The Galavanting Andrew U

slow morning, we planned to meet up with david for lunch, in ozu. hopped on the 1138 train and waited a bit at ozu for him to show up.

since he works in the area-ish, he brought us to a small but good ramen place hidden away in the side streets. it’s a bit weird for me to be served rice on the side with my ramen but… o well.

ok. well the first highlight of the day was the purpose of meeting up with david at lunch, to take his car. yea o.o… i think they call it a K-car or somethin? they’re a lot smaller and not as powerful as regular cars, but because the are small, they fit with the narrow narrow narrow streets of japan. he brought out some maps so we could try and follow them to reach our destination: kikuchi gorge. we were also supposed come back and pick him up afterwards.

after the ramen, michelle suggested i drive him back to work…. so… off we go. and something goes wrong O_O! wtf’s…. maybe it’s just the gravel? hmmmmmm keep going a bit more… wtf… hmm… david gets out of the car, i notice… o.o emergency brake 😉 it’s aallll good. lol… out into the street, aw crap, left side, left side. lalalala… turn! wipers?! other side… ooo the signals… turning left…. wrong direction! lol…. in more simpler terms… everything has gone opposite. gotta sit in the right-hand seat, drive on the left-hand side, signal with my right, and right/left on the signal is flipped. yikes. and no left turns at a red light. crazy. and… drive through reds! lol… apparently many japanese people run the red light, it’s very common o.o… so if we must, we must.

anyways, david directed me to his work place, and we got there in one piece. i adjusted pretty quickly to the left-side and the turning lanes, but the signaling still needs some work, i forget sometimes and the wiper goes off instead. we pull into the company parking lot… and, of course, the parking lot is designed like shit. the workers there could have done a better job, easily. aiya.

aaaaand we’re off. since we didn’t have a map for the place david works, he sorta directed us back into the right direction… we were to take the street out, get on the 325, right on the 387, and right on the 45 up to the gorge. after driving for a while, we see the ‘kikuchi’ sign, we’re already on that road! hurray. there were no numbers on it tho, so… we should be good. continue driving, driving… wtf, we’re on the 341. T_T… michelle and i figured out some crazy way to get back to the 325… get onto the… 90? then 139? iuno the only streets with names were these numbered routes T_T it was horrible. anyways, we somehow finally ended up on 325… it led up to a mountain side where there were a lot of twists, turns, curves, and slides… lol, it was actually pretty fun once u got a hang of the car. there were a bunch of sections where only one car would fit comfortably, so we’d both slow down and pass eachother… after these, we came to a split, i took the road that we were naturally flowing into, and ended up on a small bridge that was only wide enough to fit the car, barely. scary shit o.o… and we end up in a small residential area with so many more narrow narrow roads – -;… we come back out, back across the scary narrow bridge, to find some random guy pissing into the stream, keeeeeep driving… and for some reason we end up on 203. but we never really strayed from 325… so we kept going… and going… since 203 was going in the same general direction. and we were lucky, for some crazy reason 203 intersected with 325 (although our map didn’t show it) and we’re finally going up the right road. the rest was sorta boring and straight forward… we didnt get lost anymore 🙁 it took about an hour in total to reach the parking lot for the kikuchi gorge/ravine/area so that was pretty good.

when we did reach the parking lot, we weren’t sure it was the right place 😛 but i got a signal from michelle, and i paid for the parking… apparently michelle was ASKING if it was good, not saying that it was – -;… but, it was 😛 lol…

we walk into the area and going into the paths… there are two routes. we (i) choose the left one, although i was pretty sure it was going the other way… lol o well. the forest path was pretty nice, a bit scary too, there were no rails, and their makeshift ‘rope and logs’ were not at a lot of the cliffs as well. it could be extremely dangerous o.o… extremely. we walk up and take a bunch of pictures along the way, and we find a caterpillar spinning its… cocoon and michelle gets some good shots (the macro on mine was… weird, and i was too impatient :P) so she has some good pics. we keep walking and walking, taking a bunch of pictures, and at the end of the path…………. is… a parking lot. yea. – -;… so after a minute or two of complaining to no one in particular, we head back down the same route, which was several times faster since we weren’t taking any or as many pictures as on the way up. there was one thing that we did stop and take several, near the beginning (or our end) of the route, there was a large butterfly or moth thing attached so a small plant. the wings were green and even looked like leaves, the body was white and thick, a lot larger compared to regular moths. it looked very interesting and possible evil. we took our bunch of macro pics and kept on going onto the correct route.

