japan continued...

ok so our secondday in kyoto got off to a rainy start. luckily, j-hoppers had several umbrellas for hostel use which was really nice. umbrellas are only about $3-6, but i didn't want to spend money on something i would only use for (hopefully) that day. so i picked out a cute navy blue one with bright blue and red polka dots. it just so happened i was wearing bright blue jeans and a red hoodie, so it matched my outfit perfectly!

we had picked out a couple spots we wanted to see around kyoto and looked at several maps to come up with the best plan of attack. we figured if we hit up the torii gates in the north and took the bus back to kiyomizudera, then we might be able to get to the golden temple before tesni came. so we grabbed our umbrellas and hit the streets to get to fushimi inari taisha.

fushimi inari is a shrine with thousands of donated torii gates. merchants and manufacturers have donated them in hopes of incredible wealth... kinda wack if you ask me, but i guess everyone has to wish for something! there were several large shrines, and several small ones tucked away along the path. we took some mary poppins inspired jumping pictures in front of the torii and i took a .gif file set of nicole doing cartwheels down the torii path, amazing. somewhere along the way, we fell off the path and ended up in a small neighborhood setting. maybe where the people who tend to the landscape of the shrines live or something? i got my first hot cocoa from a vending machine and we enjoyed the scenery while the rain drizzled on...

we took the train back to the center of town and ate lunch at... guess! mos burger! when in doubt, mos it out. i got my normal burdock rice burger thing, as did nicole. adam was daring enough to try the a-spiceee-mos-a-cheeburger. he said it wasn't so spicy, i think the japanese are afraid of real spice. except for wasabe, that's a whole different beast.

after lunch, we hopped on the bus again to head to kiyomizudera - a buddhist temple and unesco world heritage site. it is high up on stilts and looks over a really lush green canopy of trees. apparently it used to be the cool thing to jump off the platform at kiyomizu (they say their phrase "jump off the platform at kiyomizu" is the english equivalent of "take the plunge") and if you landed, your wish would be granted. now people go to pray and drink the sacred three waters hoping for health, longevity and success in studies. nicole and adam waited in line to drink the water, i stayed back to take pictures. we walked the short loop and it began to rain harder, so we thought we should probably head back to the hostel.

we didn't get to go to the golden temple, but its ok... the rain was so horrible, we just wanted to go back to the hostel so we could let our shoes dry out. tesni was coming around dinner time so while adam stayed behind to finish his book, nicole and i went shopping. we oogled the japanese fashion trends and found a lot of lol-worthy shirts and i took pictures of the heels & boots. we finally found a bookstore and nicole worked her magic skills to find the japanese photography section so that i could find the books that andrew had wanted. finally, a success in buying gifts!

we met tesni at the train station and brought her back to the hostel. we all agreed we were pretty hungry, and wanted to eat something close by. no trains, buses or long walks in the rain. luckily, we found a place around the corner from our hostel with okonomiyake! yummy. tesni, nicole and i split a couple vegan noodle and rice dishes and adam chowed on chicken... it was delicious. we sat at the bar, so they cooked right in front of us and we looked at some weird porn book. you know, light reading before a casual dinner... no big deal. we stopped by the combini (aka. seven and i holdings) on the way back to grab some weird spritzer type drinks.

with drinks and snacks in hand, we went up to the chiller floor. hostels are always kind of strange, they draw a really weird crowd and this was no exception. we just hung around and drew pictures of each other, and aliens, and read some odd british magazine that had been left behind by some previous hostel visitor. again, we were all exhausted after a very full day, and the three of us girls slept well while adam was away on another floor... finishing that book!