Halloween!

Ok, so maybe you've heard that Halloween isn't celebrated much in Japan..... which may be true outside of Kansai Gaidai. But man, do we know how to party! We had a costume party which was a huge success, but unfortunately I was unable to attend due to the fact that I was EATING BASKIN ROBBINS! Or, as they call it here, 31. It was 31% off today because it's Halloween or because it's the 31st day or for some other reason that I'm not aware of. Anyway, it was delicious! Magical mint night and pumpkin pudding all the way....
So anyway, I spent the whole day in costume(as Nicki Minaj in case you couldn't tell), and at school I got a lot of compliments! Although schoolgirls at the mall snickered at me(they're just jealous!), but I don't really care because I had FUN and it was all in the spirit of one of my favorite holidays =)

After ice cream, I went to the party at Seminar House 4.There was free food and drinks! Ohhhh yeah! We played BINGO(I lost all rounds) and took pictures in costume. I love Halloween! And even if most Japanese people don't dress up, there's a lot of Halloween merchandise sold here in Hirakata-shi and many of the Japanese students at Gaidai wore costumes. Oh well. Maybe it's a growing trend?

I hope to keep updating more often like I've been doing over the past few days! Also, please look at my photo-stream if you want to keep up with the pictures I'm taking, as it will only display the 200 most recent images. Man, my English is getting terrible here! Let's just hope my Japanese is improving >__>

First Kyoto Trip in a Looooong Time!!!

Hey, sorry for the delay in updating! Not much has been going on here, mostly staying around Hirakata which is usually a pretty uneventful area. We decided not to rush our Tokyo trip, so I might be going in Spring instead when I might have a longer break. But today I had a blast in Kyoto! I've been wanting to go to Kyoto for sooo long since I haven't been there in 4 years =( Well, there was that one time I went clubbing, but that's different...

So anyway, some SH4 peeps and I went to Fushimi Inari, which is a shrine dedicated to the deity Inari. It has fox statues everywhere(because Inari is related to foxes, but according to my Shinto class he's actually an old man and not a fox), and lots of stairs and bright orange torii gates. It was raining the whole time, and we got tired pretty quickly, but we managed to make it out and ended up right in front of another shrine, Tofukuji. It's pretty on the outside, and I took some pictures of it, but we decided we didn't want to spend the 400 yen it cost to get in.
So, after lunch somewhere in a random part of Kyoto, we decided to go to a pretty cool Buddhist temple, Sanjuusangendo. It's indoors and houses a lot of really awesome statues which are so sacred that cameras aren't allowed, so (sadly) I was unable to take pictures =( It smelled great though, because they burnt this powerful incense which I almost bought except that it cost like 800 yen and I'm cheap.
Anyway, that's my first Kyoto exploration story as of yet! Be sure to check out the sweet photos in my flickr stream. Next time, I think I'll be going to denden town (the Akihabara of Osaka), or maybe Nara or Arashiyama. Who knows! Hopefully I'll update about Halloween fun times tomorrow XD

Home Visit and Shinsaibashi

Sorry for the long delay! Here, I'm almost always busy studying, sewing, or doing the stuff I'm blogging about. That or I'm being lazy. Yeah, usually the latter. Anyway, About a week ago, I went to my Home-visit Program partner's house! Her name's Sena(the same girl I went to the Mexican festival with), and she is awesome! We made takoyaki, but since I don't eat tako(octopus), her family had prepared konnyaku for me to put in the mix! Takoyaki is an Osaka delicacy which uses a special frier with little hollowed out sections which you put batter and octopus in to make perfectly rounded tako-balls! The stuff I substituted the tako for is a gelatinous substance which is totally vegetarian and also very healthy! It was delicious and (maybe?) tasted like the real thing(but how am I to know??), and her mother kept insisting that I should open up a konnyaku-yaki shop ^^ We ate on her balcony in the open-air of a small Japanese city. The air was chilly, so we went inside after eating and drank tea with sweets. It was so much fun! I hope we can visit each other often!

Making Tako/konnyaku-yaki!

Today, I went to Shinsaibashi, which is a major shopping district in Osaka. Well, to clarify, I went to Namba station, wandered around for  a while with some of my friends, then eventually found Shinsaibashi.  We spent most of out time in Ame-mura, which(did you guess??) is the "American-village" part of Shinsaibashi. They blast r&b in all the shops and sell urban clothes. And there are crepes everywhere!! Afterwards, me, Adam, and Aya went to Sweets Paradise, which is all-you-can-eat specializing in desserts. I AM SO FULL NOW!!! I enjoyed it, although I think the best part was the tea section =) 

Now I'm off to study. Midterms are next week, so I doubt I'll have much to blog about for a while. Sooooo much studying this week!!! But I'm going to Tokyo after midterms, so I think it's worth it. Still wanna go to Kyoto..............>_> But I still have time!