Drinking Milk, Chasing Geishas and Sakura in the Spring Time aka Japan

Sorry I haven't updated in quite a while... I got back lastnight from a four day trip to Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto. It was AWESOME. Japan is so cool! and SOOOO expensive!!! CIEE went on a tour with a tour group though an agency; my first trip of this kind. I've never been on an organized tour before. I'm not sure I like it, but I must say it was quite entertaining.. We landed in Kansai Intl Airport on Friday noon and met our Japanese tour guide, Guchi San. Her name sounds like Gucci. hahaha! So, we had Suzanne, our Resident Director, or basically our CIEE person, Sue, the Korean tour guide who I guess booked our flights?... I wasn't real sure on her purpose of being there, and I'm still not. She couldn't speak Japanese, and our Japanese tour guide could speak English, so... There were four other adults on our tour who were just random other people. Most or all of them are currently working in Korea. Coincidentally, one of the ladies teaches English here and had just met with Shirley, a fellow member of Shinparam a few days prior to our trip. What a small world. We ate lunch in a restaurant in the airport and then headed out to our tour bus and drove a good two hours to Kyoto. I tried to stay awake but I ended up falling asleep. I had/have a cold, so the timing of our trip wasn't the greatest for me. In Kyoto we went to some temple and got to run around and take pics. It was really pretty. We were really luck because we were in Japan during the cherry blossom or sakura season! We missed the prettiest part, but they were still there. We got to stay in a traditional Japanese in that night, which was awesome! We slept on tatami mats which smelled nice. The actually bedding was pretty similar to the traditional Korean bedding - nice and comfy! They gave us cool yukata robes which we all decided we ought to wear to dinner. Dinner was interesting.... It was A LOT of seafood and A LOT of raw fish, both of which I am not a fan of. However, I tried to be open minded and I tried EVERYTHING! (Sarang, you should be proud of me) Even a whole baby squid which inked in my mouth when I started chewing... eeew.

yup, I ate one of those buggers... it inked in my mouth which was an odd sensation.

In total, we had about nine different dishes (not all shown in this pic) and desert. It was kinda fun to watch other people eat and dare each other. Anyhow, that night my friends and I went out and walked around town. We were all a bit sick, so we opted not to go the bar with our other friends. Instead we hunted for geishas. We actually saw some! I didn't get any good pics though. There was a whole mob of tourists (foreigners and Japanese!!) standing in front of one of the houses waiting for this geisha to come out. I think she eluded us though and went out a back door or something... It was really quite disgusting how we were all standing there (about 20 people) with our cameras out and ready... my friend got a good shot earlier that day, so I'm stealing it and putting it up here. Oh, we also saw the Cherry Blossom Dance performed by the maikos and gaikos which was really pretty. I liked that you could see the instruments on the side being played. The next day we went around and saw the Silver and Golden Pavillions amonst other things. Our tour guides were hillarious! They had this extendable/retractable metal stick which had hot pink ribbons tied to the top which they would wave around in the air. Guchi San, the Japanese women, although small, walked SOOO fast! So she was always light years ahead of us and all we could see was this small pink ribbon bobbing up and down. The Korean lady, Sue seemed to be ina bit of a power struggle with Guchi San and kept wanting to take over, although she couldn't because she didn't know where we were going. The one time Guchi San got held back Sue gladly took lead. When we got to a fork in the road she turned to Suzanne, our program director and was like "What Way!?" hahaha. Another time, we were leaving a restaurant after lunch and Sue decided it was her turn to hold the stick. (she was a bit aggressive and kinda crazy...) She walks over to Guchi San and says, "Wheres the stick!?" (when she talked she tended to yell) Guchi San looked slighly alarmed and quietly said, "You have it. Its in your pocket." Sue goes, "Oh! Oh! Ok. Ok." and kind of sheepishly pulls it out of her pocket. Also, whenever Guchi San would give us information or direction, like please be back at the bus by 3:30, Sue would feel the need to repeat it yelling. Example: Guchi San: Okay, here are your tickets. The washroom is to the right. Sue: THE WASHROOM IS TO RIGHT! Guchi San: Please be back here in one hour, one hour. 3:30. Sue: ONE HOUR! THREE THIRTY!

