• Dare to Dream

    Dare to Dream

    Somewhere around six months ago, I was sitting in my apartment talking on the phone with my mom. From just outside my window I could hear Buddhist monks chanting at Ninnaji, an enormous wooden temple […]

  • A Different World

    A Different World

    Ladies and gentlemen, I’m pleased to announce that this post officially marks the first time in almost two years that I’m actually writing about the country I’m in! Welcome, at long last, to Cambodia 😀

  • KaZantip 2011: Black Sea Paradise

    KaZantip 2011: Black Sea Paradise

    Warning: This post contains a few NSFW photos. View only in good company 🙂 The Republic of KaZantip, the legendary Eastern European Shangri La of parties, lasts for just one month a year in a […]

  • The Mega Trip Part 9 (The Great Wall)

    The Mega Trip Part 9 (The Great Wall)

    With the land-based portion of my adventure through China nearly over, I realized that I was still missing a significant piece of what I wanted to see before returning to Japan. Kung Fu. So, after […]

  • Thaipusam: Masochistic Mayhem

    Thaipusam: Masochistic Mayhem

    Warning This post contains some graphic images. If blood makes you queasy, you may want to skip it. I’ve mentioned a few times how, although I do travel mostly without plans, I also do so […]

  • Huashan: The Danger Trail

    Huashan: The Danger Trail

    On December 20th of 2006, I received an e-mail from my dad. It contained this Powerpoint file. The forwarding messages all included such phrases as: “I CANT EVEN LOOK AT THE PICTURES WITHOUT GETTING DIZZY!!” […]

I was last seen 5 months ago in Los Angeles, .

Summer Vacation

 Japan, Public  3 Responses »
Jul 242005
 
Methinks Stuart doesn’t want to leave just yet Methinks Stuart doesn’t want to leave just yet

Here I am, updating my website from a freshly formatted computer (at long last) in a 2/3 packed-up room next to a window looking out on a sunny (I repeat: sunny) day in Kyoto, Japan. Can life get better? I submit that it cannot.

By the way, I finally added the rest of the Gion Matsuri pictures to my previous post, as well as a video of some of the festivities…go back and cheggit!

C-class. Talk about personal attention – four students and three teachers?? From left-to-right: Hidy, Dylan, Tayama Sensei, Kusunoki Sensei, Shivana, Me, and Yamada Sensei. C-class. Talk about personal attention – four students and three teachers?? From left-to-right: Hidy, Dylan, Tayama Sensei, Kusunoki Sensei, Shivana, Me, and Yamada Sensei.

So, this Wednesday was the Study in Kyoto Program’s completion ceremony, where the original members of YHM bid farewell to some of the awesomest teachers around. Thankfully, I have another whole semester with them to look forward to. The ceremony itself consisted of each person saying a few words in Japanese, followed by my fellow shamisen students and I performing our “final exam” for the entire graduating class. It didn’t go half-bad, considering we only had something like fourteen lessons in total.
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HOLY CRAP GION MATSURI (VIDEO)

 Japan, Public  12 Responses »
Jul 172005
 
This is the building crew in front of the half-completed Iwatoyama Mikoshi this Tuesday This is the building crew in front of the half-completed Iwatoyama Mikoshi this Tuesday

Holy crap! That was without a doubt the biggest festival I’ve seen since I came to Japan. And I got to be a part of it. Awesome.

To start off, I should mention that although the Gion Matsuri’s main event took place this Sunday, there are actually smaller events held for nearly two weeks both before and after. That being said, this weekend was pure insanity.

The original Iwatoyama float…significantly different (and smaller) than its present form The original Iwatoyama float…significantly different (and smaller) than its present form

Starting off on Friday night I headed downtown with the intention of studying for finals, figuring I might peek my head out every now and then to see what was going on with regards to the festival. I figured that there would be little more than music being played from those gigantic mikoshi until Sunday’s parade.

Oh, how wrong I was.
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Building the Mikoshi

 Japan, Public  5 Responses »
Jul 122005
 
Each neighborhood has been so faithfully reproducing their floats for the last millennium and a half that when the street of Gion were finally paved, special indentations were left as guides for each year’s mikoshi construction. How awesome is that. Each neighborhood has been so faithfully reproducing their floats for the last millennium and a half that when the street of Gion were finally paved, special indentations were left as guides for each year’s mikoshi construction. How awesome is that.

