Giant update dump of DOOM

Okay, let's try to go for a real update this time.

First off, in case you thought I was kidding about Dutch licorice, the internet has once again proven me right.  I especially like the Japanese guy's reaction.

Anyway, dang, so much to write about.  This is going to be kind of brief because I have a lot of catch up on, and I've already visited basically everywhere in this post a bunch of times, so you can go back to previous posts to find pictures.

Let's see...

So last week on Wednesday I went with Kim and Louki to Ise, because they wanted to see Ise and I am always okay with visiting Ise.  It was pretty exciting, but since it was my fourth time at Ise I will not really write much here.
...also, Kim and Louki got a bunch of my friends from the dorm to make a little book for me with pictures (INCLUDING A PICTURE HALI DREW OF ALL OF US AS OUR RESPECTIVE PONIES IT IS NOW CANON) and little letters and I might have cried a little but you can't prove it and Kim definitely doesn't have photographic evidence shhhhh.  It was basically one of the nicest things anyone has ever done from me and oh my gosh yes.  I will treasure it forever.

On Thursday morning I helped out at the tsukinamisai at Susanoo Shrine, at which there was much excitement that I shall not write about but it involved someone nearly passing out, and then afterwards I got FREE LUNCH and also got to listen to a long and complicated discussion about the shrine's finances and their relationship with a couple of important neighborhood organizations.  Basically, it was good stuff all around.
Thursday evening I went to pick up my dad from the airport, and managed to get him food without killing him* and got him to his hotel.

On Friday morning I met up with my dad, showed him around some sites near my dorm, like Koushouji and Gosha Shrine and the super awesome bakery in the Valor.  I also filled out some paperwork so that he could come up into my room and look around, and I am sure he will tell you how COMPLETELY SPOTLESS and NOT DISORGANIZED my room is.  Right, Dad?  Anyway, he also got to meet Louki and Grace, which was cool.
...aaaaand then I had to run away to class.
But after class we met up with Itou-san, who came by in her car to pick us up!  We were going to go to Nagoya Castle, but the traffic was really bad, so we wound up getting there right before they closed.  We decided to save the castle for another day, and we walked around Meijo Park and the castle moat instead.  I would just like to note that the koi in the castle moat are INCREDIBLY CREEPY and I am pretty sure I am going to have nightmares about their creepy mouths.
ANYWAY, after that we drove past the City Archives, which are housed in this building that looks like it belongs on the Harvard campus. Not even kidding.
And then we went to Kawahara Shrine to see adorable baby turtles and definitely not to show my dad the shrine or anything.
And then we went to dinner at a really good Chinese restaurant, and Itou-san made endless fun of my dad for eating less than me.  And then Itou-san totally stole the check and SOMEDAY I WILL WIN AND PAY FOR A MEAL.  I am planning.  PLANNING, I SAY.
Anyway, it was all around a very nice day!

Saturday, Dad and I went to Inuyama to see the castle and the other stuff in Inuyama.  The castle was much warmer than it was when I went with Nick, but the stairs were still as terrifying.  We also went to this cool little puppet museum that is just outside of the castle grounds.  And then I introduced my dad to soft cream (it's like the much better version of American soft serve), which may have been a mistake because he might be mildly addicted to it now oops.  Anyway, after that we went to the temples on the mountain, and met this Buddhist priest who showed us around a tiny recreation of the Shikoku pilgrimage.  The Shikoku pilgrimage is a route of 88 temples located around the entire island of Shikoku, which takes approximately a month to complete on foot.  There are hundreds of recreations of the pilgrimage, usually which employ sand or dirt from each site and some sort of sacred object from each site.  This particular recreation had little pots of sand below the floor and a scroll from each temple.  Anyway, I got a pretty long explanation from the priest, because he was pretty excited that I understood what he was talking about.  So that was cool.
After that we were going to go over and check out the Monkey Park, except it turned out to be an amusement park?  A really expensive amusement park?  I dunno.  So instead we headed back to Nagoya, bummed around Osu Kannon and bought AMAZING MEAT BUNS, and then went over to Kanayama to grab curry for dinner.
So that was Saturday!

