The real Summer has arrived to Kyoto. It reached the early 30s in May, but it’s warmer now. 38 degrees on Tuesday. Along with the heat, there’s the early morning deafening insect noise that starts at 6am or so, sweaty looking Japanese people walking around repeatedly saying ‘HOT!’ to each other (and little else) and a very unhappy Icelander (Ã?ris) yearns for cold weather and is dying to get home. The only problem Giita and I are having is the inability to get enough sleep. Now that school has finished, we’re getting to do some touristing again though, which is fun. Last weekend we went to Osaka, where, amongst other things, we found a shop that only sells panda-related goods.

Monday was graduation day for the foreign students in Ritsumeikan. We dressed up, watched some speeches, an out-of-tune shamisen (Japanese stringed instrument) recital, ate some cold food and received an A4 thing with our names on it and a small box. Then there was a photo show thing by our administrator-y pal Jason, which was the best bit.

After the ceremony, there was much boozing, some singing, then a photo of some people trying to look heroic in front of a Shinzo Abe poster.

As a result, we weren’t feeling the brightest on Tuesday. Giita was late for her last teaching class, then we were both late to meet our pals Takeshi and Ayako, who wanted to take us to the beach for a barbecue. Since it was a bit late for the beach, they decided instead to take us to Amanohashidate, a couple of hours north of Kyoto, for a festival called the Monjudo Defune Matsuri. The basic premise was something to do with a dragon who terrorised the town until a holy chap decided to preach to the dragon, who repented and lived happily amongst the townsfolk thereafter. This was represented in a performance with added pyrotechnics, as can be seen in this video clip.

Once the dragon had been sorted out, they celebrated with a fancy fireworks display, including fireworks that exploded into the shapes of smiley faces, flowers and cats. They like their ‘cute’ over here.

It was great stuff though. And having had no expectations made it even better. The following day was our last local market, then a trip to see Kyoto Sanga play badly again, but manage to beat an even worse team called Shonan Bellmare. Cormac got lost on the way, so here are the people that did manage to make it, happily clutching their complimentary Sanga towels.

Our plan for yesterday was to go to Awaji Island, across the world’s largest suspension bridge from Kobe, where Giita wanted to photograph some buildings. The weather wasn’t right for it, so we decided to go to the Tezuka Osamu (pioneering manga artist) Museum in Takarazuka and Kobe instead. And Giita has gone off to Awaji on her own today, since I have rehearsal later. The museum was fun, had a wee film theatre and a place where we could pretend to be Osamu by cleverly disguising ourselves with the prop beret as seen below.

Some lovely soba noodles and tempura later, we went to Kobe to meet Aleks, who brought us to his favourite cafe (it had a river in it!) and showed us around his favourite haunts. He’s so proud of Kobe and was armed with loads of Kobe-related facts to entertain us with. Giita took loads of photos, but since she hasn’t had a chance to upload them yet, here’s the only one I took.

Finally it was in to a nice Izakaya for fried veggie foods for us and steak for Aleks. It’s nice to be able to go visit places again without feeling guilty for not studying! I somehow came out with 95.5% from my last grammar/writing exam, but in all honesty it was pretty easy. Giita and Ã?ris are leaving on Wednesday morning, so we’re just trying to send some boxes and make last-minute preparations now. Beginning to look forward to getting home, seeing everyone, eating veggie satay and watching football that isn’t played by people in purple jerseys in a place where every statement isn’t greeted as if it were a surprise and girls don’t say ‘bai-bai’ to each other in really irritating voices. Although I think I’d still happily do another semester here if I could. Rightio, off to pack boxes. Bai-bai!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 10:51 pm and was written when Joss was feeling jumblings, sleepy.