oh deer, what would Buddha do.

So I’m going to do one of those things that people who don’t regularly update enough do, just throw a bunch of past events together and write one semi-long entry. To make it more bearable, I'll put a lot of pictures in, yay.

1. For Spring Break, I went to Kyoto and Nara

Just so I feel like I’m filling your head with a little information instead of pure mindless chatter, Nara and Kyoto are located in the Kansai region of Japan. This means they are not close to Tokyo (I’m saying this because people often seem to think Japan=Tokyo), and for the record I am also nowhere near close to Tokyo. I’m slightly closer to the Kansai region, but it’s still a ways away. Anyway, both Kyoto and Nara were once capitals of Japan. The Kansai area is a really nice area to visit and I would recommend visiting Kansai over Tokyo any day.

Kyoto is famed for its Geisha and indeed, we did manage to see a gaggle of them near Kyoto Station. Didn’t manage to get a great picture or anything, but the quality will be made up for in quantity (of Geisha that is).

I think I actually prefer Nara to Kyoto a little bit. It’s smaller, but a very pretty area. The main attraction in Nara is the Big Buddha.
It’s enclosed in the largest wooden structure in the world (I think). The other big attraction in Nara is the deer. There are ‘sacred' deer wandering around all over. As you can see, the deer and I quickly became good friends. They even gave me a little souvenir.

2. That whole band thing.

So we had another show and this time we had a full band, drums and all. Very exciting. The show went well and we even took one of those ‘band taking a picture in a random outdoor setting’ type shots. It was fun and we’ll do it again soon. Leif wrote a little something about it here. (That's Leif in the picture under the ladder, fearless in the face of bad luck.) You can see some pictures over yonder and if you’re really interested, you can watch a bit of the show (or at least listen as the lighting isn’t so favorable) here.

3. I went to a cool festival and all I got was this crappy shirt.

I lied, I didn't get a shirt. This festival was seriously cool. It’s a horseback-archery-festival held in the southern part of Shimane in a really pretty town called Tsuwano. Basically there are a few guys (and one girl actually) that ride on horseback under some cherry blossoms trying to hit three targets via bow and arrow. Very cool.

4. Cherry Blossoms

As you may have inferred from the above section, the cherry blossoms are finally out in Japan. Well actually, it's more accurate to say that they were out since I'm putting this up quite late. It's refreshing to see the flowers after a long, long winter.

letter from an American kid

Hanging on the wall of my elective English class.