretty great. I made one, too, and it's "to practice Japanese every day," which I certainly do not do.

Thanks for reading, I should be updating again soon because I'm going to Osaka next weekend (to get a tourist visa for my big trip to Vietnam next month) and then the week after that I'm meeting my parents in Tokyo and then going with them to Kyoto the next week. So I should have lots to write about!

Cate