Sunday, Dad came to my dorm to drop off his bags for the day, and then we went to Nagoya Castle and actually managed to get inside this time.  We also visited the Tokugawa Art Museum later that day, which had a big collection of popular books from the 18th century, including, weirdly enough, a bunch of guides to the red light district.  I don't even know.  There was also a new exhibit on the possessions of the merchant class, which was pretty cool, although I don't know why I would want a tea bowl that cost that much if I were a merchant.
Then we went to the Tokugawa Gardens, which were significantly greener than they were last time I visited, but also had fewer flowers, weirdly enough.
We grabbed dinner at Pastel, aka that weird restaurant that only sells cake and pasta, and then I took my dad to Nagoya Station and said bye.
Upon returning to the dormitory, I discovered that Abbie had spent the entire semester saving one yen coins so she could go to the Lawson (convenience store) and buy a teriyaki burger using only one yen coins (one hundred five of them, to be exact).  It was potentially the most epic and trollish thing to ever occur in a convenience store.  The cashier at our register managed to get through the entire thing with a perfectly straight face, although the other cashier looked like he was going to die from holding in his laughter.  He was turning bright red, not even kidding.
ALSO, Ashley bought cell phone charms for all the pony girls and THEY ARE THE COLORS OF OUR PONIES AND WHY IS THIS SO GREAT.  Anyway, I have a tiny bell with a ribbon hanging from my cell phone now, and it is in Twilight Sparkle's colors and it is great.

Monday morning I woke up at an ungodly early hour to say goodbye to Meredith and Hali and Ashley, all of whom were leaving for the airport.  Then I saw an annullar eclipse, or, really, I tried to take pictures of it, failed, and then spotted the people across the street who actually had sun filters, and asked them politely if I could share.  Thank you, nice people across the street!  Anyway, it was amazing cool and I will be incredibly disappointed if I don't develop super powers.  And then after that I collapsed into bed and slept for a while, because I was running on four hours of sleep.

Tuesday was Kim and Louki's last day in the dorm, and due to a long and complicated blood pact, Kim had to watch an episode of Sherlock with me, so we (Abbie and Kim and Louki and I) did that.  And apparently I spent the entire episode grinning like an idiot, but, HEY, IT'S SHERLOCK AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.
Then we went to Mountain, which is a sort of infamous restaurant by the dorm.  It is infamous because A. it has the largest serving sizes you have ever seen and B. it has the weirdest pasta you have ever seen, like green tea and red bean.  Yeah.  But I got a parfait so all was well!  Although my chocolate parfait had a prune in it, which was...odd.
And then we had a Roommate Dinner, which turned out to be more like a Roommate Plus a Whole Other Chunk of the Dorm Dinner, which was fine, because it meant that we got to hear about why not to be a politician in India and how the Netherlands doesn't have a government right now and other exciting things.

Today I woke up at an ungodly early hour to take Kim and Louki to Nagoya Station with Dheeraj and Grace, which was exciting even though all of us were sort of falling asleep.  (Okay, Grace was literally falling asleep.)  Once we saw them off, we fought through the sea of people who decided to ride the subway at rush hour (IT WAS AWFUL I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE AUGH) and somehow managed to get back to the dorm without being crushed to death.
Also, I apologize if this post is more incoherent than usual 'cause I think I'm running on roughly three or four hours of sleep.  I'm coming down with something, which means that it feels like someone's been sandpapering my throat, so I kept waking up in the middle of the night and thus got lousy sleep.  Ugh.
Anyway, yeah, that's what I've been up to, basically.  I'm gonna go collapse and drink some more tea now.  Oh, and eat more of these crazy plum cough drops, which are the greatest thing I have ever found.

*My dad is allergic to shellfish, which is...problematic, if you live in a port town like Nagoya.

American food, ponies, and taiyaki

Dear everybody who listed all the synonyms for buttocks I missed on the last post:
I am so glad you like butts and know many, many, many, many words to talk about butts.
...I really don't know what else to say about this.  I am clearly not as into vocabulary for butts as you are.  And I am totally okay with that.

Also, my blog has officially gotten hits through the keywords "nude men."  WHOO.

Anyway!

