This is Halloween, This is Halloween

Happy Halloween, everyone! 
Even if you don't celebrate it in your country to my foreign readers, do help yourself to a piece of candy today. 
I celebrated with exams and tests, which were not much fun, but at least it's over with. Didn't have any parties to go to, but I wound up spending time with a friend and lounging about.
It was a good enough time. A little laid back for Halloween [especially considering I don't have school tomorrow, so could have done anything], but it was nice. 

As far as weekly recaps are concerned, let's see.
I have pictures again this week!
Thursday, I made potato soup for my Thai friend and her Japanese friend. They both really enjoyed it. I was at a loss as to what would be considered "American food," because I didn't want to make hamburgers, but. I finally thought of soup, and it was a lovely idea, considering that it was chilly that night. Next, it will be the Japanese friend's turn to cook. I'm quite excited. 
I cannot recall much of Friday, and Saturday was dull.
But Sunday, besides being stressed out for personal reasons... Sunday was divine. 
An internet friend of mine had e-mailed me to let me know about a free classical Japanese performing arts show at a Noh Theatre in Yokohama happening on Sunday. I invited a friend of mine to go with me, and so we set off that morning to go to the show.

It was five hours of free performances, ranging from storytelling, classical Japanese music performances, dancing, poetry readings... All of it, and all in their traditional styles. We were allowed to take pictures! 

Before I knew pictures inside the theatre were okay, I took this photo.

Just to be sure that I would be able to remember it.

This is the stage in semi-full, though. You can at least imagine it.

The front was a square platform, the curtain a doorway for dancers to enter through.

I want that curtain.

Or perhaps something like it.

I could pretty much live in a place like this, though, I think. 

Another angle of the stage.

I loved the architecture. 

Some of the first performers. The women with the stands in front of them were singing.

The other women were playing the shamisen.

Another shot of the architecture in-between performances.

I believe this was during intermission.

A woman playing the Koto.

She did an incredible job. It was stunning.

Some women preparing for their performance.

Some of the classical dancers. This was something about the seasons, I believe.

Not sure.

Her outfit was incredible. Mid-way through the dance, she had her hat taken off and the wisteria let go of.

And then, towards the end, she removed the upper layer of her kimono to show that she had a red one underneath.

Like so.

Another dancer.

Perhaps the best one that I managed to take of her. 

This group had two performances--one towards the beginning, and one towards the end. 

Their song was much longer. I cannot remember what the type of song it was is called, though. 

Five-koto performance. It was amazing.

So there's your dose of classical Japanese for the week.

Monday was spent in preparation for Tuesday's oral midterm in my Japanese class, and yesterday was the day of that test. Today, as I've mentioned before, I had my writing exam. 
I think I did all right in most of it. I hope so, at least.

Have I already gone through everything this week?
I guess so. 
Studying isn't very interesting, so surely you all do not want to hear about that. 
I am off for the rest of the week this week. The university festival is this weekend, so they are giving us a couple of days off in preparation. I don't know if I'll go yet or not, but maybe. 
I think I'm going to try to go up in the mountains this weekend to see how the leaves are changing. It may not be quite time yet, but it's worth at least checking out, I think. Besides, it's something to do. 

Money saving tips for this week would be to look for free performances in areas that are interesting to you.
Classical performance, for example, is something that I positively adore. This was perfect for me. There are free music festivals, free performances, free lots of things.
You just have to know how to do research or have those connections that help save so much money.
Don't be afraid to research free events, though. Never know when something may turn up.

Not feeling particularly wordy this week, though, I guess.
So, I'll talk to you next week!
Take care, guys, and happy Halloween!

-RD

You'll Be All Right, No One Can Hurt You Now

Bit of a lame title, but bear with me. I'm sleepy, freshly well from illness, and barely able to think all that well at the moment.

I had a really dandy weekend, but I've spent the past three days trying to recuperate from a fairly strong case of a cold. 
By fairly strong, I mean I was rather incapacitated on Monday and Tuesday, although by Tuesday I was feeling better, and I have only hit my "gotten better" milestone after classes today. Now my nose may be able to heal after so many tissues, and I've got to figure out how to un-chap my lips as best as possible. 

Sadly, for whatever reason, I cannot remember Thursday or Friday evenings all that well, so I'm assuming that nothing spectacular happened. 
Saturday, however, I did manage to get out and about, and of course, with getting out and about in this area, it involved spending a bit of money. But, if you've all noticed, we're almost up to 80 yen to the USD, so I'm really excited for that. If it can hit it again, I'll be quite a happy little girl, I think.

