More Hawaii and some Kansai

So I was going to put up more pictures of Hawaii but most were of me while I was riding4-wheelers. Since the helmet was way to big for my body I decided against including most of those.

Here are a couple of goods ones though.



So last weekend I went hiking to this place called Roku Gaiden (Rock Garden). Its between Osaka and Kyoto so I figured it would have some good views of both cities.

This is a panoramic picture I created. As I walked up to the summit of this hike and turned around I actually said out loud to myself "holy crap". Thats how amazing the view was.

A little explanation, this is looking towards Osaka. You can see the tall buildings of Umeda (downtown Osaka) to the left right on the bay. It was a little cloudy today so you can't really make out the airport on the top right. Does anyone else think this looks like a simcity 3000 picture? Maybe just me and Slubbs.

A waterfall I passed on the hike.

There were all these signs that had the Japanese Kanji for "dangerous" on them with a picture of a pig. Now I know why.

This is Kobe. I haven't actually made it over here yet, but I figure the city which created Kobe beef and inspired the Bryant family to name their son must be pretty sweet.


Again more Osaka.
This is looking towards my house. Kyoto is in the valley up on the left. Is this picture as shocking to you guys as it is to me. Sometimes when I'm living down in that cramped space I forget just how much crap they fit into such a small place.


After the hike I went to one of my friend cities because there was an Obon festival.

They started doing this dance were all these old women in Kimonos were dancing around a bunch of old men playing drums. Well it wasn't 30 seconds until some old women grabbed me and forced me to participate. So this is me making a fool of myself in front of approximately 300 Japanese people.

Oh well there ended up being a cute girl in front of me.


So I'm having my first bit of culture shock. I think Japan might be worse than a country in Europe or something similar, because its so homogeneous. I mean seriously, everyone here is Japanese. Sometimes it really starts to wear on me that I'm such an outsider and stand out like a sore thumb. But thats just part of living abroad I guess.