Kyoto!

So this past week we had a 5 day weekend vacation from school and I decided to meet up with my good buddy Kevin in Kyoto and do some sightseeing. I had been before on my study tour but I could hardly even remember what I had seen. Overall it was excellent. I stayed in a local hostel, saw tons of temples and shrines, walked and biked around the city, and got to hang with Kevin and his Tokumachi friends.

I took about 200 pictures which would not only take forever to upload

here, but also would probably bore the life out of everyone, so I’ll try to just throw up a couple of my favorites here and then some more on facebook (not all 200).

We didn’t really stick to a very solid program, instead preferring to wander wherever our curiosity took us, which I believe served us quite well and proved fun. Because it was Silver week (the break) there were tons of tourists everywhere and it was a little tiresome to simply follow the crowd so we avoided this whenever possible.

The main thing to do in Kyoto is to check out the plethora of temples and shrines. All the Buddhist structures are labeled Tera or Temples so they’re easy to tell apart from the Jinja or Shrines which belong to the Shinto tradition. Either one can be a small offering spot, to a large complex of buildings, though often the temples seemed to be more elaborate and grand

Among the highlights for me was the first night’s dinner, where we ate at this excellent little traditional Japanese restaurant (2^nd picture). I also really enjoyed wandering Ponto-cho,

a small side street crammed with restaurants and bars that is famed for being an area where Geisha and their Maiko apprentice can still be spotted occasionally. This place was excellent but as it turns out is impossible to get a table at, we tried for about an hour. The 'Philosopher's Walk' (4th pic) by the creekside was excellent as well, quite peaceful compared to the rest of the city, and we even found a sketch artist drawing there who sold us copies of his works. On the last day we took this really nice hike through Fushimi Inari shrine which is the shrine of many Tori gates. The gates

are the orange ones you see which are the easiest indicator that it is a shrine instead of a temple as they only denote Shinto places. This one had so many it created a tunnel of them all along a 4km hike around the south-eastern hills above the city. It is dedicated to the harvest and the key that the fox holds is the key to the granary.

P.S. I apologize again for the crazy unorganized blog, I'll work on making it prettier/simpler. I think I might just be trying too hard to make it look just right!

Sunset Live!

So over the weekend I went up to the neighboring prefecture of Fukuoka for a big music festival called Sunset Live. It was a tad expensive and it was a bit of a long drive (2 hours) through areas I’ve never been before so I was little hesitant at first to spend my entire weekend to go to a show. But after some convincing of a few ALT friends nearby I decided to live it up a bit. Tsun and Peter (in the second photo) went ahead of us and set up camp on the beach while Spike and I drove up on Friday afternoon, got turned around a few times but made it just in time to see one of the big headliners who ended Friday night. The weekend was excellent! The music for the most part was great. There were three stages with different kinds of tunes at all times, tons of food, drinks and really outgoing people. It was pretty wicked hot and of course as we camped on the beach the sand got everywhere. By the time we came back I was sunburned, stung by a jellyfish, slightly hungover, and dead tired, but it was totally worth it.

Here are some of the bands that really stood out and a link to some of their music that hopefully works:

Dragon Ash – first night closer band, who had a mix group that kind of blends rock with a little hip-hop at times. They had some fun energy on the stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbBPZsTPfAE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJzSGuDRIbA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_qSMx8-PPU&feature=related

Doberman – Easily my favorite band at the entire show, amazing ska group that really rocked and even did a cover of Bella ciao with the keyboardist playing an accordion, who by the way is hilarious, at times standing on his keyboard which required half the stage crew to come out and hold it up to keep it from breaking. I highly recommend them

Akai Taiyou (Red Sun)
Shasho Wa Nekoron Da Mama
Leap For Joy

Black Bottom Brass Band – we only caught the last two songs they played the first night, but they paraded around the festival periodically playing like a marching band. Quite fun to watch and I think just about anybody could like them. They've got 3 songs on their myspace playlist.

BBBB's Myspace

Aside from the music it was pretty fun as well. On the second night things got a little crazy as it was the highlight day with the best bands and the most people there. Back at the campground I met some guys who were playing soccer on the beach and after kicking it around for a little bit, they gave me their soccer ball. Later Tsun and I made a bunch of friends by just wandering the beach and talking to people which turned into going from tent to tent having drinks and talking, and in some cases singing along with people on guitars, bongos and ukuleles. It was really neat to have that cool sense of community where everyone on the beach was welcoming and wanted to get to know us, though that could be just because I was really outgoing and obviously a Gaijin (your Japanese word for the day meaning foreign person –I get this one a lot). I got the feeling that was actually a cool thing there though the way people treated me instead of shocking and strange. I even got dragged around by this guy who was so excited, introducing me to all of his friends after we had only talked for like ten minutes!

Excellent times with excellent company