Merry Christmas!

This is my first Christmas away from home, and it's kind of weird. All the stores are full of Christmas decorations and carols are playing, but that's it. Tomorrow's going to be an ordinary Monday... It's been quite difficult to feel like it actually really is Christmas now.

Yesterday I went to a Brazilian Christmas party. Ate so well. Oh god. So many delicious things. I'd love to have the recipe of each and every thing, especially of the desserts, but everything else too. Or better yet, someone to make them for me on a regular basis, because I'd be sure to mess them up. (And the smashed potato & meat thing was so very similar to perunasoselaatikko that it reminded me of home. xD More cheesy, though, so it was even better, I guess.)

Today I went to an onsen with some friends. It was lovely, quite different from Kurama onsen which is the only place where I'd been before. There were three very small baths, just big enough for four persons (and we were exactly four). But it was so nice and quiet. Atmospheric. This was Ohara onsen, some half an hour bus trip from where we live. It was up in the hills in this rather small place, and there was a fifteen minute walk from the bus stop on really small roads. I love the area. It was rainy, but it just seemed to fit the atmosphere there. I couldn't, of course, take pics inside of the actual onsen, but here's the place (photo by Marina):

  

Note the little piece of snow in front of the entrance on the left! Snow! 

And a photo of the main bath (obviously not from this time of the year):

 And us on our way there... it wasn't quite as dark yet as it seems on this pic.

So, I had  Christmas onsen instead of Christmas sauna, and as for my Christmas dinner... well, there was pork in it, anyway. And it was tasty.

And tomorrow it's ordinary Monday, as I said, with ordinary Japanese classes... but at least we are going to have one week vacation for the New Year.

This 'n that

I’ve had so many posts on my mind in the past couple of weeks, but somehow I haven’t had time to write them. Life’s been busy. 24 hours of classes/week is quite a lot... There have been some exams, one term paper outline (the deadline for which was today, and I swear it was harder to do that outline than it’ll be to do the essay), presentations and whatnot… but I think I’ll write a post about that stuff some other day. When I feel like it...

The weather has been turning colder. It’s positively chilly. People keep on saying stuff like “but you’re from Finland! You can’t be cold!”… well, yeah. Compared to Finland it’s not that cold here at all. But the Japanese cold is different from Finnish cold. Finnish cold is sharp and crisp, Japanese… this sneaky chillness that literally goes to the bone and marrow. Maybe it’s the humidity? Another thing is that it’s cold inside, too. My apartment is impossible to keep warm… or maybe that could be done if I kept the air-conditioners blowing all time, but I don’t want to see what kind electricity bills I’d get after that. 

Besides, I don’t like aircon. And it’s located right over the table where I have my laptop, so if I’m sitting there, as I’m right now, the air from the aircon is blowing straight at my head, which is unpleasant. (It is on now, by the way. And I’m hiding from it underneath a blanket. Am very warm at the moment. 🙂 )

…I’ve now twice got some random alert that the bath’s plumbing is freezing, or whatever. How? It’s not even below zero out there, and this is inside. >_>

This. It gave me heart attack yesterday morning, when this thing gave a loud alarm when I was right beside it, and suddenly a Japanese voice started talking something I didn’t quite understand. xD

Seriously.

Anyways. I’ve done also some fun stuff during this time, but here’s just a quick summary… 

First there was the Takatori samurai festival, which was an awful lot of fun. It took a couple of hours to go there by train. Went there with a friend, and we were basically the only foreigners there. xD People kept on trying to guess where we are from, but when one is from Finland and the other from Luxembourg, that wasn’t so easy. xD
(You get these tiny v ids full screen from the bottom corner, you know!)

A couple of vids more that I was going to post here but were too big (of the dancers - that adorable little girl in the first row! and of some fighting). I hope these links work...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qn246MnC_mP6lhmu4Ozcj6ZuOKF0PM0T/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q3UjtesFOPGCIqGuP7j_z-EsZgPTjAo_/view?usp=sharing

Then, the university festival…. Which I mostly missed. I had planned to go there during the weekend, but somehow didn’t have time. So I was there only for Thursday evening when it started. Saw at least the bonfire…

A big part of Saturday I spent at the flea market at Kitano Tenmangu shrine. They hold it every month on the 25^th. Awful place. xD Too much stuff. And places where you can get a plastic bag for 500 yen, and the fill it with used kimonos and stuff…

And then got invited on a river boat ride on Hozugawa. It was awesome.

And lastly, kind of off-topic (if there now is any topic), but before I again forget... Someone asked me a while ago about the name of my journal, so I thought I could say a few words about it. I’m awful at naming things. And making decisions. I kept on postponing making this journal because I couldn’t decide on the name. I wanted to have something about Kyoto, or maybe language, or both. At first I thought of something like kyokotoba, which is the term for the Kyoto dialect (kotoba = word, language), but it felt kind of off…  But kotoba actually gave me idea for this name: it consists of two kanji, 言 (say; word) and 葉 (leaf). So I though of words as kind of leaves of language, and as I’m here for autumn term, falling words felt kind of fitting. That name was taken, though, so I had to add something after it. Also the Kalevalan phrase “puheet putoelevat” came to my mind, literally something like “ the talks/words are falling” (from the mouth). So, here we go. What's in a name, anyway?