First up, a few more photos from sightseeing in Nara with coworkers. Nara is the hometown of the colleague that organized this trip and invited us to visit. He gave me these photos today at the office.
Last week a few colleagues from our office in Germany were visiting and after a few days of meeting in the office, we traveled a bit around Japan to see some of our other office locations. I think the cities where our other offices are located are really beautiful so I was looking forward to this trip. Unfortunately for you, I took ZERO photos of all the loveliness. One exciting thing that came out of the meetings is that I'm officially extending my stay in Japan until December 10. Yay!
After spending the week in meetings, on tours, on trains and in taxis... I was really in need of some relaxing alone time. For as much as I enjoy spending time with my coworkers, I think I also require just as much down time so that I don't get burnt out. Enter Dogo Onsen. Seriously, for what does Wikipedia not have a listing??
Instead of joining my colleagues for dinner, I opted to do some sightseeing and visit this famous onsen in Matsuyama. I'm not sure if I've talked about onsen before but visiting one has been one of my Japan goals. They're all over Japan and are basically a public bathhouse. Some use water from natural hot springs and some use heated water. So each one is different and there are many famous ones in Japan. This one happens to be one of the more well known onsen. So for a Japanese person, visiting an onsen may be a one per week type activity. Not a big deal at all. But for an American, it's a pretty interesting experience since we don't really have anything like this in the US. And instead of explaining it in detail, I'm going to again defer to Wiki.
This is the entrance to the Dogo Onsen.
After leaving, I took a streetcar back to the area of my hotel and then wandered around to find some dinner.
Matsuyama at night.
I landed at Yoshinoya. Yes, Matsuyama is famous for fresh fish and awesome sushi. Yes, I chose instead to eat something familiar and delicious and quick. Enter Japanese fast food- gyudon. Rice bowl topped with sliced beef and grilled onions, raw egg swirled in. A little miso soup and pickled vegetables on the side. SO delicious. So easy. So thankful that my coworkers introduced me to this after the softball game last weekend.
Okay so I actually did take a few photos in Matsuyama. The trees were all pruned into really interesting shapes and so I thought they should be documented.
Oh, wait a minute.
Anyone else agree with me on this? I'm thinking Matsuyama definitely inspired some Super Mario Bros. scenery. Most definitely.
The view on our flight back to Osaka, just before getting to the city. I was amazed at the view from the plane of Osaka. Literally concrete and buildings for as far as you can see from both sides of the plane.
Friday night was spent Skyping with my favorite family. It was so nice to spend the morning (theirs!) with them and of course see my favorite baby girl. Seeing everyone together really got me excited about being home with everyone for Christmas. It really is my favorite time of year.
On Saturday, the only plan I had was to make my way to Osaka in the evening for a Thanksgiving dinner with friends from church. It was really rainy so I ended up having a really nice day consisting of sleeping in, taking a bath and going to the grocery in the rain. On my bike. I took my umbrella along in case I would have to try the whole driving while holding an umbrella deal. But thankfully it was barely sprinkling so I didn't have to attempt it (could this be the dangerous thing?). Going to the grocery is probably one of my favorite activities here. Well, really anywhere. If you want to make me really happy, give me $20 and take me to the grocery store. Heaven.
Thanksgiving dinner ended up being really fun. I (unintentionally) took the last train home from Osaka so I should probably be more careful about that in the future. But seriously, one of the largest cities in the world and your trains stop running at midnight?? Even MARTA goes later than that and we all know how bad MARTA is. At dinner, I talked for a long time to one of my friends about different social issues in Japan and differences in mentality between Japan and the West. So after I got home I stayed on the computer another two hours researching the things we had discussed. Needless to say, I didn't wake up in time to make it to church on Sunday :)
The buses from the train station stop running at around 10pm. So I frequently have to take taxis back to my apartment. My ride on Saturday night was really entertaining because the cab driver had a little bit of a hard time figuring out where I live. Usually, I just say the name of my neighborhood and apartment complex and hand them a map with the name written out and they know exactly where to go. The problem when they're not exactly sure where to go is that I'm the only other person in the car and I'm no help at all. This ended up happening on Saturday night. So the cab driver kept asking me questions and I would just laugh and keep saying "English only" which would make him laugh and proceed to ask the question again, really slowly. Of course this made me laugh even more because to me, Japanese is Japanese whether it's spoken at normal or super slow speed. And I can't understand it either way. We ended up making it to my apartment with no issues and I think he asked me how long I was staying in Japan. I think I told him two months. No one will ever know.
