November 14. 2004 00:00

Maple leaves

I have a bit of a headache and I felt disturbingly fewerish on the way home, but I'll try to write this entry today. Let's see how it goes...

Today we went to Arashiyama for Momiji matsuri, Maple Leaf Festival, with Dion. It was surprisingly fun with him. He's got a kind of a bad nature, but it kinda reminds me of my class back home, so it makes me feel somehow relaxed ^_^ Haha, it's funny to say this, but the people in our class are sometimes real bitches, but that's what makes them so much fun to be with :P When you know they're gonna make fun of you anyway, you can just be yourself. And nobody really means to be mean with all their talk, even though they sound nasty sometimes. If you ask me, we have great class spirit ^_^

Well, there was no information about the time the festival took place so I just decided to leave at 10.30. Dion was cursing me to hell for waking up so early. Haha, I knew he'd be like that :P In fact, I woke up at nine and ate a good breakfast and had a long shower... It was a great morning. (And a great day, though cloudy. I still don't have to wear a winter coat outside! Just a T-shirt and a sweater and I'm fine.)

The subway and bus took a while, of course, but I hadn't prepared for the horrible traffic jam near Arashiyama... I think we spent 30 minutes on the last couple of kilometers. The events listed in the Kyoto Visitor's Guide are so different that I never know what to expect. I thought this was one of the smaller events, but it seemed like half of Kyoto was there. We didn't let it bother us too much, though. The festivities were mostly on boats in the river, so we could see them from the other bank, even if they weren't too close. And somehow (at least for me) the day wasn't about seeing the festival but more like about spending time out. It was great to have a free time and spend it just walking outside.

There were lots of food stalls of course. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep track of what I was eating, so I decided to let this be a "eat what you like" day and forget about the diet for a while. I only tried to keep it a little down, and to eat regularly. (That's good for dieting, keeps your body burning the calories... If you were wondering why it's important.) I tried okonomiyaki today. It was nice, but not as good as takoyaki. There was yakisoba too, but that'll have to wait for the next time. Dion had this funny family tradition of eating squid by the river, so I joined him, because it sounded kinda nice. The squid here is so much better than in Finland... (Well, obviously, it's fresh.) Then we had some manjuu things that were filled with meat and rice, they were pretty good, too. At least much better than the bean paste one I had...

The festival itself was nice, but I enjoyed sitting next to the water almost more than watching the festivities. It would've been great to be there on the boats, though, dressed up funny and performing something. There was a Shinsengumi boat with two men in appropriate clothes and swinging katanas and it was clearly everybody's favourite. (Mine, too, they were so cool/funny :P) There were some pretty miko (shrine maiden) girls that inspired Dion (and me too, since he was up to it...) to comment the girls around... Well, actually it started already in the bus when we were discussing whether one very masculine looking girl was in fact a girl or a guy. (The all-together feeling was a girl, in my opinion.) It's fun to comment on girls (or guys) sometimes. Now I'm side-tracking to not-so-important things of the day again, so let's get back to the "main plot"...

So, the maple leaves. The Arashiyama mountain was only starting to get red, so the festival wasn't maybe as wonderful as it might've been. But after the festival we went to Tenryuji temple, the world heritage site I missed the last time I was in Arashiyama. Walking there through the park, there were some pretty nice autumn leaves, but the best ones were in the temple garden. There were bright red ones and everything. There's gonna be more, I think, but that was the best I've seen this far. We never got into the main temple, we just went to the garden, because we came in from the back and the temple entrance is in the front, and we would've had to pay extra for the temple... But we could see half of it from the garden, so I don't really think we missed that much.

And just to note, we happened to walk into the old train line's last station at the side of the park... It's a really weird place for a train station, but it had a nice feel to it. Not many train lines end in a bamboo forest ^_^

After that we shopped around for a while. I got some souvenirs to my girlfriends (Tsu & Friggs, that is), but I'm not gonna tell you what they are so they'll be a surprise when I get home ;P (I'm mean.) Dion got one of those ear-digging sticks (you know, you clean your ears with them) and was disgusted when I told it was what lovers do to each other :P Then we parted, he went home and I went to spend, spend, spend money at Book-Off.

Did I already mention I spent lots of money? I seldom get to waste loads of money, so I wanted to go for it today, and spent all I had with me. A round 10 000 yen ^_^ I got mostly CDs but also a little something else. I got the Inu-Yasha "artbook" that I've been running into for a while but didn't really want to get because it has so much "boring" text and less art. It turned out to be a great reference for fan art drawings and cosplay, though, with all the character sketches and everything. Good thing I got it in the end. Then I got this packet I've been looking at several times (it's been there for a while). It has a book and a CD with the story read out. I thought the book would be just a manga, but it has lots of "fan stuff", too... Boring, I like clean manga and art more, random fan info on a thing I'm not a fan of is boring O_o And clean manga would be easier to follow, too... The art is ok, though, and it seems to have more than one story in it. (And the stories seem to be for a little more mature audience, since there are a couple of sex scenes there... Nothing explicit, but enough that you get the point.) Anyway, I figured the combination of sound and text would be good for studying Japanese.

Then I got the X-Men 2 DVD for me and Ravie, because we have the first movie as a Japanese DVD, too. I wonder if I can watch it with my comp... I'd love to see a good movie, it's been ages since I've seen any :3 And then I got a pile of CDs. The reason why I'm still up and not sleeping and mending my upcoming (though at the moment surprisingly in-existent) head-ache is that I have a tradition of listening the CDs I buy through once when I get them. Start to finish, no suffle, no repeat, one time the way they were "meant to be" before I start mixing them up with whatever other music. I got another X-Japan CD for Ravie, a random sale CD Rise/Speed (it's kinda nice for a totally random thing), No way to say single by Hamasaki Ayumi (I thought it was a full CD, damn... At least it was cheap... Sometimes I want cheesy pop and since I don't have a radio I have to buy some cheap pop music :P), Dream Field by See-Saw (my hand just went for it... It has a pretty cover, by the way), the second Best of Inu-Yasha collection (Wai! I didn't expect to run into it!) and Avril Lavigne's Under My Skin. I thought I'd be buying that Avril anyway, so why not get it here for cheap. Besides, I've been missing her music. And there're Japanese translations of all the songs! What... joy! (or something) :D

I have a long list of things I still want, on the top of which is Maaya's newest album and single collection, but I haven't seen Maaya's CDs in the Book-Off at all. And the others are things I just want to try out but are by so famous people that I can't get them for as cheap as I'd like. They're all 1500 yen... (Like the real Hamasaki Ayumi CDs... I should've figured it'd be a single if it was that cheap.) I'm not into buying CDs that I just want "for fun" for 1500 yen, I'll rather wait until I find a cheaper deal, or until I'm sure I have lots of extra money and nothing else to spend it on. Or until I really feel like shopping :P For the Maaya CDs, for those I don't really mind if they're brand new and expensive. (Actually, it might be quite nice. I respect Maaya enough to buy them new ^_^)

Oh, midnight. Cool :D I'll be up for at least and hour more listening to music, though ^_^

Endnote: Ah! Had to add a little more... I had to tell I bought a photo of Yun-sama, that good-looking guy from the Winter's Sonata thing :D Just couldn't resist it :P Actually, I've been looking for a good, cheap photo for a while so I could show everybody what he looks like... It's a shame it's black and white, you can't get the whole effect of his dyed hair and all ;P