One night, while walking back to my hotel in Osaka, I came across a guy doing some calligraphy. I'm not sure if his work has any special significance, but calligraphy is certainly a big part of Japanese culture. I'm even taking a class, once a week on Tuesdays. This guy worked fast and made it look so easy!
It's the Year of the Mouse here in Japan, which must mean it's the Year of the Rat in China. Hmmm. I prefer mice to rats any day. I'm not sure exactly what these things in the picture are called (ema boards?), but people purchase them, write a message/prayer on them, and then hang them up. I have a feeling that they are then burned eventually, because I saw lots of other items left to be burned. The were plenty of other mice souvenirs for sale at most shrines and temples and they were selling like hotcakes.
This is a picture of a guy preparing okonomiyaki, a tasty treat made out of stuff like shredded cabbage, onions, bacon, and eggs. It's kind of like an omelet, I suppose, so you can pretty much put anything in it that you want. Okonomiyaki will always have a small place in my heart because it's the first food I had when I arrived in Miyazaki, the prefecture that I live in. There were some things on the menu that I recognized, but I'm glad I chose something new. In case you didn't know, I have quite an adventurous spirit!
Can you find your name? I can't find mine, but some people certainly found theirs. I asked some girls about this wall of names. From what I gather, you deposit 100 yen, find your name, and grab the fortune. There's a similar kind of fortune called omikuji. If you get a good fortune, you keep it. If you get a bad one, you hang it up on a tree or rope or whatever before leaving the shrine so that your curse stays behind. The Japanese sure are a superstitious lot, eh? If life were only so easy!
Nara is known for its deer, and sure enough, I spotted quite a few of them. They are quite tame, so it's easy to pet them, even though they don't necessarily like that. And you can feed them, too. Vendors sell stacks of special deer food wafers for about 150 yen. During the day, I didn't see too many of them, but at night, I saw several little herds of 20-30 deer. And if you slowly approached, they didn't get startled at all. Seeing so many tame deer at once is quite an amazing sight.
This is a picture of a snack called "kaitenyaki." It's basically a pancake filled with that omnipresent "Japanese chocolate" called anko. Each pancake cost 100 yen and I bought 2 of them. I can't exactly say they were delicious, but they were good. There's almost no way to escape eating anko over here, and the more I eat it, the more I like it. Or do I?
Here's a picture of a five-tiered pagoda in Nara. You'll have to trust me on the five-tier bit, since only three tiers are visible in the picture. There's something about the five-tiered pagodas that I really like. Maybe it's the fact that they say to me, "Hey, man, it's true, you really are in Japan!" I saw at least two more of them in Kyoto and even went out of my way to find one of them.
This is a picture of perhaps the most famous sight in Kyoto, the kinkakuji, or Golden Pavilion. I went there on my last day full day in the Kansai area. I almost decided against going to see this beautiful pavilion, because by that time I had done my fair share of sightseeing. Besides, the location was a bit out of the way. But, remarkably, the entrance fee was only 400 yen, so I thought I'd go for it. I'm glad I did, too. I think it's important for me to see the sights that are important to my Japanese neighbors.
Yes, they do have bread in Japan! Unfortunately, the majority of the bread you find is white, like the rice. But on occasion, you really can find some healthy and delicious whole-wheat bread or even rye bread. Before I went on this trip, I heard that the bread in the Kansai area was great and I must say, I wasn't disappointed. But lucky for me, there are even some decent bakeries closer to home for those rare times when I don't feel like eating a bowl of rice. Hee hee.
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