Kanazawa Institute of Technology
7-1 Ohgigaoka, Nonoichi, Ishikawa 921-8501
threw a party for the people who have Birthdays vegetables and rice. Beef is really good here, it's expensive, and it does taste different from most of the beef in the US, but it's delicious. So, we hung out and ate, talked with the Japanese students, and sung happy birthday 8 times. One of the students made a really tasty cake. It was really think pastry, almost like crepe layered with whipped cream and mandrin oranges. Definately different from an american cake, it was light and fluffy, but not very sweet at all. Actually, most sweets in Japan have much less sugar than in the US. Also, most of the really sweet stuff I've had is bean paste, rather than chocolate or sugar. It has a really interesting flavor/texture, I can't really describe it.
g similar names might seem wierd in the US, its not all that uncommon in Japanese families. They were 7, 5, and (I think) 1.5. The kids were really nice. They loved Pokemon, so I watched a couple episodes while I was there. A lot of the Pokemon names are different in Japanese, but Pikachu is still the same. A lot of Pokemon are actually named after gitaigo or giongo. These two are similar to onomonopia in English, but they also include sounds for many non-auditory senses. For example, toothed (like saws) is "gizagiza" and soft is "fuwafuwa". Pikachu is actually made us of "pika" the sound of electricity, and "chu" the sound of a mouse. The other American student staying with me (Xander) brought his DS, and the kids loved it. They hadn't seen the Pokemon game before, so they sat there watching him and shouting Pokemon names. We hung out with them most of Saturday afternoon, they were really easy to talk to since they use mostly simple words and grammar.
ajor military target during WW2, so only about 5% of the city was ever damaged. The entire district has mud walls along the street, with tiled tops to stop the water from getting on them when it rains. We visited the Nomura house, which had a really amazing garden. They also had katanas, armor, and a bunch of other relics from the household.
A cool thing to notice in this, the vines are held up over the water by poles. A lot of the Japanese gardens have wood structures supporting the plants.
Whether or not anyone who wears these really understands the English is questionable. Most people just wear the shirts because they look nice and English is cool. We didn't end up buying anything though, it was all designer so it was like $50 a shirt.
ries in Japan have a really different selection from most places in the US. There are a lot more things with meat or vegetables baked into them, and a lot less sweets. I really like the rolls with bacon and corn. Those run about $1 each. Lunch and dinner are usually about the same. I also eat onigiri for breakfast a lot. Onigiri are rice balls with chicken, fish, etc. inside wrapped in seawead. They're 1-1.25 depending on the filling, and I eat about two of them. Cereal is very very expensive here, which is too bad. Ramen and curry are the two most popular cheap choices for cheap, non-breakfast food in Japan. Ramen (see the picture) is kind of like the free-dried ramen available in the US, but much, much better. It is served with a variety of toppings, but pork, eggs, seeweed, bean sprouts, and leek are the most common. Ramen is between 2 and 4 dollars a bowl. You can also buy a set, which is ramen with rice and some other side, usually a vegetable, for 6-8 dollars. One bowl of ramen is usually enough though, unless you're feeling really hungry. Curry is also really popular. The curry place near our apartment serves rice and curry with a piece of pork for 5.50. This is usually way too much food for me, I've only ever managed to get through about 3/4 of it. Even food at sit-down restaurants is really cheap. Tonight I ate tempura chicken, squash, some meat, some other meat, rice, miso soup, a cabbage salad, and a meatball for 6.50. It was a ton of food, I came nowhere close to finishing. The most expensive meal I've eaten was beef at a sit-down place inside a tourist attraction for 10. There are also a fair number of American fast food places around, although they're more of a treat. Within walking distance we have a McDonalds, a KFC, and a Pizza Hut. The McDonalds and the KFC actually taste exactly like their American counterparts, but they're more expensive, 6-7 for a meal. The Pizza Hut is nothing like Pizza Hut. They serve a lot of really wierd toppings and crusts, nothing you'd recognize in the US. Also, because of the cost of cheese the pizzas are small and pricey. Overall, it's actually really cheap to eat here compared to the US. Most meals cost me less than five dollars, and I'm certainly not going hungry.
Kanazawa, making for a lot of really scenic views. The whole look of the town was very traditionally Japanese, but a very different Japan from the one I've seen most of the trip. The black dots in the water are buoys you can see in the picture are used by local fishermen to cultivate clams and mussels.
Wajima was absolutely beautiful. The city is nestled right between the mountains and the ocean, surrounded on both sides by steep mountains dropping off straight into the ocean. We walked through an open air market there, selling a lot of locally made crafts, and lots and lots of fish. They had piles of crabs that were still live, and all sorts of squid and octopus, as well as a huge varitey of fish. At the advice of one of the SGE students I tried a free sample of what turned out to be "fish guts pickled in salt" according to his cell-phone translation. I'd already chewed and swallowed it by the time he gave me the translation. It was pretty good. I might have bought some, but I didn't want to carry it back on the bus. After the market we wandered around the 
city for a little longer. They had a small hotspring supplying a free public footbath, so we all took the opportunity to wait there for a while. 
at the market, but a lot of people hadn't taken the warning all that seriously. We could only see a few of them (1-2) because of the tall buildings, and they didn't really look very large up that high. It also hadn't really occured to anyone how aggressive they were, until we were warned by a local after buying icecream and walking out onto one of the larger streets. Not 30 seconds later one of the kites swooped down and knocked the icecream out of the hands of one of the students just ahead of me. They ended up being much bigger than they'd seemed, and much more aggressive than I'd assumed. We saw the warning signs on the way back to the bus.
Most of the exchange/Japanese students at Shiji temple.
The seashore on the way back. Most of it looked like this, really amazing.
But, it was the scenery that really made the trip outstanding. We passed through a lot of rural Japan on the way. The entire way was dotted with little villages, terraced with rice patties and tucked between mountains. We alternated between tunnels the whole way, riding for a dozen or so minutes before breaking back through to the twilight. Unfortunately, the sun set all too soon, leaving it too dark to see anything outside. Only a few sparse lights would mark the distance we traveled outside the tunnels.
corroded pipes (they're in the process of replacing them this summer). It's really different from Nobu's complex in Tokyo, but even in a building this old the same hallmark Japanese cleanliness is still omnipresent. The appliances may be a little rusted, but the cabinets and floors are spotless.
Nobu didn't really have anything planned to do, so we decided to ride into Shinjyuku and look at the precinct government building, which we'd seen the other night on the way to dinner. The station at Shinjyuku was huge. It was a junction for 15 JR lines and a dozen or so subway lines. I took a couple pictures, but they don't really show much. The Shinjyuku station underground was absolutely enormous. On the way to the precinct building we stopped at a graveyard/shrine. Japanese graveyards are very different from most of the ones in the US. To begin with, everyone is cremated, the graveyard had no bodies. Also, the graves were much smaller and packed much closer together. Some graves also had more than one person from the same family. The shrine also had a well for visitors to get water to wash the graves of their family. Each grave had some sort of vase or holder for flowers, as well as a place to burn incense. The other really noticeable difference are the wooden posts. These are bought by the family and placed at the grave annually at the day of the person's death. The other thing that struck me about the graveyard was how strange it seemed to walk through a graveyard right in the middle of the city. It was a really interesting thing to see.
has an expres elevator up to the 45th floor, which is apparently a pretty popular attraction. You can normally see Mt. Fuji well from up there, but unfortunately it was too cloudy today. Either
