Fall, Finals, and Bunnies!

Hello out there!

Sorry again for yet another inexcusable delay.  Life here has been busy getting ready for finals and the rather unexpectedly impending return home.  Due to financial situations that I won't bother to bore anyone with, my trip to Japan has been cut to just one semester.  While at first I was very upset about this change of plans, I've come to terms with it and I'm actually alright with going home.

In the meantime, let's talk about fall in Nagoya, Japan!  You see, things here move a little differently for whatever reason, so while back home in the mighty Midwest, there's already been a spattering of snow, here, the leaves haven't even all fallen off the trees yet, and it's only been the last week or so that the temperatures have started to fall below freezing.  The week before, I went on a few different leaf viewing trips, but both to the same place Zen garden.  One was at night, so that was kind of different.

  

A few of my favorite pictures from the nighttime leaf viewing
outside of the Tokugawa National Museum.  I especially
enjoyed that even though it was dark, you could see the
reflections of the leaves in the water.  It was very serene.
These pics were taken on the 23rd of November, long after
the leaves at home had fallen and the weather turned nasty.

  

These pictures were taken a few days later on the 29th.
We were there right around dusk, and it had been cloudy
and rainy all day.  We also went to the Tokugawa
Museum that day, but we weren't allowed to take many
pictures, unfortunately.

Also, I spent an evening with a few friends unwinding at bunny cafe.  It's exactly what it sounds like.  You go into this cafe and you get to play with bunnies!  It was a weird reminder that pets are a luxury item to the extreme in Japan.  If I recall correctly, the cheapest rabbit was a few hundred dollars.  I've seen kittens and puppies in pet stores that go for literally thousands of dollars.  You don't buy a pet here in Japan unless you've got money to burn, apparently.  That could be one reason why places like the cat and bunny cafes are so popular.

  

I made a few new friends at the Bunny Cafe!
The little guy on the left was really sweet and
very friendly.  He was only four or five weeks old.
The one in the other pic was the most inquisitive
about the camera, so I got the best pictures of
her.  The bunnies were exactly what I needed
to wind down and try to relax a bit before finals!

I'm afraid to say that this blog will be winding down in the next few weeks to a month.  I do have some more content to put up, but I don't know how many more posts it will take to do.  Before I go home, my friend Sara and I are going to Tokyo for a few days to do some sightseeing.  That should be fun, and I plan to take a ton more pics.  That'll probably be enough material for a few posts.  I also want to do one for my art classes, kind of summarizing what I did and looking at the art I created while here in Japan.

If anyone has any last minute things they'd like me to check into or write about while I'm still here in Japan, they'd better be sending me questions quick!