After sleeping until after 10am on Sunday (so nice!) I mapped out a route from my apartment to the local train station area. I didn't exactly have an idea of what I wanted to do once I got there, but I figured that I'd think of something during my 45 minute walk. This route is similar to the one that the bus takes from my apartment so the scenery was familiar. The bus route passes the public library and I've always wanted to stop in and check it out. So during my walk when I realized that I was standing in front of the library, I took the opportunity to go inside. After wandering for a bit, I sat at one of the touch screen computers where you search for a book and started touching commands until I got to a screen with an English alphabet search form. I typed in a few book titles that I had discussed with my friend at Thanksgiving the night before and jotted down the reference number on where to find the book. After some more wandering and trying to make sense of the cataloging system, I was able to find one of the three books that I had written down. I had a small hope that I would find something in English since I was able to search with the English titles, but no such luck. However on the way out, I did spot English versions of Time and Vogue magazines. So maybe next weekend I'll go back to catch up on some fashion and news.
Next I landed in one of my favorite coffee shops and camped out for a while with coffee, a pastry and my book. This is also one of my favorite activities. If it involves good coffee, people watching, bread and reading something interesting- I'm in.
Next I headed to the nearby mall for some shopping and to meet a friend for a movie. The above photos are from the pet store. I debated picking up some things for Hershey and Cocoa but since I'm not exactly sure what DogBread Pumpkin is...
The movie ended up not happening but we did do a little shopping for my favorite niece and ate a fantastic dinner at a Nepalese restaurant.
This morning's breakfast, since I haven't shown you nearly enough food lately. Looks really strange but it's scrambly spinach, ham and egg with a side of sliced persimmon. I found a new instant matcha latte mix at the grocery this week and this was the first trial. So, so good. And easy! All it needed was a little more milk and some fluffing.
The temperature has been much colder these past few days.
Cold enough for my big fluffy scarf to make its debut! Thanks, Hannah. Also, thank you pillow for that sweet sleepy face. Ha.
Have I told y'all about ground golf? My office held its annual tournament over the past two weeks and since I've mostly been gone because of travel, I haven't gotten to see many of the games. Originally I was a substitute for one of the teams but when it came time for me to play, I chickened out for fear of embarrassing my team. It also happened to be the day that my boss was visiting the office and would be watching the games. That may or may not have contributed as well.
So today was the last day of the tournament. I was looking forward to watching the final match from a comfortable distance on the sidelines. Imagine my surprise when a colleague came into our office this morning and said, "Kasaleen-san, ground golf!" Apparently it's important for everyone to participate in the games. I figured that no one had noticed the fact that I hadn't actually played. Should have guessed that I was wrong about that.
So I got placed on a team with two colleagues that I hadn't officially met before. But I asked another colleague to tell me each of their names beforehand so that I could remember them and say hi before we started.
Ground golf is kind of a mix between putt putt and croquet. As you can see, you have to hit the ball into the wire cage. The clubs are wooden and the ground golf balls are kind of rubbery and plastic-y feeling and about the size of a racquet ball.
The game was so fun and our team lost by one point.
This is the top two teams. Obviously I didn't help my team make it to the top but I'll still pose for the photo. My team was so funny and made me laugh the whole time even though I didn't really know what they were saying. But I think sports is a language within itself :)
Tonight I'm blogging and catching up on emails while the Japanese national volleyball team plays Argentina on TV.
Heaven.
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