travel highlight reel: kyoto and fukuoka

so, this is ridiculously late… i have been slackin on the blog/photo tip big time! it is a tedious process to convert all the photos into jpegs and then post each photo from flickr to here individually… it takes hours. i have 118 new photos on my flickr site, you can just look at all of them there. it would take forever to post them all on here.

this is totally going to be out of chronological order as well…

first i went to kyoto, then to fukuoka.

mochi making

i got to make mochi with some old ladies and a guy. they were different then the mochis i usually eat, filled with some sweet bean filling instead of ice cream. it turns out that i am not a terribly proficient new years mochi roller, but i got some good shots and i’ll let you guys in on the process. these mochi are a traditional new years snack.

first you steam the rice

then you spin it around until it turns into dough….

then you squeeze out a little ball of dough

you roll it around in your palms and throw it onto this tray….

then you grab a ball of this bean stuff and put it in the middle of the rolled ball and roll it around again….

then you are done and ready to package it to give out to people and eat yourself

MOCHI!

photos of fukuoka

kyushu is a beautiful island! i didnt take any photos of hakata city, which was a pretty big city, but i was staying at a bhuddist temple about 30 minutes outside of town and it was really nice out there.

the temple

so there actually wasnt a temple at the temple… it was torn down because it was a couple hundred years old and they are rebuilding it. but my friends former host parents are buddhist priests and the house is next to the temple.

this is the foundation of the new temple

this is the bell tower.

this is the auxillary bell… its a couple hundred years old

this is the mausoleum where peoples ashes are stored

behind the house is a bamboo forest with a trail going up the hill

i found a shrine on the top of the hill

this is the view from the top of the hill

eating!

we got fed tons of food in fukuoka every night, it was wild!

we ate at my friends high school friends house… this meal was wild… the hibachi stuff… the best fried chicken wings ever… sashimi, crab legs… sushi cake… and more… and fanta

thats the host mom on the right and the friends mom on the left… super nice people

mmm. grape fanta.

kyoto!

i took tons and tons of photos in kyoto which is my favorite city in japan by far… and osaka… kansai region in general…. here are some

on the bus

on the train

and on the street

on christmas i went to a slammin reggae party in kyoto and had a blast, but alas, dancing and shooting photographs dont go well together, so i got mostly blurry shots.

i thought this was kind of odd… a crab sitting in a bowl of crab ramen. the arms moved up and down. hes a cannibal!

the kabuki theater

the zen temple

this was a pretty amazing zen temple/garden

this painting was huge, i thought it was really old, but it was made like 2 years ago to commemorate an anniversary of the temple. its alot bigger than whats in the picture, its on the ceiling with an incredible buddha shrine underneath it. amazing.