April Showers Revisited

This is kind of just putting in the pictures that I didn't get to upload with the last batch, but there are a few new ones going in as well. So here they are:



This is a picture of a temple in the Nara prefecture; my host father took me to see it. It was very interesting, there was tons of information about Japanese religion and such. :3



More temple...And me.



Here you see little "wishes" that people can buy to wish good luck for themselves or family or friends. You also see my host father, sort of.



These are also little wishes that people have attached to trees.



A picture of the fountain at the temple. It was pretty, so I decided to take a picture.



And this is the entrance to the temple :D We were in the taxi, and I quickly turned around to sneak a picture of this.



This is actually a picture going uphill toward this really famous temple in Nara; I think it's called...Kiyomizu Temple?? :/ I think.



At the entrance to the temple. There were tons of foreigners there, like me, so I didn't feel quite so out of place here. :B



A picture of the walk on the way down from the temple.



Me, really high up, near the top of the temple. It's on this big mountain overlooking the major city of Nara prefecture, so it's got quite the view.



Outside the temple.



This is the Buddha shrine at the top; it was difficult to get a picture, since all this smoke was coming up from the incense and it was all hazy.



Me ringing the gong outside the shrine :3 Big tourist attraction, this.



Me, looking out over the city below.



The top of the temple with the skyline. Looks like a desktop.



Me in front of a little pond thingy. I'm giggling because my host father was saying that we should take a picture of me falling backwards into it. :D



This is me drinking green tea inside one of the many shops lining the way up to the temple. It was free though, so my host father and I stopped in to have some. :P



The way back down from the temple.



Me eating dango, which is...I guess rice flour balls covered in this honey stuff. It's SUUUUUUUPPPPERRRRRRRR sweet.



Aaaannd me outside of another temple. LOTS of sightseeing that day.

So that concludes this blog entry, the next one should be a bit more exciting, because I plan to make it mostly about people :B I'm going to take my camera to school to take pictures of my classmates and teachers, and also upload some photos of my host family. Until then, cheers!

April Showers....

...So it's raining here. Which is really nice, I love the rain. Also, I have tons of pictures that are begging to be uploaded into a blog entry, so I just decided to get it over with.
These are pictures from random times at random places; enjoy ^^

I thought we'd start with a picture of my toilet. I just noticed that I didn't really have any pictures of the house, so I decided to take a few. Some others might come up later in the blog.

This is a picture of the bay at the city of Obama. Yes, Obama. Apparently during the U.S. elections this was a big deal. But yeah, it's a nice city about thirty minutes from where I live.

This is a picture of the back of my host mother in front of the Tenrikyo church in Obama. We went there so that she could pray and pick something up, but I can't remember what exactly.

There are going to be a lot of cherry blossom pictures now, because we went to the Nara prefecture, where the Tenrikyo headquarters are, and there were TONS of cherry blossom trees. In full bloom. It was lovely.

These are street signs in the Nara prefecture. I just took a picture for decorative purposes.

This is me trying desperately to take pictures out of a moving car. It didn't really matter anyway, though, I still got tons of pictures of the surrounding buildings.
This place was BEAUTIFUL.

This is the parking lot outside of the church headquarters; even the parking lot was pretty.

And these are the church headquarters. This building is unbelievably huge, and the inside is just as awesome as the outside, but I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the inside.

A picture of a little pagota outside of the huge church building.

So my host father loves to steal my camera and take tons of pictures of the same thing over and over again. I'm actually going to cut some out because they are repetitive and because of time.
This is our little group in front of a cherry blossom tree; I'm closing one eye because it was so ridiculously bright that I couldn't see out of both.

This is the other part of the big building. I actually don't think we went inside this one.

Another picture of us in front of flowers. The girl is Hitomi, who is a friend of the family, my host mother, and then a boy whose name, sadly, I can't remember. He came with us and then we ended up just leaving him there, I'm really not sure why.

Me by myself in front of the flowers.

I had to pose for tons of pictures with cherry blossoms. Once again, my host father attempting to be creative with my camera.

Mmmm-hmmmm. :)

This is a picture of my host family caught unawares. When my host dad was looking through the pictures on my camera later, he was all surprised when he found this one haha.

...I had to take a picture of this. In almost every car in Japan, there is a mini TV. And everyone watches TV while they're driving. The drivers here are absolutely nuts, I've never seen anything like it. And yet, they NEVER get into crashes. I just don't get it.

These next pictures will be of me in my uniform; there are tons of these, but I'll only post two or three because some are hideous.

Another one.
Ok, I didn't finish uploading all of these. So it looks like some will have to spill over into the next batch. Another post should come in a few days if I have time. As always, thanks for reading.

One last one. :D

About a week in...

These are a few photos from the beginning orientations of the trip, from touching down in Tokyo to photos of the orientation in Nagoya to some of the house. There aren't very many, but I will upload more soon. ^_^



This is of Narita Airport; I will try to go back in later and rotate these. At this point, we were waiting to be taken in a bus to the hotel in Tokyo, where we spent one night until we were separated into different cities.



This is just a picture of the vending machine there; there were so many drinks to choose from, it was ridiculous! 8D I ended up getting an apple juice that tasted like drinking straight out of an apple.



...and here is RT, my Texan friend posing with said apple juice. It was excellent.



This is a picture of Holly, who was my roommate in LA; first picture of an actual peace sign. It's only going to be peace signs from here on out. :)



More peace signs. This is Holly and Alyssa, another friend who is from Florida.



A picture of some Japanese Kanji that I took for future reference. :D I know that the second to last one is the kanji for electricity.



I had to take a picture of the BIG cup of noodles. I just thought it was cool.



This is actually supposed to be a picture of Disneyland Tokyo; but it was raining and I was pointing my camera through a bus window. I think you can sort of see the castle in the background...



A Japanese McDonald's. Funny how that happens.



A picture of us settling into our room at Nagoya.



This was the first part of our group that stayed in the Red room in Nagoya. It was awesome because there were girls from so many different countries.



Arranging our futons. We had to put on our own sheets and claim our sleeping spaces on the floor; there wasn't much room to put our luggage either, so the competition for finding space was fierce. :D



This was Group 3, and our leaders were YOOOOK-say (Yusuke) and Sakae, both of whom are peacing out in the background. That kid in the front is Tom from New Zealand, who by this point was all photoed out.



These are the people who went to the temple that was down the street from the hostel where we stayed. My camera ran out of batteries not long after this, so there aren't many pictures of the temple.



Walking up to the temple.



The temple close up. This is where my camera died, I remember now.



This is a picture of my messy messy room, which I had just moved into at this point.



A picture of my coats, and everything hung up nice and neat and tidy.

So those are all the pictures that I have. This first week has certainly been nervewracking, but very very fun. School starts next week, and I should have lots more pictures to upload by then. Bye for now!