Dancing is forbidden.

Hello again. I have now been here for over a week and am beginning to settle in and I think it is safe to say:

It's just so pretty. I really like to walk around with icecream because I pretty much have nothing else to do (other than learn Japanese and German.)

I live on the 14th floor at the top of a mountain (hill?) and this is the view from my window. The photo doesn't really show, but the weather has been amazing the whole time- I have not worn a jumper once and have got a tan. last night someone from our Japanese group invited us to go grilling (bbq) somewhere on campus which was nice.

This is somewhere in town but I thought I would honour the cherry blossom with a photo as I missed it in Japan. I will go and see it one day.
It's starting to sink in that I'm in Germany...
This is where I get of the bus generally if I want to go into town or to the park.

On Thursday night I met some friends in the park and we wanted to go and celebrate as it was a Feiertag on Friday and we had the day off. What my friends had forgotten is that a Feiertag means you are not allowed to feier. There was a Tanzverbot after midnight and there was no music anywhere in town. I like Germany and everything but a dancing ban seems a bit 16th century to me. My friend then also sent me a link to the website which explains that Baden-Württenberg (The state I'm in) has the most days with a dance ban.

Anyway I will go now as I need to buy something to make Spätzle with, which is a kind of egg pasta which comes from this region.

Oops I met them again - England Trip

Before I went to Tübingen, I had a visit from Yohei from Japan and Clara from France. In the spirit of our trips in Japan (Kamakura etc.) this was the England trip. We also want a Germany one and a France one.

Amongst other things we had a pub lunch: Had a nice walk in the countryside,And Yohei had a staring competition with a sheep.

We also cooked Japanese food which was nice and it felt kind of like being back in Japan together.

Happy Crossing Sad Crossing.

I thought you might like to hear the crossing the road song. This is the sad one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ommgK1dPwL0&feature=related

And this is the happy one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIuXQfV3z4M&feature=related

Unfortunately the whole tune isn't on the recording, but as you can see it is much happier.

And Now for Something Completely Different

I'm currently sat in Birmingham airport waiting for my flight to Stuttgart. After the disasters in Japan I have been very lucky in getting a place at Tübingen University to study Japanese, and it's great as I can also learn German at the same time. I have nowhere to live when I get there so I am just going to see what happens.

I thought it would be nice to continue blogging about my travels in Japan but unfortunately my photos are on the computer at home so that will have to wait a little while. Instead I will have to blog about Japan in another way. I had two friends who I met in Japan over at the weekend – Yohei from Japan and Clara from France and it was lovely. Me and Clara ended up talking about some of our other senses in Japan (than just sight.)

Trains-

The feeling of not holding on to anything as you are pressed in on all sides by other people (it's actually fairly comforting- like a big hug.)

The feeling on your bum where the heated seats are just a little bit too hot.

The announcements in Japanese and then a horrible American English.

The noise in each station. Each station has its own tune, to help sleepy commuters know where they are and it's really loud. Some tunes are nice, others are dreadful. I particularly liked Mitaka and Higashi-Koganei.

The sinking feeling in your heart when you've just run to get on a train and then realise you are in the women only carriage.

The level crossings (there are many of them) near my halls played repeatedly a major 3^rd (C and E) on a piano when a train was coming.

Food

When eating riceballs wrapped in dried seaweed (my diet whilst I was travelling pretty much) your fingers stick slightly to the seaweed and then it cruches and breaks when you bite it.

The splatter of soup on your chin from slurping noodles.

CHOPSTICKS!

The song our rice cooker made when it was ready- the happy rice song.

The taste of Matcha- Matcha latte, icecream, biscuits, chocolate and cake. I will seriously miss this.

The smell of the kitchen when someone has been cooking with Kimchi (Korean spicy pickled cabbage- berry derishasu.)

The unhappy crossing the road song.

The happy crossing the road song.

The heavy japanese rain on your 100 yen umbrella (cheap but still open up at the push of a button.)

The incredibly loud sound of pachinko parlours (a type of pinball gambling?) if the doors open as you walk past.

The distant sound of someone singing (wailing?) when you enter a Karaoke place.

The feeling of metal to your lips when you get a bit too close to the microphone.

The rush of blood to the head and tingling fingers about 2 hours into an 8 hour long session of Karaoke. This is then followed by a bit of dip until about 6 hours in when you perk up again.

A lot of Japanese people of their clothes (rather than perfume etc.) which is quite nice and you can smell it much more when it rains.

