First Week in Kyoto Pt 3

More views of the Kamo River from a charming little park I found. I ate my vanilla cream filled soft waffle sitting in the park.
Looking up one half of the Kamo river. The Kamo is the most famous river in Japan and other towns in Japan have named themselves and their rivers after the Kamo. Look around for Kamomachi and Kamogawas on your next trip!
This was on the calendar in my host family's bathroom. Clearly they were excited for my arrival.
This picture makes it look gross, but this was an unbelieveable fried item. Japanese panko on the outside with a small piece of chicken and a fried onion (onion ring kind of taste) on the inside on a stick. I bought it as snack at the grocery store and ended up eating the whole pack of 7 in about 10 minutes. To think it was only 200 yen...

First Week In Kyoto Pt 2

I was walking home from school one night (a 50 minute affair if going straight) and ended up cutting through the Imperial Palace Gardens. I also ran into the hotel I stayed in when traveling with the Brookline High Japan program. It's only about a 10 minute walk from my apartment.


An interesting building in my neighborhood is on the right. The photo didn't really capture it well.














Funny English is the norm. This is only worth a chuckle, but there are others that make you burst out laughing. I almost did it in class the other day when I realized my tiny notebook had "Campus notebooks contain the best ruled foolscap suitable for writing." Who came up with that word in an otherwise normal sentence.


This is the view of the Kamo River from a small park along the side. The river isn't much of one because it is less than a food deep. The paths on the sides often hide the development as well. Nonetheless, Kyoto and other Japanese cities surprise people with the lack of tall buildings and a real center. This is mostly due to the fact that building tall buildings to withstand big earthquakes gets expensive fast.

First Week in Kyoto Pt. 1

The fog rolls in off the mountains to the east of Kyoto. The photo doesn't do it justice, but I was very surprised to find it on my walk from the bus stop near school in the morning. Classes start at 9:15am for me. You'll also notice the character on the mountain (Dai amongst other readings in Japanese, Da in Chinese). These characters are lit in bonfires on summer nights on the mountains surrounding Kyoto.
My host mom from 3 years ago was worrying whether I was capable of cooking for myself. To assuade her fears I sent her pictures of my first and second meals. This is number two with avocado salad, tofu in a light soy sauce, and a stir fry with beef, baby bok choy, tofu, garlic, and perhaps some onion too.

This is one of the first genuinely run down and abandoned buildings I've ever seen in Japan. Modern Japanese buildings are usually not much to look at architecturally, but this was a first.


Down the street from the run down building was this random shrine. I liked the angle looking back down the street so I took a picture. Of course the picture doesn't do it justice.

Konbanwa from Kyotoー京都からの今晩は！

I safely arrived at KCJS in Kyoto last Tuesday and finally moved into my apartment today. You'll find the pictures of the neighborhood and the apartment here: http://picasaweb.google.com/brett.m.newman/NijoHeightsTour(hit the slideshow button for best results). The location is near the intersection of Karasuma Dori and Nijo Dori in Kyoto.

It is wonderful to be back in Kyoto, and my host family from 2004/2005 is incredibly glad to see me. As always they have been incredibly kind to me: we have shared meals, they have taken me around Kyoto for tourism and shopping, and I stayed at their house a number of times already. Furthermore, they were invaluable in helping me get set up here at Nijo Heights and even picked me up at Itami airport when my adjusted flight schedule put me there instead of Kansai.

Classes start tomorrow morning and we have a week to shop around for our favorite courses. All looks very good on that front thus far. A cell phone will be in the works in the next week or two because I need to get the proper paperwork.

Finally, during orientation we had a great introduction to the students from Kyoto University auditing KCJS classes and those in the international friendship clubs. They gave us tours of the Kyoto University campus, answered questions, and took us to the friendship tea time . Finally they arranged for all 50 of us KCJS students to go out for dinner and drinks the night our orientation concluded. The program has really done an excellent job thus far of making sure we get those introductions to the Kyodai students.

Following something I've seen friends do in the past I have set up a blog for my trip. I'll try to send emails once in a while and update the blog more frequently. The address is http://brettinkyoto.blogspot.com/ . I will post this this email as the first entry.Best wishes to all of you stateside. I hope to see those of you in Japan soon!