My.first.time

Since I've been riding the train a lot lately (at least 2 times everyday; well, sometimes more if I haven't been paying close attention to the trains and I get on the wrong one by mistake), I have had plenty of time to look at the numerous advertisements that are posted inside the train carriages. Some of them are tastefully done and are rather nice to look at, while most of them are just a lot of (Japanese) Kanjis that I don't even bother reading or understanding anymore.

Well, this blog entry is not about those train ads -- just wanted to make that clear. The train advertisements only explain why my title for this blog has dots in.between.the.words. (See them now?). I have been seeing a lot of the Sony ads while riding the train and theirs is one of the ads that I rather enjoy looking at. Not too many words (sometimes none), just their new product and their slogan, "like.no.other". So, I thought I'd copy Sony's style for this post's title and put more dots in there than necessary. (Weird? Not really? That's what I thought.)

Anyway, this post is about my first time to see a real-life geisha; thus, the title "my.first.time". I have seen a lot of fake geishas before -- women dressed up and made-up as one who go around Kyoto for a day -- but, despite having been to Kyoto, oh, so many times, I have never seen a real one. That was, until a few weeks ago.

I went to Kyoto to take a few photos of the place at the tail end of autumn. Next to Spring, Kyoto is, arguably, best visited during Autumn. So, there I was minding my own business, when, right after stepping out of the Kyoto Central Station, I saw the geisha. Well, she could have been a lower rank-maiko (geisha apprentice) -- but I didn't care, I was just really excited and felt really lucky to have finally seen one. Her make-up, hair and kimono was so exquisite, that, if she just stopped moving for a while, she could have passed off as a wax sculpture or a giant geisha doll.

I later found out that, that day, the geishas were doing some green tea preparation shows in public. If I had only known that before hand, I would have ditched my plan to do an Autumn-shrine-and-Kyoto-visit and would just have searched for all the geishas I could find. Anyway, 'nough talking. Here are some more pictures of the geisha and then some...

fake ones...

Happy New Year Everyone! Wish you all the best in the coming year!

Japanmanship

Found this really funny Blog about Japan while I was searching for something, err, Japan-related. Some of his entries are just hilarious. It also doesn't hurt that they're written with such wit and humor, which, *sigh* I often wish I had. Anyway, I won't hold you, if you're interested about Japan or the Japanese (i.e., their quirkiness), or, have been to or have lived in Japan before, click on the link... you'll like it! Have fun!

Future me

Last night, I received an email from myself. Before anyone thinks that I'm such a loser for sending myself email, allow me to say this first: I sent that email more than three months ago...and I only received it last night. =)

I found this nifty website called futureme at around the same time that I sent the email. It allows you to send emails to your future self. Well, it also allows you to send future email to others but I don't think that's a very good idea.

Anyway, the email I sent myself was really interesting. It felt both weird and funny to read what I was feeling at that time that I sent it, what my expectations were and how I thought I'd be feeling more than three months after. When I sent the email, our stint at Kyushu University was just about to end. We were about to graduate in a few days and we only had a few weeks left before we all had to go home. So I talked about that stuff and then about some other stuff as well. It felt like I was telling my story then to my future self. Come to think of it, I was.

So, last night, I felt like sending another letter to myself... and I did. This time, to futureme a year hence. Here's hoping that, if I'm still around to read my letter, at the very least, I would find it interesting and/or funny -- I don't really care, as long as I don't find it depressing.