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Published: August 10th 2013
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Sake bremaster
Telling us the ways of the sake. And pouring us lots of drinks. In the morning. Today we arrived in Osaka. I didn't have time to post a blog yesterday as we were too busy. This Tour of Japan is fast and crazy and I've usually only been able to write posts for the blog late at night. Yesterday was our last day in Kyoto. The first thing we did was take a tour of a sake brewing plant, which included lots of sake tasting. I couldn't say that sake drinking for me first thing in the morning of what would prove to be the hottest day would vw a wise thing, but hey, we were there and the sake was free. The sake brewmaster gave us the tour and was a pretty cool dude.
Then we headed to a confectionary house where we were trained in making Japanese sweets. The sensei there was riot, and a good teacher. I've attached photos of the sweets I made - pretty good if I do say so myself. They had all sorts of crazy stuff for sale in the shop there as well, but I passed on it. Walking around in the Dante's Inferno all day is not conducive to hanging onto sugar sweets if you know what
I mean. Next cultural experience was a Japanese Tea Ceremony. The woman who was demonstrating this said a traditional ceremony takes up to four hours and she has to remain kneeling the entire time. Four hours! People run marathons in less time than that. I think my knees would explode if I had to do that. We also had lessons in calligraphy and origami. I made a samurai hat, which I also posed with no small amount of dignity for both of you reading this blog.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon at a temple above Kyoto. Craig and Teresa managed to hook up a special service which allowed us to see more than the regular public. I felt a little bad, knowing people that live in Kyoto never get to see what we saw, but it was still very impressive. The only drawback was the heat - which has been running hotter and hotter every day now. When looking down on the city from the temple, Kyoto is shrouded in a heavy haze... you can't even see all of the buildings despite them being close.
The night ended with dinner and a performance from a couple
geishas (Brandon, are you paying attention?). From what was told to us, not just anyone can book geisha performances. They only come through referrals. Craig and Teresa had done it before in years past and I guess that helped book them. During the night you had a chance to play a drinking game with one of the geishas. If you won, you got a prize. If you lost, you had to chug a beer. I played and beat the geisha. It was pretty awesome, especially because she was shocked she lost to me. My manly celebration (somewhat similar to what I imagine a caveman would do after killing a wooly mammoth) may have been a bit over the top, so I had to calm down and go into Super Polite mode. Anyway, it was a pretty incredible experience.
Today was hotter than the last day. It seems each day gets progressively hotter, like someone keeps turning the oven up just a bit more. Most everyone in the group has been a sweaty mess. This morning we left Kyoto and drove to Osaka. First stop was the Osaka Aquarium, which has a couple whale sharks. We then tried to hit
Origami
Me in my new samurai hat. up a couple other attractions but really were unsuccessful. One was to go to a place called Joypolis, which is a two story section of a 9 story mall that is just video games and the like, but it just happened to be when all the kids were taking photos in their traditional clothes (see user's comments in the previous blog). For those of you back in the States, imagine it like when you had to line up for Yearbook photos in high school, but just imagine that every kid in the state was there and that they were all wearing these traditional Japanese rigs - then add on a group of British and American sweaty people cluelessly wandering around, unsure of where to go and why there are so many kids running around in these outfits and you will have an idea of what it was like.
We left and checked into our hotel to get ready for the evening. We are staying in the Ritz Carlton! It's something I will probably never do again on my own, so it's cool to scratch it off the Bucket List, but I am like a fish out of water, walking
Inside the buddhist temple
There were something like 1300 individual buddhas on the wall. in all sweaty from the heat in camo shorts and a T-shirt. Oh well, we are all like that.
Osaka is bananas right now as it's a three day weekend and they have a huge fireworks show. I heard that an estimated 60,000 people were going to be there for it, but I passed on it because it was going to be 5 hours in the direct heat with no shade and outdoors. We are on the 29th floor of the hotel and we have a corner room with a huge window and a great view of the city below, so we actually got to see the fireworks pretty well from our room. Man, the Japanese really know how to do fireworks right. It was something like a 45 minute show, and it seemed like there were four or five "finales". The grand finale was something I won't forget.
Tomorrow we are supposed to go to Universal Studios. Considering it's a holiday weekend and kids are out of school right now AND it's supposed to be hotter and more humid than today, I am sure it is going to be a rough day. Wish me luck!
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Mike Petty
non-member comment
Sounds like fun, except for the weather.
Looks like a lot of fun times. Better keep the dome covered, or you'll be sorry. :)