From the Midwest and Around the World

   I recently realized that I do not deal with really big cities very well. Crowds annoy me I don't like to fight through them and I don't like to even see them. I learned this in Tokyo this past weekend. I, of course, really enjoyed Tokyo overall. I just didn't like that except for in my dorm at the hostel, there was no escape from people. The first day, I arrived from Hiroshima in Tokyo in the afternoon and went to Harajuku and Shinkjuku (the major fashion districts). Because it was the weekend, there were just so many people and my feet were hurting, so after walking up and down the main street, I had to leave. I felt suffocated, annoyed, and slightly guilt-tripped by the panhandlers, salespeople, and general crowdedness. There were literally people packing the sidewalk as far as the eye could see. However, despite that, I saw some of the interesting fashions that are popular in Japan. After being wiped by the crowds, I hopped on a train and arrived at my hostel which wa...

   Let's talk about fortunes! At Japanese temples and shrines, there are little boxes, like so:     Inside are sticks with numbers written on the end. To get one's fortune, you shake the box and then hold the box until a stick comes out from the hole. You read the number and grab a piece of paper with that number on it (some temples even have vending machines which do this). This whole process and the paper you get are omikuji. On each paper (which is different depending on the number), there is a certain degree of blessing: all the way from amazing blessing to horrible curse. The two times that I've done it, I've never gotten a curse. In Kyoto, I did a koimikuji (love omikuji). I got a "future blessing" for that. I won't tell you the whole thing, but for me, the "key to good luck" is reading...so I think I'm fine for now. The second time I did the omikuji was in Tokyo at that Asakusa Temple. I got "Regular fortune." Luckily th...