My friend that I've been hanging out with quite a bit was busy last weekend, and may be again this weekend, so I had to improvise from my becoming-routine schedule that I'd been developing, and on Saturday, I spent time with a new person and another friend of mine.
At separate times, however. I left the house at about 11:00 AM with my new friend, and we went to look at a second-hand store, and then to a book store. Afterwards, we ate lunch together. Because I need nothing at the second hand store, I only bought a couple new comic books, and we went to the sushi restaurant. 

She and I both are apparently men with our tastes in coffee, however.

That is the best canned coffee that I have had over here so far.

The rest is all too sweet and weak, but that one actually had a little kick to it, without cracking my teeth from sugar.

Afterwards, I met up with my other friend, and we laid around the house until the early evening, and then headed out to Machida. Did a spot of shopping--I bought myself a new pocket-watch, a poster with the iconic Chat Noir image on it, which I've always wanted, and a couple of novels in Japanese for practice in my leisure time. It would be a good idea, provided I were more competent in Japanese, but... I'll be there some day. 
After our miniature shopping-spree, we went to TGIF, because for some reason it's a really popular restaurant over here. We were initially looking for a Mexican restaurant that supposedly exists, but we have yet to find it, although we intend hunt for it some more to in the near future. 

Chili-cheese fries.

Which was more like french fries decorated as tacos, but hey.

Good job for trying, Japan. An A for effort, and they were still really good.

May try to make myself some... taco fries(?) in the future again.

This was my monstrous burger. It was just as big as anything back in the States,

and much to my stomach's dismay,

I ate it all. 

And, though it wasn't particularly spicy [those jalapeños were quite mild], it was quite delicious.

My friend's and my dessert. We split it, because we were both about to explode from having eaten too much.

And it was lovely.

Came back home, and I spent Sunday starting to work on homework for the week, slack off, and do a variety of things that I usually do when spending time alone. By this point, my throat was beginning to hurt, but I thought nothing of it. When I first came to Japan, my throat hurt for a few days, likely because of the new air and germs and I just wasn't acclimated to it. I brushed off this sore throat just as I had back then, and went about my business, despite the fact that my voice had degraded into something hilarious by this point.
I went grocery shopping with my Thai friend, and upon her learning about my sore throat, she decided to surprise me with dinner.

We had initially been planning on making fried rice together, but she went a step further and make soup for me along with it.

Spicy seafood soup and fried rice.

Yum yum.

And it was fantastic and I ate myself silly. She's an incredible cook. Once I couldn't eat any more, I put the broth from the soup into a cup and drank it. While I was hanging out with her, she also showed me a Thai horror movie that was surprisingly good. Shutter was it's name. I've taken to Asian horror films quite well, although I'm still really jumpy as far as they're concerned. It's all right, though. In small increments, they're fine. I'm slowly getting more and more jaded to them, too, so that's probably a good thing. I expect they'll always scare me, though, and that's just how I like it.

Monday... Monday and Tuesday were my bad, "I am nearly dead from being ill" says, although I was beginning to feel better by Tuesday evening. A friend of mine came to drop off the homework that I missed from class, and another friend stopped by just to come and visit for a while since we hadn't for a while.

Today was spent in class, sleeping, and then finally feeling better spontaneously, while grocery shopping. The friend who went with me was greatly amused. I made dinner for the two of us, we watched the last presidential debate [funny, since she's from New Zealand], and she made dessert. 

And that is this week in a nutshell. 
I've been taking pictures of flowers that have been blooming lately.
Here you go: 

Totally a flower, right?

These are the autumn-edition of those candies that I showed you the summer-edition of.

This is a Japanese-sweet flavoured version, and they were delicious. 

Anyway, that's all for now. I'm really tired, since I'm still feeling the lingering effects of my cold, although I expect to be completely well by tomorrow.
Toodle-pip, pets.
Talk to you next week! 