Sue and Rex. He just kind of walked behind her and posed.

I was feeling pretty sick the second day, so it really wasn't that fun for me, unfortunately. We went to some really cool places though. Here are some pics of various temples/shogun houses etc. We also went to Nara to see the Korea town there. The area we went to has a large Korean population and we were supposed to learn a bit about the Korean diaspora to Japan. Koreans are currently the largest foreign population in Japan, but will soon be out numbered by Chinese. We talked to a Prof. from Kansai University who is a cultural anthropologist and specializes in the Korean Diaspora in Japan. There is a lot stigma attached to being Korean living in Japan. Japan has the law of jus sanguinis (unlike America which has the law of jus soli) meaning, that if your parents are Korean, even if you were born in Japan, you are still considered Korean, not Japanese. The professor (his name is Jeffry T. Hester) told us about one instance that happened about two years ago. Someone fell into the subway tracks and the only person who jumped in to save him was a Korean/Japanese person, who save the fallen person, but ended up getting killed. So, apparently all the news papers were saying what a shame it was that no Japanese person was willing to risk their life and how great the Koreans must be because the Korean/Japanese person willingly helped. (this is a really bad re-telling of the story. Sorry - keep in mind these are collective societies). Interestingly, many of the Korean people in Japan are from Jeju-do, which is an island south of the tip of Korea. Here is a pic of a restaurant that obviously has connections to Jejudo . Also, we found out that there is kind of a divide between the Korean people in Japan. Most have an affiliation with North or South Korea. I thought he just meant that they had family living there or something, but we walked by this school that has North Korean ties and he told us the last time he was in there, there were pictures of Kim Jung-Il and Kim Il-Sung as well as the North Korean flag hanging up in there. Interesting, right? That evening we ate at a Korean restaurant in Korea town. What a relief!!! I don't think I've ever missed Korean food so much. I also kind of concluded on this trip that I don't particularly like Japanese food. There are certain foods that I really like, but as a whole, not so much... I'd say I gave it a more then fair shot though. Mostly, I think I don't like the flavors which are much more subtle then Korean. Osaka was really fun. We stayed right in the center, so there was lots of lights and lots to do! The first night we were there we didn't do a whole lot because we got back from Nara kinda late. We did go out and got ice cream. I had green tea sundae which came with rices cakes and a chestnut on top. Other people got sweet potato pie sundaes and some delicious strawberry one. The second night we had the whole night to ourselves. We went out and had dinner at a ramen house. I actually couldn't eat Japanese ramen because the noodles have eggs, but... There were some Japanese guys sitting at the table next to us and they started hitting on one of our friends, who they though looked like some famous Korean actress. It was funny because one of the girls studied abroad in Japan during high school and was interpreting the whole conversation, but they guys didn't really seem to catch on?.... it was entertaining, none the less.

...sadly, it rained...

We also went to this palace in Nara which is known for having deer that roam around freely. They were cute, but looked really really dirty... I didn't feed them, but I did take pics with them. Here are some pics from various temples/palaces we went to. *worlds largest bronze buddha *the golden pavillion As far as fashion goes, I would say there is much more variety and its much more eclectic then Korea. However, there was still the majority fashion which seemed to be dyed (lightened to a light brown color) hair, HEAVY eye make-up (probably to make their eyes look larger), short skirts and shorts, pretty conservative on their shirts though. The girls talk in this really high pitched nasily voice on purpose because they think it sounds attractive. When we went out for a bit to eat a bunch of the girls were mocking the voices saying things like sumi masen while pinching their noses and talking in really high voices. It was pretty funny, except they were doing it in a restaurant surrounded by Japanese girls... awkward. Anyhow, thats all I can really think of at the moment. Hope you enjoyed that very long post.