Here's a bunch of long overdue photos from the last two weeks!
The autumn leaves have been absolutely stunning! The mountainsides are turning all sorts of colors, which makes them even more stunning than usual. I did my best to photograph the one that you can see from Shirasagi's garden, which is right outside of my apartment. The leaves are finally starting to fall from most of the trees these days, but the colors were beautiful while they lasted!
The autumn leaves have been absolutely stunning! The mountainsides are turning all sorts of colors, which makes them even more stunning than usual. I did my best to photograph the one that you can see from Shirasagi's garden, which is right outside of my apartment. The leaves are finally starting to fall from most of the trees these days, but the colors were beautiful while they lasted!
Below are a bunch of photos of the bike paths next to the Himeji Castle Moat, which were surrounded by trees in stunning shades of red and gold. This is definitely the scenic route to get to downtown in Himeji! Unfortunately, I'm still not quite sure of all of the twists and turns through neighborhoods that it involves to get to the back entrance of this pathway, but once I'm on it I can orient myself via the castle.
This area is always full of joggers, bikers, and... cats. Stray cats, for the most part. Some of them are friendlier than others. But they all manage to be very popular photography subjects!
The brown leopard-spotted cats were very affectionate! There was a whole family of them, and they loved all the attention they were getting. The black kitten was more disgruntled about having his sleep interrupted by camera-wielding humans.
I took a nice walk along the paths of the Yumesakigawa River, which I see every day during my commute on the Sanyo Train. I promised myself that I would go and admire the autumn leaves and waterfowl during daylight one weekend, and it was definitely worth it. The Yumesakigawa is a very large river, and it flows directly to the ocean (which I did not walk all the way down to, due to the way being blocked by really big factories). I enjoyed the smell of the sea and the barrage of noise coming from the seemingly-unending flock of birds.
Ms. Daley!!! It's Benji! I don't know if you remember me, I'm super tall and was in one of the classes you taught in with Mrs. Hove. Anyways, I was cleaning out my room when I found the letter you gave us on the last day of school. You left us a link to your blog so I decided to check it out. Wow, you take amazing pictures! I hope you're having an awesome time over there; I loved reading about the differences from the US in the grocery stores, restaurants, and more. I'll need to visit your blog more often :) Everything is going well here in Chandler we just finished our semester. Us seniors are sooooo ready to graduate. Class of 2014!!!
ReplyDeleteBenji!
DeleteHow can I forget you after that really awesome video you made for the final project? I still (more-or-less) fondly remember 3rd period from last year!
Glad to hear you cleaned your room. That's always a good sign. Seriously, though, I'm glad you enjoyed this blog. I don't give it nearly as much attention as it deserves!
And I hope you and everyone else is having a great senior year at Chandler! I heard you guys finally beat Hamilton in football! I wish I could have been there to watch that game!
Yes it was awesome! But we lost to them in the playoffs so that sucks. And I know I finally did, but the reason for it is because I couldn't find my phone, I cant believe out of everything else only that gave me motivation for finally cleaning it! Anyways, wow I'm looking at all the pictures you have, and its crazy different from here at home!!..and I know "duh benji I'm in another country" haha, but it all looks so awesome. The colored leaves look so cool. Are you used to the huge change now? Also, probably the most important question one can ask: How is the food?! I read in one of your posts that a certain meat twitched?! I would've ran. Also, how does the style of clothing differ from here? And I'm not trying to be stereotypical but does everyone know how to draw amazing Anime? Sorry, I know, so many questions but I'm just curious!
DeleteThe food is very different from what we eat here. Lots of raw fish. Lots of fish in general, actually. I'm not a big fan of octopus tentacles, or snails, or fish heads... and I've since learned to not ask what things are. The mystery makes things interesting, though! I've found I really like tuna sashimi, which are prepared raw with a special sauce. It's really hard to describe most food here, though, because it's totally unlike anything we eat in Arizona.
DeleteClothing is a good question. I've not really been able to figure out if there's a standard style... unless the Japanese style is the fact that they don't follow our sense of fashion rules. They layer clothing in really different ways, sometimes, like a short skirt on top of jeans. The fashion ranges from pretty regular clothes, to super cute and fluffy, to punk and gothic style, to very formal and professional clothing. And that's what I'll see just walking along downtown! Oh, and the occasional woman going by in a full kimono... or the man on a scooter in full priest clothing.
I'd say that more students are able to draw anime-style drawings in a typical classroom when compared with students in America. But there's just as many kids who draw stick-figures, too! Art classes are required subjects here, so there are many students who have a lot more practice with art than they would in Arizona.
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