Hello 日本

Yesterday I went with my Area Representative (Ono-san) and her daughter (I forget her name…oops) to Kishiwada to see Kishiwada-jo.
It’s a pretty small castled, in comparison to Osaka-jo, but it was still really beautiful and had a very interesting rock garden.
Actually, there was a wedding going on that day, and turns out it was a gaijin (from Canada!) getting married to a Japanese woman. So we ended up being a sort of part of the wedding parade, because they went right up to the top of the castle too!
We were kind of stranded outside on the balcony for a while because we couldn’t interrupt the ceremony.
It was pretty cool though, from the top of the castle it was possible to see all the way to Kansai Airport.
After that, we drove to Jolly Pasta and I had kiwi juice and bacon pizza for lunch.
Then the Onos took me too this cool historical park place. It basically has a bunch of old buildings made of wood and straw, such as houses, a well, and storage buildings. It was pretty cool, but rather uninteresting aside from the historical aspect.
Then they took me home.

Today I met up with Sehee in Namba (took the train by myself; yay!) at 8:30. Actually, I got there at 8:30 and then it took us like 20 minutes to actually find each other because Namba is so ridiculously massive.
Finally, we met in front of a McDonald’s. Then we had to make our way from the train station to the subway station and buy a ticked to Yodoyabashi.
We took the subway there, and then we had to buy a ticket to Fushimi-Inari on the Keihan Main Line. During this whole time, I constantly made Sehee ask the Japanese people for help.
Getting to Fushimi involved getting off the train at one station and then waiting for the local train (stops at every station) instead of the express train we were on (only stops sometimes).
But finally, we made it to Fushimi-Inari station!!! I made Sehee ask the train main how to get to the shrine, but it was actually very easy. We left the station, turned left, and walked until we got to the entrance!
Along the way we passed many stores selling food. In Fushimi-Inari, a popular street food is roasted sparrow (yes, the bird) because it is supposed to be the favorite food of the fox. The fox spirit is what Fushimi-Inari temple was built for.
We actually ended up coming in through the back entrance, and as we made our way to the main entrance, we noticed a crowd. Naturally, we checked it out. At first we just saw some men dressed in traditional clothes. Then came a parade of boys, stepping in time and playing some sort of flute instrument. Behind them were men dressed in samurai armour. It turns out that it was a celebration for the anniversary of the temple. We had no idea it was happening today, so we were very lucky to see such an event!!
Then we spent a while exploring the shrine. It is actually the place where a scene from Memoirs of a Geisha was filmed. If you have seen the movie, it is when Sayuri is a little girl and she runs through a path lined with orange torii gates. I actually made Sehee reenact the scene. It made my day
We wandered around the shrine for a while, and then walked back to the train station…where we discovered it was the wrong station. Instead, we had to walk basically back to the shrine to find the JR Station, because the Keihan Line didn’t go to Kyoto.
We had to push our way through a massive crowd of men in white clothes (sometimes half-clothed) to get to the train station. We bought our tickets and made our way upstairs, from which we had a perfect view of the men performing another part of the festival. They called a big float and then shook it to make it jingle. There was also a man on a horse who followed behind the float.
Unfortunately, our time was limited and we had to catch a train, so we weren’t able to see the rest of the festival.
We made it to Kyoto Station and from there we found our way to the exit and bought a 1-day bus pass. Then we took the bus to To-ji Temple. To-ji is home to a very large wooden pagoda. Unfortunately, it cost a fair amount to get in to see the pagoda, so Sehee and I settled with taking pictures from behind the fence. And they weren’t bad photos either, so I was content.
We walked back to the bus stop and realised that we had just missed the bus back to Kyoto Station. So instead we took the bus to Gion. We got off at Gion and went to Lawson (a convenience store) and bought chocopan for lunch. Yum. Then we took a stroll down the streets of Gion. Gion is the “geisha district”. Well, actually geisha in Kyoto call themselves “geiko” and the district mainly consists of one street with many fancy restaurants and houses. It was really beautiful. We didn’t see any real geiko, unfortunately, but we did see a few people who paid money to dress up like geiko. They were Asian, though, so they looked real. Sehee and I were jealous.
After wandering around in circles for a little while, we finally found the right way to get to Kiyomizu Temple. We decided to walk the 30 minutes or so there, which involved a hike up a fairly steep hill with out 1 thousand other tourists (I despise Golden Week crowds SO MUCH!).
We stopped in a few stores on the way there.
FINALLY we got to the top. Kiyomizu is very beautiful; there are tons of trees around, which is not normal for me to see in my daily life. There is a waterfall at Kiyomizu that you are supposed to drink from with a metal cup. Unfortunately, the line would’ve taken about 1/2 an hour or more to wait in, so we skipped that. I really want to go back and do it!
After Kiyomizu, we decided to make our way home, as we were tired and hungry. On the way back, Sehee stopped and bought some vanilla and green tea soy milk icecream. It was pretty good, actually, for soy icecream.
We got a little lost, but with some help from a car park man, we walked down to the bus stop that went to Kyoto Station. When we got to the station, we managed to figure out the best route back to Namba. It involved changing trains around 3 times, but we made it!
We left Namba Station and went to an arcade to take purikura. We tried to send it to our cellphones, but for some reason it didn’t work!!! So I can’t show you the pictures
After purikura, we went to eat dinner. We had hamburgers, which were actually pretty good! Funnily enough, my host family had hamburgers for dinner too….Odd.
After dinner, we made our way back to Namba Station and found our trains and said goodbye!
And that was my day!
I am SOOOO TIRED!!!