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Published: December 28th 2011
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Good Fortune
In Japan there are all kinds of ways to ask for good fortune for the New Year. Today we had breakfast in our room, it's part of the deal here so we ordered Japanese style breakfast which was cold salmon and rice and a very small egg puff of some kind, a little kimchi and some other unrecognizable tofu kind of things. It was enough to get us going along with tea we made in the room.
We set off on foot to Nijo Castle and Imperial Palace. Unfortunately, both are closed for the holiday but we plan to come back on the 5th to both. We continued on foot to several temples including Heian Jingu Shrine which was built to celebrate the 1100th year anniversary. Gee, we get excited about the Bi-Centennial. It was built in 1895. This was a Shinto shrine. Usually orange is Shinto.
Now we were getting pooped out from all the walking so we hopped on a bus to the Kiyomizu-dera Temple which is Buddist. This one is very large and impressive. It was quite interative with bells to ring, and plenty of activities where you can ask for blessings and safety. This temple is very beautiful during Cherry Blossom and Fall Foliage. There are still a few fall colors going
and plenty of trees and plants that stay green year round. There are also citrus trees growing in peoples yards. It's so cold I can't believe citrus can grow so well here at this time of year. There is a huge row of tourist trap shops with lots of wares and we sampled the mochi (flavored pounded rice) and had some green tea along the way.
We took our first taxi ride back to the hotel. We took a short rest and then headed out to find dinner near our hotel. We only made it about 1/2 block and an adorable young man advertising the place explained to us that there was a Yakotori bar up on the 3rd floor so we decided to give it a try.
There is something here called Gaijin smash, according to Beth. It's the Japanese way of describing dumb tourist moves. The food at the Yakatori bar was good until we decided to order our 2nd round of meat and managed to order chicken fat sticks instead of chicken. EWWWW! So after dinner we did a little shopping at the little grocery store and I manage to accidently commondere a ladies shopping
cart. The carts are really small and I got distracted and set my basket on her little cart. I noticed a lady flitting about for a little while but didn't notice until I got up front that I had her cart and her groceries were on the bottom. She was no where in site and of course was too polite to tell me I had her cart! Gaijin smash #2 So then we are leaving the store and I tell the clerk Ohaiyou Gozaimasu which is good morning and it is night now. I also managed to leave our rail passes at home so this was all of my Gaijin tricks for today. We'll see what tomorrow brings.
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Deb G
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Kyoto - Ga atta ni okonawa
:) Have Beth translate. Sounds like an amazing trip, guys! I'm reliving our trip as I read about your adventures. We have about a 6 hour videotape of our trip, but a blog would have been much easier! Glad you enjoyed some good yakitori, sans chicken fat. Enjoy the rest of your trip - Tanoshī o motte iru!