I haven’t written anything since Kiiro-chan died… I was upset, but mainly the reason is that I was super busy. My schedule at work has gotten a lot busier and probably won’t get better until April, and a lot of stuff happened in the meantime. For one, my PC came! Hurrah! I’ve been waiting for it for a long time, and now, finally, the wait is over! I’ve got a nice, new 22″ widescreen monitor and it’s just soooo gorgeous! Movies, TV shows, games… they’re breathtaking on my nice powerful machine with it’s beautiful new face.

My weekends have also been busy. That’s right!! The last time I write, I hadn’t even done the international exhibition, had I? I didn’t really take many photos, unfortunately, but I’ll just say it went really well. I had a good time, was really busy, and got to show lots of info about Philly to some of the stranger locals who ended up coming out. My Japanese teacher came as well, so we hung out together, which was nice — I didn’t end up bored. There were other Americans — the JETs from local schools… but for some reason I never hit it off with them. They’re nice enough folks, but too many of them just aren’t interested in Japan at all, and it just hurts my brain too much to wonder what the hell they’re doing here if they hate Japanese food and aren’t interested in learning any of the language or culture… oh well.

The next day, I had 3 days worth of study meetings… so I had no weekend at all… it was a really exhausting 2 weeks. And that week (big news!) I started dating a girl here, Hitomi, so that’s nice and happy. We’d been hanging out a lot in January, watching movies or cooking together… so yeah, now we’re together. And the next weekend, Minako’s friend from the US came to visit, so rather than stay home and rest like I should have, I went with Minako and Hiro and their friend Deren (and Hitomi) to Kyoto again. Exactly one month from my first Kyoto trip! Then, the next day, Minako’s friend had a home party in Fukui, so we went there, but I missed the last train home and had to take the morning train back to Takefu, shower, dress, and head off for another week of work! >_<

So, this weekend is the first weekend I’ve really had any time to relax at all. I spent today watching movies with Hitomi, finishing setting up my computer, and cleaning my room (boy, did it need it!). Now, I’ve got a chance to write, so I thought I’d quickly toss up a few photos from Kyoto, and just say hi so that my parents don’t think that I’ve died off or anything.

So anyway, photos from Kyoto:

We went to the Fushimi Inari shrine, which you may remember from Memoirs of a Geisha.

Since it was the Japanese festival of Setsubun, the shrines were all doing mamemaki — throwing us packets of beans with which to celebrate Setsubun.

More mamemaki, this time at the Yasaka shrine, where I went last time as well.

We walked down Gion street, the really famous maiko neighborhood. I want a house with a tree growing out of it!

A park area in Maruyama park.

Oh man, there were these really tame pigeons there… it was one of the coolest experiences ever!

Minako’s face is priceless in this shot.

Hitomi also enjoyed these crazy pigeons.

Next we went to Chion-in, which was an absolutely HUGE temple!

This was at the top of a small mountain, after a huge staircase… very beautiful and peaceful. We got to see a golden shrine that hadn’t been viewed by human eyes for 200 years, and just happened to be on display now!

You may recognize this temple from The Last Samurai.

We also went to Kiyomizu temple, where I went before. It was around the same time as well, so a very similar experience. But again, quite nice!

Group shot at Kiyomizu temple.