What... a WHAT? Park?

About a week ago, I went on a mini-trip to Kyoto. It was here that I went to Arashiyama. Arashiyama is a cute little area in Kyoto where they have a nice little river, a monkey park, a bamboo forest, and some cute little stores. Wait... what? A Monkey Park? What is a Monkey Park? Good question... This is a monkey park... What you are seeing is a shot from after a small hike up a mountain. There`s a little park that...well, I`m not sure ifi ts FOR monkeys or for people but taken over by monkeys. I didn`t think it`d be so weird to see monkeys in person. There are swings, a slide, benches, handrails...everything a regular park would have except the monkeys are all running all over so...I think it`s theirs. Also they were probably there first.Though it appears it`s in a cage, it is actually the opposite. At the top of the mountain there`s a cage where humans sit to be protected from the animals. You can walk outside but you might want a little break from almost stepping on angry monkeys. (At least I think they were angry. All of their faces were so red. Maybe they forgot that SPF30, it was the first really sunny day in a while)

The rest of Kyoto is a beautiful place. It is full of beautiful shrines and temples (over 1000) It`s hard to get more than 5 in in one day though so if you go, go for a few days. One place we went to was Fushimi-Inari where there is an endless row of Torii (these big red gates). Look towards the center of this picture and, its hard to see, but theres this kind of reddish brown line that goes all the way up the mountain to a shrine. That line is all Torii... since it takes two hours to go up the whole thing, we decided to just walk through a little, I got the basic idea.

More to come. The cherry blossoms are blooming now and by next week they should all be bloomed.

A Case of the Shakes...

I woke up this morning at 9:40. "Why?" you ask? Because there was an earthquake of course! It was probably the least scary natural disaster I've encoutered because it was pretty weak (4.0). However, north of me where it "really struck" it was 7.0 which is pretty pretty heavy. But still, it was a very strange feeling, I woke up and the room was shaking and I thought "WHO IS DOING THAT!!!!" and I was kind of angry, then I realized what was going on and just stared at the shaking light and though "this CAN'T REALLY be an earthquake..." I stared more, after about 30 seconds it was done and I completely passed back out. When I woke up and went out of my room, my host parents were gathered around the TV and said "There was a big earthquake North of here, I can't believe we didn't feel it." "I felt it!" "Hahahaha, no you didn't" "Yes. Yes I did." "No, we would have woken up..." then we had guests over and the first thing they said was "Did you feel the earthquake this morning?" I turned to my host mom and said "IN! YOUR! FACE!!!!!!!" I didn't say that. I mildly though it.

This is How Japan...

There was a plane about to land in Japan, a regular domestic flight. As they checked the wheels, they realized the front set could not drop. This made a problem. Though the plane was large and safe, there were propellors so if they touched the ground there was sure to be a problem. They decided it best to do the following, put all the wheels down that were possible (all except those in the front of the plane.) Then fly around for two extra hours and wait until all the fuel was gone so they wouldn't blow up. While this was happening, they cleared the whole runway and sprayed it with fire extinguisher foam. The plane landed completely fine. In fact not a single person was injured. The font of the plane dragged on the ground and made nothing more than a few sparks, then the plane stopped and everyone deboarded. Apparently, they did, however, countdown to the landing which would have scared the crap out of me. "ONE MINUTE UNTIL LANDING.... THIRTY SECONDS....FIFTEEN...FIVE...FOUR...THREE...TWOOO.... OOOONNNNEEEE." Tell me that's not good preparation...





Of course as always there are pictures to be shown... the Spring Break Trip pictures were just uploaded and are ready to be viewed at ...
http://michaelmalarkey.myphotoalbum.com/

A Short Travel...

