まだ生きている

First off, apologies for not having written anything in so long. A combination of being alternately busy and lazy is the main reason for no updates in the past couple of weeks.

A couple weeks ago I started doing a lot of hiking around the nearby mountains. They have these symbols carved into several of the mountains around for a festival that takes place in August. From these symbols you can get great views of the city. There's one very close to my house (about a 30 minute hike) and I took some pictures from up there. These are from the north of the city facing south.







A couple of days after I climbed the close by mountain I went up Daimonji, the mountain with the most famous symbol, a massive "big" kanji. You can see where it is in the third picture. The cut out area of the mountain in the middle of the picture. It's a lot higher than the one by my house, but it faces west so when I went up in the afternoon you're taking pictures into the sun. They didn't really turn out too great.









I ended up getting sick a couple days after this which took me out of play for a few days, but it allowed me to watch a lot of the Arrested Development that I had downloaded. Fantastic show, FOX would be idiots to cancel this gem.

Last week I got a message from Kitai asking if I wanted to go with him to a nearby club for their "80's night". I ended up going as well as Andy, Sebastian, Christoph and his friend who was visting. It wasn't very busy and a large percentage of the crowd was male foreigners. When I go to a place filled with foreigners in Japan I'm often thinking "what the hell, why are there so many foreigners" at the same time forgetting that I'm a foreigner as well. I'm sure many of these other people are thinking the same thing probably. I also find that it's also really easy to tell the difference between foreigners who love here, and those who are just visiting, but thinking about it, it's not that hard to do in Canada either.

Anyway, the club night was turning out to be kinda dull when all of the sudden this lady (Japanese) approaches me and we get to talking. She asked me if I would be willing to teach her English on her days off. She works for an architectural company in Shiga, Kyoto's neighbouring prefecture. This past Thursday I met up with her at Kyoto Station for lesson number one. Her English isn't that good, but she seems like she really wants to learn so I think she'll be able to make some good progress. Next week I'm going to her hometown for lesson 2. Should be interesting. I've never been to Shiga, and the town she lives in has a very famous castle that still exists in its original form.

I'm still not quite to sure if her interest in me goes beyond English though, but I must say she is a very attractive lady both looks and personality, although I do think she thinks I'm older than I am. I don't know her age, but I'd guess it's close to 30 and she doesn't know mine, but she does know I am a university student. Either way, it's nice to have a little side job.

The Osaka sumo tournament starts tomorrow and I've got my ticket! Sumo was on my top 5 list of things to experience first-hand in Japan so naturally I'm pumped. I'm Going with Andy, his brother who is visiting, his girlfriend, and Sebastian. Should be a great day. Expect lots of pics and a detailed report in the near future.