Our Religion professor, Ludvik, had given our class a list of festivals during the month of April and Prae asked her which one she thought would be worth checking out this weekend. Ludvik said that the Spring festival going on at Gokonimiya-jinja was definitely worth checking out. So Prae and I decided to go to this shrine and visit the festival for a bit. We decided to meet at 10:45 at the temple. Gokonomiya is located in a small town Momoyama, and I had to change trains from the express to the local just to get there. Kenny gave me a call right before I got on the train and I told him where we were headed and he said he'd probably meet up with us later.
Prae and I got to the shrine and were expecting to see some kind of merry Matsuri going on, instead what we saw was the tail end of some kind of solemn looking ritual. We had missed the festival. Oh noes! Luckily, even though it's kind of tricky to get to Momoyama had a lot of other sites to see and a nice map outside the shrine to guide us. We chose to visit some shrine in the mountains and started trekking up into the woods. There were these two giant Tori areas that were blocked off and giant, what I'm guessing were burial mounds in behind them. There was also this huge HUGE staircase. Prae and I were thankfully at the top and opted to walk down. During this time of exploration Kenny had showed up and I managed to miss both his text and call. But we were all able to meet up at Gokonomiya and strangely enough, he had been wandering in the same area of us, we just missed each other.
By this time we were all hungry. Lunch time! We settled on a small Okonomiyaki restaurant. We each ordered some yaki soba and split a large okonomiyaki. My first okonomiyaki on this trip and it was delicious! Lunch concluded with the purchase of soft serve ice cream and we wandered around Momoyama a bit.
It was kind of amazing, we were the only non Japanese tourists there. It felt like we had discovered some kind of new land unknown to our people. Momoyama was gorgeous by the way. It is known, I guess, for its waters and the riverside walk was beautiful. The sakura season is pretty much over, but the walk was still amazingly gorgeous. Just marvelous. We wandered from the river to another temple and then to an area with a lot a lot of sake houses. We walked in to a gift store but did not take part in the drinking.
All this walking and we were pretty tired. So we went our separate ways and headed home. When I got home I was the only one there so I decided to take a nap. It was about 6:00 when I fell asleep, and I woke up at 10. I had completely missed dinner and felt pretty bad. I went downstairs, showered and went back to sleep. I don't think I ever really woke up, so I luckily didn't really get hungry. And I'm pretty sure my host family thinks I had a bit too much to drink, because my host mother asked it we visited the sake making houses, to which I replied yes. I mean, we went in a gift store, but I'm pretty sure she got the wrong idea. Miscommunication. Oh noes!!
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