after a couple of minutes walking by the ravine, we come into a couple of openings and one in particular led out towards the cliff and waterfalls. the perfect place to take pictures! there was no one there to tell us how far out we could go (even though we paid to get in and park…) we could’ve went into the water if we wanted to (although we did not want to o.o…) michelle and i took a bunch of pictures by the small waterfall at the edge of the cliff 😀 i guess it’s the same at any other ‘natural’ wilderness place, but it was a first for me. no warnings put in place for ‘beware of the waterfall, you might kill yourself’ type stuff… as we kept walking through, there were numerous more occasions where we’d stop and take a bunch of pictures by the ravine and forest, but the first area was by far the best 😛

we spent about 3 hours hiking around the forest and decided we needed to head back in order to pick up david at a reasonable time. granted that we didn’t get lost again. and driving back to town was a breeze, we easily found the right routes and it was a bit faster too. i think i got used to driving in japan by this time… i think. lol :P… once we got into the city, i got lost again. we were supposed to turn at a 7-11, but at the same time, we were also looking for route 202. APPARENTLY (we saw afterwards) 202 is perpendicular to the street we were supposed to have turned on – -;… oops? we drove around lost for a good half an hour to 45 minutes and finally ended up in teradyne’s parking lot once again. they (he and don) were waiting for a while now :S sorry!

i stumble out of the car, finally completed all the driving i’d do in japan, and we’re off again to drop don off at home. it seemed to me that only from kumamoto did the setting sun actually turn red. o.o and i dont think i have a good picture of that 🙁

we head back to david’s to rest a bit and then we head back out to find some dinner and either karaoke or a bar. (it’s our last night in kumamoto after-all) david drove us back out into the city and we go into a small bar that serves italian food…. italian bar food o.o… so the portions were smallish 🙁 dave and i got some pizzas, which were actually pretty good! thin-crust 😀 and michee got some pasta dish… the small pizzas were… small. and the large was… small. *sigh* but we were full-ish after another pizza. lol…

since michelle doesn’t sing, and dave probably wouldnt, and i dont think i’d feel comfortable singing in front of a bunch of strangers (it’d be an open-bar type of karaoke)… we decided to head back to bar alex! whee.

we get there and the back of the bar, by the couches, were taken over by may’s (alex’s fiance) co-workers, who all work at a candy store somewhere… and her mom! haha… the youngest was 19, and… older. lol. none of them were my type – -;… i’m very picky. may was the prettiest out of them all, and she’s taken. lol 😛

at some point we were all introduced and i can remember……… miki, yoko, ayana, mori, and may… 0.o o well… some dangerous questions flew by though o.o… michelle asked them how old we look and we’d range in the teens. then they asked us! and… dave and i just sorta… kept silent, let michelle handle it. good job michelle!

i drank an ‘oasis’ and ‘pirates’ drink, both were pretty good, but the second oasis tasted a bit different 0.o iuno. o well. michelle went crazy over the white russians… too bad i dont do coffee. o.o…

for some reason, david called alex, masao-kun, and apparently alex was given a japanese name… hahaha, and he answers to it too, it’s pretty crazy o.o! michelle asked may and her friends to give us some japanese names and david ended up with osamu, michelle with risa or keiko… and i’m keisuke. 😀 i’ve thought about names and if i have three kids, i’d have their names start with (oldest to youngest) K or C, A, and R… a reflection of my own siblings as well as my best friends, it’s a cool coincidence so, that’s my ‘plan’. i’ve liked the name kyou or kyousuke, or somethin like that but iuno how that name would fare in canada. o.o… meh.

anyways. may and her friends then asked us (michelle) to give them english names! they all seemed to go crazy and laughed a lot with approval. there was a…. amanda, jenny, becky, elizabeth, ashley, and a katherine. lol… it was a good night. when we told may that we’d be leaving the next morning she said to come back! see us again! haha… michelle doesn’t plan on coming back to japan until after 5 or more years, wants to see other places first… but i think i’d come back (if my life allows me) after a couple of years, with other people, maybe leon! since he missed this part of japan :P… hahaha. meh. we’ll see where my life takes me…

and… since drinking and driving can be fatal in japan (if you get caught, u’d get fired. just like that), david called up a daikou, which is a service offered in japan and korea, iuno bout other places, where a driver would come to where u are and drive your car back to your house, and there would be a follow car to take the driver back. and it costs a lot less than a taxi. our daikou was an old man, and the follow car seemed to be… his wife? iuno. its possible – -;.

but a good day, good night, good memories. thanks dave! 😛

at kikuchi gorge, we were ‘allowed’ to walk into the ravine, and this is me by a cliff by a small waterfall, with my new bag!

