Day One

Yesterday,  I had my first taste of japanese food -- in Japan! :) So, we got out around noon and walked around the neighborhood and went to a couple parks. At the exit (or enterance, depending on which way you are going) to one of the parks was this little shinto temple with statues of foxes inside of it. You could give them money or food as an offering, I'm guessing for good luck? Okay, so for food I had salmon onigiri (the triangle) and then the five vegetable and chicken rice ball (the circle) For the onigiri, the seaweed was wrapped with wax paper between it and the rice. When you open the package, you slide the paper out and it stays wrapped in that triangle shape. This way, the seaweed is crispy, unlike the other food where the seaweed 'was one with the rice.' Later on that day, I walked around this little shopping area on my own and went into a flower shop, some trinket shops, and a large stationary store (Anna would have loved it :P) We ended the day with the movie 'My Neighbor Totoro,' a Hayao Miyazaki film. I was first introduced to his work with the move Howl's Moving Castle (the movie that caused Anna to gain her eyebrow scar) Last year, though, I rediscovered him during digital animation class. For our final project we had to research a famous animator and do a project on them. Me being the only freshman in the class got stuck with Miyazaki, a name I neither knew nor knew how to pronounce. I have since watched 5 of his films and I have to say they are great! He puts so much detail into everything and has all the scenes hand drawn. It's really incredible. So, yeah, I finally watched the most well-known of his films. It was pretty good. So, the end :) (I've never been good at conclusions)
~sayonara, Cecilia