The bump as you go up onto the pavement on your bike (then off again, then on again...)

The shock as you use a washlet (spraying toilet) for the first time, or if someone has changed the settings to extra strong spray and the water temperature to high.

And now for something completely different- I'm in Tübingen and it's very pretty. I've made a German friend already who showed me the town and helped me around etc. I'm looking forward to the next few months. Here are two photos I took.

Miyajima a.k.a. Shrine Island.

The day after I was in Hiroshima, I went to Miyajima, which translates as Shrine Island, although its true name is Itsukushima. I have no idea what that translates as. From ages and ages ago this island has been sacred, I think for all the lovely flowers plants and animals which seem to flourish here. Because of that they decided to build a shrine on it, but not so much as on it, as off it. The island is sacred, so peasants and commoners were not allowed to set foot upon it. The solution was to build the shrine in the sea, supported by wooden struts from the ground. Just in case you haven't read all of my blog (or if I forgot to mention earlier) temples are Buddhist and shrines are Shinto, which is a native Japanese religion, although they seem to mix from time to time. To get to a shrine, you always have to go through the torii (Shinto gate thing,) which is why they built a massive one out in the sea off the island so people could go through it on a boat. It is the first thing you see on your way to the island (although sadly the ferry couldn't fit through it) and is pretty much one of the most famous sights of Japan after Mr. Fuji-san.

Warning: Many photos of pretty much the same thing follow. It was really difficult to decide if I liked it more at high or low tide, am or pm, tree or no tree, so I decided to include a wide selection for your viewing pleasure.
I got there at about 8 in the morning, as I intended on spending the entire day on the island. The tide was about half way in, and it was probably minus a million degrees because it was so windy.

About 10 minutes after I got to this view point, another ferry load had arrived with a school trip of children. This is pretty much the downside to being a tourist in Japan- you are never alone. I was glad I got there early, as afterwards it was all noisy and like this:
This shrine is one of the 3 sacred sights of Japan according to some confucian scholar. I haven't seen the other two, but they've got a hard act to follow.

I met my flatmate Yoshi a bit later on and whilst waiting for high tide (11.55am) we decided to have a wander and finish eating our breakfast. This was more of a challenge than you may think. Deer. Although you aren't allowed to feed them here, they will try anything to feed themselves. One ate the map out of my pocket (it was free so no worries there) and seemed really intent on having my raisin pan (like a big bread roll with raisins and currents.) In order to stop this breakfast theft, I held the bread high out of deer reach, not realising how this made me a target for an attack from above. A great big eagle (or black kite as I have just learned from the translation from Japanese) came out of nowhere, grabbed my bread, narrowly missing my face, and flew off. I was in quite a state of shock, as was Yoshi. Here is a diagram to show exactly how it happened. I apologise for using an eagle instead of a black kite on the diagram, I didn't realise there was a difference until just now.

Here it is again with some interesting clouds:
And again with some barnacles in the foreground:
When it got to high tide, we finally went in the shrine. It was rather beautiful:
I had to wait for ages to take this photo without anyone in it: Luckily the Japanese tourists are lovely and considerate when they see that you want to take a photo. They were also queuing (yes that's right) to have their photo taken in front of it. That is something else I love about Japan, if you ask someone to take a photo of you, they usually take a good photo, with the thing you want in the background, beautifully composed.


After the shrine at high tide, we decided to walk up the mountain to get a great view of some other islands This helpful sign pointed us to where we could get a cable car. The person who wrote it clearly had a sense of humour.
We were going to walk but felt lazy and decided to get the cable car "to save time."

Here is the view from the top:

And on our way back down (on foot) Here was the view of the torii. As you can see the tide was well on its way out. People were on their way out to it. To touch it brings good luck I believe.
We went out to it,

I touched it,

Took some more photos (naturally...)
then decided that to kill time before sunset, we would go to onsen to soak away our aches and pains from the tiring mountain climbing (yeah right.)

We came out just at the right time for sunset which was beautiful. I would have hung around for more photos but It was colder than the Antarctic, so we rushed straight back on to the ferry and went for soba.

Okayama and Hiroshima

On my way to Hiroshima (on the slow trains) I stopped off in Okayama, famous for its snacks, a garden and a black castle, known as the Crow's Castle. The name reminds me of a place near Osaka, called Okayamate, which is not pronounced like OK mate.
The castle was lovely.
But then it started to rain, so I couldn't go to the nice garden, and we decided to look for soba (buckwheat noodles, v. tasty) instead, but finding out that people don't really eat soba in western Japan, its all about udon (chunky rice noodles- nice but I was fairly sick of that after Osaka...) and we had to settle for udon.

