The Rest of the Story

You have no idea how nice typing on a laptop is.  I loved my Ipod Touch, don't get me wrong, but it took about 27 minutes to type out a sentence as long as this one.

Right now I am supposed to be either sleeping or writing my final paper for my Travel Writing course.  Instead, I am typing this blog post and uploading videos to Facebook.

For those of you who have been following my Japan adventure, I just wanted to thank you for caring enough about my life to read about my journey, and forgive me for the spelling and punctuation errors that come with typing on a touch-screen device.  Even though this is a bit anti-climatic (since I'm back in the States already), here is what I did in the last 4-ish days of my Japan trip:

Kamakura: 

It is so unbelievably hard for me to remember the names of Japanese words, people, and places.  My Japanese friends needed to repeat their names for me about 56 times before I finally remember.  I know about 20 words after spending 3 weeks in Japan, and as for the places...well...just, just, don't ask me where I was on what day.  Ask me to describe it to you, instead. 

Kamakura, or, Giant Outdoor Buddha that you can walk inside.

No way!  A picture?  This makes blog viewing 20 x more interesting!

It was hard to tell if this Buddha or the one we saw in Nara was bigger, but they were both pretty impressive.  This one's coolness factor was raised by the fact that you could pay 20 yen to walk inside of it.  There is nothing special inside of it, besides random yen stuck everywhere that people made wishes with.

After the Buddha trip, we walked over to a nearby Shinto temple where some of the Japanese girls who were with us taught Mitch and I how to properly make a wish.  To view this silliness, please check out my facebook video. 

Next Day: Enter: Camille. 

I got to see Camille.  Camille Forsman.  Who I have missed with a very large chunk of my heart ever since she decided it was a great idea to leave me and go teach English in Taiwan.  Camille, Kayla, and I shopped our way through the Ginza area of Tokyo, where we went inside of an 11 story Abercrombie & Fitch, or: a giant American Dance Party with Asian models and bouncers.

My dad has some just like these.

After not finding a supposed Palace that I was sure was someplace in the area, we went to Harashuku and went shopping.  We had the crazy idea of getting our belly buttons pierced until the woman behind the counter pantomimed that we would have to do the process ourselves--she just sells the kits.  We bought fun hats and glasses at a 390 yen shop, which became my signature look for the rest of the trip.

That night, we had dinner at a Japanese family's house, which was wonderfully bountiful in different courses, which included about 15 things that I don't remember the name of.  Many vegetables, minimal tofu--it was tasty.  The conversation was only minimally awkward.  After a certain point, we felt as though it was time to leave, but our host family felt as though it was time to show us pictures of their trip to Switzerland, play the piano, play the guitar, pass around heirlooms, teach us calligraphy, teach us the Japanese language, and ask us if we had any other questions.


My biggest worry was that Camille didn't have a good time.  We didn't really do all that much, but I hope she still loves me all the same.

Sunday: Discovering Japanese Beauty

After seeing Camille off at the train station, we had a flower arranging class with one of the ladies from the Japanese church we attended.  It was interesting to learn about how beauty--a concept that is so grand but ever-changing, is seen in Japanese culture.  Often, simpler is better.  Japanese beauty tends toward having deep symbolic meaning behind few things, rather than many that just look nice together.


Monday: Breaking the Rules. 

"Just don't go anywhere by yourself," my dad says, before his only daughter leaves for a foreign nation.

Artsy Angle.

On Monday  I hopped on a train to Ueno to go to the Tokyo National Museum, that happens to be closed on Mondays, just like most other museums in the world.  I should have known.  So, after casually walking through Ueno for a bit, I hop on another train and take myself to to Tokyo Tower.  I know it's a tourist trap and I know it's just a big, red Eiffel Tower, but when in Rome, go to the Coliseum. 

Half the fun was navigating my way through Tokyo, having a kind train-station-janitor help me find my way out of the train station, and being able to ride trains, use a map, and have my own adventure.

This was the part of the trip where April became inspired to be a world traveler.


Tuesday Tea

The next day, much to many of our disappointments, was taken up entirely by an intricate tea ceremony.  It wasn't disappointing to experience this, but most of us just didn't want to sacrifice our second-to-last day in Japan.  It was a very beautiful experience, though.  Much like flower arranging, the beauty of tea is in the simplicity.  It may not seem simple at first with all the bowing and the folding of napkins and the slow, pupurposeful way in which the tea is prepared, and the way you must hold your cup, and the number of sips you must finish your tea in, but gaijin.


Wednesday Museum Explosion

It was as though April Walker and Santi Bennett decided, "How many museums can we see in one day?"

Look at that ego.

Starting off at the Zoo with Danielle and Blythe (which, technically, is an Animal Museum), we saw a very egotistical peacock and a baby gorilla.  Next, at the Tokyo National Museum (which April could have stayed in all day), we saw roughly 1500 years of Japanese art and history in 75 minutes.  We finished up our Triathlon of Ueno in the Science Museum, which included a 360 degree movie theatre.  Imagine movie all around you--even under your feet!  We were standing on a glass bridge in the middle of a bubble, basically. 

And we saw dinosaurs.  No museum is complete without dinosaurs. 

Thursday. 

We left.  And, 28 hours of traveling later, I am home.  Thanks for reading my Japan adventures!  If you really care about me, you'll keep reading my blog anyways, because life is an adventure.  Especially mine.

Gag.