Today we had to get up and check out of the hotel by 6:00 AM (or 5:45 AM if you had phone charges to pay for like I did). Then we ran to catch the early morning train and made some exchanges to get over to Takarazuka, where we visited the Osamu Tezuka Museum. The walk to the museum from the train station would not have been so bad; if we weren’t carrying our luggage for the next 3 days with us1. The museum wasn’t as big as say the Ghibli museum had been but it was packed with stuff about Tezuka and his work. Also in the basement level, they ran an hour long “animation course”2. The course ran off a set of computer built into little desks with built-in lightboxes. You were supposed to follow along with what they were saying via your computer, but we didn’t speak enough Japanese and none of us read any Japanese, so that part was hard. Fortunately, some of the museum employees spoke enough English that we were able to participate and make our own little 2 frame animation. Mine was of my CoffeeBear character waving and it received the Astro Boy Seal of Approval3 *grin* Oh and one of the other nice things about the museum was that they allowed you to take pictures inside. So, I’ll see about posting some of those later.
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Tag: home
Homestay Day 2
We slept fairly late and then R & M made us brunch. A massive salad with tomatoes and onion, eggs, sausage, fatty ham patties and fresh fruit. After we lazily ate breakfast, they took us to a nearby beach. M-san warned us first that the water was very dirty but we had no better ideas on where we would have liked to go, so it was off to the beach. The whole area was filthy; actually, it was the first time I’d seen so much litter laying on the ground. And water level was really low, so there was something like a 100 yards of mud between the normal beach and the water line. Still, there was a strong breeze coming off the water and the smell of the sea was much like I remember from visiting the ocean back when I lived in North Carolina. So it was very pleasant. Then as we were leaving, R-san bought us some Japanese style ice-cream. Basically it like a slushie, shaved ice topped with flavored syrup but they also added in some cream. It was delicious!
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Homestay, day 1
We got ourselves checked out of the hotel this morning and I found that calls to the US must be around $1/minute, as I’d called Ariesna a couple of times and hadn’t spoken all that long but the bill was rather high. After we were all checked out, we walked down to the language school. It was extremely hot out and there wasn’t a lot of shade. I noticed K was having problems, so I carried her bag for her to the school. Once we were there, one of the teachers brought us some drinks and snacks, but the A/C wasn’t working all that well and we were still frying.
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Today, we went to see the animation exhibit at Museum of Contempary Art Tokyo (MOT). It was a good exhibit but our translator was using a quiet voice while there were animated bits blasting out their music and voices, making her hard to hear. The exhibit covered Japanese animation from it’s very beginnings1 to the present day. Again for the most part, cameras were forbidden but towards the end of the exhibit they had a mock up of Lupin’s car from Castle of Cagliostro which they did allow you to take pictures of (but no flash allowed). In that same area, they also had some of the pre-production art and key-frame art from Porco Rosso, which was so damn cool! 😀
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Again I woke up before our alarm phone1 went off. I got up, dressed and enjoyed a breakfast of mizo soup and rice cakes with some strong Japanese coffee. I love the soup, the rice is okay but I’ve gotten used to it.
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