| Happy New Year!! |
[Jan. 2nd, 2010|03:39 am] |
On Monday I went to my first Maid and Butler Cafe in Japan!! This is a picture of the maid with the New Years card that I made and I gave them an extra. If I can find the blog that it was posted on I will edit and put it up... but for now I can't seem to find it. >_<
The cafe was really cute, the maids were in adorable outfits, and there was one very nice looking man who was in a butler outfit. But sadly he didn't serve us much, but the maids were friendly!! My friend really wanted a butler cafe, I really don't mind either way.
It was a lovely experience, it's just fun to watch people in their cute outfits and listen to them speak to you in super polite Japanese. They would always say "Ojuosama" which I guess like like "Madam" only stronger... It was also interesting watching the men come into the store, they were so... strange. I am going to make it my goal to go to maid cafes more often... do some observation of these men because it's just so weird and interesting!!
Anyways the card she is holding is the cards I started working on a couple of months ago for New Years. Japanese people send cards to each other at the beginning of the year, kind of similar to the standard Christmas card. You send it to everyone you know, and it's even more special if you make it by hand. Mine were done by wood block printing, so I carved an image into a piece of wood, and then layer by layer added paint and stamped it onto the page. It's a long and time consuming process, but it's also a lot of fun and a traditional Japanese art!
New Years was.... insane. I met up with my friends and we went to a count down party in Osaka. The club there was so crowded it was insane! It was a lot of fun, but at the same time, I don't think I will do that again next year. New Years is the only day in Japan when the trains run 24 hours, so of course the goal was to stay out... all night long!!
After the count down party my friends and I took the train back to Nara and went to Todaiji Temple and Kasuga Taisha Shrine at 4 in the morning. It was so awesome going there in the middle of the night! There were surprisingly a lot of people at the temple and shrine around that time, usually people will just go at midnight, or wait until the next day. Most of the people were young people around my age... though I did see a family with a new born baby... o_O
It was the perfect New Years plan. Go to a club, have too much fun. Then go to a temple and pray for whatever you did at that club... then go to the shrine and pray for good luck and for it to never happen again.
Luckily my fortune for the year said "good luck."
It was a really fun night with friends and I didn't get home until 7am! Of course that meant that I slept in until 2pm... making me stay up until 4am today. This is going to suck going back to normal people time...
Those were my adventures!!
Happy New Year everyone! |
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| a silly dream |
[Dec. 29th, 2009|12:32 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
For a long time I've been trying to figure out what I want to do when I go home.
The only thing I have figured out for sure, is I must do a road trip across the US. The idea started a long time ago, when I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I thought it would be such a great idea! To travel across the US, going to all the weird and unknown places mentioned in the book.
The longer I am here, the more there is I want to see, more places I want to visit at home. I want to visit my sister in New York, I want to visit Jess wherever she maybe at that time, I want to finally see Washington D.C., I want to go back to Colorado and see my old house and my old neighborhood, I want to drive across the desert and visit a tourist trip that's way out in the middle of nowhere. I want to spend some time in major cities and see great things in each one.
My goal is to save up enough money to go on a very long road trip, at least one month long in the summer that I come home. I feel like the time between going home from Japan, and finding a home and a place to work is the best time to wander around. I have no obligations, no permanence.
When I go home from Japan, I will get all my stuff together. At that point I will really know the things I need and don't need in life. Get rid of all the stuff that I was attached to before leaving, and only keep what I can fit inside of a car. I will then hopefully buy a car (or if need be rent one for this trip) and I am thinking an iPhone (or what ever equlivliant will be around at that time that has navigation as well). Afterward, I will pack up my whole life, everything I own, everything I am, and set off on an adventure across the country.
In the end, I want to be in California. I plan for California to be my last stop on my road trip. There I can see my friends living there and also see the state myself. It seems like a good ending point, a place where I hope I can find a career and create a new place of permanence.
This is just a silly idea, but it's something I would love to do more than anything when I get back home.
I don't know why while I am living in Japan I am craving to drive across the US. Maybe it will just be the ultimate cure for homesickness. Maybe, I want to see the US from an outsider's perspective.
There are also parts of me that don't want to go back home just yet, that wants to see different parts of the world, and live in other places as well. But maybe... maybe that can be left for the future as well.
Just ideas. |
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