…another adventure all in itself, i’m driving. in japan. (with david’s car)…

for some reason we chose to go to nagasaki today, instead of amakusa or takachiho. we planned out our bus/train routes and the ride would take about 3 hours… yikes.

we got to the station and we were about…. 30 seconds too late. the right train left as we were climbing the stairs to the ticket counter thingy… *sigh*… the other train (non-express) came and we jumped on that instead. we get to the next station and jump on another train, which was not the express and ended up taking about an hour and a half longer than the express was supposed to. instead of arriving at 12-1ish, we got there around 230 – -; and, it was raining. hard. what a crappy… ngah. on the train we went through several areas that were very countryside-ish and it was just a platform, the train driver would check the tickets and everything… i also saw a bunch of coasts that were veryvery low tide or something, boats were resting on the bottom of the lake, still tied to the dock.

when we arrived at urakami (right before nagasaki) station, we bought some buns for ‘lunch’ and umbrellas. we stopped at urakami because it was the station closest to the nagasaki peace memorial museum and peace park, which were the priority of the trip to nagasaki.

we easily arrived at the nagasaki peace museum, our feet were completely soaked, ugh. i hate it when my socks get wet inside my shoes T_T… here, there were about 4 small museums gathered together but the other ones were closed. anyways, we headed towards the nagasaki bomb museum and went through it.

compared to the hiroshima museum, this one was a lot smaller, (and cost more) but i guess it is still part of the experience, learning about the atomic bombs. although the bomb on nagasaki was larger (fatman) the museum, asides from it’s own local landmarks and testimonials, seemed like a summary of the hiroshima bombing.

there was also a ‘special exhibit’ by a japanese photographer who has taken several photographs in the middle east, mainly iraq, and examines how the war is affecting the people there through photography, and comparing it slightly to what had happened to japan. he had a couple of stories about children who had been suffering through the war about their home, lack of health care, and their problems. one story was about a boy he had photographed, he saw that he had amputee legs and wanted to take a picture, altho he didn’t ask how it happened, he thought to himself, that he must have stepped on a mine. years later, he found the same boy again and learnt that his legs were not actually destroyed by a mine but he suffered from polio and he did not have full control over his legs and they were not strong enough to stand by themselves. the wooden legs were to support his legs to enable him to walk. when he was younger, if he was able to go to a different town to receive the medical treatment, it would have not turned out this way. but because of the war, he has suffered a lot. (i’m positive the impact of the photographs and story were a lot better than how i told it… T_T)

afterwards we walked to the hypocenter of the bomb, where a large spire marked it and circling steps surrounded it. it was a very large and quiet area. there was also a statue as well as a duplicate of a part of the urakami cathedral after the bombing.

we walked on towards the peace park. we saw several different statues given by various countries to commemorate peace and the bombing. they were all very interesting statues. in the centre, was the peace fountain which is shaped like dove’s wings, also resembling the shape of the harbor. these wings of water open up and the peace statue is seen directly between them. altho i don’t know the story behind the large peace statue, it actually looks like its directing traffic or something… i’ll look it up later. it was huge tho.

after this, we decided to try and find the half torii gate, surviving the bomb, it stood on one leg. we walked for a while and we only came to a place that looked like a shrine, but was closed. no other place could have been it… we’ll never know. (unless we look it up and stuff…)

it was STILL raining, so instead of heading down into chinatown to try one of their famous dishes that combined western, chinese, and japanese, we headed back, beginning our 3 hour ride back… where we sat and got kicked out of several ‘reserved’ seats :P…

when we finally did get back, the rain had already stopped and david picked us up from hikari no mori… we drove around a bit and most of the places were actually closed T_T, this was around 930pm… and we went to a sushi place instead of the ramen places we were aiming for.

this sushi place seemed a bit different from the others. the chefs were in the back, the track ran into the back and out again. to order specific dishes, it was through a telecom. altho it was very…. ‘efficient’ i guess… it was very odd and seems less authentic and nice than having the sushi chef right in front of u. it was like a fast-food version of sushi on a track thingy (i’m sure there’s a better word for it that i’ve forgotten… :P) but nevertheless, the sushi was good and 105¥ per plate. when we asked for the bill (kaikei, not okanjo) the waitress plugged in into an electronic device then input it into a numbered card o.o… we take the card up to the cashier and it reads from it again… crazy. but interesting…

so… our day trip to nagasaki was… ok.
all the days we’ve actually spent in kumamoto were good
once we stepped out into nagasaki… bad. 0.o… weird.

