Whoa...

Sorry. It's been awhile. I just haven't gotten around to this. And my camera battery died when I needed it, so you won't get to see a lot of what I did if that's your thing. If your on facebook, there are lots of pics there.

Yea, so I went on a little trip this weekend with my school. There were 25 of us. We chartered a bus and took it south, near Mt. Fuji. We got to this area in the mountains that is collectively known as Hakone. We ate lunch at a traditional Japanese place. I have to say, I am not crazy about Japanese cuisine. It's just not my thing. So after a somewhat unsatisfying lunch, we headed up to an open air museum, which is, if you don't know, a big open park/garden filled with artwork. It was interesting, full of more modern/20th century pieces. The quality was pretty good; it had artwork by many well known sculptors. The more modern stuff I'm not really into, but fortunately, there wasn't a vast amount present.

Before dinner time, we went to where we were to stay the night. It's called a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn. I roomed with 4 guys. The room was very traditional, with tatami mats all on the floor, futons to sleep on, tables about 12 inches off the ground, tea everywhere, sliding doors...very traditional. Plus, they gave us these Japanese robes to wear. So I got to dress up like a Japanese for the whole weekend, which was awesome.

For dinner that night, all 25 of us ate a traditional Japanese feast in this big room where we had to sit on the ground. It was a lot of food, but like I said, I'm not crazy for Japanese stuff. Yet again, I had to cook my meat myself, this time under a super candle thing (it was amazing that a candle can boil water and cook meat). Afterwards, we sang karaoke (there was a stage in our room...go figure).

The whole reason why we were here though was for the hot springs. Japanese people like hot springs. So do I. After dinner, I hopped in the large outdoor one and just relaxed with a bunch of Japanese guys. It was amazingly hot though, so I couldn't stay long.

After a good night's sleep, I woke up early and hit up another hot spring. They are more than just giant hot tubs. They are elaborate, large, pieces of stone work and there are usually multiple ones, so they are large entities. Plus, people usually bath in the shower part. It's a public bath house basically. I had breakfast (they had some western food, like french fries and spaghetti, which was amazing, especially for breakfast), said good bye to my Japanese clothes and headed out for some castle.

The castle wasn't too memorable. It's famous, but it didn't strike a cord with me. Outside of it they had this zoo type thing which was kind of weird and sad. It was raining too, so that kind of killed the mood. We next went to a Buddhist temple, which was everlasting. There were buildings that kept going and going back into the woods and up a mountain. It was neat to see a Buddhist monastery and I got my fortune told too. It came on a piece of paper and it was written in Japanese. I had two Japanese people try and read it to me, but it keeps coming out weird. It's a good and bad fortune, from what I can tell, with lots of random stuff on it. I know that if I get in a fight though, that I will win, so that's good to know.

Then I came home. Week was fine; I had a midterm on Wednesday. It was weird. It was open book, essay format. But she wanted it written like a formal essay, with citations and all this stuff, so it was tough.

Highlight of the week: Jewish food. I ate at a Jewish place on Monday and it was awesome. I don't even know what Jewish food is or what exactly I ate, but it was worth it.

Ok, so it was another slow week. I'll try harder, lol.