CoraFromEarth

Date: 3/25/2025

Sorry for the lack of posts! Ive been busy with school, but also lots of fun experiences. The past 3 weekends I've done a lot. Here's what I did in chronological order

Went to a little town in the mountains named Kurama to hike and go to an onsen. Its a hot spring outdoor bath and it was a bit to get used to but very relaxing.

The weekend before last I went with my friend to a cafe in Osaka and had a delicious caramel late. Afterwards we sat, talked, and I was able to take out my sketchbook and do a little drawing.

Last weekend I went back to Osaka to get a haircut. I've been meaning to get it cut short for a while so I'm glad I finally did. I love the results.

Date: 2/24/2025

Hi Everyone!!!

Yesterday I did a bit of touristing. One of the friends I made here found an activity for us and we had an absolute blast! We did "tea ceremony" with kimono. Now I put tea ceremony in quotes because of course it wasn't entirely like the real thing. It was more of an explanation of what a real tea ceremony might be like while teaching us how matcha is properly prepared. We had a group of 5 friends and we were joined by a few other tourists. Before we made our tea we were given the opportunity to wear kimono and have our hair done. It was really fun to dress up, here are some photos.

After the tea ceremony we were able to go into a small courtyard and take photos which is where most of the above photos were taken. The photo of me and the other girl was taken in the tea room which was sparcely decorated aside from a flower, hanging scroll calligraphy, and fusuma-e(sliding door painting) on the back wall. This sparceness is meant to bring the focus on the ceremony as tea ceremony was primarily develped as a zen practice.

Date: 2/12/2025

Hi everyone, I'm doing great btw. I hope you noticed that the I changed the title of the blog to just blog because I just want to ramble about anything. Japan is where I'm at so you'll definitely see a lot more Japan.

To quickly touch on Japan, I've been making some friends and we've been doing lots of stuff together. Now that classes are in full swing I've also just been doing a lot of homework and such. Over the weekend we went into Osaka for the day and just kind of walked around. We saw a few shrines and stepped into a Buhdist temple. That was really fun, but also really cold. The floor was tile and sucked all the heat straight out of my socked feet(we had to take our shoes off to go inside). We also did the touristy thing and went to Osaka's most famous street Dotonbori.

Here I'm taking 4 classes: Japanese 2, Kanji and Readings 2, Japanese Influence on Western Art and Design, and Wa: The rules and Principles of Japanese Art and Design. I love taking the Japanese language courses because I feel like thats the reason I came to Japan. I wanted to learn the language and culture better than I would from afar. I think though I might actually be enjoying Wa the most though. I think the articles that my professor is having us read are super interesting and have given me some real value other than just educational value. The two most recent articles we read were about Zen Buhdism. I think in a nutshell zen is about clearing ones mind and living in the moment. I think thats probably not even quite right, but I think that in reading the articles it made me want to slow down and empty my mind. I think this slowing down makes me more aware of whats going on in my head and helps me better attend to my thoughts feelings and sensations. This moring I was scrolling social media using and app called Cara which is made for artists. As I was scrolling and just got this feeling "Oh man I should just really make art." I often get this feeling when I look at other peoples work, but I find everytime I go to sit down to draw or something I can't create anything. I think this is a flaw of what I'm letting inspire me. I don't think I'll make art if I let myself be inspired by art. I think the only times I make art that I love doing is when I'm inspired by the pure joy of the idea of creating what I'm about to or in the process of making. When I think about the pieces that brought me the most joy and motivation, I realize that they weren't made because I was inspired by another artist, they were made because I was inspired by the medium, the subject, or the feeling. When I think about school and the pieces that I had the most fun, it had to be my vinyl sculptures and my prints with tigers as the subjects. I really ended up ejoying the process of these and felt amazed by what I was able to create. I get so much motivation to create but I seem to be allergic to inspiration. I think I need to let the art come and let the inspiration flow from things that interest me. I think that I'll be inspired when I need to be and I can't try to force it out of me. I think thats how this all relates to zen. Zen seems to be able to let the natural happen, as it needs to and when it needs to. Anyways I don't think I'll start to practice zen buhdism or anything, but I think that there are some nice principles that are really nice and seem to give me some peace.

