ひさしぶりだね！

Hi everybody, it's been a while! For those of you who don't know, I'm spending spring of 2010 in Kyoto in the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies. The city is beautiful and historic, but still crazy and Japanese if you know where to look. I'm studying at a genuine Japanese University... just not with any Japanese students. All my courses, aside from language, are in English. I'm in a Post-War Fiction and Film class, and a survey course on contemporary and historical Japanese religion. It's been an interesting couple of weeks so far, from orientation, and getting to know my classmates through sushi

(I did not in fact eat the Japanese plum and labiate roll)

and drunken Karaoke,

Hold me Jack!

to actually having to remember to be a college student and do my homework.

I live in a rural area five minutes from a shrine dedicated to sake in one direction and a monkey park in the other. My host dad trims his lawn with a flame thrower and I migh start spinning fire with a group called 遊火 pronounced Asobi, the kanji of which literally translate to "play" and "fire." The semester is looking bright. This past sunday, I witnessed the largest Kyudo archery contest in Kyoto, in which massive numbers of archers of all ages and genders try their hand at shooting targets lined up at one end of a temple, fom the other end of the temple.

No seriously, lots of archers.

The temple in question must be about a hundred feet long or more, so it's not an easy task. Tomorrow i'll be going on a field trip to a number of temples and shrines, as the classes I am taking are strongly tied in to Kyoto's history.
Whew! So that's the rundown so far, I'll keep you guys updated as cool stuff comes my way!