Jerkasaurus Rex has Hyper Beam

A trip to Kyoto was scheduled during the orientation week period, with many purposes in mind - firstly, to get the ryugakusei to interact more with the nihonjin gakusei (Japanese students), and secondly, to see some of the sights of Japan that are famous and tourist-y. The entire class was divided into groups of five to ten, and then delegated to a group of Japanese students who would show us around Kyoto at their pace and liking. The group I was in consisted of Megan, Kim, Amanda, and a few others I hadn't met yet, Seth, Robert, Tom, and James Craven, otherwise known as JC (or simply Craven). When I asked if he was related to Wes, he said he was.

The group of nihonjin we were with was a group of five girls, who for the most part stuck to themselves. Most of them knew very little English, with the exception of Mana-san, who was an English major. Me and her spent the walk to Goten-Yama train station talking back and forth, her in English and me in Japanese. The train fare from Goten-Yama to Shijo station in Kyoto was 340 yen, or, a little less than three dollars. Once we reached Kyoto we took a bus from Shijo station to reach our destination: Kiyomizudera, the largest temple in Kyoto.

Kiyomizudera is a buddhist temple, and one of the most famous ones in all of Japan. It has turned into somewhat of a tourist attraction over the last hundred years or so, but still has a lot of history and interesting things to see. First we went (uphill) up a winding street filled with souvenir shops and restaurants, then another large set of looming staircases, before reaching the temple grounds. If we turned around, we saw the entire city of Kyoto sprawled before us, as we were on one of the tallest points in the city. Entering the temple cost about 400 yen, which is a small price to pay when compared with some of the tourist traps of America.

There are a million things to take pictures of. There's a large bell used during New Years, and next to it, an area where requests are made (of the buddhas, presumably). Requests are either placed on a narrow piece of paper and tied around a long pole, or placed on a small wooden plaque and hung with hundreds of others. There is also, inside the actual temple area, a place where people throw in small amounts of money (5 yen, 10 yen, 100 yen, etc) and pray for some kind of wish, usually something that the temple has to do with. Each temple has a specific purpose (academics, love, health, etc). Kiyomizudera, I'm not sure about, but I throw in a coin and make a wish anyway.

There's a pool of water with a bunch of cups with extremely large handles nearby. Mana-san tells us it's not for drinking, and you cannot put your hands in the water, but you can use the long-handled cups to get water from the pool and rinse your hands that way, and that it's for purification. I wonder if it's alright to, after rinsing my hands off, splash the water onto Craven, who's next to me. I think for a second and decide not to. Extra purity might be a good thing but it might also be taboo to splash buddhist-purity-water-stuff on other people.

We continue down a trail on the mountainside. To the left is a gorgeous-looking forest. We pass a ledge where there are about thirty people taking pictures of the scenery. The ledge has the best view of the city of Kyoto in all of... Well... Kyoto. It's absolutely amazing, especially at the time of day when I saw it, with the sun just setting below the mountains on the horizon. As we reach the bottom of the trail, there is another large pool of water, but this one is much larger, and there's a fairly long line winding nearby. Above the pool, three small fountain-like rivers of water are streaming downstairs from up the mountain. I've heard about this before. Each fountain represents something like love, life, and happiness, or something along those lines, and if you drink from all three, it's good for you. We all hop on line. Craven's in front of me. There's a bunch of long-handled cups in a device labeled UV Cleaning, with a purple-hued light inside. When Craven takes a cup out of the container, it makes a horrible screeching noise that causes half of Kyoto to cover their ears and mutter in Japanese, "what the hell was that?" Craven laughs. Ooops. We go to each fountain and drink. The water is quite refreshing considering how much we've walked in this heat. Craven drinks his from a completely full cup, gulping it down like he's a fish who hasn't been in water for days. Nihonjin and ryugakusei alike are staring at him. "What? I'm thirsty."

We finally leave the temple after a bit more sightseeing. I'm starting to get the hang of sentences like "Let's do this," or, "Shall we do that?" a bit better, since it's most of what the girls say in Japanese, and most of how we respond. We head down the same street we came from and stop a few places to buy souvenirs or get ice cream (which is REALLY good). Taking the same bus back to the train station and the same train, though this time, to Hirakatashi station, which is actually a bit closer to where we live, we decide to stop and get dinner at the station.

Hirakatashi is the main part of Hirakata, the part where buildings are more than two stories tall and it's taken advantage of everywhere. No building in Hirakatashi that is more than one story tall is owned by only one company. As a matter of fact, a building with four stories will often have upwards of eight different things inside - a restaurant, a bookstore, and arcade, a cafe, etc, etc, etc. We head into a building and up an elevator to the third floor where the girls tell us there is an amazing restaurant. Seeing as they live here, we take their word for it, and it's a good thing we do.

The atmosphere isn't any different from a normal western restaurant but the food is incredible. Everything to eat in Japan is just plain better than in America. I haven't yet had a meal where I thought "ew, this tastes terrible", or felt really fat for eating such an unhealthy meal. That night, in addition to some peach tea, I had pork stuffed with cheese on a skewer. So good. We exchanged jokes and stand-up comedy (What did the bear say to the rabbit? Nothing, they're animals, they can't talk.) until it got late, and then headed off, just arriving in the nick of time before the dormitory closed its gates.

We passed a place on the way back called "Game Dino". I'll have to check that out.