The Eye of Patrick

Hello everyone,After visiting Peggys Cove and having a wonderful time, we decided to try and make another trip to the surrounding areas of Halifax.

Our intended target was Lunenburg. It is a historical town on the eastern part of Nova Scotia and is known for its schooner Bluenoose, which was one of the fastest ships made in the 1920s.

The town is also known for its New England like buildings. This is preserved by strong local by-laws that control what you can do to your house.But that is not where we ended, as we (me) was driving and we had thought we had made the proper turn off, but it turns out we had not and were driving somewhere else and you know on a highway there is not much room for turning around so we decided to go with the flow and we ended up in Wolfville.

Wolfville a very beautiful and small town located in the Annapolis valley. It is a town that has a lot of victorian buildings that have been converted into B&B and has a very nice old university. So we drove around there and I took some photos of the old building. We did not stay long as there was not much to do, but it was nice to take photos again.

I hope you enjoy them,

Patrick

So i am still in Canada preparing for Japan, but I decided to take a week out of my busy schedule of putting things into boxes to go to Nova Scotia. It is a province located on the eastern part of Canada.

The night before I left I had started to pack my stuff, usually I leave it until the next day. But I decided that I should do it the night before so that I am not in a rush the next day. Which turned out to be a good thing as for some reason I did not wake up on time. I had set my alarm to 9 am, but i woke up at 10:10 and the bus was at 10:30 am. So becuase I had my stuff packed and ready I was able to get to the airport and catch my flight to Halifax.

Since arriving in Halifax I have done a lot of driving. The reason is that I failed my driving exam last week. I think the reason was becuase I was too nervous and had not much pratice (5 hours of lessons) so I was too nervous and failed to make a proper turn. But since coming to Halifax I think i have done a fair amount. Driven up to 130 km for the first time, passed people on the highway and had to desire to honk and all the idiots on the road. It is annoying that so many idiots have their drivers license, while i am still waiting for mine.

What else have I done? I went to Peggys Cove, which is an interesting white lighthouse located on one of the eastern points of Canada. It was a fishing village that has morphed in a major tourist attraction. It is interesting as their is many laws against development, which is designed to preserve its natural beauty.

While near the edge of the water I heard from someone that some people have fallen in and died. That thought kept on running through my head hehe, I thought about me falling in and drowning and thought how painful that would be.
I really enjoyed visiting here as I had not had any experiences lately when almost all my photos turned out well enough that I had a difficult challenge of deciding my wallpaper. So I decided to share some with you guys, leave a comment if you like any of them.

I am going to Cape Breton Island so I will hopefully provide some updates and nice photos from there.

Take care,

Patrick

During my stay in Japan I have gone to many difference places, but none have come close to matching the sheer beauty and reverence that Kyoto is able to generate.

Me =)

Kiyomizudera Temple

holy water

Sun setting on Kiyomizudera Temple

stairs at Kiyomizudera Temple

Kiyomizudera Temple

Little Shrine

bad wishes

It is a history of 1000s of years. This has lead to many unique and wonderful buildings being built. While on in exchange in Japan I had the opportunity to visit Kyoto many times. While there is many temples in Kyoto, the one that I enjoy the most is Kiyomizudera Temple. The reason that I like this temple so much is because no matter the season or time of day the temple has something uniuque to offer. Whether it be the lush green forests in the spring and fall, or the changing of the leaves in the fall, each one is so beautiful and magasjtic that you can’t believe that this is your 2nd or 3rd time because it feels as awe inspring as the first time you went.

Here is some history on the temple:

“Kiyomizu-dera (or Kiyomizudera, 清水寺) refers to several Buddhist temples but most commonly to Otowasan Kiyomizudera (音羽山清水寺) in Eastern Kyoto, and one of the best known sights of the city. The temple dates back to 798, but the present buildings were constructed in 1633. The temple takes its name from the waterfall within the complex, which runs off the nearby hills - kiyoi mizu (清い水) literally means pure water.

The main hall of Kiyomizu-dera is notable for its vast veranda, supported by hundreds of pillars, which juts out over the hillside and offers impressive views of the city. The expression “to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu” (「清水の舞台から飛び降りる」) is the Japanese equivalent of the English expression “to take the plunge”. This refers to an Edo period tradition that held that, if one were to survive jumping from the stage, one’s wish would be granted.

