Advertisement
My apologies for not getting this up sooner. At this rate, I'll be finished with Kyoto right before I leave here, and I've done a few more things since then, and have taken more cool pictures to boot! So, I plow onwards with the next installment for now.
March 28, Friday Hideko made us a lovely breakfast again before we headed out to Uji, a few stops away from where she lived, to meet one of the ladies from the party, Achan. She escorted us to Byodo-in Temple, which can actually be seen on the back of the 10-yen coin. We didn’t get to see the inside, but we got to see the museum next to it, which was pretty cool. Achan kinda saw us as a mix between puppies and 5-year old kids… She bought our tickets into the museum, as well as our tickets back from the station. She asked every member of the staff for maps of the surrounding area and requested them in English. When Liz was in the gift shop buying stuff, Achan tried to get the cashier to speak in English until Liz said she understood Japanese. All of us being 21
year-old women and having been in Japan for 6 months, it was both adorable and frustrating at the same time. We all had a good laugh about it afterwards. Achan was really nice either way, can’t argue with that!
After Uji, we went a few stops over to Inari to meet back up with Hideko. We went to a restaurant with her and a few terrified Japanese students our age and had lunch (her treat again, of course). She had asked us a few days before if we could come to her work (I think it’s a sort of head-start English program for Japanese kids) and play some games with the students there. Very entertaining. I played a Japanese version of “Red Light, Green Light” with a few kids beforehand, along with Liz. We sung a couple of children’s songs with the kids (Bingo, Old McDonald, you know) and held up picture cards asking what the pictures were of in English. One boy in particular, maybe 7 years old or so, could easily be ready for Japanese game show television next year. He was freakin hilarious. I had to try very hard to keep from laughing… Rather unsuccessfully, I’m
afraid. It was pretty fun, but exhausting. Either kids have too much energy or I’m just getting old!
After that, we headed to Fushimi Inari Shrine down the road. Probably one of the cooler places we saw during the entire trip. It’s most known for having thousands and thousands of large orange gates that cut a pathway through the mountains. We walked the entire mountain path through them, about 2 hours long. OY, was I tired by the end. I think we all definitely got our exercise that day. And boy did I ever get pictures. Once we shlumped back home, we found dinner waiting on the table for us from Keiko! Hideko got home from work late that night, and we went to bed soon after. It was a good day.
That's it for this one (if only because it's so pic-heavy). Only 2 more days of the trip to go, then we can get on to even more things! See you next installment, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.143s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0967s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Byodoin Temple, Uji
