Just Something Quaint, A Couple Ships in the Night

It seems it's been quite a while since I posted, apologies for letting time get away from me once again. Things are definitely starting to gear up in class. Since I last wrote we've had two character tests (which went fairly well) and on this coming Wednesday we have our first big lesson test. I am a little anxious, as it's a lot of material, but I've already started studying some and I have a fairly good study guide to go by.

This coming week is "golden week" in Japan as a number of holidays all fall right in a row, with companies and schools usually giving people the whole week off. However, as Ristumeikan is fairly infamous for limiting holidays, SKP students only have off this Monday and Tuesday, so it's been more of a "golden weekend", ha. However I've been enjoying myself. The previous weekend I didn't do much, although on Sunday I had a fairly fun time a small barbecue near the river downtown. I was feeling a bit under the weather, though, and this past week has been stressful with the test coming up, having to give a speech in class, and starting on a project for one of my lecture courses. The past few days I've been having an earnest break, though. :)

On Friday evening I went with a group of girls downtown to the large shopping district. It was fun, although I did discover that buying pants here is going to be something of a challenge (my formidable gaijin bottom was too much even for the double L size, haha). However, I did buy two shirts I really like from a store where everything was 490円 (or a little less than $5) and I picked up some fun souvenirs for folks. :D After shopping we went to this amazing parfait place. I know in America parfaits are thought of as generally a light food made with yogurt, but in Japan they are quite the opposite. My parfait was a small one, it had frozen berries, whipped cream, and chocolate ice cream and is just one of (no exaggeration) 150+ varieties available. There's even a $100 parfait that you have to order several days in advance, served in a bowl roughly the size of a small trashcan, piled high with whole fruits, ice cream, pancakes, donuts, and everything else imaginable. Needless to say, it's all quite delicious.

On Saturday morning I got up fairly early and went with the same group of girls to a ninja village. In case no one has ever told you, ninjas are awesome (although I don't care to weigh in on the ninja vs. pirate debate at this time). The ninja village is located in a town about a two and a half to three hour train ride outside of Kyoto. Even the town itself is quite into ninjas, providing a ninja themed just about everything (there were even ninja manikins hidden throughout, lurking above streetlights and rooftops). The actual ninja village included a ninja style house, a ninja museum, a castle with extremely high walls intended to keep ninjas out, and even a ninja demonstration in which several actors, fully dressed in ninja costume, came out and explained various ninja techniques and weapons before demonstrating them for us. I even have a short video of the final "fight"!
The ninja village, while satisfactorily full of ninjas, was also surrounded by very beautiful scenery.

A shrine at the ninja village.

The anti-ninja castle.

The gorgeous view of the river and mountains, from the hilltop anti-ninja castle.

And finally, although there was a slightly more expensive option that would have allowed us to walk around as ninjas all day, we decided to go the cheaper route and rent costumes for 20 minutes to take pictures and have some general ninja shenanigans, hehe. After all that, it had become rather late in the day, so we all climbed on the train and headed for home. When we returned we decided to stop by an 'onsen' or public bath, where we ate dinner at the adjoining restaurant and then had a nice luxurious soak in the hot pools of the onsen. If you ever get the chance to come to Japan, I highly recommend it, especially after a long day of walking around a ninja village.

In any case, not too much else to add. Last night I went to this amazing Thai curry place and had some really good peanut chicken curry and some mango sherbet for dessert, which had real chunks of mango in it, and today I haven't done much other than relax and try to grip on to the last few moments of my vacation. I'll try and up the posting a bit, hope everyone is doing well back home! :)