Bon Dance & Yukata - Summer Dress

This day Saturday April 21, 2007, I went to Kansai Gaidai University to live a Japanese cultural experience. We learned how to put on the Yukata dress and also learned a few steps of the Bon Dance.
This is a famous dance in Japan, called "Bon Odori" (盆踊り) in Japanese. People dance the Bon Dance during the Bon Festival, which is held in the Summer as a holiday to honor the departed spirits of one's ancestors.

The ladies on the photos are actually a team of dancers who belong to a Japanese Dance Academy and have been dancing for some 15 years. They come to the Uniersity once a year and donate their time to devote it to international students who want to weara Yukata and learn about their dances.

(浴衣, Yukata) is a Japanese summer garment. People wearing yukata are a common sight at fireworks displays, bon-odori festivals, and other summer ...
The material of my Yukata is cotton, but there are other light weight fabrics as well. In comparison to the Kinomo,which has many layers of thigh, heavy material yukata is very light and easy to put on.

Pensamientos! - Thoughts

Friday Afternon - Hirakata City Town Square
These defenitely are amazing, unforgetable and breath taking moments of my life. I am learning so much about the Japanese culture and the other cultures that surround me. This experiece also helped me to break away from the daily routine we live in California and learn more about us and others as humans.

I am very glad I came and words can't explain the feeling of being here.

Kinkakuji Temple- The Golden Temple in Kyoto and its surroundings

Ohayou Gozaimasu!!

This beautiful day we had to take a trian from Hirakatashi to Shijo Station in Kyoto, and then take a bus for about 45 to 50 minutes to get to this gorgeous temple. It is the Golden Temple " KINKAKUJI.
The whole place is a very large and beautiful park with many bonsai trees and a small like, and waterfalls aound the garden. Once you get to Kinkakuji, you can't believe what is in front of your eyes. It is truly amazing and beautiful. Passing the temple there are gardens, and bamboos around. There are beautiful trees with Sakura, (See Photo), any time you see a tree that stands out because of its whiteness, that is becasue it is blommed!!.
Many green areas and stairs path along the park lead the way to a shrine and temple. Also there is a large mountain behinf this park which makes you feel a little cold because of its forest. Do you see a shrine with thousands of shiny coins on the ground? People here make a stop, make their wish, take photos and throw some coins to see if they make it into the bowl in the middle of the little figures around the budhas.
Also towards the end of the park there is a big temple and people smell the insense and with their hands they push the smoke towards whatever area they want to heal or if they have problems in a realationship they push the smoke towards their heart, etc. Evryone does this as they approach the insense bowl.
Also in the Temple behind the insense bowl, there are the belt with large ropes, where people vow, and clap twice, make a wish and then ring the bells and clap again and vow before leaving, another great experience for those who have never been in a temple.

The people you see in the group photo are my freiends, two of them are my unit mates (from Seminar House 3 (dorm)), and one is my former roommate from Orientation Week. From all the Asian people you see in the photo, only 3 are Japanese, the girl wearing the jean Jacket to the left, the girl wearing a white long sleeve shirt, and the guy with the brown leather Jacket. The rest are from other countries including: China, the girl next to me, Taiwan, the girl with her sunglasses on her head, Australia, the girl wearing pink scarfe (she is half Japanese half Chinese) and Chile the guy wearing the beannie.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog!!

Going Hanami- Kyoto

In Japan when the Cherry Blossoms season arrives, everyone talk about the beautiful "Sakura" and it is very popular among citizen and tourist to go "Hanami" which is the Japanese word used for: Going to see the Cherry Blossoms.
Kyoto a 45 minute ride from Hirakata is a very famous place for Hanami, since it has very beautiful Sakura trees and many are lightened at night. The Sakura trees in their full bloom looked like cotton from far away, but as you approach them you can be enchanted the the impresenly gorgoues white of its blooming flowers.
Also Kyoto has many tea houses around the town which makes a unique experince for seeing Geishas wearing their full Kimono and Geisha's white make up.
(Photo) My friend is from Taiwan, and she lives with me, we always hang out together and share our experience in Japan. Some of you may not differentiate among Asians, but once you are in Japan you leanr to distinguished Asian people, becasue depending on where they are from, their facial features vary.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed seeing some Sakura Photos!!

Spring Break 2007

It was cold here in Osaka City, that is the city where I live, but my school and seminar house are in the suburbs a little far from the metropolitan area, the town is called Hirakata but they do not have any major airports or hotels. My husband Chad came to join me after two months without each other. Our planes have been set to have Spring Break together so he landed to Osaka Kansai Airport on Saturday March 17th . We spent one night and a day in Osaka, the weather was pretty cold, but we walked all over Namba and showed him the cool Dotombori Bridge, etc.

We picked all our luggage and took a bout two trains before we got to the Ferry Port in Osaka, which will take us to Kyushu-a big Island south of Japan. It was 12 hour night ride!!

When we arrived got to Kyushu our port was in a city called Beppu (North east of Kyushu) it was a little cold but nicer than Osaka, then later the sun came out and it was quite nice. Beppu is very famous for its "Onsen" (Natural Hot Springs) They are all over, if you look closely at the photos you see smoke or steam every where, that is from the onsen. There we rode the local bus and went to a very nice private Onsen called Yunosato, some were outdoors but the family ones were straw houses and we rented a one hour for 2,000 yen (less that $20). We then had some thick noodles and took the bus to another stop. We got off close to the 9 Hells, which are a set of onsen holes with different colors, during our walk we run into a temple and it had many different duddha's, so we too photos, prayed and then run into the very Unique Sex museum, Weird ha? but our curiousity made us go in and believe me is crazy!! we took pictures but theywon't be posted in this blog. It was a good crazy experience to see how creative the museum was though.

