Two Weekends!

Lots of time has gone by! And my title image changed. I think it might be broken. Well, we’ll see if I can fix that. But lots of other things have happened!

Last friday, I went to Kyoto and wandered around in the shopping district. Nothing really super exciting happened. Fun looking in windows though! And I had some doughnuts, which were not real doughnuts because this is japan. They were sweetish bread rings. Didn’t really take any pictures. I wandered to a museum, but didn’t really go in. For some reason I was really out of it.

That sunday, though, was a ton of fun! I left early and went to Toji, which is a pretty standard temple by Kyoto standards, standards which, it should be noted, are incredibly high. I went into the temple and looked at the statues and architecture, and got to go into the pagoda, which are very rarely open in temples, and took a look at all the paintings on the inside, which were many centuries old and in very good condition! I wish I had been able to climb it, but they only let you see the first floor. It would have been really fun to go up in, too, because it’s the highest in Kyoto! Or maybe Japan, or something. It has some kind of height record. It’s five stories high, but I’m not sure if a pagoda-story is the same as a regular story. It could be bigger.

But I wasn’t there just for the temple! I was there for the market. It was about half antiquey kind of stalls, but there was also food and clothing and other miscellaneous ephemera. Some of it was a tad pricey. I was looking at a little brass lion-ey creature an inch or so tall, but pleasingly hefty. I asked the price and there was one zero whose presence surprised me. Same thing when I asked about an old map. I did buy a little bell, though, which jingles pleasingly amongst my change. Then I saw a cooler bell at another stand, and felt kind of like an idiot. But whatever. Still enjoying it. I also had a fabulous lunch! Fair food is always fun. Picture attached. Takoyaki, little octopus dumplings which are a local specialty, and roasted corn. And a soda. That afternoon I wandered around Nijo castle, which is not really a castle because the castle burned down, but there’s still a pretty cool palace. It featured the famous nightingale floors, which squeak when you walk on them. Sounded more like mice than nightingales, but whatever! Lots of very delicate metalwork around the beams and doorways.

Then during the week, on tuesday, I took a field trip to a grade school! I went around from class to class with some other exchange students and did a different activity in each room. The kids were super cute and practiced their english on me. I wowed them with my kendama skill. Those japanese tops are pretty tricky though. I’ll have to pick one up and master it.


This weekend followed a somewhat similar pattern in that friday was a little aimless. I wandered around Osaka with my speaking partner, in the shopping district. Picture: the Glico man, famous Osaka landmark. Hadn’t really seen Osaka at all. Kind of fun... but shopping isn’t that fun for me. You know, Y chromosome and what have you. Well, that and not a lot of money to spend on anything. There have been a couple of times when I’ve thought, man, I could blow some serious spending money here. Didn’t happen when I was in the shopping district, actually, but it did later when I went to pokemon center, which is a shop that only sells pokemon-related things. It also happens at temples sometimes - they usually sell some really lovely wooden Buddhist rosaries which are rather pricey. I might have to pick one up before I leave. Anyway, pokemon center was full of pokemon things. It was... really really fun to wander around in, actually.

The next day I was by myself, and went to Kyoto to see the plum blossoms. Kitano Tengu, the shrine I went to, is famous for them. Lots of different varieties in a ton of different pinks. I caught them at their peak, and had a really lovely time wandering around the grounds. Took a ton of pictures. I walked to the outskirts of kyoto after that and went to Ryoanji, which is famous for (and synonymous with, though there’s a lot else there) a zen rock garden, which is notable for being very very old and for the fact that it is impossible to see all the rocks in the garden at once. Supposedly, only by enlightenment can you see all fifteen at once. I was a little bit disappointed at first, because the garden is actually very small, but looking at it became... rather hypnotic. It seemed a little like one of those cross-your-eyes at it pictures. The temple was nestled in the hills, in a very cute japanese way. I’m a little bit sick of it being winter - all the photographs in the pamphlets you get at the temples show these beautiful summer trees and sakura, but now they’re much more drab. One of the reasons I went to the rock garden was because it’s a rock garden and winter shouldn’t matter. It did, though, somehow. Anyway, thanks for reading.