Me Katie & her friend Regina
The weather in Japan has been great since we got here. it’s been sunny and warm very day! Kyoto is definitely one of my favorite places here. I would saw it has the most culture and history than anywhere else we’ve been and you really can see & feel it.
Our third day in Kyoto was much better. Katie’s friend Regina met us at the hostel and she was our personal tour guide for the next two days. She has been to Kyoto before and has lived in Japan for over a year and was so helpful and answered all our questions! We started the morning really early and I finally had a cup of coffee, 6 days without coffee is way too long for me! We went to the Sanjusangendo Temple. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures inside, but there are 1001statues of the Buddhist diety Kannon inside the temple. 124 of them were made in the 1100’s and the rest were made in the 1200’s. They are all lined up in perfect rows on either side of the gigantic statue. We walked around the city FOREVER and only took the bus once. We saw so many temples, that after a while they start to blend together. But I really liked the Kiyomizu Temple, which you could look out into the mountains and see a Buddhist temple off in the distance. It was beautiful and the foliage reminded me of home!
Kiyomizu Temple
At the parade.
Every October 22nd the city has a festival called the Jidai Matsuri to celebrate its anniversary as a city. This year was the 1,100-year and we got to see the parade with people dressed up as ancient warriors and emperors, etc. from all the different time periods. While we were watching a little old man handed me a brochure that was in English & Japanese so I could understand each of the different parts of the parade, and he let me keep it! The old men here have been so nice to me! That sounds weird, ha, but yesterday another old man asked if we needed help, even though we had already figured out where we were going, and also gave us some advice and I think he just wanted to practice his English but he was very sweet.
In the afternoon we walked down the Path of Philosophy and saw even more shrines and temples. All shrines are free to see and enter but almost all the temples have admission fees, and don’t offer student discounts which is annoying.
That night we went out do dinner with our French roommate David, I tried cooked oysters for the first time, then we played Plachinko, the gambling game everyone here is addicted too. We lost of course. Karaoke is very very popular here. It’s different than in the states. Here you get a private room for you and whoever you are with and they serve you drinks in your room and you pay by the hour. Each karaoke venue has like 8 floors, which different themed rooms on each floor. We had a blast doing it!
Me Katie and our French roommate David in our Karaoke room.
Today we went to the Golden Temple called Kinkakuji Temple, it was beautiful! The whole thing is made out of gold and sits right next to a pond and it reflects off the pond. It’s surrounded by gardens, just like al the other temples, and it was so peaceful to walk around. We also went to the Ryoanji Temple and saw the famous rock garden there. I don’t know how, but looking at a rock garden is so peaceful too! Everything here really is so zen and I really do feel so at peace here.
Regina had us try all sorts of typical Japanese foods while we were in Kyoto. I tried a rice omelet, which tasted very Mexican to me, so obviously I liked it! They pour the ketchup on it for you before they serve it. I think we had half the bottle of ketchup on our omelet! I also tried cooked squid, kind of like calamari but without the batter and it was served with mayonnaise! Mayo is very popular here, they put it on everything!! Mochi, which is pounded rice is also very popular. It’s usually cut into triangles and filled with different pastes. I tried the one that had red bean paste in it. We tried other ones too, but I have no idea what they were. One tasted like a banana though. I also tried plum wine, which I spit back into the cup and I think I offended the lady, opps! I also had aloe and white grape juice, that had actual pieces of aloe on the bottom of the can that you drink. It was so good! I wish we had better juice drinks in America. They have every combination of fruit juice you could ever think of.
the Golden Temple.
Right now we are in Tokyo at a real capsule hotel before we leave for China! I much prefer the first capsule hostel we stayed at. This one is a little bit older and a little dirtier. And I am literally sleeping in a capsule. The only shower here is an onsen on the top floor (a public bath), so I might just wait until I get to China...We walked around the Asakusa area, where our hostel is, and it is a bit more touristy than other parts of the city, lots of souviner shops! We had sushi again tonight and I tried king crab leg sushi, it was really good and tasted like lobster!
My Capsule
I can’t believe how fast the first week flew by! I wish we had more time here to visit the country side and see rice fields and go to Mt.Fuji too. Oh well, I guess I will just have to come back one day!
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