nara.
at first we thought bradley was going to join us this time, but he decided to head to hiroshima instead, because the other day he went the wrong way and ended up in osaka instead 0.o meh.
we headed over to the station and towards the tourist info centre, which happened to be closed on tuesdays – -;… guh. we had to figure out how to get to nara! there was a smaller but crowded info centre that leon went into and found out. the nara line. duh. had some time to kill so we went to eat lunch, finally got my omerice with hayashi sauce, it was preeeetty good. not amazing, but.. yea. 😛
and onto nara we went. several people recommended it and said that the trip would take the whole day, so we decided to cross our kobe from our list. it’s also called the deer park because of the mass amounts of tame deer wandering around you. we saw several more temples and stuff… from outside, and several more deer.
michelle bought some deer… crackers/cookies/flat stuff and as soon as she paid and picked it up, the closeby deer swarmed her, she was trapped between them and a fence, crazy. they bit her a couple times too! this happened to a lot of people actually, those deer are vicious.
the one temple we did go to was… called… something… and it held the largest in the world buddha statue. it was huge. huge. it was also accompanied by smaller ones on either side. huge.
outside to the right, was a smaller buddha that looked… evil. but it apparently was believed to relieve people of aches and pains by touching the buddha in the same spot then touching the respective part of your own body. it was placed pretty high so people could only touch the legs and knees. if i was buddhist, i might believe these things 😛 too bad.
since there wasn’t much else to do in nara, we started to head back. drifting from shop to shop in order to waste more time 😛 but of course, it started raining. so we hurried a little to the nara station to head back to kyoto and our hostel. and we saw bradley! that liar went to nara. evil. o well – -;
at kyoto station, we decided to look around a bit since we weren’t hungry and it was raining, but everything ended up being too expensive to even look at, we ended up on the children’s floor with toys and accessories. hahaha… leon’s had a car and train obsession since the beginning of the trip 😛
anyways, after losing michelle on some other floor for a while, it was time to head back to the hostel. and of course, it was raining hard – -;… it hasn’t rained this hard the whole time we’ve been in japan, it was usually lighter and in patches. the walk to the hostel would be about 15 minutes and neither michelle or i had an umbrella or jacket. mr hui had his windbreaker complete with hood, safe from the evil rain. by the time we got back we were both soaked and tired.
while michelle went to shower and do laundry, leon and i decided to head back out and get some dinner, and some cup noodles for michelle. with some umbrellas and dry clothes, we departed back to the pontocho area.
under a covered street, we passed by a ‘capsule’ store that leon knew that i wanted to go into 😛 too bad for him, i spent like 20 minutes in there looking for stuff… (they were supposed to close at 10, i went in at 945ish…) the store basically had anime figures that were usually ‘surprise’ boxes, but unwrapped and sold separately. found some nice stuff there 😀 the most i spent in one place while in kyoto… lol
after walking around a bit more, we wandered into a shop that we had to pay at a vending machine first, then sit down and they would take our tickets and we’d get our food. you didn’t have to say a word, the tea and chopsticks, and stuff were right in front of you. the fast-food pace of noodles and rice and stuff is crazy here.
after grabbing some cup noodles, we returned in the once again heavy rain and i did some laundry. whee – -;… at least it was SO much cheaper than the other place. it was only 300Â¥ for washer and dryer combined, detergent was free.
the deers attack
the largest buddha in the world, i think.
one bad thing about a ‘dorm’ type hostel room is that some people tend to sleep early or just earlier than you and it’s almost impossible not to make noise when the bunk beds squeak going up the ladder, the blankets make noise, the door ALWAYS slams shut and locks, and the small cubbies underneath you close with a magnetic click. o well – -; too bad. (we are usually the ones that are up the latest :P)
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