We also walked into another shrine and took photos.

Next day we went to Mt. Takasaki, in Beppu and saw thousands beautiful monkeys in the mountain. After that we rented a car and took off. We only stay there one day and a half and then drove acroos Kyushu through a National Park called Aso-Kuju. The drive through the mountains and forest range was amazing, and Chad did a great job adjusting to the driving on the opposite side of the road.

The Aso Mountain is national park with one of the largest craters in the world. Driving across the island was colder because of the mountains and we were further away from the coastline. We arrived to the volcano around sunset, so it was closed but we parked in a view point and watched the gorgeous sunset while freezing to death. Then we drove more around town and went another onsen, and look for a hotel where we could stay. We got a western style room at around 10:00pm and went to bed, when it was time to get up, we couldn't believe the view from our window. It was all mountains and huge pine trees.

It was quite a surprice, the hosts at the hotel treated very nice, we had a table reserved and had Japanese breakfast for our second time in Japan. Very different dishes by the way!! Fish, rice, and some seaweeds, fermented beans and other stuff!! Hard to swallow for sure. after breakfast we checked out and went to see if we could get into the rope way again to see the vocano, but we were out of luck. We spent half day there, check out the area and since the ropeway was closed temporarily because the gases were too strong, we got in the car again and on our way out we saw a helicopter giving rides to see the volcano, so we decided to pull over and see how much they charged, it was $50 per person for 4 minutes. So no way we were going to do that, but we met some Japanese guys from Tokyo and gave them our video camera so they could video tape the volcano while they were riding the helicopter, so they did that for us!! So we have a Cool Video!!

We left The Aso Volcano Ropeway Station and we drove to Kumamoto to the west side of Kyushu island, we ate lunch and saw a shrine and took off again soth. The drive was very long for about 3 hours and it was all worth it. We drove under so many long tunnels, under huge green pine tree mountains and along a few Japanese farms.

Chad and I were really looking forward to get to the Ocean again and see sun and palm trees, so driving all the way acroos the island again was a good and relaxing way to spend the afternoon, took photos and video of all areas we drove by until we arrived to Miyasaki.

It is on the east side southern Kyushu, there we spent two nights and the weather was super nice and sunny. We stayed in a the Kensigton Hotel-A Brittish Style Hotel, located in main down town Miyasaki. We wasnted to check out the town at night but by the time we took showers and got ready to party, at around 9:00pm everything was closed, so went to dinner and tried to find a place to have some cooktails but every little place that was open had spoke all over, and we didn't like that. On this and any downtown are of any city in Japana they have a lot of Gentleman's bars, so all you see around are executives, all drunk going into these places. We saw some sexy-dressed women alone walking around so we wondered !! Also all these bars or establishments have a man staying out the door passing flyers, and all around the streets, there were many men passing flyers as well, marketing those pubs. We decided we better go to bed since it did not seem that we were going to find a nice smoke-free place to have a beer, so we went to out hotel. Next day we checked out of the hotel and drove along the Miyasaki Coast, heading South towards Nichinan area. We saw some surfers on the beach, and listened saw cool little beach town on the way down.

We stoped at a tourist point called: Nichinan- Sun Messe. It has the 7 large figures in front of the ocean and it is on a large hill with many other cool monuments around it.

NICHINAN COAST-COUTH OF KYUSHU

THE THANKS GIVING BELL

NICHINAN-SUN MESSE

Then we contonue our drive and stopped at a the parking lot to hike to the "Udo Shrine" This Shrine is inside a large cave and it was amazing. We hiked up the mointain and down for about 15 minutes, and arrived to the other side of the mountain, this was a tiny Japanese Village with a very few souvenir shops, and houses before getting to the shrine. The Shrine was the most beautiful Shrine I have ever seen, so far is the best looking one, of course is in fron of the Ocean!!

After we did all that sight seeing, we started hiking back and all the sudden we heard the leaves move and when we looked it was a 5 foot snake, I got so scared!! Chad hand in there trying to see if he could video tape it but the snake scaped.

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We then drove back and found a place to eat and took off to "Chad's dream destination" in Seagaia, northern Miyasaki, along the coast as well.

We stayed in a nice hotel called "Sun Phoenix" thanks to the Sheratton's bell boy, who I met and talked for a while when Chad was trying to find a place for us to spend the night. He was so kind he made us a reservation under his name and we payed $70 for a $140 room. It was the best place. It had onsen, and so we didn't miss that opportunity, and got a nice reflexology massage by japanese ladies. After that we got ready and went to the hotel's restaurant that had the best Miyasaki Roman Noodles with fire torch cooked pork!!

Next day we woke up with another surprice from our room window "an amazing ocean front view with many pine trees between the hotel and the sea". Next day, early morning we went to the Ocean Dome so Chad could surf, but it wasn't until we were inside it when we found out he couldn't surf first, because he didn't bring a board, and second in the Indoor Ocean Dome they don't even rent boards and it would cost $1000 to ride "Weave Heaven" (a two hour consecutive artificial wave, mostly rented by groups of 10 people and with a reservation in advanced). Chad was certainly bombed out because we didn't know the details about reserving Wave Heaven at the Ocean Dome, but we ended up spending about 4 hours there, watched a surf show where the artificial waves got really big (about 6 feet) and we also went a few time on their water slides, etc, and left at around 4:30pm so we could catch the Ferry back to Osaka that night. Overall we really enjoyed and had a good time every where we went.