This appears plausible: the lush vegetation below the platform might cushion the fall of a lucky pilgrim, though the practice is now prohibited. 234 jumps were recorded in Edo period and of those, 85.4 percent survived. The fall is indeed only 13 metres, which remains impressive for a wooden construction.” Source

The text below is from my post on my 2nd visit to the temple, I tried to preserve as much of the original text as possible, in the to leave as much of the raw emotion and expression that came from the visit.

I think no matter how many times I visit Kyoto I will ever get tired of it, there is something about that town that is enchanting and draws me back again. The 2nd day of my friends’ trip to Kinki was a trip to Kyoto. We were going to do the traditional stuff, like visit Kiyomizudera Temple. This was my second visit in a long time, as the first visit was at the beginning of the year and I was unable to visit it during the changing of the leaves. But I was lucky this year as the leaves changed not so quick this year so I was able to get the tail end of the change in colours.

We entered the temple in the afternoon, so I was worried we would not be able to get any good pictures. But we were able to get a lot of the golden afternoon light, so I was lucky. The reason that I like this temple so much is that it stands out their on top of a hill and you look out on Kyoto and you feel this is a old country. In Canada so many things that we call old would be considered new. But in Japan they have been able to preserve a long tradition of culture.

I feel lost for words so I will just cut to the chase and post my pictures.

Hello Everyone, Sorry for not posting lately, I just graduated on Thursday and have been busy saying good bye to friends. But I wanted to give you something to read, this is a post from when I was on exchange at Kansai Gaidai. I will post some over the months to come, until I am in Japan and can give you more JET stories.

Take care,

Patrick

Since coming to Kansai Gaidai I wanted to get involved in the Japanese culture so I decided to join a club. When you join a club in Japan it is a major commitment as you are required to dedicate a lot of your time to club activities unrelated to the purpose of your club. In my case I joined the golf club because I have golf before in my life but I have never actually practice to much so I thought why not pick up a good skill set for future job applications. Also I thought it would be a good way to meet new Japanese people and break away from the many Japanese at my school who are simply trying to become friends with foreigners because it is cool or they want to speak English. My first time at the golf club was great everyone was very nervous including me, but they had such a friendly vibe to them that I decided to come back the next practice and had continued to do that for the last while. Clubs are an important aspect to any school and as a result when my school had their name sake day, Kansai Gaidai Days, my club and many others opened little shops around the school and sold stuff. I think there was at least 20-30 different clubs and booths selling stuff, this was no amateur operation as the equipment that was used by these groups was sometimes very complicated.

We started day before the festival getting ready, we had a meeting at our club house and discussed what we were going to do and sell, my club had been selling baby castellas for the longest time (Baby Castellas are small balls of cake with chocolate inside) So we got to work painting and decorating the stuff that would be covering our booth, I was held responsible for writing some of the English signs as we made the booth as bilingual as we could as we had many different people attending and we were unsure of their Japanese or English ability.

Then the next day came, it was a Saturday but we had to be at school for 8 am to set up, even though the festival was not till 1 pm that afternoon. When I woke up that day I questioned the reason why I joined the golf club ha-ha…. so I got to school earlier then I ever had before. All my golf mates were there and starting to set up, so I pitched in and helped.

Then we realized that one of the local food stores was selling eggs at a discount compared to other stores, there was just one catch and that was you were only able to buy 2 per customer. We got around this by going in a group of 4 and going through each checkout line, I think there was like 14 lines so we were able to get many eggs. It was worth it, as a penny saved is a penny earned as the saying go.

Other actitivities were going on at my school while I was there. My school has a cheerleading squad and they were doing some stunts, they were different then what I was used to in Canada, as they did more dancing then gymnastic kind of activities. But still to watch them was so interesting and exciting.

Before the festival started I was unsure on the number of people that would come to the festival as my school in Canada has hosted similar events and the turnout to be say to be poor at best. But that was not the case, even with the poor weather we had, which was rain, many people came. I was in charge of selling to English speakers, so this meant that every foreigner that entered the school was required to talk to me. Plus I had to go up to Japanese people and speak Japanese to them and shock them into buying my product, this worked a couple times. If you know me I am shy person so this was hard at first, but it got more fun as time progressed.

Here is a funny picture I took, it is a picture of the takoyaki machine that we used to cook the baby castellas in… in this picture it looks like the devil.

And as I had to go to class I went to the washroom where I was able to get photos from the roof.

So all in all it was an interesting experience that has taught me a lot about Japanese culture that I would have not experienced had I not decided to break away from the confines of my gaijin life.