I've officially been living in my host house for a week now! I didn't do much today (Saturday) but yesterday we had a lot of fun. I had to get to school at 8:30am for Intro to Electronics lab, where I got to play with a breadboard for the first time. It was really fun.
After lab, all the SCTI kids met up with faculty and we all went to Arashiyama. From there we took the "Romantic Train" through the area to look at the mountains and river nearby.
We had planned to then take a boat ride down the rapids of Hokugawa, but because of the recent rain here the water level was too high and the boat rides were cancelled. We've been told that we'll find time later to go back and do it.
Instead, we took the train back to Arashiyama and were given freetime for the rest of the day to explore. Arashiyama is a beautiful area at the base of Kyoto's western mountains, with bamboo groves, temples, shops, etc. It was very scenic.
A group of us (John Le, Mel, Bryan, Stephen, and me) went walking around and on the way we saw a Japanese TV show being filmed along the river! A clown and show host were trying to get a group of tourists to solve a word puzzle. Then we went on a little hiking trail up a mountain and back down again. It had so many beautiful trees, flowers, and small buildings.
After wandering around Arashiyama we took the Hankyu train line back to downtown Kyoto, where we met up with Raunaq (our cool electronics teaching assistant), who showed us around the Ponto-cho shopping/dining alleyway. We ended up eating at a Yakitori place nearby.
Then the boys went to a bar, but I said I would be home by 10pm so I got on the train. The whole day was lots of fun.
This week, Helen Bing (our program's patron, who also happened to fund Stanford Taiko's performance tour of Thailand and Japan in 2005) will be visiting us, which means a formal dinner at a French restaurant on Monday night! There will also be a formal welcome party for us at Doshisha on Thursday, so I'll update you all about those later!
1 comment:
Hey Janet!!! I miss you!!! Sounds like you're having fun hehe. I had the same circuits lab the other day with the breadboard :). No one in Twain got new roommates this spring and the caterpillars are back!!
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