KYUUSHUUUU TTRRRIIPPPPP

Day 1
yeah! it's finally here! --sad thing is that that means i only have 16 days left here. i'm kind of growing accustomed to living here and I rather like it. But that's besides the point. So we got to kyoto eki bright and early this morning and took a SHINKANSEN (oh my gosh bullet train) to Kobe where we are now!! We walked around a lot, had lunch in this really great chinese place (we were in china town.... in japan... anyone else find that weird? my okaasan always says that the japanese hate the chinese.. or my family does at least haha). We toured these really old houses that were western. They were really pretty, looked like eighteen hundreds washington dc or.. england? but really great. Got lost a little (but always find our way back thanks to sensei sama dorsey, our fearless leader.) and saw some more house-ish stuff. Got to check out this really awesome art museum, a lot of oil paints, some soft pastels, an acrylic or two and some water paints. All really beautiful. IT IS SO HOT HERE. i thought i was going to die all day. seriously. then we tried to go to some sake brewery but today's apparently a holiday so it was closed. so instead we went to this sake museum which was a little boring and a little interesting. Then we went to this AWESOME Mountain (Mt. Rokko) where we took a cable car up and got off to look at the gorgeous view of the city and the ocean. It was really stunning. Then we went back to the hotel! i would just like to say that our hotel is amazing. we all got single rooms (which is glorious, not that i'm opposed to roommates, i've just never had a single hotel room before and it's SO COOL). So they gave us eye warmers and bath salt and some tea as well as shaving stuff, comb, toothbrush and toothpaste, etc. it's so amazing. and A BED! oh my gosh it's been so long since i've slept in an actual bed. how am excited am i? to quote oppaman san, the most excited. Yeahhh.. ANA Crown Plaza Hotel for the win. So I guess that's all for today. we saw this superrr creepy old man (i think he was homeless) coming back from dinner (which we had at this cool little place that played a ton of jazz music and the food was phenomenal. of course the meat is bound to be. we are in kobe after all haha) which scared us all to death. Now I've taken my bath and I shall go to bed! YAY study excursion!!!!
Jya~