WINTER BREAK

Me and Luc in front of the pile

So over winter break I went with my three friends from Whitman, Amy, Luc, and Bridget, to Nozawa Onsen in Nagano for Christmas, and then to Kyoto for New Year's. It was a delightful time with not too many stories. I snowboarded for all four days in Nagano, while my friends only snowboarded for 2 (I brought my new board and other gear, and they had to rent, so it was considerably cheaper for me). We had a delightful Christmas celebration--this was the first year ever when Christmas was more of an event for me than my birthday (they did take me out to dinner, granted, but I got such a haul on Christmas morning!). The evenings in town were spent searching for good restaurants, reading in front of the fire in our inn, enjoying the onsen (hot spring baths) of course, and also, drinking.

it was so beautiful on top of the mountain!

I want to paint this one

 Then, we set out for Kyoto. We did the usual sightseeing, wandering downtown, shopping, eating ramen.... we didn't actually have that many days in Kyoto for sightseeing, and we were remarkably lazy in the mornings, so we probably only saw half of my "Best Of" Kyoto spots, but it was a great half. First up was Fushimi Inari, the mountain of shrine gates.

Bridget, me, Amy, and Luc--the only picture I have of the four of us

 Immediately after, we went to Kiyomizu-dera, for a wonderful view of the city, as well as every tourist in Kyoto ever.

 The next day we spent shopping--well, Amy and Bridget spent several hours shopping, Luc and I went to an arcade and got some ramen and I did end up buying a sweet vest for about $10. That night we stayed up too late doing karaoke.... The following day, New Year's Eve day, we woke up pretty late and were SHOCKED that there was at least three inches of snow on the ground. But, we jumped on the sightseeing bandwagon and went straightaway to the Gold Pavilion, for one of the most beautiful sights I've seen in one of the most beautiful cities.

white and gold

For NYE I met up with my study abroad friends for a wonderful night of bar-hopping, visiting the shrine at midnight, darts, video games, and finally 4am ramen!

everyone I wanted to be in this picture somehow ended up in this picture

 New Year's Day we were too hungover and lazy to do much of anything. But the next day, the last day, we went to the Ryoanji rock garden, and really enjoyed the snow still on the ground.

Before I left town and my friends, we went out to dinner at a wonderful French restaurant, reminding me again that French food is surprisingly one of the few international cuisines that Japan does amazingly well.

Bye bye Kyoto..... don't know when I'll see you again..... maybe in springtime.