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Published: October 29th 2007
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i was all packed up on friday afternoon and ready to head out of school slightly earlier than usual (i am allowed on friday, as i teach an extra class during the week!) but then a first grade teacher invited me to a home-ec class where the students were cooking okonomiyaki so i had to go along and watch them and luckily, they fed me really well as everyone wanted to cook for me! it meant that i didn't need to worry about dinner!
it took 4 hours to get all the way from saga to kyoto but the time passed really quickly and it was great to travel on the shinkansen - fast bullet train... which is ALWAYS on time! why can't english trains be on time when japanese trains can easily manage it!?!? it was FAB to see mum and dad waiting for me at the station! i was so excited to root through all the goodies that mum had brought out - she must have only packed a few clothes for herself!
so we were up reasonably early on saturday morning and set off for Kinkakuji - the Golden Pavillion. It was absolutely stunning and we
really enjoyed walking around it. although it was an overcast day, the weather was still quite warm... we loved looking at the beautiful maple trees, which are only now starting to turn red and orange. i can't believe it's still t-shirt weather and we're nearly in november! i'm sorry... i'll stop rubbing it in now for all those who are freezing in england at the moment!
after Kinkakuji, we visited Ryoanji temple and the zen garden outside. we sat and relaxed here for a few minutes... it was made up of lots of small white stones and 15 larger stones which were "very thoughtfully placed" apparently!
we were starving after all this and so luckily stumbled across a beautiful chinese restaurant where we ate tons! the food was delish!
in the afternoon, we took the bus to Gion... and saw lots of GEISHA! how excited was i?! maybe you can tell by the fact that i took so many pics! i felt quite rude just snapping away but i'm sure they must be used to it really! we then walked for quite a while (not that we got lost or anything, *ahem*) to find the Heian shrine...
by
the evening, our legs were really tired from all the walking that we had done so we treated ourselves to a cake each in starbucks... yes, even dad had a cake! he hardly ever eats dessert!
on sunday, we got the bus to Ginkakuji - the silver temple (although it wasn't silver!)... the gardens around it were absolutely beautiful so we enjoyed admiring the views around here. we found lots of tourist shops and i couldn't believe how cheap everything was! i treated myself to a few pictures of a japanese girl and boy on a gold background and can't wait to get them framed when i'm back in england! we then enjoyed a lovely walk by the water, whilst eating an ice cream (yes, even dad had an ice cream! you can tell he's on holiday!)
we climbed up a very steep hill to get to Kiyamizudera temple and admired the views over Kyoto from the top. again, the gardens were beautiful and we were fascinated by the way people could enter these temples and pray and cut themselves off from the tourist noise and chaos around them!
my train journey back was fairly reasonable but the
lady next to me wanted to practise her English but she couldn't speak many words so we had a brief 5 minute conversation with a few English words and then a few Japanese words and then I pretended to be asleep for the rest of the journey!
mum and dad are travelling to tokyo today and i'm very jealous! they've booked the same hotel which matt and i have booked for our visit in April (what a coincidence!) mum was excited when i mentioned that there are 3 tony roma's restaurants in tokyo (our FAVE restaurant in singapore!) so i hope they eat there and save me some food for when they come to saga on friday!
most of the teachers appreciated the sweets that i bought them from Kyoto, though only 3 of them had the guts to come up and say thank you to me! lots of them crowded round when I started showing my JTE all my photos though!
hip hop tonight and then maybe a halloween party on wednesday... i need to find an outfit! any suggestions?!
oh and i must apologise for making rather sweeping generalisations on my blog! i got
in trouble with mummy dearest for implying that teachers elsewhere in the world don't work as hard as they do in japan and that if they do, they must be mad! i'm all for working hard and doing the best possible jobthat you can do, but i don't like to see people doing that at the expense of their family. and it's clear that a lot of the time, the teachers here don't even have work to do - they just stay to make it look as though they are hard working and that frustrates me as that precious time could be time spent with their children! when mum was teaching in singapore she used to work from 7am until 7pm at school but that was when kerry and i were both in england and she and dad would get home around the same time so they could still have some quality time in the evening. on the whole, that just doesn't happen here! so apologies for ranting and raving! i'll try and tone it down a bit from now on! though after saying all that, i think i'm making some progress with one of my JTEs... she came to
me all excited this afternoon saying she was leaving at 4:30 because she had to go to the city hall, which closes at 5. i asked her if she would come back to school after that though and she whispered 'no! i'm going home!' hurrah! they'll all be leaving before me at this rate!
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helen
non-member comment
hi sounds like a wonderful weekend and not a drop of purple mentioned. bet your mum brought loads of food for you. is any where dirty over there [apart from your appartment haha] it amazes me how clean it is. loving the trees. you should of rode your bike whilst sight seeing save your little feet. halloween costume buy a pumpkin cut out eyes nose and mouth then don't cut the top off cut the bottom off instead and scrape out the middle ,so it can fit on your head. then put a sheet or something on your body.you will be pumpkin head. the difference between us and japan is we take the work home to do instead of doing it at school. anyway we work harder because we have to fetch our own dinner off jane the kids don't serve us. have fun love helen