A VERY SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

I'd like to interrupt this update with a special announcement. Ah-hem.

I'M GOING TO SEE KIYOSHI IN CONCERT!!!

My ticket came!!

My ticket in all of its glory!

I'm going to his show in Chiba-ken on the 4th of November at 2:30. Next Thursday!!
...I already know what you're thinking. "Rebecca, doesn't your fall break end on Wednesday? Doesn't that mean you have class on Thursday?"
Well, yes it does! But it's Politics class. I think I have a right to suddenly become too sick to go to class.

Funny thing about this ticket; it ended up costing me about ¥3000 more than normal, because by the time I decided that YES, I MUST GO, tickets were already sold out. Thus! This ticket is from a scalper website. Whatever. It came within two days of my ordering it! To celebrate my achievement, I'm going to post this video! Watch it!


Now, let's get back to our update. For today, I'll update on our "study tour" to Nikko!


Emily and I on the train! Apparently it wasn't an actual Shinkansen, but it sure looked and felt like what I would imagine one would look and feel like. Regardless, we'll be coming back from Osaka on one next Wednesday, so I'll be able to compare after that. Yes, my hair does look awful in this picture. I had just suffered through rush hour on a train from Kanazawa-hakkei to Asakusa. With a heavy duffel bag and a warm hat on. Not fun.

My lunch on the train! See that pink thing hiding behind the "grass"? Awful. The rest? Pretty good!

Our first stop was Edo Wonderland! Pretty much a theme park (without rides D:<) based on the Edo period.

Oh hey Nicole!

This was supposed to be a ninja haunted house. There were no ninjas. Maybe zombie ninjas? Regardless, it was scary.

The park's cute samurai dog mascot.

Shrine. Note the gold guy.

Gold guy EXTREME CLOSE UP. Looks upset, right? I incurred his wrath some more when I went and "prayed" before him without throwing a coin into the little box. He got back at me later that day. I'll get there in a bit.

Pretty~

These fish were SO INTENSE and SO UGLY. They had these giant mouths that opened and closed all awkwardly. We could buy food and feed them, and they would get way too excited.

Nicole and KC feeding the fish.

Fish EXTREME CLOSE UP. Disgusting.

Pretty.

They put on some mini-play about this wanted-guy. Lots of fighting. What up with this guys face?

Intense fight scene!

This really twisted tree statue outside of another scary house. I didn't get a picture, sadly, but at the very end of this scary house a bright shining Buddha appeared, apparently cleansing everyone's souls! Nice.

After that we went to another part of the park that showed some torture scenes. This guys was made to sit like this:

Sucks to be him.
After this, there were several different scenes being depicted with dolls. Take a look:



Dying guy EXTREME CLOSE UP. I took a ton of these shots. I won't post any more, so you all get to look forward to seeing them when I get back!

Where am I?

They had a ninja perspective house! Except it was just a perspective house. Again, no ninja to be found. It was INCREDIBLY difficult to walk inside of it though. Surprisingly difficult. Way better than the Crooked Man's house at Enchanted Forest. Nah, nothing ever beats Enchanted Forest.

Emily totally standing up straight with her pimp face on.

Emily putting the moves on a statue. Get some, Emily!

Pretty...

We had seen this Yakuza guy all around the park and FINALLY I got a shot of him!

After Edo Wonderland, we went to our hotel! There, we changed into the Yukata they provided for us and went down to the baths. Here we are in our yukata:

A serious photo. Even if Emily is the only one with a serious face. From the right: Emily, Brenna, KC, Nicole, me!

And a normal photo!

Making a heart with Brenna!

I thought being in an onsen with my friends would be super embarrassing. Turns out it wasn't at all.

Alright, remember me saying that the gold guy statue at the shrine got back at me? Well, let me tell you the story...

When we first got to the hotel, the international center staff who came with us, Oshii-san, told us that because there were a ton of high school students also saying at the hotel, we couldn't enter the onsen from 7:00 to 9:00. Because they had booked it for that time, we assumed. So around 5:30 we went in and used the baths and the onsen, then later around 7:30 we decided to take our used bath towels to put them in the laundry basket inside the changing room that leads to the onsen. HOWEVER, as Brenna, Nicole, and I approached the changing room entrance, some hotel staff women came out and told us 「外国人NO！」 which is a lovely mix of Japanese and English which means "Foreigner NO". Shocked, all I could do was hold up my towel and say in Japanese, that "I just wanted to put the towel..." which earned me a look from the staff lady that clearly showed she was wondering which planet I came from, so I replied with a clearly PO-ed "It's fine!" and stormed off. First of all, it's rude for her to say it like that. There are a million other ways she could of said we couldn't go in. For example, "I'm very sorry, but until 9:00 the baths are only open to high school students." What made this all the much more rude, was the fact that she was a STAFF MEMBER. I'm paying to stay there, why would she talk to a guest like that? Then again, with how xenophobic this country is, it was only a matter of time until I was faced with this level of racism.

It's times like this when I wonder, what the hell am I doing here? Then again, this sort of thing happens everywhere. I wonder, have any of you had a similar experience of discrimination? In the US or anywhere else? Let me know about it, we can complain together!

The next day we went to Nikko Toushouguu. Which has lots of old buildings and shrines and what not. We had an English speaking guide, but thanks to her quiet voice, most of the time we couldn't hear her. So, no, I didn't learn anything. Saw some nice architecture, though.

All of us! Third row: Marie. Second row from right: Alex, Nicole, me, Yinzhou, Brenna, Hiromi, Emily, Chiaki-sensei. First row from right: Kiana, Niki, Kelli, KC.

A pretty building.

The 'hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil' monkeys. I took more pictures around the place, but god, history is so boring.

Lunch time! From the right: Hiromi, Emily, Brenna, KC.

Nicole, Yinzhou, Marie.

KC and I!

So pretty much, that was my trip to Nikko! Overall it was fun, except for the experience with my mortal enemy, the Foreigner-NO staff lady.

Tomorrow I'll recap our politics field trip and our short trip to Kamakura, and tell you all about my epic plans for fall break!

For now, I'm off to write a report. Goodnight, everyone!