So Wednesday night was American Food Night, which is to say that a bunch of American girls in the dorm cooked American food for Louki and Kim (the two Dutch girls).  I made "American" food, which is to say that I made food that Dana makes in America, which is not really all that American.  As it turns out, Japanese squash is much sweeter than butternut squash when boiled, plus I was missing some spices, so my vegetable soup didn't taste exactly the same as it does in the States, but it still tasted pretty okay.  I also made renkon and satsuma imo, which is not American but I DON'T CARE.  Anyway, we also had macaroni and cheese (actual macaroni and cheese, not out of a box; it was amazing) and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and s'mores (made over the stove, which was exciting and involved lots of things catching on fire) and random American candy Hali's parents sent her and peanut butter cookies (om nom nom nom) and mugicha (barley tea), because that is TOTALLY AMERICAN.
And then Ashley and I began phase one of Our Dastardly Plan to Turn Louki into a Brony.  And it worked. Bwahahahaha.
...and then we watched Fern Gully for some reason?  You can just watch the Nostalgia Critic review to get a sense of the entire movie (but don't watch it near sensitive ears, as there is swearing out the wazoo).  Uh, yeah.

Today we were going to go to an arcade, but we actually wound up going to the arcade for about twenty minutes and then spending the rest of the time wandering around Osu Kannon while some of the girls went clothes shopping.  Also, I had cookies and cream taiyaki,* which was DELICIOUS.

In completely unrelated and totally random news, this morning I had an epiphany and realized that bronyism** is structurally similar to a Japanese new religion.  Think about it.  There's a doctrine (the episodes) which are based on the experiences and thoughts of a founder (little bit of a stretch, but read any of Lauren Faust's articles about why she wanted to make the show the way it is) and expanded by the select few in the upper echelons of the movement (the animation team, Daniel Ingram, etc.).  Those in lower positions in the movement also release publicity materials (so much fanart and fan music) and add to the established canon (Derpy...I mean, seriously, Derpy).  Those in the movement do everything in their power to convert everyone they come into contact with...in a series of steps eerily similar to shakubuku in Soka Gakkai.  ("Do you watch ponies?  No?  You think it's dumb?  Well, I'm going to tell you every reason why it isn't dumb...over and over...every time I see you...and eventually I will wear you down enough to watch the first episode...and then I will cajole you into watching more...until eventually you are hooked...and then you can go out and win more converts!")  The community exists at a national (and international, thanks to the internets) level, but there are also local communities which will have meetings (to watch new episodes, nerd out, sing "At the Gala" to each other and freak out everyone else in the room...not that I have ever done this).  And before anyone says, "But this metaphor doesn't make ANY SENSE because MLP:FIM is NOT a religion!" I would just like to say you have obviously not met a devoted brony.  MLP:FIM is a WAY OF LIFE.
So, not a perfect match, but with some tweaking bronies could qualify as members of a religious organization in Japan?
And thus concludes my nerdy rambling.

On a final note, I've added some new pages to the blog, if you haven't already noticed.  They're on the sidebar on the right.  Man, I'm suddenly all productive on this blog.  HOW CRAZY.

**That is, being a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

*Taiyaki is a kind of fish-shaped pastry, normally filled with red-bean paste.

Recap: Nagoya Port, Osu Kannon, and the Nagoya Science Museum

Well, it looks like it's time for our daily dose of time travel.*

It's time to travel back to Wednesday, January 11, 2012!  Also known as the day we decided to check out Nagoya Port.

Despite having lived in Nagoya for four months (has it really already been that long?), I'd never actually been down to the port, because it is on a separate subway line than pretty much everything else in the city.  But there were two things we wanted to check out down there: a spinning top museum which Miranda had found online and the Nagoya Port Aquarium, which pretty much everyone lists as One of the Things You Do in Nagoya.

The Spinning Top Museum is on Wikipedia...but after visiting it, I must wonder about who put the entry up.  I can honestly say that it was the strangest museum I have ever been to--and I have been to some pretty strange museums.  It's in a warehouse...basically...and there's no sort of organization to it.  It's just a bunch of spinning tops in cases.  Sometimes there are signs up telling you where in the world they are from, but sometimes there aren't.  And all the tops are just sort of heaped together. Also, there were random other toys thrown in and a whole bunch of children's clothing on a rack and rocking chairs and bicycles hanging from the ceiling?  And we were the only visitors.  And the only other person there was this old lady who sat behind a counter at what we think was a register to buy tops, but we couldn't figure out what was for sale and what was on display.  It was.........................really weird.

So after that we got lunch at a really good noodle place where the waiter/chef realized I spoke Japanese and then gave me a bunch of advice on noodles.  

And then we headed over to the Nagoya Port Aquarium.  It was a bit pricey (2,000 yen or about $26), but pretty nice.  I wouldn't say it was as nice as Monterey Bay Aquarium, but then again, I am kind of spoiled in that respect.  They had two buildings with a whole bunch of exhibits and dolphins and killer whales and belugas and SEA TURTLES.  I am all about the sea turtles. I tried to convince them that they should be friends with me, but they were more interested in doing sea turtle-y types of things.

