yamaonna

hey, well Im not in a very good mood right now, so i will keep this short and not lament to long on what isnt right with the world.

suffice to say Im feeling quite down, due to a few reasons.  firstly, i have a wee cold, and being sick depresses me.  it hasnt been too bad at all, but neway.  secondly, i think im getting homesick.  that sucks.  thirdly its cold and raining.  and i just read something that really upset me, not a smart thing to do…  must stop killing time by reading stupid fiction…

had a school sports festival on wednesday.  it was fun but I dont want to talk about it in my current mood.

dinner was cheese fish (cheezu no sakana) – for lauren

im going to mope around now.

just killing some time….  25 minutes til my next class and i didnt bring any work to do.

got my gaijin card yesterday.  its really ugly, but now i dont have to carry my passport with me everywhere…

another update so soon?!?

well, had a very quite weekend.  it was really nice to sleep in both days  but as of tomorrow its back to school and waking up at 0630 everyday….  blah

so anyway, saturday was spent doing some homework, and then with some girls i was introduced to by one of my teachers – Shizuka and Megumi.  We went shopping in S-Pal for few hours and then out to dinner at this tiny quite italian place.  Dinner was great!  I love how in japan they like having all these little courses!  we had salad and raw(?) octopus to start, followed my a shrimp and soy bean cream pasta,  a cheese pizza, then lemon soy chicken followed finally by desserts of sobet, creme’ brulee and a tira mizu like apricot, rum and rasin cake.  Absolutly lovely!  I love food

today, i decided to do a little walking.  I live withing 30 minutes of a place called Kitayama, which has about 5 well known temples and is near Aoba Shrine.  pretty cool actually, but i need to learn to avoid places with yama in the name – means I’ll be climbing either stairs or hills…..  Aoba shrine was pretty, heaps of trees and quite grand.  So was Rinno-ji another of the temples, but it had a garden which was beautiful!  Unfortunately you could take pictures, and the websites photos suck, but if you wanna look, its at http://www.rinno-ji.or.jp

so thats really all for sightseeing until next weekend….

on a side note, found a story that I think is absolutely hilarous – The Hikokiri Stainmaster.  if you dont mind reading rurouni kenshin fanfiction, give it a whirl, but you probably wont understanad what i think is so funny…..  its a parody, but the thing that really really got me laughing was the ‘scrubbygumi’ bit…..  hehe, cant say it without giggling still…. 

how the hell can they tell these things by just answering a few questions about animals???

and now its time for more exciting adventures with michele….

stop jumping up and down already

well, first of all, a bit of house cleaning, really.  My family wants to know what my room is like, so heres a couple of pics –

very basic as you can see, bed, desk and closet, but enough, and pretty spacious for japan   got a huge map of sendai on my wall, with a couple of postcards that im collecting.  did you know you can buy blu-tak at loft?  Imported from AU of course….

So this weeks holidays were some state holiday and childrens day, but we had 3 days off in total.  Tuesday was spent on homework and washing, wednesday I did some exploring of the cbd, and no my wallet wasnt ‘much’ lighter after that.  Sendai is truly a beautiful city, and they certainly arnt lying when they call it the city of trees.  there are the main avenues in town that are lined with these huge trees, and once of them you can even walk down the middle of the road on a pedestrian walkway! check out the city website – http://www.city.sendai.jp/kankyou/toshisuishin/pamph-e/index.html  it was a nice day, but i must have had a sign stuck to me saying ‘Talk to Me!’ cause so many people stopped me to chat….  and i only knew one of them…..

Speaking of, the dorm-mother here has taken a real shining to me and keeps showering me with food!    she’s soooo nice! (give me food and i will love you too!)

Yesterday I decided to get up early and go to Yamagata prefecture.  after getting up i finally made the 11 o’clock train……. yeah, kind not so early…  but it didnt affect my day much.  I went to a place called Yamadera (mountain temple) where there were a heap of shrines and temples built on a mountain….  I got there and realized, I must like torturing my self, cause I keep going places where I have to climb stairs….  to give you an example, this is the view from one of the temples –

yep, see those houses down there???  I climbed all that and higher.  its no wonder my legs are still hurting…. but it was pretty.  here’s some of the buildings –

and for some reason japanese people like to take there dogs on hikes….  when the stairs are taller than the dog…..  crazy….

