So exams are pretty much over, with the exception of one more tomorrow afternoon. They've gone just fne with the horrible exception of Monday morning when I slep through my exam. It was awful, I did get to take it but at a reduction. I hope that is alright. The Shamisen performance is coming up fast. But we've made some significant improvements in the last two weeks, so maybe it'll be alright. I'm thinking and packing and thinking some more. I have to get my re-entry permit and I have to go to Osaka to do it. Maybe I'll go out somewhere nice after the Shamisen performance. So much to do in so little time. The concert on Monday evening doesn't help. But it will be so worth it. And then I'm off to Tokyo for Christmas and New Years with friends. And then home for the next stage on my whirlwind winter break. And then, gods willing, back to kgu for the spring semester.

Elizabeth moved out of Wednesday and I miss her already. It sucks that she wont be here for the spring semester. The room is pretty quiet with just me. But I've got a lot to do before I leave on Tuesday I suppose.

The long awaited second picture post! I promise I will never get this behind again! I swear I started uploading again like....a month ago and just recaught up. Never again. And I started tagging things in photobucket so that made it take longer too. Most of these I've already explained so I wont give too much explanation here, but I'll tell what each sideshow is about. These are by all means not all the pictures I've taken, they are the highlights. I have over 200 of Kiyomizu at night and Kyoto Imperial Palace alone. I'll try to go from oldest to newest. So lets get going!

This was our trip to the Kaiyukan a long while back, it was really pretty and very fun to see all the fish, and it mostly focused on things from the pacific rim!

This is probably my second visit to the shopping hub in Osaka that is Shinsaibashi, and it is still probably one of my favorite places to go! Lots to see and lots to eat! Osaka is definitely Japan's kitchen!

This is one of about three temples and shrines Leslie and I visited in a day. This is the main gate at Choin and Kodaiji, which had a really beautiful set of gardens.

This is Yakasa shrine, and there was a wedding going on when we showed up there. So we were really lucky to get to see it and take some pictures!

This was my visit to Nikko and Keigon, as well as Adryn's school (sadly no pictures of that it wasn't allowed) and Tokyo. It was really nice to have a weekend with Adryn in her new home!

This was our school festival and it was a blast! Like many things in Japan, especially Osaka, it had a lot to do with eating things. Its so amazing I haven't gotten fat here.

This is Fushimi inari, there were so many stairs, and so many torii gates and man. I just do not even know how people can do this, but it would be great excercise to just up and down all the time, especially since this shrine is free.

Another temple I visited, this time with Elizabeth. This is Tokufukuji. We are going to have seen all the temples and shrines around here I swear.

This the Kyoto Imperial Palace. We were lucky to see it without having to register and sign up in advance. There is one week in the fall and in the spring. Lots of Japanese people haven't even been here!

Kiyomizu at night is one of the most gorgeous places I have ever been too. The leaves are all really pretty this time of year as well. There is a really god reason this is a world heritage site, it is just incredible.

And finally this is my trip to Kinosaki Onsen with Elizabeth, courtesy of her mom who paid for our Ryokan, and thus pretty much everything except for my train fare. This largely features what we ate since I didn't really (couldn't) take pictures of the inside of the baths.

And this is just a slideshow of images that don't really go anywhere else. But they are fun times that we've had here in Japan!

Not too much to report up until this week-ish. Mostly chilled out and then went into Shinsaibashi again this sunday, we decided that we didn't go to Osaka enough. Johnny's store made me giggle a lot. Made an extremely nice visit to Kiyomizu at night, two actually, one with Elizabeth and one with Tomosuke. It is an incredibly beautiful place, and even more so in the fall lit up at night with all the brightly colored leaves. I feel really lucky that I was able to see it. Exams are coming up, another distraction from enjoying the random adventres of Japan, but oh well. I will miss Elizabeth when she goes home, I'm sad she wont be here for the spring semester. But we will get Elisabeth from ASU so I guess you win some you lose some. But next semester I'll be in homestay so hopefully that will do something for my evening loneliness tendencies so they don't return.

But this weekend we took Elizabeth's mother up on a extremely generous offer to pay for a hotel somewhere we would like to go, and we went to Kinosaki Onsen which is north in the Kyoto prefecture and by the Sea of Japan. We stayed in a real ryokan and went to no less than three different onsens in town while were there. Not to meniton bought the worlds cutest plushies. There were 7 different onsen but we were only there for one night so there was only so much we could see. But we had traditional Japanese cuisine for dinner and breakfast, some of which I liked some of which I didn't. But there was a LOT of crab for dinner, as its the regions specialty. God it was good. And the onsen were so relaxing. I will have pictures of the town as soon as I catch up on picture uploading, which keeps getting delayed by tagging. We did however wake up this morning to snow! I didn't think I'd get to see snow while in Japan, as Osaka is a snow free-to very small amount of snow zone. But we were lucky ne? Nothing quite like getting into a outdoor onsen in the snow (and for those of you who don't know, in Japanese hot spring's you wash off and then go in completely nude in the seperate mens and womens bathing areas). The whole thing was really fun the the yukata they gave us to wear were surprisingly warm and really comfy.