Every 25th of the month Kitano Tenmangu Shrine holds a flea market. I love flea markets and I managed to reign Prae into going with me. We arranged to meet at noon, but for some reason I woke up early and decided to just head over early. I caught the train and subway to campus and planned to walk to the temple from there, but me being directionally handicapped walked in the wrong direction. I realized this when I reached the river that I was supposed to be walking away from.
I ended up taking a bus because the shrine was too far from the river to for me to make it in time. And can I just say that was the most crowded bus I have ever been on. It was insane one arm was in the air an elbow was in someone's rib cage. Crazy world, my friends, crazy world. And the little hunched over old people are even crazier. They push and shove, and are positively frightening. But I made it to the temple in one piece despite the geriatric demons and walked past bustling crowds to get to the temple.
Prae arrived on the bus after and we wandered around the booths. There were food booths (yes, free samples), game booths (they have these silly paper hoop things to scoop fish and balls before the paper breaks), booths with plants, booths with silly souveniers, booths with old stuff, booths with creepy old dolls, and lots and lots of booths selling old kimonos. Prae and I didn't actually end up buying anything aside from food. We settled on Hiroshima style okonomiyaki and those little fish things with the red bean paste inside. Yum. Good times.
Mosquito punks. These always reminds me of Aunty Maybelle for some reason.
Prae and I decided to walk back to the Imadegawa Station near school and along the way stumbled upon an archaeology museum. Free Admission!! Yeah we went in and got awesome stamps. The museum was pretty cool, but let me just say there was a reason it was free. It looked like they had found these artifacts at building sites and decided to stash them in this museum. Then we wandered some more. Saw a temple and happened upon a really pretty little stream. We walked along the stream for a bit and sat and talked story before going our separate ways home.
After dinner my host father and I played Go. 'Go' means five in Japanese, it's kind of like connect four, but played on a board. The object of the game is to get five in a row, which can be surprisingly difficult given that I was playing with a seasoned veteran. But I had beginners luck on my side. I won the first game, lost two, and came back strong for the win in the last round. My host father said we'll have to play again sometime so he can exact his revenge on me. Insert evil laughter.
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