-RD

I've Been Guessing, but I Could Have Been Guessing Wrong

Hey guys!
Lovely weekend, and I even have pictures to go with it! 
My friend's apartment is about fifteen minutes (on foot) away from about a million different temples, all lined up for whatever reason down one specific road. 
I have no idea why they're all there, and neither does he, but that's what we went to see once I got off of work and over to where he lives. 
On Friday, I went to my Folklore class and watched the Japanese version of the Ring, and right after watching the first run-through of the infamous tape, my friend sent me a text message. Needless to say, when I felt the vibration in my pocket, my mind jumped immediately into thinking that I was receiving the phone call to alert me that I had a week left to live, and I panicked. I told him about it Saturday, while we were walking on the way to the shrines, and it proved to be very amusing to him. So, when we walked past a well in one of the temples, he told me that the girl was in there and waiting on me. After quickly panicking just slightly and walking away as fast as possible, I reminded him that, at that point, I still had six more days of life left in me. 
It was a very fun time. 

So, on to the photos, then, shall we? Some of them were taken with my phone, as the batteries for my camera were in the process of dying, and subsequently, the photos needed a little sprucing up. So, sorry about the difference in quality. I'd spruce them all up for you, but it's getting late and I'm a little tired. 

A little mailbox. 

I wanted to steal him. My aunt likes orange and eccentric things. 

It's a perfect birthday gift, I think.

The first shrine.

The next few pictures are all of this one, but I had to start getting conservative on my camera battery shortly after.

My friend explained what this was to me, but I've forgotten.

Sorry about that.

I made him read off that top line--it's strictly in the Chinese characters, and seemed pretty difficult even for him.

He being native Japanese, it was very silly to watch him jokingly wipe imaginary sweat from his brow once he finished reading that line.

But it was admirable, his effort. And he was able to do it, thereby earning a lot of respect from me.

Buddha in various stages or something, I believe. 

I could be wrong.

Oh, it was this well. 

Where he made the joke about Sadako/Samara coming to get me, the girl from the Ring.

I found this temple pretty interesting, as it's...

Rather differently designed than the rest of them.

"Something something something TOKYO something something SHO ["place."]"

"Haha, that's right." 

Thought this was really pretty.

One of my friend's favourite poets was buried here. 

He read me the first stanza on that plaque.

I understood... Some of it. Can't really recall any more,

but it was lovely.

It was arguably my favourite shrine out of the entire trip, too.

This was right as my camera was in the throes of death, so all of the pictures were terrrible.

But, in my favourite shrine, they had a small bamboo forest, which is something I've always wanted to walk around in.

So, whether or not we were technically permitted to, I don't know.

But we did, anyway.

This is the street we walked along. 

Counting all the temples in his area, some not featured on this map, there were 25. 

For a while, though, like I told you, I had to use my phone for a camera. Here are the pictures I was able to scrape up from that: 

The door to this one--there was someone in there, perhaps cleaning or something.

And she opened the door.

And I couldn't see anything except for the door spontaneously moving on its own.

Needless to say, I had to walk away from this pretty quickly, too, much to my friend's amusement.

I really like the entryways to shrines and temples.

So that was my shrine-time adventures with my friend.
Earlier in the week, and some other times throughout this week, I was getting spoiled rotten by one of my friends, a girl from Thailand, with food. 
Thursday, I believe, she made dinner for me and a Japanese friend of hers.

Green curry in the pot, I'm not sure about the name of whatever it is on the plate.

But it was spicy.

And it absolutely fantastic. She is a brilliant cook. Yesterday, a friend of mine and I went to the restaurant that she works at, also of the Thai cuisine variety, and she spoiled us with appetizers and drinks, and when I looked, it was she who was making our dinners, along with the help of the owner. 

I had a shrimp fried-rice dish. 

The fried egg over it, once you eat the whites--it took me a second to adjust, since it's not at all common in the states.

But if you put the yolk over the rice, it smooths out the texture and makes it taste even better than fried rice already does.

My friend's soup. It, too, was fantastic. 

Everything else that I've been doing lately has been primarily involving avoiding washing my dishes, school-work, and studying. Fewer credit hours this semester may indeed wind up paying off for me--I've learned a lot, and a lot faster than I did when I was so bogged down by English classes last semester. My exercise has gotten a little sporadic, but I'm still managing to move, and hopefully, as I've been eating a bit more traditionally/better lately, it will be all right. I'll stretch this weekend, hopefully.

So, I'll end it here for this week!
Enjoy the pictures. I'll try to have more soon, but I don't know when I'm going out and about again.
We'll see. Definitely more pictures of food; I think I'm getting fed or helping to prepare something on Friday.

Take care, loves.

-RD