Okayama campus in autumn

 Look at those leaves! This campus is fairly stunning, and believe it or not people come along most days to sweep up all the leaves so as to maintain the campuses appearance. 

Christmas stollen from my German friendies :D

 

And mini corn dogs at the sushi place, or as the Japanese say 'Amerika dogu'

Yayy my book arrived! 

Okayama general update and temple visit

General Update

I decided my room looked a little glum so I jazzed up my door, though it now hurts my eyes a little...

These are phone charms, and yes all this food is life sized, I dont know about you, but I think a life sized fried egg hanging from my phone would get annoying fast!

Cute panda mugs that hold hands eeeeeee....

Well at least it rhymes!

Temple

So we decided to visit the local temple in the evening and stay out until sunset.

At temples there is always an opportunity to get a fortune of some sort, either from a booth where an woman gives you pieces of paper at random, or through a machine which you put ¥100 yen into. These fortunes may be good or bad. If they are bad you are supposed to tie them to posts like the one below, and this will prevent the bad thing happening. However if it is good, I have heard mixed opinions on what to do, some Japanese have told me to take it home, whilst others said I should still tie it to the post. I love the below picture because everywhere else I have been there has only ever been pristine and new looking pieces of paper tied up, but this temple had a lot less traffic, so less fortunes being told and tied. Some of these fortunes were little more than dust, and must have been there for months at least. 

A small cemetery 

A shrine gate in the foreground, and the city in the background

Across the roof tops of the temple

The bigger cemetery sprawling into the distance. It was interesting how much less eery the Japanese burial places feel compared to British ones, even at night in the dark they felt a lot more calm and peaceful than any cemetery I have ever been to before. 

Across the graves onto the city below. 

Evening began to fall, and people started to turn lights on. Sadly as it was so cloudy we did not get to see much of the mountains or a sunset :(

And my lack of a decent camera made night shots pretty difficult. But here it is, Okayama city by night

Packaging, my accommodation, Okayama and other observations.

This just a post of things I have noticed, or that have no place else where in my blog, but I want to share anyway.

The Japanese love packaging!! I mean it, it is beyond crazy. You probably know that gift giving is very important here, which I shall talk about in a future post I am sure. But what stands out the most is that how the gift is wrapped and presented, is often more important than the gift itself. This love of packaging has also inevitably bled into commercial products. Whereas in England, and as far as I can tell most of Europe, there has been a push in recent years to cut down on over packaging products, in Japan this is definitely not the case!! 

My late night snack of camembert and ritz was hindered by ridiculous amounts of wrappers. Having grown up being told that packaging like this kills polar bears, it has been hard for me to see the advantages of it. Each slice of cheese is wrapped, why on earth would that help? But living on my own, as I do, I have reluctantly accepted that actually this is pretty practical, for one thing it stops me eating everything in one sitting, and equally it keeps my food fresh, preventing soggy ritz (which no one wants) and mouldy cheese.

I thought I would also add in a few pictures of my accommodation, I will take better ones later, but this scene was beautiful at the time with the sun low in the sky, but in hindsight it does not photograph so well.

 Below you can see the rice fields next to my accommodation, which if I lean really far out of my balcony I can just about see.

And here is a picture of Okayama centre, I can't believe that before I arrived I was told this was a village -_-

Today, whilst in town I saw this ridiculously fluffy pony, he was so damn soft! And when the owner noticed me trying to photograph the pony, he proceeded to place a plushie pony on top. I don't know why, but nevertheless I wanted to keep him. The pony, not the owner. 

A legitimate medical problem in Japan, Strawberry Nose.

Ohh and last but not least, I was genuinely shocked when I first saw this, and have since seen it quite a few times. Anyone can go into jewellery or cosmetic shops and buy disposable piercing machines. Coming from the land of OTT health and safety, this blew my little mind. 

Festival and shopping

So last week we got an extra 3 days off from university for the campus festival. I didn't really know what to expect, but essentially there was a lot of food, and a lot of dancing. It was pretty interesting to see how people acted differently here. Under normal circumstances students do not come up to me and talk to me, but because they were trying to draw people to their stalls, we were constantly being hounded down to eat whatever food they had to offer. Students were more than willing to just shout random English words at me to get my attention. I had more than one person just say "I love you" for no apparent reason besides to get my attention so I would buy the food at their stall. I had to learn how to say "maybe later" in Japanese just to get people to leave us alone. And when I did return to one stall for food, the girl screamed at me (which is apparently a positive thing here), but startled me nonetheless! 

Stalls all tried different tactics to get our attention, one which was selling just chips had the below sign, the McDonald's clown is slightly terrifying, and the 'M' legs are just random!

After all the excitement and food of the festival we were off to the outlet mall in Kurashiki for a bit of shopping, which also meant I had to get my first train since I arrived in Japan, which was a lot less stressful than I envisaged.

Mitsui outlet park is actually built on the site of an old Dutch theme park, Tivoli Park. Pretty much all that is left of the theme park is the clock tower. The picture below is taken from the train station looking towards the outlet park.

I keep seeing these pants everywhere, because apparently it gets cold enough to need giant fluffy pants here...yay?

I also took a picture of 'something'

Apparently Christmas has arrive already, from what I could tell there was a little stand where kids could control the lights and sounds the tree made...

Bruce biscuits!! Found in a French shop? Where I also found the Queens face on biscuits...

Interesting earring packing 

My first Japanese McDonald's 

Mmmm teriyaki chicken burger. Actually a large here is so much bigger than a UK large meal.

The tower from the other side as we left. Upon the hour I am told that little characters come out of the clock, though I really don't know what they do.

The results of a hard day shopping, and yes I even managed to buy mince pies in Japan, in November!! Yayyyyyyyy!

'Popin Cookin' Sushi sweet kit

About a week ago I spotted this in the supermarket, and I vaguely remembered watching a youtube video about this product a few years ago. So I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy it and try it out!

 Unfortunately for me, of course, the instructions were all in Japanese, so my attempt at making these sweets is largely the product of guess work...

Inside: 1 mould, 1 spoon, 1 pipet, 1 moulding sweet, and many sachets of magic

Somehow one packet of magic with the addition of water turned into a 'rice' ball. 

 This one is turning into an egg omelette 'tamagoyaki'

 You can see the tamagoyaki and some form of meat (maybe 'salmon') in the background in their moulds. In the foreground I am attempting to make sushi shaped balls of 'rice'. 

Aha! Partial success! 

Now to make the fish egg things that go on top of the wrapped sushi. I swear this part was magic. Sucked up the red liquid with the pipet, dropped it in the clear stuff, scoop it out and pop them on the sushi! Well it fascinated me at least.

 And tada, tiny little sweet sushi's, with a penny for scale. Sure they are not pretty and I made a lot of mess, but I had fun and that is the important part.

(I haven't tried one yet, so they might taste gross!)