Hello From JAPAN!

Yup, you heard it right. I am on my 4th day of my 5 day trip in Japan! Finally after years and years of waiting I have finally made it to Japan! For those of you who don't know I have had a love affair with Japan for as long as I can remember. When I was in France I even bought manga! In highschool I would wake up at 4:30AM just to watch sailor moon and dragonball Z (this was in the mid nineties, before anime was cool) and in college I spent three years studying Japanese language. Why did I choose to teach English in Korea and not Japan? Well basically it was easier to get into Korea and I figured the two countries were so close I could hop back and forth when ever I felt like it... the the gas prices surged and that was the end of that plan. But none of that matters now. I am HERE!!!!

I cant really remember ANY Japanese :( Its really quite sad, and I feel like I am totally letting John down. I really thought it would come back faster. I listened to about 7 hours of audio lessons from Pimlseur but that didnt help much... I still dont know how to say how much! (which I will look up after I finish this post.) I also know nothing about Japanese food... which is a problem for a vegetarian, and I didn't do enough reseach before getting here.

My first impressions about Japan:
1. Japanese people are the NICEST people in the world!
2. This place is way cleaner than Korea
3. Everyone rides bikes and so far I have seen three priuses and tons of solar panals
4. They have beautiful gardens even when there is no space for a garden
5. Very few bars compared to Korea
6. Everyone really does play pachinko!
7. Japanese men are much nicer towards women than Korean men
8. This place is much less crowded than Seoul
9. It is true that very few people here speak ANY English.
10. I really really really wanna come back here!

Why do I think Japanese people are so nice? Because almost any time John and I were having problems people came up to help us.... when we got off the train from the airport and were trying to figure out the map to the embassy (we are here to get our new Korean visas too) a man comes over and speaks PERFECT English and offeres to help. He was just a random stranger... that never happened to me in Korea, and rarely in the US. When we were in the subwaystation trying to figure out how to buy a ticket, one of the workers came over and helped us, again, speaking great English :) At this point I was starting to think that people were wrong when they said Japanese people couldn't speak English, but those were the last good speakers we met. And, here is a great story... I left one of my bags on the subway train and in a panic ran back and the train was gone :( John was brave enough to go up to one of the subway workers and tell him we lost something. The man didnt speak any English, he tried to point to where the office was and we didnt understand (well I was just panicing and being negative now so I couldn't understand) so he brought us to the office... when we got to stairs he motioned to John and I to take the escalator and he ran up the stairs :) cute. At the office he explained it to others and they tried to ask us again but they got the idea and told us to wait. about 5 min later he came back with my bag :-D I was so happy I didn't know what to say!!! But any way I just want people to know that if you come here and you cant speak any Japanese thats fine, because Japanese people are so nice they will try to help you no matter what!!! Ok now its time for some illuminating pictures!


Here I am riding a bike I rented through the park surrounding the imperal palace in Kyoto, one of the old and great capitals of Japan. The park was beautiful and Im sure the palace was also beautiful, but I didn't get to see it. You have to buy tickets in advance for guided tours and they were all sold out for today :( Next time... But the road was all rocks so it was a paint o ride around, but really nice and pretty :)


hehehe... for some reason there are train cars only for women! Obviously John and I didn't ride in this car, but we were in the car next to it, and in our car there was also a sign on the door to the next car that said women only!! I thought that was kinda funny.


This is a shinto shrine.... sooooo beautiful! They have this amazing garden that surrounds it and we walked through it. It had huge lakes filled with koi and turtles. The bridge behind me was were John and I stopped to take a break and have some snacks and watch the turtles and fish swim below us. It was really peacful and relaxing... why cant catholic churches be this nice :)


HAHAHAH! This is a road construction site. Everything must be cute in Japan Even construction equipment! Yes, those are monkeys and YES they are way too cute for their purpose!!