Lights. And More Lights.

Tonight while watching T.V. there was a news story about one of the elementary schools in the Kyoto area that had recently come back from Christmas (or rather New Years over here) Break.  The news anchor narrated cute clips of the kids saying their New Years greetings as a class and sharing their favorite story from their vacation. For the first bit my reaction was more or less "aw. Kids. How cute!With their little stories!"  Then I realized that I had just done those exact things yesterday in my Japanese class. (T_T) My level is that of an eight-year-olds.  Hopefully this is one of those "I can only move forward" type things.

I've been doing various things since my last post. I've done a few part time jobs doing English conversation at the connected High School and I judged an English speech competition in Osaka.  I also headed to Korea at the start of my winter vacation.  Won't have pictures of that trip posted today but I will just say it was one of the most amazing trips I have taken. I can't speak a word of Korean, I really knew nothing about the food, culture, history, anything before going, yet somehow that seemed to make the trip so much better.

Also. For some reason my bath has been really, really hot recently. Every time I get into it I'm reminded of that introductory scene in Shogun where that poor sailor is being boiled alive and I can't help to wonder if maybe they were just trying to get him clean...I can only imagine how those sailors smelled.

As for now. I'm throwing up some pictures from my November excursions to Tokyo and Arashiyama.  Basically in the fall the Japanese seem to like to light stuff up.  In all honesty, it is beautiful, my pictures aren't very good so I apologize for that.  But when temples light up the fall colors at night, it's absolutely amazing.

But Tokyo first.  My friend and I had nothing we really felt the need to see it Tokyo so when we had free time our first day, we ended up just wandering and our wandering led us to the Tokyo Dome (only because we saw a rollercoaster from the distance).  We stuck around for quite a while and when it got dark, this happened:

 Aaand the view from our hotel room at sunset. For whatever reason all 6 of us (sharing a 3-person room...it was cheaper) woke up around sunrise, saw this, and went back to bed.

Goddess of Liberty (according the sign)

I keep wanting to write gangnam but this is actually gundam. The original of giant robot fighting anime.  I've never seen it, but apparently it's pretty big--saw a lot of gundam themed cafes.

It was pouring rain one day but even so we wandered around Ueno Park for a large majority of it.

The sign says "Forest of Lovers" and I have absolutely no idea why.

Shibuya. When you think of Tokyo, most likely this is the area you think of, whether you know it or not. It is also home to the world's largest crosswalk (or so I was told).

 Last two shots are night views from our hotel room. We were quite lucky to be close to the top floor.

And then Arashiyama. As I said, basically a lot of stuff lit up.