Woke up and left rina’s place around 8 or 9, i cant remember… the four of us squished into the back and we set off to head for kyoto. took a pit stop along the way at a small cafe, all the mountains surrounding were giving off smoke, looked pretty cool. rina’s uncle paid again for breakfast! so nice O_O! he’s a ‘president’ of a mechanical parts design place, which sounds cool. haha
back into the car, which has a built-in gps system, the four of us in the squished back drifted in and out of sleep during the ride, since it was about an hour or so back to our hostel where we would change, shower, etc…
the plan was to meet them at the castle at 12. so we did whatever and took the bus to nijo castle, but they were no where to be found. leon gave them a couple calls (cause 10¥ cut off after a bit…) and we concluded that they were at a different castle – -;, the golden pavilion, kinkakuji, which was a lot farther away, so we jumped on the next bus and we arrived at about 1245 and went through the route which took about 20 minutes or so.
the castle is built on the riverbed and is plated in gold, ooo. picture below. along the paths there were also coin tossing pits for.. luck, i guess. it was a huge mound of money and a small bowl. the scenery was very nice and calming, despite the loads of students and people around.
and we came out the exit and met up once again with rina and her uncle and aunt to head to lunch. after some more driving and napping, we end up around arashiyama area. her uncle paid for lunch! and we walked around a bit across the bridge that looked like nihonbashi without the highway over top of it… but not into the mountain area, o well.
went towards the daikakuji which had several ikebana setup near the entrance, he paid for entrance fees! aiya, so nice. the temple was pretty big, they were displaying kimonos, buddhist alters, flowers, zen gravel gardens… gates, a lot of stuff. an interesting tidbit was that the floor boards leading the the master’s room were intentionally made squeaky so that they would know when someone was approaching, oooooo.
that was nice, and we got a ride back to our hostel at around 5ish, but dropped off a bit away cause there were cops in the area 😛 aaaand we napped (or i napped, iuno what they did…) but we headed out to pontocho, a night-type + gaming district not too far away. passing a bunch of clubs and other ‘clubs’ until we arrived at a random dinner area bar-type place where i got some yakisooooba.
it was a nice night, we all bonded a bit too, awwww… we learnt a bit about leon and leon learnt a bit about us, altho i doubt he wanted to know 😛 o well. we stopped by a gaming centre so michelle could use the washroom… so much gambling! coin games, pachinko, virtual horse racing… crazy.
kinkakuji from across the pond
ikebana at the daikakuji
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