I headed a little further on to Yamagata city, but was very disapointed with that.  But I suppose finding my local mister donuts that afternoon made up for it   hehe

Today it was back to the grind, but of course tomorrow is the weekend….  Everyone has moved back into the dorm, so its pretty noisy here again.  getting woken up at 5…..  but thats probably the sun, and the fact i take out my ear plugs while Im sleeping.

god forbid i have a husband who snores

RIP SLAO

oh, and Laura, you have permission to kick my butt…..

now heres something intresting –

Information from the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages

would have updated on the weekend, but i was far to tired… well, better late than never…  neway.

So, on the weekend I decided to do some sightseeing, as one does when one is overseas, and so i went and brought the  Sendai marugoto pass.  it included unlimited travel on certain bus, train and all the subway lines here for 2 days for 2500 yen, and gives you discounts etc.  Its a great idea, but i had difficulty getting my money worth.  but thats beside the point…  so now that i had a means to travel, i decided to go to one of my favourite places near sendai – matsushima!

I dont know what it is about matsushima that keeps calling me back.  Ive been there a total of 4 times now, which is more than any other place in japan.  well, except shinjuku but that doesnt count.

Matsushima is truely beautiful, when you have good weather.  I was so happy that the weather on the weekend was pretty damn good.  I even got a little burnt!  So, what did i do…  I went to a lookout, which is where i took the photo above, and then wandered back into town.  in town I went to Oshima, an island I had never been to before, which had a heap of little buddah everywhere.

it was actually a little freaky, but i learnt that the best way to deface a budda was to actually take off with the whole head…  heaps of the statues were missing their heads!  thats probably why it was freaky…

From there it was to a tea room overlooking the bay, and tea   macha has really grown on me!  and I tried this famous sweet of the sendai area – zundamochi.  its basically sweetened crushed soy beans over rice cakes – yummy!

then it was on to the Date wax muesum, which tells the life story of the most famous lord of the area.  had to get my history fix   you also get in for 500 yen if you are a forigener (50% discount!)

so that was saturday. 

Sunday i decided to go to Akiu, about an hour from sendai by bus.  Its famous for its onsens, but buggered if i could find any…  so after my disappointment in that, i decided seeing the natural wonders of the area would be a good idea. 

First stop was this really pretty natural george.  Kinda small by my standards, but the rock formations were intresting.

then it was off on another half hour bus trip further out to see Akiu Otaki waterfalls.  Once again, not the biggest, but pretty none-the-less. had about a 2 kilometer hike down to the base, which was amusing, because of all the women wearing high heels……  and also pretty tiring.  Since then my leg had hurt….. 

I guy had actually taken his little tri-colored cav down there (see bottom right hand corner), it was really enjoying itself, but i hoped he carried it back up – it was a steep climb!

On the way back some people started talking to me, which is always nice, travelling alone can be a little lonely.

Back at the top i learnt money really does grow on trees

just not all that much….  there was a shrine at the top.  people were praying to the tree, but i have no idea why….

then sunday evening when i got home the very very kind dorm mother gave me dinner even though sunday is the day off for dinner.  she’s so lovely!  Topped off a good weekend

now I just have to figure out what i want to do over the next 3 days….

well, as some of you know, i got net    yep, thats right, i finally got the internet into my dorm room.  so expect more updates and emails…  maybe…

speaking of which, i’ve put some new photos onto my website http://www.geocities.com/guardian_forever/  and totally re-vamped the place, so comments on the theme would be appreciated.  go check it out

um, not much has happened since my last update.  Infact its pretty much golden week here (theres about 4 public holidays in the space of a week) so I’ll be getting up to all sorts of things over the next week.

and, well, thats about all, just wanted to get on and give a short update before leaving this morning.  and check the weather.

this is actually pretty cool….

You Are 50% Normal (Somewhat Normal)

While some of your behavior is quite normal… Other things you do are downright strange You’ve got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself

thats enough for now…

that didnt work to well did it…..

try again…