-Shinkansen-

On the list of great things I've done with my life, I can add peeing at 186 miles per hour. The Shinkansen (Bullet Train) was our means of transportation to and from Hiroshima and Himeji. It's the fastest, smoothest, and coolest train I've ever ridden on. I think it's the second fastest in the world, I think there's one in China that's faster. BUT it's pretty fast. I didn't even realize how fast we were moving until a non-stop train passed while we were waiting at the station in Himeji. It's dead silent until it's directly in front of you and it scares the crap out of you. It just blows by. Inside its pretty much exactly like an airplane, it's great. Chicago needs a shinkansen train instead of the El, imagine going from south loop to Evanston in like 4 minutes or something. (That was not calculated and was just a random number.)



-Hiroshima-

I saw lots of pictures of Hiroshima and the Atomic Bomb Dome and the peace park. I never would have thought it'd be as powerful as it really was. Our hotel was literally across the street from the atomic bomb dome. The atomic bomb that leveled the entire city went off 490 away from the building and it was the only building in the epicenter of the blow that survived. The building was left as it was after the blow as a memorial and a rememberance of what occured. It's a really beautiful place, but it kind of has this really heavy weight to it. The peace museum was definitely the strongest part. They have tons and tons of artifacts from after the blast that are just terrifying. Like someone was waiting outside of the bank when the bomb went off and the only thing that was left of them was this kind of shadow of them sitting there. They have the actual bank steps with the persons shadow in the museum, it's creepy... I figured it was a good place to see and experience though. I enjoyed it.
Atomic Bomb Dome


-Miyajima-

This could possibly be the most beautiful place in Japan. I can't say I have been everywhere but it's ridiculously beautiful. We took a little ferry out to the island and got off only to be swarmed by people loving deer. These things want food and if they don't get it, they will eat your map or clothes. I got a few butting me with their heads and chewing on my jacket. We bought some little crackers and fed them, it was fun and kind of scary. I never thought I'd be afraid of deers but those guys were aggressive. We went and visited what is considered the most beautiful shrine in all of Japan. It was. It's in the ocean so when the tide is up it is in water, when the tide is down it's on a beach. There was a shinto wedding taking place on it the day we were there and we watched for a little, as did tons and tons of other people. I felt a little awkward standing, so we left. We explored the island a little. We took a cable car up almost to the top the kind of hiked up to the top. There were little red faced monkeys up there. One of them ran over by us and hid then screamed at this lady and scared the crap out of here. It was hilarious. We stayed at the most awesome hotel ever too...



The shrine at lowtide




-Himeji-

Japan's national treasure. It's got a giant giant giant castle that has not been rebuilt. There has been a little bit of fixing up, but it's all done using the same techniques that were used in the times of it being built. It was really beautiful. I was pretty tired from traveling everywhere else that I didn't really get to take it in as much as I wanted, but it was still really cool to see. It's weird as hell to think that people live near a castle. I wish America had castles. They are such a foreign concept to me. It's just so intense saying something like "I live near a castle." A CASTLE. Just think about that. A giant white beautiful Japanese castle. Weeeeeiiiiiiird.

Hounen Matsuri (The Fertility)

Hounen Matsuri...

This is the Fertility Festival in a little suburb of Nagoya Japan. While it turned out too look a lot like a penis worshipping festival, it was slightly different...slightly.

The point of this matsuri is to give good luck to those who are trying to have children or to prevent childhood sickness's to those expecting. I think over the years it's kind of lost some of it's purpose in a few ways. Like...the part where buckets and buckets of free sake (rice wine) is given out to everyone. I don't think pregnant women really NEEED that, though I am sure it lowers peoples standards to the point where more children are concieved.

There is a shrine (Tagata Jinja) where people go to pray for these types of things. There are tons of phallus shaped wood carvings and rocks here to pray on/to.



There is a nice large parade esque march from one shrine that is about a mile away to the Tagata Jinja. From the far one, a giant giant penis shrine is carried. First a priest walks by with salt to put on the part of the penis shrine. Following this, various people run around giving out more free alcohol, then various other shrines and things are brought by. Finally a giant flag is brought by to teach the male anatomy to everyone. (Though, it's probably not the male anatomy people need the lesson on, probably the female Rubik's Cube of an anatomy would have been more productive for everyone...no offense...) Anyway, finally the big guy arrives (I can say guy, because it's a penis.) It's carved out of a tree (Cedar I think.) it's 620 pounds and 96 inches long. It's brought to Tagata Jinja and everyone cheers when it makes it there.



