Kobe and Arashiyama

So November as a whole has been pretty slow. I spent a lot of time, outside of my classes, inside my room, either to study or to read and nap. There are a few key thing that went on, so I’ll talk about those. I will add a couple small tidbits from days in between too though 🙂

November 8th & 12th

On the 8th Mary and I wanted dessert (and I think she prob wanted boba too, if I remember right) so we went to T-site (a mall/shopping area in Hirakata near our school). We got some cute strawberry cakes. I added the twelfth only to show my sad instant curry dinner to the world X3

The cakes~ it’s nobody’s bday, that’s just for fun.

November 16th: bento picnic

I signed up to do an experience Japan program picnic event being held by Mary’s speaking partner. Turned out that I had too much work to do that day so I had to opt out of going. Mary went and helped them make the bentos but came back to the dorms with it instead of going on the picnic. She was nice enough to bring me my portion even though I didn’t go 🙂 we had a mini picnic on the school grounds

November 17th: Kobe

Celine, Raven, Shelby, Max, Akea and I all decided this was the best day to go to Kobe. It was fun, we shopped around at a mall, walked through Chinatown (only briefly, but I got a snack), visited Ikuta Shrine, checked out a nice park, got Kobe beef at a small restaurant for lunch, went into a studio Ghibli store (there are a lot of those. I mean, they’re everywhere across Japan. Makes sense though, since they’re a big $ maker), went on a Ferris wheel that overlooked a bay, and we almost went into the observation tower by the bay but it was a long wait time and cost more money than we wanted to spend. At the end of the trip, probably about 8pm, Shelby and Akea went to check out the beach. We were tired and it was starting to get chilly so Celine, Raven and I headed to Chinatown to grab quick dinners before going home. That is, the stop at Chinatown was supposed to be brief, but the foooooood~ we tried almost everything on our path on our way out. Gotta say, I wish I could go back there even just for Chinatown :3

First visit to Chinatown was just walking through quickly for a snack. It’s blurry, but those ones in the top right with the dark sauce on top are what I got. I can’t read kanji, so I had to take a picture and ask for it. Urgh, they were good. I know most of what I ate that day in Chinatown was pork, and my stomach hurt later for it. Worth it 👍🏼

^ Shelby’s snack. Also very good (though I liked mine more ;3)

Ikuta shrine ^_^ I don’t have a ton of photos from here unfortunatley. I forgot to take them. At least I remembered the name of it though. Ikuta shrine houses a Kami of connections/relationships. There were lots of hearts engraved everywhere and lots of heart-shaped souvenirs and relationship-related omamori (charms) at the front. If you want, try looking up the shrine for more photos, it’s neat 🙂

Some cute candies I bought from a candy vendor outside of the shrine. They look nice. It tasted mostly just like sugar though. I’m not sure if I just have a bad sense of taste XD

The docks near the park. We mostly stayed around this bay, since that area is the center of most attractions.

We found a cool art piece in that public park by the bay. It was actually behind a fancy-looking Starbucks haha. But we had fun climbing on it. The signatures and writing on it were cool to try to read too (mostly kanji so not super successful). Also, I seem to have plastic bags in most photos I post. Oops. Well, in this you can see the outline of the honey butter potato chips I bought in a funky bookstore there (yes I bought a book too :3). I’m developing too strong a love for honey butter, help-

The Kobe beef that I ordered was a low(ish)/medium quality according to the menu. I got a small serving of this one instead of a larger portion of a “lesser” quality one. It all looked good to me. It came to about 4,000yen (close to $40) anyway. The seasonings and sauces that they gave was wasabi, steak sauce, soy sauce, and sea salt. I liked the house steak sauce most but the soy sauce was good too. The wasabi made it taste strange to me. Anyway, it was super good and was filling with the side dishes ^_^

Liftoff on the Ferris wheel. Celine and Akea are on the one in the picture and Shelby Raven and I are in the next one.

For the sake of everyone’s sanity I turned the sound off on this one. We ramble too loudly to focus on the images XD basically we talk about the maze below, Shelby pretending she’s going to shake the… basket(?) and the boat that looks like it’s coming in too hot to the docks :3 the observation deck/tower I mentioned is the tall and skinny red building that pops up when I move to look at the maze.

Lots of people were getting married or taking wedding photos here.

Ignore me annoyingly repeating Raven’s name XD she was trying to duck under my camera lol. But it’s Chinatown at night when Celine, Raven and I went. Almost every stand had Peking duck, which was really good. Other than that I tried a lot of buns. Half of which, to my surprise, kept ending up being sweet even though they looked like they were savory 😂

November 19th

Thanks for the package boss lady! It was full of Christmas stuff. It was super sweet and everyone likes the reindeer slippers X3 I’ve rationed the candy to last even to now haha.

November 21st

Thanks for the thanksgiving package momma b. Much appreciated ^_^! We plan on using it as a pre-Christmas/departure party dinner though, since most of us were going to be in Tokyo on thanksgiving day.

November 23rd: Arashiyama

For the most part, we did a lot of similar things to what I did on my trip to Arashiyama with mu speaking mc partner, Aoi on the day we toured without our phones on. This time, though, I went with Celine, Shelby and Raven and we visited the big bamboo forest, saw some nice fall foliage (since Arashiyama is in Kyoto which is known for being good for leaf-viewing), and hiked up to the wild monkey (Japanese Macaque) park/sanctuary ^_^ Akea and Max met is there later before we all headed back. Mary had work to do, unfortunately, so she couldn’t make it.

The bamboo forest. They were really tall and the fence protecting them was also made of bamboo. It was cool, crowded, but cool 🙂

Some nice sights along the way. We were headed to find a place to eat before going to the monkeys.

We stopped at a restaurant right below the mountain the monkeys live on. I got egg broth udon soup. It was… eggy. It was filling and it’s not like it was bad, there just wasn’t a ton of flavor :] but the issue was hot HOT our seats were. It was crowded so we sat at a long counter at the window and we were like bugs under a magnifying glass. Phew. It was refreshing to start climbing in the shade up the mountain trail to monkeys after ^_^

There were a lot of monkeys. They ranged from cute little babies and mommas to big and kinda aggressive. It was cool to see them. They come down from the mountains at certain times during the day because people are allowed to feed them at that spot, though you have to buy the fruits and nuts there which makes sense 🙂

On route off the mountain it started to get dark fast. That’s the shrine that we entered to go up it and where we had just exited from 🙂

Snagged a picture and video of the water and boats (we missed the time to go out there by about 10 minutes but we wanted to rent a couple :P). Afterward we grabbed a couple light meals from vendors and then went home via train 🙂 takes a little over an hour.

November 26th: Taco night

I got the taco kits from an international goods store that Mary and I came across in Umeda (in Osaka) about a month ago. Bought enough to make 24 tacos. We all worked together and took a part to either chop, cook, or toast and voila~ it made me happy to do a big buffet dinner with everyone. It’d been a while and I’ve missed big dinners back in NY.