Today I was supposed to meet Prae and Kenny to pick up our cell phones and take advantage of the group discount offered by Au (one of the major cell phone providers in Japan). We were supposed to meet at the Karasuma Oike stop at 11:30. However, I've fallen into the habit of only paying attention to the minutes hand when reading time and I ended up arirving what I thought to be 20 minutes late, but what was actually 40 minutes early. The sad thing is, it took me another 10-15 minutes to figure out why they hadn't shown up yet. Yes, I can't tell time.
Once everyone had arrived at the station, we made our way over to the Au store, where we soon find out that all of us lacked one of the essential items for getting the cell phone. Prae forgot her passport, Kenny didn't obtain the correct paperwork. But me, I out did both of them. I had the wrong paperwork and failed to bring my passport. We failed together.
Failing so hard really works up an appetite, so we went wandering around the area and ended up on Shijo street and found this pretty sweet restaurant underground. The restaurant looked pretty traditional, we even had to remove our shoes and put them in wooden lockers. Our eating area was a private table on Tatami with pillows for our oshiri. I had tenpura udon, Prae had some sashimi business, and Kenny had doria, which we still don't really know what it is but it does seem to have a lot of mayo.
After that we wandered our way to a department store where we realized how thankful we were to live in a country where normal clothes don't cost $100 for a shirt. Well, at least where we shop. I have yet to find a department store selling T-shirts for less than $50 dollars in American money. Prae was supposed to meet up with a friend that currently lives in Kyoto, so Kenny and I doubled back to find that street with the cherry blossoms and the river that we ran across the night before we left for our home stays. Sadly, the weather wasn't the greatest, but it was still very pretty.
We then wandered our way to Maruyama Park, with lots of, yes you guessed it, cherry blossoms and Yasaka Shrine. But where I really wanted to go was Kyomizu Temple. We were on a mission. Sadly that mission took us on a trek up a mountain that was thankfully lined with free samples of mochi. We wandered, and in true wandering spirit found a shrine dedicated to the fallen soldiers in WWII and that housed the largest concrete Bodhisattva I have ever seen. I think the pamphlet said it was 24 meters high. Totally picture worthy.
Finally, after much much much walking we reached Kyomizu Temple. It sits in the mountains, so the view of Kyoto from there is absolutely amazing and the grounds are equally gorgeous. We wandered around did the tourist picture taking and went down to get our drink on. From the holy streams water, of course. There were 3. I think drinking from one of them is supposed to give you good fortune in different areas like health and you know, life.
By this time we were tired. Tired. Tired. We had wandered like crazy and were ready to head back. So we walked down the mountain and got side tracked in true Hawaiian style by food. We bought 16 mini-soymilk donuts. Now, I know what you're thinking. Soy milk donuts, Anya, you hippie, next thing you know you'll be hugging bonsai trees. But trust, these donuts were delicious and would sate any snack craving carnivore. We killed them in about 5 minutes and continued our trek. Long trek. I want to google map our general route. I'm sure we walked more than 4 miles, easy.
I do so much walking here, I feel like I'm in one of those epic fantasy novels making my way through Middle Earth or something. But really I'm just exploring and getting lost in central Kyoto. It's still fun, though. Fun. Fun. Fun.
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