To The Park!

(Austin)

April 14, 2016

    On a bright, sunny Thursday after classes had ended for the day, Rachel and I decided to go to a nearby park. I had actually been to this park before, but that was back during the first week or two in Japan, and it was at night, so I didn't really get a good view of it.

    We took a bus to a nearby stop and walked through neighborhood to get to the park. While walking through the neighborhood we saw many farms and greeted a few people with pleasantries as we walked through.

    The park itself is quite large, including a small lake on one side. There is a small river that runs through the center of the park, so the park designers created many bridges to traverse to the different areas. They put particular effort in one bridge, the main white bridge in the center of the park. It gives a feeling of centrality to the area because you can see the white bridge from most parts of the park. There is also a large bamboo forest in the park that we walked through.

    After walking for a while we sat on a covered dock that jutted into the lake. There were many ducks and a swan near the dock. We even saw a beaver! Or was it an otter? I don't remember. The breeze was quite nice under the cover of the dock, so we stayed and talked for a while in the nice weather.

    We decided to head back, walking through the neighborhood again. While we were walking back we saw two highschool boys kidding around like they were going to fight. It was obvious that they were good friends. When we got close and passed them, one of them said hello to me in English, which I responded to him in English and then in Japanese. I went on and asked what year of school he was in. They seemed surprised. We told them that we went to Kansai Gaidai and they were super excited. It seems that Kansai Gaidai is actually pretty famous. We talked in Japanese for a while longer and then headed back.

    After catching the bus, Rachel got off at the school to walk back to the dorm and I headed to the train station to head back to my homestay. The last picture is a shot from the train platform in Kuzuha station, my home station.

    

Tokyo Trip: Tokyo Sky Tree

Day 3, Part 2.

(Austin)

    So, after we left Shibuya we wandered around and found some where to eat. I don't exactly remember the specific details but I do remember trying to go to a Ramen shop and they were closed at the time and when we walked in they gave us blank stares and we responded with more blank stares. One of the workers finally spoke and basically said "no open".  Embarrassment ensued and we quickly made our way away from the place. That being said, I have no idea what we actually had for dinner, I shouldn't have waited 3 months to write this. Whoops.

    Anyways, we ate dinner and while making our way back to the station we took an odd path and ended up on... "Romance Street". Suffice to say, it was filled with Love Hotels, cheap places that you and your significant other (or random other) could find a place for a nice...night. That being said, it wasn't seedy like you might expect it to be. It was actually a pretty interesting few minutes walking down the street.

    We arrived at the station and took the 40ish minute train ride to Tokyo Skytree. Tokyo Skytree is the tallest building in all of Tokyo, taller than Tokyo Tower. Tokyo Skytree reaches a max height of 634m or 2080ft. Of course, this it the very highest point. The viewing deck is significantly below the height but you still get an amazing view... which we have almost no pictures of. My phone was dying / dead, so elijah took the other pictures, and as I mentioned earlier his phone broke so we lost those pictures. You'll have to settle for the blurry one, sorry!

    After Skytree we headed back to the capsules to sleep again. I took some pictures of the hotel's mascot that was on the posters around the hotel. We got back and collapsed. 

My capsule above to the left and Elijah's below to the right.

Fushimi-Inari

(Austin) Last Wednesday, Nov 11, we went to Fushimi Inari, one of Japan's most famous shrines. It is located near Kyoto. In Japan, there are 2 major religions: Buddhism and Shinto. Temples are for Buddhism and Shrines are for Shinto.

Fushimi Inari is the head shrine for the Inari Okami.  Inari is the kami (god) of foxes, of fertility, rice, tea and Sake, of agriculture and industry, of general prosperity and worldly success. Inari is also one the main 8 gods of Shinto and has been worshiped since the 5th century.

Because Inari is the god of prosperity and worldly success, companies pay patronage to the god by donating money to the shrine to have Torii erected in their name. There are thousands of these torii all over the Fushimi Inari shrine, each with names carved into them. The size and detail of each torii is determined by the amount donated.

Our friend, Ryosuke, invited us (Elijah and I) to go to the shrine and then join his family for dinner.
Yusaku and Georgia happened to be going to the shrine the same day, so all 5 of us met up at Hirakatashi station and departed on the Keihan line towards the shrine.

About 30 minutes and a train transfer later, we arrived in Fushimi Inari station which is decorated to resemble the shrine, with the cross beam supports looking like red torii.

Walking to the shine took about 7 minutes. Along the path leading to the shrine, food vendors and souvenir shops were setup up attracting large crowds. From this point onward is when I started taking pictures. We were these for -hours-, so I have a bunch of pictures of the shrine.  After taking some pictures at the opening of the shrine, we set off.

You'll see most of the shrine through the pictures that will be posted below. There are a LOT of pictures, so be prepared ;)  Note: Part of the way along the path through the shrine there is a secondary path that you can take to the top. It goes through the backside of the mountain and you see a lot of smaller family shrines built into the mountain. It is also a much harder trek. This is the path that we decided to take.

I'll be posting about dinner and visiting Ryosuke's home in follow up post because of how long this one will be due to pictures.

Here are the pictures.

Map of the entire shrine.

This represents Inari, the kami of foxes.

I took a picture of this just to show how they were securing the stone pebbles used. Keeps people from kicking them all over the place. Pretty cool.

The idea behind this is to 'wash your hands in blessed shrine water'

The more you donate, the bigger the Torii.

--------The secondary path starts here------

Some of the family shrines that we found

Old American cartoon. Was surprised to see it. 

This is a tarp over a stack of wood, protecting it from rain.

Spiders. Spiders EVERYWHERE.

Finally back on the normal path!

Top of the mountain! Whooo!