Announcing a Series on Japan!

                If your geekdom extends to Japanese culture and/or anime (or if you’re just interested in traveling to Japan someday), you’re in luck! Coming soon, I’ll be posting a series of entries all about my trip to Japan! It’s going to be a fairly long series, with at least 10 entries (I guess I had a lot to say.), so to break it up I’ll alternate between Japan posts and a regular, random, unrelated posts.

But first, a little background…

                I went to Japan in May of 2012. Yes, it’s been a while. But between the 2000+ pictures I took and the journal I kept as a requirement for the class, I remember it pretty well.

                Let me back up a bit. As I’ve mentioned before, I attended Lyon College for 3 years and minored in Japanese language, taking one Japanese class per semester. Every summer, Lyon College offers what it calls “Nichols Trips.” The college pays for groups of students to visit foreign countries that are somehow related to their areas of study, and sends a professor or two along as a guide/supervisor. After two years’ worth of Japanese classes, I got the opportunity to go to Japan on a Nichols Trip, with my Japanese teacher Mieko Peek. Since I wasn’t sure if I could ever afford to go on my own, I jumped at the once-in-a-lifetime chance.

                Billy was attending UACCB (a nearby community college) at the time and taking Japanese classes as a transfer student, so he qualified to go on the trip as well, but had to pay his own way. Now, this trip was about 2 ½ months before we got married, so we figured we’d skip having a honeymoon later in order to afford his trip plus food and shopping money for both of us. I think we’d both say it was worth it. ^_^

Billy and I standing in front of Kinkakuji (The Golden Pavilion).

                We stayed in Japan for two weeks. We left America on May 8^th and arrived in Kyoto , Japan on May 9^th local time. We spent about a week each in Kyoto and Tokyo, sometimes taking day trips to other nearby cities and towns. We saw Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, ancient castles, modern art, and lots more. We went shopping for electronics and anime in Akihabara and for cute lolita clothes in Harajuku. (Well, maybe that last one was mostly me…) Then we returned to America on May 22^nd.

                It was amazing, and I can’t wait to go back. Billy and I had decided by the third day there that it would not be our first and last trip. And ever since we got back, I’ve been missing Japan… almost like I’m homesick...

List of Japan series posts

 

                For your perusing convenience, I shall make a list as I go along. The up-to-date listing of every post in the series will stay right here:

• Announcing a Series on Japan!
• Food of Japan (Part 1) 
• Food of Japan (Part 2)
• Gundam Café
• Japanese Temples and Shrines
  
• Fushimi Inari Taisha
 

Keep an eye out for new posts to be added, and thanks for watching! ^_~