After that it was back on the train, alone apart from some obaasan (old women) who insisted on giving me cake and snacks, headed for Hiroshima.

I arrived at night, but found my hostel, made some friends and went out for food with them.

The next day I went round the main Hiroshima sights. First of all is the Genbaku Dome, or A-Bomb Dome, which I believe is the only building in the city which predates 1945. It was pretty much directly under the bomb when it exploded , which is the reason it still stands today as a reminder of the damage and destruction. It is now seen as a symbol of Hiroshima.

It's only small but when you think about what it survived, it's fairly incredible. As the bomb went off, everyone inside the building was instantly killed and this required a few moments of quiet reflection.Many things made me sad in that area, such as the Peace Memorial Park, which was an area completely destroyed by the bomb. There are memorials for all different victims of the blast, such as the Korean workers, who were being forced to work in Japan at the time.

There is also a memorial for the children, as the majority of people who were killed or affected were women and children, and this is surrounded by origami cranes. The story behind these is that as girl called Sadako, who was at home, about a mile from ground zero when the explosion happened. She contracted leukemia. She had hear a traditional story that anyone who folds 1000 origami cranes is granted a wish by a crane. Some stories say she didn't meet her goal before she died, and others say she folded that many and continued. She died in October 1955, 12 years old.

Afterwards her friends continued to fold these cranes, and people all over the world still do so and send them to Hiroshima.
The peace memorial museum was also very moving. It was very unbiased and went into lots of detail. I think it is an essential visit for anyone who goes to Hiroshima.

After that I was feeling quite sombre and I met my flatmate, Yoshi from Tokyo, who had also been to the museum that morning, and we met up with Emma, who studies Japanese with me at Newcastle, and went for the Hiroshima speciality food of Okonomiyaki, also known as Hiroshimayaki. This is a different style to that in Osaka, and much more fancy. It involves bacon (if you eat it) and noodles, and a fried egg, plus anything else you might wish to include, other vegetables, Kimchi, cheese, anything. The tradition is to have it with Yakisoba- fried chinese noodles, which is very nice, but I also had it with udon, which I have to say was berry derishasu.

Despite the city's tragic past, it is really busy and a really nice place. It had quite a "European" feel about it. We went to the castle (obviously a reconstruction) and had traditional Japanese style photos taken...
And inside it we saw this :
Which lead to this:
Which just goes to show that there is more to Hiroshima than people first think.

Nara- Oh deer.

Don't go: If you like big cities

Do go: If you like temples, deer and being harassed (by deer.)

Also go: If you like taking photos of stone lanterns.

Having been to Nara to see the fire festival a few nights before, I had only seen the city in the dark or near dark. It didn't stop me being told off by a monk for taking this photo. I'm not sure why he was telling me off though, I just finished taking the photo, humbly said sorry and then left. The paparazzi survives to strike again.

I also made a nice friend who could show me around the next time I went. I hope I didn't startle him with my flash. It will teach him not to be so nosy in the future.

This is the same place but in the day time. It is a different deer, although it could be the same one on a bad day.


Safety first:
There were two lovely little gardens a short walk away from the main park where the swarms of deer and tourists are. One of them was 600 yen to enter, the other was free for foreigners. Guess which one we went in. It would have been nice to see when all the flowers are out but never mind.
Nara is special because it was the first real capital of Japan and has some really old temples. It also boasts the largest wooden structure in the world, housing Japan's largest Daibutsu (Big Buddha.) Unfortunately when these things are inside its always impossible to get a good photo as it's so dark, but I tried. It was awesome (I don't like using that word, but I mean it in the "I was in awe" sense.)

I have forgotten who this is but I like his style anyway. Or is it a she? I'm not sure.


I made another friend:And an entire harem...
In the park, much nearer the station, you can buy special crackers for the deer to eat, but I wanted to save mine for later so I could treat the deer who live further away. They were much less demanding until you hold out the crackers when they started off.


Fed up of lanterns? There are more coming but for a break have a look at this lovely photo. It is everyone's wishes for love. I want to meet someone nice etc etc etc.
And back to the lanterns.

The deer here were totally different- they didn't even want my crackers really. I also tried bowing to them and these ones bowed back- obviously due to higher standards of respect.
That's another post to cross off my list. There are still many more to come.