Hajimemashite!

Welcome to the new Japan blog! I was going to start with some explanation as to why this took me so long to make, but that really would've just taken the form of a list of complaints, and I've already complained about my logistical problems in Japan enough. On to the cool stories! They'll be super abridged for now, since there's so much to catch up on.

The trip to Japan was a harrowing experience. I traveled with my Brandeis buddies: Tanya, Emily and Zach. The flight from Dallas to Tokyo was excruciatingly long, and really bizarre in that it was day outside for the entire thirteen hours. We swelled with excitement upon landing in Tokyo. The flight from Tokyo to Osaka was easy. I wanted to sleep, but couldn't take my eyes of the gorgeous mountains long enough to do so. I've really never seen anything like them. The mountains are jagged, but the thick tree cover sort of smooths out the edges. The result is sort of like giant, forested sand dunes. Also, the country is carpeted with them; I've never been anywhere where there weren't lovely mountains in view. Anyway, our excitement dissipated upon arrival in Osaka, where we each had to drag about 100 lbs. of luggage through the Osaka airport. We then loaded said 100 lbs. of stuff onto the express train to Kyoto, which took us to Kyoto station. From there, we had to take the subway to the station near our hotel, and it took us a while to find the hotel itself. By the time we got there, we had been awake about 24 hours, and had pretty much traveled around the world.

The next day, we met a bunch of the other KCJS students, and the J-Team (that's us Brandeis folks) adopted one Adam Boles and went on a long walking journey to the spectacular Kyoto Station. On the way, we happened across an exceptionally large temple complex, which we explored a little bit. Inside, some school girls took notice of us, and gave us an excited "herro!" followed by an admission that they didn't really speak English very well. "Daijobu" ("it's okay") we responded. They erupted with surprise and excitement. We went on to explain that we understood some Japanese because we were foreign students studying Japanese. The tour guide had to tell them to settle down, they were so thrilled. They continued muttering about us for the rest of the tour.

Kyoto tour itself is architecturally marvellous. Very modern-looking, but I have no problem with that. It's also full of lovely stores and attractions. The team enjoyed some ice cream there, and visited the "happy terrace," among other things.

Okay, so Kyoto Station really isn't much of a story without pictures. So I'll just end this post with information on pictures. I figured I'd be able to upload photo albums to my blog so you could look at them right here, but apparently that's impossible. Since no better alternatives seem to exist, I've decided to just throw them all onto Facebook, since that allows me to put them all on there, to caption them, and for others to comment. Unfortunately, that means that people with no Facebook account can't view them. For this, I apologize. If you want to view them, you'll either have to create a Facebook account and add me as a friend, or just get someone who is my Facebook friend to show them to you or something. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Post #2 coming right up.