Kyoto 紅葉 (fall colors)

People here in Kyoto make a huge deal about kouyou, aka "fall colors," but to be honest when I compare the kouyou here to New York and New England's, it honestly isn't as nice. The colors aren't as vibrant as those you'd see in NY, and they don't all come out at once. Instead, they change a little at a time so that the colors last forever (about 2 months or so), but they aren't as striking: I got some pictures from google images >:D

Kyoto's Fall Colors

North East US Fall Colors

Regardless, people here are all about the kouyou and Kyoto gets flooded with "leaf peeping" tourists every fall, supposedly. Earlier in the season my host parents were telling me that the weekend trains would be more crowded becasue of all the people coming into Kyoto to peep some kouyou at the temples.

I've also noticed that if just one tree has changed colors, about ten people at a time will notice it, stop what they're doing, and then gather around it to take pictures. Makes me think that we don't appreciate our fall colors in NY enough. Hahah.

Arashiyama and German Market

On Friday I was sooo tired but I went with my friend Chika to Arashiyama to see the light up. Friday was the 初日, the first day of the lightup. The whole event will continue for about ten days or so. Arashiyama is famous for having beautiful 紅葉, fall colors, and also for its pretty bamboo forest.

Some of the bamboo was lit with different colored lights, like blue :O

It was super-croweded, but still !

I made a small video. It was really dark out so I couldn't get much footage:

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The next night, Saturday, I went to ドイツマーケット, The German Market, with my friends. It was pretty small but neat because there was live music (Christmas songs!) and a huge tree and stalls selling German-y things like beer and hot wine and weiners, etc.

There was even a really drunk Santa Claus. He was standing near one of the wine shops and it looked like he was enjoying free refills.

and a carousel :D

Fall Break: Before and After

I just realized that I had forgotten to blog about some ultra-neat things that happened before break (!!) --

AKP gave us money to throw a Thanksgiving Party the Friday before break so that we could thank our host families for BEING SO AWESOME. So student council got together and planned the whole party, which took place in a large lecture hall on campus. We got there early to set up and shoved some tables together, hung some paper chains, and made Martin and Julia look Thanksgiving-festive :

Japanese Gothic (??)

Twins (!!)

Eventually our host families came and we started dinner. AKP bought us five or six Turkeys and the host families provided the rest of the food, since it was a potluck. It was a strange but tastey mix of Japanese food and American Thanksgiving foods.

After we finished eating, my song practica class went up to the front and we performed a stirring rendition of 'Popstar.' Youtube that song ! It was great and totally embarassing but for some reason I think the audience really loved us.

After the dinner party, I went bowling on Kawaramachi with Kate, Martin T, and Martin's neigbhor, Kohei. We played a couple of games normally and then got bored with that. Our next few games were all potty-shots and all left-handed. Kate and I teamed up and lost all the games against the boys except for the first one. What the guys don't know is that we were just letting them win.

The next day I went with Martin T to his hiking club meeting. We did a wimpy 10-minute run down by the Kamogawa and then went on a hike up 大文字, aka Daimonji. Daimonji is a mountain with a big 'dai' or 大 carved into its side. Every year there's a night when the city lights up the dai with fires. The image below is from google. Thanks google :

The day was nice and warm and it didn't take long to reach the top. When we were up there we were able to sit right in the middle of the 大. The parallel concrete lines in the picture below are the pits where the fires are lit. The kouyou (fall colors) were amazing :

The sunset was also pretty stellar:



The next night, Sunday, was 満月(mangetsu), aka a full moon.

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When we returned from break, Doshisha's Imadegawa campus (my campus) was in the middle of holding its annual school festival called 'Doshisha Eve.' The festival is three days long, but I went on the last day, Sunday.

I've never seen anything like this festival in the US. I wish our colleges had them. It was huge and there were so many people and performances. There were two stages set up where the music and dancing clubs, and individuals would perform. The hip-hop circle was amazing. There were also circle- and club-run food tents set up and indoors there were various kinds of themed cafes. There was even a cafe where all the guys dressed up like women. Since there was a HUGE line for that one, we didn't go, but I wish I had at least gotten a picture.

I went with Jessica and Faith and we bought food, watched the dancers and performances, saw a student-made movie in a classroom, and watched sweaty men wrestle with eachother in the outdoor wrestling ring.

Korea Wrap-up

On our last night in Korea, we got a surprise roommate at 5am. I didn't even hear him come in, but I became really wide-awake when he collapsed on the bunk below me. I was fine with it, once I realized that it was our new roommate, and not a hobo that wandered into our room... but then he started snoring and talking in Korean (?) really loudly in his sleep...



I eventually fell back asleep, but then Martin woke up to weird, smacking sounds. He thought that I was eating in bed, or that there was a horse in our room, or that I was eating in my bed with a horse, or something. Anyhow, it was our new roommate making drunken smacking sounds with his lips.


The next morning, the three of us got up at 8am to catch our plane back to Osaka. The whole time we were packing, our drunk roommate didn't wake up, but just flailed around in his sleep a lot. It was probably the best end our vacation could have had. bahaha.

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Once I got back to Kyoto, I dragged all the crap I bought in Korea back to my house and then slept a ton, but before that, I made this video --