The Gion Matsuri, one of Japan’s three largest, has officially started. And it’s pretty safe to say right off the bat that it’s going to kick ass. Rather than attending class as usual today, Dylan, Kier, Harrison and myself headed downtown for a day of mikoshi-buildin’. What’s a mikoshi, you ask? It’s a TWELVE TON portable shrine, constructed without the use of a single nail just as it’s been done for over 1,500 years. Each board is carefully joined by wrapping layer after layer of hand-made rice husk rope (which is quite a rash-causing rope, I might add) around the joints. These shrines are what will be pulled…by us…through the streets of Kyoto for Sunday’s main event of this month-long festival.
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Wagashi Class and the Language

 Japan, Public  12 Responses »
Jul 042005
 
I couldn’t start off a sequence of wagashi pictures with anything except the one, the only, the magnificent…Ota Sensei! Look atchu wit yo’ badass self. I couldn’t start off a sequence of wagashi pictures with anything except the one, the only, the magnificent…Ota Sensei! Look atchu wit yo’ badass self.

Hey all,

Before I start I’ll just say that this post will deviate from the norm both in terms of content and pictures. I’ve been wanting to throw up a bunch of pictures from my Japanese Confectionaries class for some time now but whenever I’ve intended to do so some outdoors event comes up and pushes it back with more traditional “Kyoto” pictures. But this time I’m really gonna post them! I’ll describe them via the captions, though, since they have less than nothing to do with the content :).

And I suppose if I’m gonna show you Ota Sensei I might as well introduce all 3 wagashi teachers. This is Maru-sensei, the second in command. He also rules, and consistently puts us to shame with his candy-making technique. Once, just to impress us, he ninja’ed up a ten-layer cake with a blindfold on and his hands tied to his feet. Wagashi no tatsujin! And I suppose if I’m gonna show you Ota Sensei I might as well introduce all 3 wagashi teachers. This is Maru-sensei, the second in command. He also rules, and consistently puts us to shame with his candy-making technique. Once, just to impress us, he ninja’ed up a ten-layer cake with a blindfold on and his hands tied to his feet. Wagashi no tatsujin!

So, the other day I spent a decent amount of time surfing the web and gathering information for my Nihon Kenkyuu (“Japanese Research”) class. Kenkyuu is a class wherein I’ll have to give a ten to fifteen minute oral presentation in Japanese on a topic of my choice. And they really do let you choose anything you want – Harrison is doing his on the Dragon Quest video game series and its influence on society. Last semester Stuart did his on hair dying. I decided to do mine on creatures in Japanese mythology. Part of the reason behind my decision to pick a more serious topic is the fact that UCSD has not yet determined whether or not I’ll be able to transfer the class for credit (ridiculous), and I figure the more “traditional culture class”-esque topic I choose, the more likely I’ll be to get it approved. The other reason is because Nick suggested it and, seriously, when has Nick ever steered me wrong?
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A Massive Summer

 Japan, Public  7 Responses »
Jun 302005
 
The Sky of Evil The Sky of Evil

This week has held a few very opposite events. The good and the bad. Yin and Yang. And all that jazz.

So just to get it out of the way, I’ll start off with the bad. First, my denshi jisho (electronic Japanese-to-English dictionary), my best friend, my closest companion, my lifeline, has been destroyed. In an act of negligence I dropped the precious $200 piece of equipment off my desk and the screen cracked nearly to the point of uselessness. Even more tragic was the fact that that I had accumulated a word memo of over 300 “must-learn-over-summer-vacation” words, which seemed to be lost forever.

Ah! Scoot over! That gaijin is looking at us! Ah! Scoot over! That gaijin is looking at us!

This simply would not do. So I sat down with a blank Microsoft Word document, and after a mere five hours of trying to decode the barely visible entries from the small left-hand corner of the screen which was still operating, I obtained every single word.

Bad thing number two: the weather sucks. Big time. Yes, changing seasons are nice, but I have to say that sweat, B.O., and sticky skin after being outside in the humidity for five minutes is not my cup of tea. My posters are all curling up, and my carpet is still wet from a small cup of water I spilled over a week ago. And the hot rain doesn’t help much either.
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