(This is the final stretch... the were spinning it faster earlier but I think they were tired after a mile and 620 pounds.)



After this little show they put on they throw rice cakes off of a raised stage (about 20 feet up). They warned us before hand via a PA system that old people and young children should NOT partake in this. We figured it was kind of a silly little warning that Japan just HAD to say because someone probably got hurt ones and sued. There were buckets and buckets of these big white rice cakes (not dried rice cakes, they looked like balls of dough), guys came out and on the count of three started throwing them into the audience. I reached up to catch one and I'm pretty sure the rice cake stopped, took out a bat, and hit my hand and fingers with them. Because there is no way a rice cake should be that painful to catch. Suddenly it went from cute little balls of dough to realizing they were hard-as-a-rock-rice-hockey-puck-bullets. I tried to take a video of it but it's hard to see what's going on because I was scared for my life and stopped paying attention to the camera and payed attention to what could possibly be the last few seconds of my life. I ended up catching two. This was a horrible idea for a potential musician.




We witnessed some serious casualties as we left the rice cake party. One guy with a broken nose sat with blood all over his hands. (I'm not kidding, they were HARD. AS. ROCKS.)

Anyway... what a weird festival. Of course, for my photographs feel free to visit
http://michaelmalarkey.myphotoalbum.com

I'll be away going to Hiroshima/Miajima/Himeji for the next 3 days... stories to hopefully follow...

Pulling Through the Grey Area

I frequently have too much on my plate. Especially as far as hobbies and interests go. As soon as I start to make progress on one thing it spawns an interest in something else.

Sometimes it feels like I am downloading 30 at once so everything goes really really really really slow. (How about that for a 21st century analogy.) I was always kind of mediocre at Japanese. I'd have little speed bursts. The same thing happens with guitar. And piano. And electronics stuff. And tech stuff. The most stuff I started learning, the slower each one got at each one. This is the first time when I have kind of "stopped" everything except one. My Japanese has improved a lot...but it works a lot like my Jazz guitar. I can hear things just fine. I know what I want to say. When it comes to forming my own ideas on the spot, I choke...kind of. It's not a horrible fall on my face kind of thing. I can get simple basic stuff out and be fine, but when it comes to doing what i really want to do, I can't do it as well as I'd hope... this sounds likes it getting sad. It's not.

My speaking, the hard part, has gotten a lot better. I think this has to do with my complete immersion in Japan. (Other than my occasional computer uses and secret TV shows that I download from time to time.) I don't have a guitar near me. I have a piano, but no sheet music. I can't really push myself with music or electronics or anything of this sort. I can do what I already know well and tighten that up some, but I can't move forward. My Japanese, however, that seems to be moving ahead juuuuuust fine. I wish there was a land where people only spoke in Jazz. ii-V-I's and alternate changes, piano fingerings, guitar technique, and composition terms. Oh yeah. It's called Music School.

COUNTDOWN To Hiroshima/Miajima/Himeji: 3 days.

That is Soooooo Japanese, Also.

I just had to share this...

on the third floor of Nanzan Daigakku's E-Building (The school I go to) I noticed this by the hallway windows...





As you can see. Incase of a fire, you are supposed to wrap a belt thing around you and jump out the window. This is a perfect example of the brilliant yet strange inventions that Japan has to offer. If this were in America we all know that some couragous college student would try it out when there wasn't a fire and would surely kill himself. His parents would then sue the school for having it... it would just get out of hand. I get sad when I think about that. All the genius live saving inventions we COULD have but alas, we can't have.

Anyway, I think I am gonna try it out this week, wish me luck!!!!!