Category: Katie in Kyoto

Midterms

Published on by Katie SandovalLeave a comment

We took a summer break! This post is from June 17, 2025. The last few weeks have been pretty busy as assignments have started to pick up. The semester is also a little over halfway finished, which means it’s time for midterms. I’ve already taken two and have another one coming up in about two weeks.

One of my “midterms” was for my Japanese speaking class. It felt more like a review than a real exam, so I only reviewed the grammar points we learned from that class. For a speaking-focused course, I got partnered up with one of my friends and we had to write a short script. We didn’t need to actually speak our scrip out loud when we were done and we were even allowed to use our phones to look up words we didn’t remember, so it was actually a pretty easy test.

The second midterm, though, was for my Natural Disasters class and that one I definitely had to study for. We were tested on earthquakes, volcanoes, mass movements and more. Science isn’t really my strong suit, so I tried to review as much as I could, right up until the last minute.

The format of the test was also interesting, one paper had the questions, and we had to write our answers on a separate sheet. I kept catching myself almost forgetting to write my answer on the answer sheet sometimes since I just wanted to write it down next to the question. Even though I was stressing out on how I did, I managed to pass with a C, which I’m honestly happy with.

Aside from midterms, all seven of my classes have been assigning more presentations and homework. The workload itself isn’t terrible, but it’s happening at the same time I’m starting to get notices about things to do before leaving Japan.

Balancing schoolwork and preparing to move out has definitely been stressful. I also want to keep my weekends free for exploring, which means I’ve been trying to finish all my assignments during the four weekdays I have class. It’s starting to become a lot to balance, but I’m still trying to do my best to stay on top of everything.

Day Trip to Nara

Published on by Katie SandovalLeave a comment

So far, my friends and I have been taking a day trip about once a week. It’s a great way to explore different parts of Japan while still keeping up with schoolwork. This time, we went to Nara, which is a little over an hour away from where we are.

We wanted to get there early to buy some deer crackers before they sold out, so the plan was to leave at 6 a.m. on the dot. My friends followed through with that plan… I, however, accidentally woke up a bit late. Luckily, I was able to catch an express train.

Express trains come at different times but are not that different from the local trains. The only difference is that local trains stop at basically every station while an express train will skip some in order to reach a certain station faster. Thanks to that I was only about 30 minutes late instead of what could have almost over an hour late.

My friends told me that no one was selling crackers just yet at Nara Park, so I met up with them at Todai-ji Temple. The temple was massive! The outside was beautiful, but the inside was even more impressive. The enormous Buddhist statues were mesmerizing, and since we arrived early, it wasn’t that crowded which was a plus.

After walking through the temple and learning a bit about its history, we made our way to Nara Park. By then, the street vendors had started selling crackers, so we bought two packs of ten for about 400 yen. Even before we even bought the crackers though, the deer started to surround us, almost like they knew we were buying them food. We had to quickly walk away though as we wanted to split the crackers between us first.

Once we were able to split the crackers between us, we started to feed the deer, which was such a fun experience. They do feel a little pushy, I even got my bag and sleeve bit by a deer! But overall, they were surprisingly sweet. Also, there are warning signs all around the park since the deer are wild animals, things like “Don’t touch the fawns,” and being careful of bites and tackles, so I wasn’t shocked or upset that my stuff got bit.

I’ve seen people post videos online where the deer seem aggressive, but personally I think a lot of it depends on how you interact with them. When we were done feeding, we’d hold our hands out to show we had nothing left. Most of the deer seemed to understand and would walk away. A few sticked around hoping for more but weren’t biting at me anymore.

After we finished feeding the deer, we stopped by Kofuku-ji Temple. We didn’t go inside, but the outside was really pretty. Right nearby was the Higashimuki Shopping Street, where we tried some well-known foods. One of my friends got fresh mochi, made right in front of us every 30 minutes, which she said was really good. My favorite was the strawberry daifuku. I got a set of three mini daifuku, each a different flavor: milk, chocolate, and matcha with red bean paste. They were all delicious.

We ended the day by browsing the shopping street for souvenirs before heading back to the dorm. We spend about half our day in Nara, but we had a great time.