Date: 2/3/2025

I've been doing a bit of reflection this morning about what this blog means to me. For me its a way for my friends and family stay updated while I'm away. I think thats great and such a good sentiment, but its honestly super stressful for me. Sharing my experiences in a format like this or like social media has never been my speed. I think there's a good reason why I've never really been someone to post on social media. I like experiencing my experiences rather than remenicing in them. For me taking photos ruins the moment. I think some people like to think that experiences don't last as long as photos, but I don't think thats true. I know my memory of my experiences will fade but ok oh well, that happens. Being stressed about taking pictures in the moment makes the moments so much worse for me. Stressing about having to contact people while I'm here is really hard. I'm gonna contact people on my own terms. I think I'll continue this blog, but don't expect anything from me. I don't owe anything to anyone. I don't owe my experiences to others. I love my family and fiends reading this, but me sending you pictures and updates does mean I love you more nor does the opposite mean I love you less. I need this experience for me and I'll tell you all about it when I get back. Before I made this blog I contemplated whether or not I should actually make it. I don't know that this is me. I think this blog is what everyone else wants from me. I'm sorry but I have no obligation to continue. Please don't contact me on your own thinking you'll get special treatment either. I'll update you when the time is right, so if you don't hear from me until I get back then thats that and it doesn't mean I care about you any less.

Thank you and I love you,

Cora

Date: 2/1/2025 22:29

Today I went to a fun event put on by a student organization, ate some pizza, did a fire drill, and went to Don Quijote.

The event was a variety of japanese traditional activities like caligraphy, oragami and kendama. They also had a rakugo performance which is a kind of traditional comedy show where the comedian tells a story with comedic elements. They did this in japanese and english. I still need to get much better at japanese grammer. I feel like a know a lot of vocabulary and can pick out a lot of words from what I hear but I'm unable to piece them together in a way that makes sense.

After the event I went with a small group to a resteraunt on campus. Its more of a cafeteria style resteraunt where you get a ticket and they quickly perpare what you ordered. We had our food within a few minutes of ordering. They have an authentic italian pizza oven imported from italy so I thought I should try some pizza. I ordered a margarita pizza(I know very japanese). It was pretty good, but I think I've had better in the united states. It was cooked perfectly but the ingredients weren't the best quality.

After eating we headed back to our dorm for the fire drill which was as uneventful as you could imagine. During the drill they also talked a little bit about what to do in the case of an earthquake. They also mentioned the potential within the next 30 years for a really large earthquake called the nankai megathrust earthquake. Hopefully I'm not in japan for that one.

Finally me and the group that went to the resteraunt also went to a general store called Don Quijote. This store could be described as Walmart on LSD. Products everywhere and of all kinds. lots of noises from advertisements on the store monitors and a constant ring of their store's jingle. 🎶don don don donnnnkiiii don ki..hooteeeee🎶 link to the jingle

Oddly enough don quijote also sells some food items including eggs which apparently don't need to be refrigerated in japan. I asked my group about it and they thought it was perfectly normal. They're from switzerland and finland and said that their eggs are also unrefridgerated.

One bit of culture shock for me has to do with the walk there. A good half of the walk from my dorm is on a narrow road that doesn't have a sidewalk. You have to walk just about a foot away from traffic going 30kmph

Date: 2/1/2025

My first saturday in Japan!! I'm still trying to settle in to all the new things that are going on.

I wanted to clarify a little bit about how this blog is going to work. Idealy I'd like to post once a day at the end of the day to do a bit of a recap but I'm a busy college student so that might not always happen. I'm also not someone who takes a lot of photos so ocasionally the blog might be lacking in the photo department. I also want to be courtious of Japanese culture where it is very disrespectful to take photos of others with out express permission.

I also want to keep my updates pretty much just to my blog. It's quite stressful to think I have to update everyone individually, so please, if you want to know whats up with me please refer to this blog :3

When I arrive back home I hope to share a larger set of photos with those close to me, but for the sake of internet saftey I will be withholding some images from the blog. Thank you for your understanding!!

I think the cafeteria food here is better than the US and its cheaper. The first two photos below are breakfast and the last photo is supper. Breakfast at the cafeteria always includes rice and miso soup and is only 400￥ dinner has a bit more variety and larger portions but cost 600￥ still much cheaper than meals of this quality in the US.

Date: 1/30/2025

Its my birthday today and I finally have some time to make a post!!

The flight here ended up being pretty smooth. I atctually mostly enjoyed ascent and descent as it had the most to see, otherwise it was just clouds and ocean. Although I didn't get to look out much because the cabin was kept dark.

Got through immigration and customs easy enough, it was a little unintuitive, but I managed.

Still settling in and pretty busy learning how to live here. I think I need to set the expectation now. I won't be able to post maybe as much as I would have liked.

Last night I went out to eat with a group of 12 and had 2 sushi rolls for only ￥925 (about $6). I feel like we might have been a little loud, or maybe it was just because were foreigners, we got a lot of looks from the other customers.