That evening we met with Itou-san for dinner, 'cause she said she wanted to meet up with the S-As again before they left.  We wound up going to potentially the best Indian restaurant I have been to in my life.  It was SO DELICIOUS.  And we had a nice time chatting and trying to figure out what was in the dessert (it turned out to be coconut milk).  All in all, a fun time.

So that was Wednesday.

Thursday was Miranda's last full day in Japan, and she and Nick wanted to get some souvenirs for people back in the States, so we went to Osu Kannon, which is a sort of shopping arcade/temple district thing across the city from me.  There are also three kofun (burial mounds) in the area: the one I went to before with Geoff plus two more.  So we decided to explore and find omiyage and generally be the intrepid young people we are.

Here's a tiny temple we found on our wanderings.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but it was so cold that there were chunks of ice floating on the top of the water in the hand washing basin.

Needless to say, not the most pleasant experience.

Here's a little shrine we found.

And here's Osu Kannon, the temple which the district is named after.

They have a whole ton of pigeons.

They also apparently have a Jizo for mizuko.  Maybe I've just started noticing a whole lot more of these, now that I've read about mizuko, but they seem to be EVERYWHERE.

Here's a little Inari shrine we found while wandering around. It's called "Maneki Inari," which can be roughly translated as "Beckoning Inari."

(Maneki neko, by the way, are those beckoning cats [usually called "lucky cats" or something equally dull in the States] which you see EVERYWHERE.)

...someone was having some height issues again.

Hey, look, it's a Maneki Inari!

This was the shrine right next to the Inari.

...and here's a tiny temple!

Whoa, it's NOT a dragon.

This is a pillow filled with salt.  Apparently it solves a variety of issues, including insomnia and back pain?

So then we went to this little cafe...

...where they allowed everyone who came to write/draw something and then put it up on the walls/ceiling/wherever there was a space.

Needless to say, we drew stuff.

...here is my exceptionally silly comic about mizuko.  I don't have mizuko on the brain.

(In Miranda's words, "You have a thing about dead babies. It's kind of creepy.")

So then we went to ANOTHER temple in the area.  It included one of Oda Nobunaga's graves?

THIS IS THE BEST RESTAURANT EVER.

All they sell is buns.

For 160 yen (a little more than $2) you can get either a vegetable or meat bun.

THEY ARE DELICIOUS.

We might have bought some and then came back later and bought some more and then came back later and bought even more and then came back the next day and bought some.

They are THAT GOOD.

(Also their slogan is "a taste you will want to eat again.")

...also, tacos.  And beer.  I don't even know.  Nothing they serve even slightly resembles Mexican food.

So then we went over to the Nagoya Science Museum, which was in the area.

IT.

IS.

GREAT.

We might have stayed there (doing SCIENCE) until they kicked us out.

Miranda and Nick still hadn't been to the Nagoya Television Tower, so we headed over to Sakae...only to discover that the TV Tower is closed until April.  Ugh.  So much for that.

So instead we grabbed dinner and then went up on the roof of Oasis 21.

And then we did the only possible logical thing we could do on the roof of Oasis 21 at about 8 p.m.

We played Bananagrams.

The next morning Miranda left on her crazy birthday adventure to Helsinki (yeah, I know) and Nick and I headed back to the science museum (after getting more buns), because WE HAD NOT DONE ENOUGH SCIENCE YET.  We did SO MUCH SCIENCE.  We also learned the SIGNS OF PUBERTY.  And HOW YOUR LUNGS WORK.**  And how recycling works.  And what people eat in the JUNGLE.  And what FUTURE SCIENCE will look like.

Basically, we were giant dorks all over the place and everybody probably thought we were super weird gaijin, but WHO CARES, 'CAUSE SCIENCE.

*...and now my references are just getting obscure.  Points to anyone who gets it!

**So the human body room was probably the lamest, 'cause it would say, "Push this button to find out how your lungs work!" and we'd push the button and it would just illuminate a sign.  If I wanted to read signs, I would go to a SIGN MUSEUM.

Also, the signs of puberty exhibit was kind of like, "You will get acne!  It will be upsetting.  Oh well."  It also said that when you hit puberty you will become sexually attracted to the other sex.  HMM.  I know a number of people who apparently got a failing grade in puberty.  OOPS.