the peace fountain and statue

menu at the sushi place…

because of our late night we all woke up around 11ish instead of 10… good timing for lunch tho. since david lives and works around here, he frequents some places and this time we went to a small quaint okonomiyaki shop called… yorimichi i think. our second time having okonomiyaki and this time it looked… nicer, fluffier, better o.o… and that it was. last time it was a large ‘manten’ mix but this time we chose a couple ingredients instead. i got meat (pork) and corn which turned out really good.. .mmmmmmm. and its really filling too. like. really filling.

the owner knows david and we’re introduced as the canadian foreigners, but they think i’m japanese (cause i haven’t said anything yet)… and i get to practice listening to japanese that i understand and trying to answer in jap too… it’s fun but challenging. esp when you dont know a word or two that’d be essential to your answer… like… ‘graduated’, whenever they ask y we’re here on vacation or if we’re students… hahah it’s a good thing we have a translator

dave drove and took the long, scenic path with lots and lots of twists and turns and crazy signs that make it look like 90 degree turns, and unnecessary curves… crazy. would be insane drifting and racing on this route. insane. i fell asleep for a while in and out of a daze.

when we finally stopped for a break, we were at a lookout point that gave us a view of the daikanbou. which is a formation of mountains and hills that look like a buddha lying down, pretty interesting… and an amazing view of the city below

we then headed towards mt aso, or mt nakadake 0.o… there’s some difference… lemme google it… ahhh. ok. mt aso is the compilation of 5 different peaks of volcanoes and mt nakadake is the largest active volcano in the world. o.o in the world! when we entered the peak area, the sulfur level was 0 and you can look into the nakadake crater, which was pretty cool. the water was green from the minerals in the volcano and steam from the water gathered and rose continuously, it was pretty cool. when i walked further up, i began coughing O_O! a bit scary, u feel it in your throat and u can’t help coughing. by that time, the warning turned yellow (2nd highest level out of 4 levels)… and we sat around in the stone huts, that were built to avoid… stuff 0.o… talking about movies and random shit. it was preeeeetty chill.

got back into the car and headed back to david’s place, supposed to meet at his friend’s place around 630 for a dinner party thing. on our way down we caught glimpses of a lot of interesting landscapes, the most interesting, komezuka. it is the hill/mountain that has a large round crater in the middle, the tip looks like it is scooped out. stories go that the city was starving and the gods scooped out the top of the hill to feed them. the crater was formed naturally, so it’s pretty cool to see.

arrived at cheryl’s place, greeted by their kid, lance who’s a year and… a bunch of months old, pretty cute :P… don and cheryl’s house. the other ppl that were there were… takao (25 or 6), chase (?) and his wife, midori, they got married in… february. and more ppl to come later on. just small talk, still a bit awkward not knowing anyone, so we played a bit with their kid. more people showed up… eriko, arlene and her dad, keith and rie (who we met a couple days earlier), and a couple of other people…

chase had a small namco attachment that played ms pacman, mappy, and some other games. for a while we played those games and it was awkward talking to anyone… just sorta kept ourselves until a bit after dinner, eriko and michelle bonded a bit, i talked a bit with arlene’s dad, (yea, weird) from the philippines who was staying in japan to help out arlene cause she’s pregnant… and so is cheryl, she’s expecting her second in a couple of weeks.

everyone was admiring michelle’s body… like, all the women there. lol… and i got called cute 😛 someone said david was sexy but then he turns cute after talking… lol. that was some weird conversation…

after a bit michelle and i ended up talking to don and cheryl. they’re both engineers and have been in japan for almost 2 years. when they first got here, they didn’t know -any- japanese, they’re both from america, went to university together, started dating in 97 and even considered joining the peace core… they decided that once cheryl got pregnant, she’d quit her job and focus on raising her children, she wanted to do this as well, and at the time, don’s work (teradyne, david works here too) was offering positions in a japanese branch. once cheryl got pregnant, the timing worked out great and they decided to move out here to kumamoto to have their first (and second) child. teradyne provided a private tutor for them and helped them setup everything they needed, housing and other essentials.

