I hope you all had a fantastic batch of holidays, though.
Happy New Years, too. May it be a good one for us all.
I told you briefly about my second Miyavi concert, did I not? I think that was about where I left off, if I remember correctly.
I mentioned yesterday that these past couple of weeks have been a positive drain on my finances, what between travelling from place to place and finally buckling down and buying Christmas presents for people. But, I've found a new way to save money, and it did come from a rather surprising source. I'll get to that in this entry.
After the concert on Wednesday successfully wore me out and left me tired and grumpy, we stayed at home on Thursday, and I sent my friend off to Harajuku on Friday on his own to go explore and do whatever he saw fit. I needed a little bit of quiet time, you see. So my friend was away for the day, and I slept.
Saturday, however, he and I ventured to Kamakura. We left a little late, however, and only had time to, besides doing a little wandering around aimlessly, look at Koutoku Temple, the home of the famous, enormous statue of Buddha.
It is, indeed, quite enormous.
A lovely place, although my poor mood soured the adventure a little bit. I was still a little tired, and the holidays are always a little difficult for me, no matter what I'm doing or where I am, apparently. I'll try to go back again though, maybe a little earlier, before I leave, to see about enjoying it and going to places besides the temple. It was a lovely place, but Kamakura is absolutely dripping with history, and I want to see as much of it as possible. It was a charming town, besides.
For whatever reason, the photos on my SD card are all out of order, so I'll write explanations underneath wherever they need, of course.
My friend went underneath to go see how it was built. I couldn't be bothered at the time, for whatever reason.
This was along the way to the Buddha statue, actually.
Part of the temple.
Two different trees from two different times--the other one was much earlier.
One of my closest friends over here is from Thailand, so I've grown a bit fond of the place.
A different part. Behind the Buddha, there was a little doorway that you could walk through and get to a different area.
This was beside the big pair of shoes in the temple.
One of the trees from Thailand.
Incense burner in front of Buddha.
His back, for some reason, has windows.
From there, my friend and I went back to the main portion of the town and walked down a street to look around before deciding to come back to the dormitory and eat dinner.
He made some pretty delightful Indian food for me one night, and I returned the favour another night by making chicken quesadillas.
Sunday, I stayed home again while he went back to Harajuku to go see the shrine for Emperor Meiji, but on Sunday, he, my friend from New Zealand, and I, all decided to go to Yokohama to enjoy the last day of 2012 there. We initially wanted to go to Chinatown along with the PokeCentre and movie theatre, but we would have missed the movie by the time we got back from Chinatown, so we decided to just go to a boat harbour and then go back to the main part of the city and eat dinner together before the film.
This was actually at the end of the trip, when we were heading back that night. People were dressed up as snakes to celebrate the new year.
Year of the snake, and all.
It's shiny!
This was when we first got here--the boat port that's beside one of the bigger shopping centres.
And the fair in the background.
A picture in a rather obscure place over in the city, underneath a staircase.
No clue. But this was on the big port that people can walk on.
It was getting pretty dark. Started raining just a little bit after we got inside.
This was my dinner. It was slow to be made and expensive, but made from scratch and positively delicious.
Well worth the wait and expense.
Another skyline view.
The entryway to the port that we went to.
End of the port. It's quite long.
The walkway again.
So, yes, we three went to see the Hobbit, finally, after much waiting and anticipation, and I was certainly not let down. Quite excited for the next film. I would go watch it again, but the tickets are painfully expensive in Japan and I just cannot afford it at the moment.
I also want to see Les Miserables because I love the musical, but... I may need to wait until that one is out on video before I can watch it, haha.
At midnight, we were all watching a television show on my laptop and eating oranges.
After we woke up in the morning, we all headed to Goutoku-ji, where I went previously on the field trip to see the lucky cat shrine and other things. The place looks about the same, except it was packed with people unlike the last time.
But it was a good trip.
Afterwards, I saw my friend off so that he could go back to Nagoya, and then went back to the dormitory with my NZ friend.
Along the way, we stopped in Machida and went to a cafe for a snack.
Yummy.
I came home, cleaned up my room, and prepared myself for my next guest, a friend of mine from Kansai, visiting for two days.
We didn't do that much on the first day, but he and I went to Ueno Park on the second, which is where my money-saving idea comes in.
In some of the museums in the park, they have really, really good discounts for college students. The Western Art Museum and National Museum both have tickets for 400 yen a piece, provided you have your university ID with you.
And the museums are stunning and you should all go if you ever get the chance.
The western art museum has a room full of nothing but Medieval works, and then another room of nothing but Monet.
To look at them was amazing, to see the detail and the care put into every piece, and yet, at the same time it can make a person feel so under-accomplished and so unworthy of looking at something by someone(people) that great.
Then, in the National Muesum, there were items from Egypt dating all the way back to before the dynastic periods.
Which made me feel very small, to say the least.
It was a mixed bag of emotions, the trip to the museums.
But I love those kinds of places, so I'm planning on going back when I've got the free time.
On the way home, on the train, there was a little boy [around five years old, maybe]. who kept looking at me. He was Japanese, and he stared hard at me. To be honest, I thought for a while I had offended him somehow. And then he started feeling his nose, staring at mine, I guess to understand the difference.
It was charming and delightfully human in the very mechanical, very stiff Tokyo.
I was quite moved.
And today... I saw my friend off and went back to my room. I gave another friend his Christmas present, because I hadn't yet had a chance since we'd both been so busy. He had a really good reaction to it, too, and it made me happy that he appreciated his gift so much.
But that's all I've really done, so I will sign out henceforth and tell you about my what is likely to be very uninteresting weekend on Wednesday.
See you all later~
-RD
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