KPQC Blog Goes Live!

Monday, February 23, 2009

The Kansai Parfait Quest Club blog is now up and running!
kansaiparfait.blogspot.com

Videos from Japan Thus Far

Sunday, February 22, 2009

These are all my videos from term thus far!
I kept forgetting to upload them, so I did it just now all at once. Enjoy!

At Osaka Castle:


Denise's favorite crab:


Food!


"Isn't She Lovely" as performed by a man at Hirakata-shi station:


Zelda, the dog who lives next door:


Bowling!


That's all for now. :)
Owen and I might be teaming up to use his video camera and my Final Cut to make some awesome vids. We'll see, we'll see.

The earth moved, but I kept sleeping.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009



This morning I slept through an earthquake. On the way to school, Kristin told me about how her futon had swayed. Begum told me later that she felt it, but thought it was part of her dream and kept sleeping. I didn't notice it at all. In class, it seemed like about half the people noticed, and the other half stayed asleep. Ogawa-sensei said it was very small, so while he did wake up, he wasn't worried about it. One student, who had never experienced an earthquake before, said he was nervous, but the air in his room was so cold that he decided to stay in bed anyway.



This evening I bought an awesome pair of boots and a red coat like I've wanted for at least a year on sale at Kuzuha Mall. The two together cost me only ¥4800 (about $50). I still need to get a pair of good walking shoes, because the lining is wearing out on the ones I have now. I think I have another month or so before they're totally done for.



A Weekend With My Home Visit Family

Sunday, February 15, 2009

This past weekend I went to stay with Yuko, my home visit partner, at her family's house. They live in a part of Kyoto that is not right in the city, but a bit farther out so there are farms and a lot of trees.

On Saturday we went to Nara Koen, which is famous for its deer.



The deer are so used to seeing people that they came right up to us. Of course, they wanted to see if we had food. We didn't buy any deer crackers though, so we had nothing to give them.



The younger deer were a bit more skittish and wouldn't let me get very close for a picture.



From the top of the mountain in the park, we could see all of Nara, and even as far as parts of Kyoto.



I knew Nara Koen was famous for the deer, but it was still amazing to see how many there were.



Yuko told me about a trip she took in elementary school when they came to this park. They sat on the hill in the picture above to eat their lunches, and a deer came up and stole her lunch!



The deer above was standing outside a restaurant and crying for food. It wouldn't move even when cars were trying to get in and out of the restaurant's parking lot.



Yuko's father took this picture of me in front of a little building we passed. I'm not really sure what kind of building it was. He told me that the roof was traditional Japanese style.

On Sunday, Yuko and I went for a walk in the neighborhood around her house. At the local shrine, there were purple cabbage plants.



They looked like flowers. I think they're really pretty; I still find it hard to imagine that these are cabbage.





The shrine had pictures inside of various community events. Yuko said that there is a festival where kids come to the shrine and pretend they are sumo wrestlers.



The area around her house has a lot of rice fields and a few orchards.



It's already the temperature of the beginning of spring here, so some farmers are already out getting ready for planting season, and some of the trees have started to blossom.





I'm going to stay with her again in a couple of weeks. It was a lot of fun, although I will admit that I was a bit nervous that I would do something impolite by accident. I think if I made any mistakes they must have forgiven me, since they invited me back. :)

First Osaka Adventure!

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Today I went to Osaka!



Kelly O. and I traveled together by train. We started our trip at Osaka Castle.




On our way up to the castle, we saw a clown, who would perform for 200 yen. He was quite entertaining.



Kelly had millet cake ice cream, which the shop proclaimed to be an Osaka specialty. It tasted like vanilla with a hint of alcohol. I got a coffee from a Quick! Tasty! Friendly! vending machine.



Perhaps the best part of Osaka Castle was the large number of adorable tiny dogs our for walks in the castle grounds. Weiner dogs are very popular around here.



We also saw a couple of pomeranians, one of which was very friendly and jumped all over us licking our hands. It made me want a pomeranian. :)

Then we attempted to find Denden town, the electronics district, but our map had it listed in the completely wrong part of town. Instead, we found a giant woman on a giant gold fish on the side of a building...



...followed by a crépe stand in a covered arcade. Mmm.



A nice policeman saw us looking at our map in confusion, and pointed us in the right direction for Denden.

Along the way we found the one thing I knew I had to see in Osaka, sooner or later. Yes, that's right, we found Denise's favorite giant crab.




After realizing that our map was entirely incorrect as to the location of Denden, I sent a message to Kristen, who was there, on my fancy new Japanese keitai (cell phone). She told us the subway station, since we knew our map at least had the subway correct, and we finally managed to meet up with her and Owen in Denden. It was all very exciting. We went in more than one manga & DVD store, but they all forbid the use of cameras, so I have no photographic evidence. As it got late, we went out for a delicious and cheap dinner (I had tenpura), followed by a quest to find a not-too-pricey parfait.





After an epic video-camera battle between Kristen and Owen...



...we got to a little road with a light-up blowfish.



Finally, on that tiny road... success!




We had a herd of chocolate parfaits.



In our joy, we formed a new group: the Kansai Parfait Quest Club (KPQC, or ケーピキューシ)
Our mission is to enjoy a parfait from a new shop or restaurant every Saturday. We will be writing reviews and taking photos, with the goal of creating a brochure and/or website for use by current and future Kansai Gaidai students. Coming soon: the face of KPQC--Owen in a fruit hat!