20 March 2013 · Comment
Hey!
I’m still in Japan. I went from Tokyo to Kyoto and it’s been a little weird so far because those are both of the places that I went to in 2007 so I’m trying to avoid feeling like I’m just trying to relive all the great things that happened then. Does that even make sense? I don’t know, I spent the last two and a half hours in this internet cafe trying to address my newly minted thesis correction notes (which are totally all about margin sizes and it’s so silly) in a Japanese-only interface version of MS Word and my brain hurts so bad I don’t even know what makes sense anymore. Where am I. What is Sarah Beth.
So yeah, the whole “Oh pshaw they’re just going to correct my spacing and I can do that from anywhere so I might as well do it from Japan” thing turns out to not have been completely thought through! Who ever could have seen that coming! I couldn’t even access the version of my thesis that I brought with me so Michael had to do some intense transoceanic hacking to send me a new copy because he is just the most wonderful boyfriend but then it turned out that it’s pretty much impossible to figure out how to do fiddly little things like adjust spacing when everything is in a language you don’t understand! But it’s ok, I’m going to Osaka in a few minutes where they have an Apple store so I’m going to get a Macbook Air and put English MS Word on it and everything will be great. Throwing money at my problems! Yeah!
Ok pictures! But first a small disclaimer. I feel like on my last giant hobo trip my camera and I were super good buds and we worked together well but now I feel sort of awkward with it. Sorry I neglected you for the last six years, camera! Hopefully we can rekindle the magic soon.
Here’s an adorable excerpt from a Denny’s menu. Magic! Maybe it means something about their fish being responsibly obtained but I don’t know because I know less Japanese than a two year old!
More adorableness.
This lady is just the best lady. Her name is Yu and we met on the train from Tokyo to Kyoto and I don’t even have the words to describe how wonderful she is. First, she’s a travel agent so she helped me find a ton of amazing places in Japan to visit in my guide book. THEN, my credit card fell out of my bag on the train and she freaking brought it to me at my hotel in Kyoto!!!!!! How amazing is that??? And THEN she took me all around Kyoto the next day to temples and a cooking class and out to dinner with her sister and her adorable nephew! I just, I can’t get over how lucky I was to meet her.
This is one of the things we made at the cooking class. It’s a cherry blossom dessert made out of bean and rice paste and making it was like playing with sculpey!
Yu and me at the Fushimi Inari torii, which means gates, which are the big orange things. Yu told me that each gate represents a donation to the temple, so the bigger the donation the bigger the gate. It’s kind of weird to think about this beautiful, magical place that I’d been dreaming of visiting for years in terms of representing money like that.
Some gates. Ayup. For some reason this picture reminds me a little of Jurassic Park.
You can draw a fox and put a wish on the back at the temple. I didn’t draw this one so I feel funny posting a picture of it but isn’t it amazing?
A kind of nice picture of a flower from the bamboo grove in Kyoto. I think it’s called a carmelia?
Three of the four awesome Spanish people I met at the bamboo grove! How did I get so lucky with meeting awesome people? Their names are Rodrigo, Elena, and Silviana and they are so much fun and we’re going to try and meet up in Nara tomorrow! I am excite.
Some more flowers from near the bamboo grove. Andrés, the fourth Spanish dude, knew their name and a bunch of others’. I asked him how come he knew so much about plants for someone who lives in the city and he was just like, “I’m weird?” I don’t know, it was really funny.
And finally, a juice box of sake! One of the great people in the hotel in Tokyo had it and offered to share. It’s so weird because your brain tells you you’re drinking a juice box so you expect it to taste like Juicy Juice but then it’s alcohol! How neat.
Ok, it’s now 5 hours since I started writing this and in that time I have taken the train to Osaka and bought a freaking computer because I am ridiculous and made my super important and not at all trivial thesis changes by mooching off the Apple store wifi and using A&M’s online version of MS Word (so at least I saved $150 there, right? Right?) so I better get on with the adventuring! Woo!
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