Kyoto Trip

So we went to campus and waited around to be split into a group with the four of us roomates and two Kansai Japanese students. We walked to the train station and then waited for like an hour in line behind everyone else. That was my first downfall... I forgot my sunscreen. I am now a very pink Claire. Which for the rest of the day made me really insecure because I'm a 5'8", blonde haired, blue eyed and BRIGHT PINK gaijin walking around Japan speaking with these two Japanese girls...

The two "tour guides" were very nice, but their English was very bad, so we all actually had to speak a lot of Japanese. I learned a lot in one day, it's like a prep for my host family. If I'm living with people like that I am actually pretty sure my Japanese is going to get very good very fast.

So we got on the train and took the scenic route, like an hour worth of trains. But the countryside was beautiful and it was good to experience how to use the trains. When we got there we took a bus to a hillside. Then walked up the hillside to this beautiful temple. It was absoutely stunning!

The sun was beginning to set over the city and the shrine was lit up.

We climbed up a long set of steep stairs (P.S. What is with old cultures and steep stairs?!). Then at the top we had to clense our hands in a little font, multiple times throughout the temple. We walked around the front gate and payed a cheap admittance to the deeper parts of the temple.

There was a really famous buddah that's the buddah for wealth and economic success. Then we went into a more sacred part of the temple. We had to take our shoes off to go around the altar area.

There was this big bowl that people would ring, clap their hands, and say a prayer. Along with a lot of beautiful painted images around the ceiling. (I have a video on youtube of the panoramic and the bell ringing).

We walked into the deeper areas of the temple and saw more buddah. There was one font to clense our hands in that the girls said was particularly sacred, I did it for luck, or blessings, or something good.

By the way, this is my favorite picture I took today:

Then we bought a prayer block and wrote our wishes on it and hung it in the temple. It's a custom and they stay for the rest of the year and then the wishes are all prayed for in the new year. I wished to become very good in Japanese, to make lots of new friends, and to generally be happy.

We also all got our fortunes for 100 yen. It's this block with a little hole in it and a bunch of sticks. You shake up the block and then a little stick falls out, it has a corresponding fortune written out on a slip of paper. The fortune though is unfortunately in Japanese. Our "tour guides" said that my fortune was "okay." Better than bad or terrible like other girls got.

So then we left the shrine...

And headed back home. We ate on the way back. I've decided that the Japanese view waitresses as inefficent. You put your money into a machene like this:

And then you get a ticket and take it over to a counter and hand it to a person. Then sit down wherever you want, and someone brings out delicious food!

I had like a hamburger type thing, with tempura, salad, miso soup, and rice. It was great and I ate it all with chopsticks. The girls seemed to be very impressed by how I could use chopsticks to eat rice.

Then we headed home, and I'm exhausted now. Thankfully we took the express home and it didn't take very long. I'm sunburnt, my feet are soar and blistered and bloody, my muscles in my legs are tired and stiff, and just... tired. I was planning on heading out to Osaka City tomorrow, but I'm thinking of lounging around, applying lotion to my sunburn. I'm going to go to campus and see what Japanese class I got in, then go to the store and find some kind of aloe product. And just rest for a day. I meet my Family on Sunday at 3:00pm, so I don't have to worry about that. It's been a long crazy week, and a rest sounds really nice...

Speaking of which it's bed time... Night and good morning!