Ginkaku-ji...Day 14

Day 14 - Wednesday, Apr 14



School! Today it was actually sunny scattered clouds, but sunny. I even wore slippers today, which was a mistake as I had to jog/speedwalk to the train station to make my morning train. Then, when I got to school and the director, Horvat, saw me in slippers he tried to convince me to go buy socks downstairs. He tried to take the it's still cold and too early for slipper wear, but I'm pretty sure he just wanted me to cover up the indecency of my open toes.

Class. Class. Lunch. Have I talked about the cafeteria? I really can't remember, but it's cheap. You can get a decent amount of food for less than 500 yen (including ice cream!) so yeah, score. I had katsu-curry. Both yummy and filling. Oh, but before I go on, I need to talk about my ice cream. It had azuki beans, vanilla ice cream and a cone like shell in the shape of a fish. Awesomeness. My dessert choice was the envy of my table. After lunch I didn't really have any plans. I sat in the center library doing my internet thing and about 20 minutes in Mio, one of the girls in the program I don't think I've mentioned yet, showed up and asked if anyone was free and would like to accompany her and David to Ginkaku-ji. I bolted up packed my bags and was off to Ginkaku-gi via bus five minutes later.

I caught the bus with David (Mio biked) and I had actually never met this David. Apparently (this was news to me too) there are two Davids in this program. At Ginkaku-ji we met up with Mio and walked around a bit outside, checking out shops and a few shrines in the neighborhood. Oh, I bought post cards! So if anyone wants a post card, leave your address as a comment and I'll send one your way. The cool thing is, after looking through most of the post cards, I realize I've been to most of those places. Yay me! We met up with Ben, another person I don't think I've mentioned, and finally went into Ginkaku-ji.

The gardens there are quite gorgeous. There's some Zen sand sculptures other areas with bridges and stones and lush vegetation. We just meandered around the path taking pictures. All in all, not a bad way to spend 500 yen. We even managed to meander to the gift store where I saw the most expensive piece of wood going for about 1,000,000 yen. Silly Zen people.



We left the Temple and a shop selling cream puffs and soft serve ice cream immediately caught our eye. Having met my ice cream quota for the day I went for a sakura cream puff. Yum. After eating our treats, we headed for the Philosopher's Path (at least I think that's what it's called). It's basically a street lined with little shops and cafes and sakura trees. More sakura. One of the shops was pretty cool it sold these tiny mobile like structures. I can't explain it much better than that and we weren't allowed to take pictures, but it was cool. Take my word for it.

And be proud of me, I managed to take an unfamiliar subway line (okay, so I've caught it once before, but that was with supervision) to the correct station. Hooray for me and my crazy navigational skills.

That was my day.