I visited Sojiji!

Today I woke up and found I could walk around okay. YAY \;_;/ The knee felt somewhat better.
I cleaned my apartment and organized things better, which is what I usually do when I’m sick or hurt and don’t go to training.

After talking to my mom on skype for over an hour, I went to Tsurumi to find some shrines and temples. Many of my students did “hatsumode,” which means “first visit to the shrine in the new year.” (yeah lol, long translation for one word. Japanese is hard, dudes.) Upon asking them, “Did you go to Kawasaki Daishi?” thinking it was the largest temple in the area, I was surprised to hear that many went to someplace in Tsurumi, which is about 15 minutes south of me.

Being a curious-hearted gaikokujin with a major in Japanese language, lit and culture, I needed to go see for myself. NEEDED. So after downing a healthy lunch of chicken, rice, veggies and washing it down with ice-cream and cake (^_^;;;) I went to Sojiji (Soji temple).

I took a bunch of pictures.


I like the contrast of texture of these trees.


Between the statue and the tree….I actually found the tree more interesting. Such a beautiful tree! One that could live in Fern Gully. I put my ear to it, but it didn’t say thing. (sometimes they creak and make groaning sounds. I’m serious….)

Now THIS is what I call a Japanese lantern. The plaque said that it was stone taken from the top of some mountain somewhere.


So….I used to think these were SO cool, these guardians. Until I watched the anime “Gantz” and they came to life and killed the main characters. ^^;;; Now I’m so creeped out by them…
(screen shot of Gantz)

I took pains to check in with facebook. XD Then I went to “Tsurumi Shrine” on the other side of the station. You can see Shrines tend to be much smaller than temples. I kind of can tell the difference well now that I went to them back-to-back. (I’ll post pictures of this place later)

Then I went to Gold’s Gym and worked out my upper-body for an hour and a half. It was a good work-out! Despite the stomachache I got from the chocolate. ^^; heh I suck.

Well, I think I can move around enough for the kindergarten class. But I can tell you one thing. It’s going to be ‘hopping on one leg-day.” XD I shall use all the creativity in my noggin to come up with a fun class.

So now it’s 6:00 PM and I’m going to watch MMA and tech videos for the rest of the night.…

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