The weather today was gorgeous. Sunny. Sun. Sun. Sun. Oh how I missed you. And the thing is, Kyoto is still getting over the whole being cold thing so it was sunny and cool. Winning combo, at least for afternoon exploratory purposes.
After lunch there were a group of guys heading to Kinkaku-ji (the Golden Pavilion) so off to Kinkaku-ji I went. It was rather stunning in the sun. Glowing in the sun and reflecting off the water. So pretty. We wandered the grounds of the garden a bit and I'm not sure if I discussed this, free samples? There are free samples of mochi everywhere. I love it. Kenny and I had no shame getting free samples, but a few of the other guys with us had some reservations. One even felt so bad that he bought a box. I like to think of those tents as a mini Costco that only serves one kind of sample. Yum mochi.
After Kinkaku-ji we were ready to head back to campus so we hopped on a bus. However, as we were riding, our Japanese sensei got off and informed us that we were going in the wrong direction. FAIL. Rookie mistake. What made it worse is that the bus did not go in a loop. We got off a few steps down and as fate would have it landed in front of, yeah you guessed it, another temple. It was pretty cool. There was this awesome pagoda and some other pretty neat buildings and some of the sakura trees still had flowers on them. This time, when we got back on the bus we made sure we were going in the right direction and barely made it back to school. I say barely, because like the little punks we are we took up the back row of seats on the bus. This was all fine and dandy until the bus started filling up, and when I say 'filling up' I don't mean all the seats were taken. I mean all the seats were taken and all the the people standing are so close to each other that their arms were pinned to their body. But we made it thanks to some (pushy) maneuvering.
When I got back to campus, I had a mission. For Golden Week, Rachel wants to visit the Ghibli museum. Ghibli is the company that produces all of the Miyazaki Hayao films. So I'm guessing it'll be a mueseum dedicated to his work. Apparently the tickets can be purchased from a local convenient store. So my wandering buddy, Kenny, and I set out on a mission to find the nearest Lawsons to buy these tickets and afterwards redeem our weeklong unlimited JR passes. We asked around our fellow SCTI-ers where the nearest Lawsons was and they all replied that there are plenty of Lawsons and that we should have no problem running into one. About an hour later, Kenny and I were still wandering. It was getting late and we still needed to make it to Kyoto train station. RIght when we were about to throw in the towel and find the nearest subway station, we spotted it, a Lawsons.
We entered and I realized I really had no idea how I was supposed to go about purchasing these tickets. So I went up to the cashier and he directed me to this machine that resembled an ATM except it had pictures and was all in Japanese. I asked him if I could buy tickets for Ghibli and he just gave me a blank stare. In his defense he did half heartedly stare the machine down with me but in the end I had to face off with this machine by myself. Needless to say, the machine won. FAIL. Our wandering was in vain, but we did get to explore the city a bit.
The nearest subway station was pretty near and we took the Karasuma line to Kyoto station. Now, to explain the JR rail pass ordeal. Basically, as a tourist initiative, JR allows tourists to purchse rail passes that gives them unlimited access to the shinkansen for a certain period of time. Mine is good for a week. Perfect for golden week. Okay, Mom, you're probably not going to like this too much, but technically, I'm not supposed to use the JR pass. It's really only intended for people with a tourist's visa. I have a cultural activities visa. Meaning, if the JR ticket counter found fault with our visa, the pass could be refused and no redeem action, no unlimited shinkansen tickets. But that was a gamble (that I did not inform you of) I was willing to take.
So Kenny and I get to the station go to the counter we've prepared ourselves mentally to look as touristy and out of place as possible, which isn't difficult for either of us. But we went to the wrong counter. After a lot of wayward wandering we find the right counter where we were refused by the woman at the window. FAIL. At this point, neither Kenny nor I were very happy. Those rail passes are a deal if you can redeem them, but basically a lost money if you can't. Luckily, we had a back up plan. Like idiots, we had gone to the central ticketing station. The legit ticketing station with nice marble floors and counters. So we went back to the original wrong counter and asked where the back ticketing station was. The back station was more our style, kind of sketchy with poor lighting and a ticketing agent that did not even look twice at our visas. She even ignored the stamps and cross outs that the original booth lady had scribbled on our passes. Awesome. All set for golden week. Just need to book the shinkansen. Boom.
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