they still own a house back in… california? and don’t plan on staying in japan for too long, maybe another couple of years. their way of life is amazing, they moved to a country where they didn’t know the language, knew a couple of people, and started their family. it’s inspirational and adventurous. and we headed home soon afterwards… zzz

crater of mt nakadake

komezuka

shuupatsu! it’s our day of travel.

woke up at 6am, and almost quietly grabbed our crap and left the hostel around 630-45. we were supposed to tell them if we were planning to leave before 8 but… we forgot so we just left a note 😛

at kyoto, i stopped to look at the boarding times while leon and michelle went somewhere else. i look back and they’re gone! no clue where they went 🙁 waited for a while and got a bit impatient so i went towards the last direction that i saw them going… no luck. hmm… maybe they went down to the coin lockers, where’s the elevator? hmmmmmmmmmmmm maybe after 10 minutes in total of not knowing where they were, they show up near the escalator and they had indeed went down to the coin lockers, michelle and i were to lock our stuff up at kyoto while we went with leon to the airport… aiya.

jumped onto the train straight to kansai airport which took about an hour. during this time i finished my 5th book! chronicles of narnia, the horse’s boy or somethin. pretty good so far, i guess…

arrived and figured out the kansai airport, for the future, and accompanied leon to the check-in gate, which didn’t take too long at all, and up to the security gates which the lines were extremely long, but moved fairly quickly. we couldnt go with him farther, so we left at that point and headed back to kyoto station. felt as if the trip was ending… 🙁

our plan was at first to visit the kyoto handicraft centre where they sold a bunch of souvenirs and stuff but we scrapped that earlier because we would have to take a bus all the way there then back, in time to catch our own train, heading to kumamoto to stay with my friend. but because of the time we got back to kyoto, we decided to head to the uniqlo that we first saw across the tracks when we first got to kyoto… although we didnt exactly know where it was T_T… walked out, chose one way, and… no luck. dead end… but i went to go buy eneloop batteries at some bic camera department store. and not much time to go to find uniqlo again… we then decided (or remembered) we gotta get my friend something! found a small dessert thing that looked cool at the station and grabbed that.

tried to find some lunch but we headed to shin-osaka since we had to transfer there anyways. took the shinkansen to kokura and for some crazy reason we had 7 minutes between that and the next train we had to catch… and of course, we missed it – -;… the next one would be 2 hours later… scrambled a bit, stressed a lot, i didnt write down my friend’s phone number so we had no way of reaching him… and then we asked the JR attendant and our new route would be kokura to hakata to kumamoto to hikari no mori. the connecting time between hakata and kumamoto was 9 minutes, not bad… but kumamoto to hikari no mori, 3 minutes. is that humanly possible?!

when we arrived at hakata, 9 minutes…. there were no elevators or escalators… and 2 flights of stairs – -;.. it was friggen evil, we had to carry and drag our luggages up them, horrible. but we DID catch our train, sweating horribly. and stressing for our next transfer, 3 minutes :S yikes.

as soon as we got NEAR kumamoto, we got ready at the doors in order to jump off the train and rush to the next one. since i studied that stupid route, it took only a little bit to distinguish, we gotta go that direction! that train! that platform! gogogo!!! we ran with our luggage, crazy. the doors closed right behind me T_T… we werent even sure if it was the right train……….. after the first stop, we knew we were fine. phew. altho we’d be arriving about 10 minutes later than we should have… oops.

finally arrived at hikari no mori ‘forest of lights’ and when we showed our JR passes to leave the station, the attendant only saw michelle’s and said… “michelle? and andrew?” and we’re like… o.o wtf. how the hell did u know… just weird for a moment, but apparently my friend, david, left a message and a phone number to give him a call when we arrived.

prior to this trip, i’ve only known david through my fansubbing of one piece, which has been almost 6 years, so i’ve actually ‘known’ him for 6 years… but have never met him or really talked to him. so u don’t really know what to expect. i only knew that he was from the u.s. and…. worked in engineering… and… yea. since we didnt know what he looked like, we just kept looking around wondering… maybe that’s him! or him… hmm, that one? but he pulled up close-by and that was easy. haha…

david’s really tall. from pittsburgh. 4 other siblings. and although he always seems to talk like he’s so much older online, he’s only about 4-5 years older! crazy. he’s a pretty quiet person usually… so yea.

he drove us back to his apartment, which isn’t that small, easily fit me and michelle in the carpeted area 0.o… which i guess is meant as a living room? sure. he’s a bit messy, but its all good 😛 one thing that we’ve taken notice of is that he leaves a lot of his doors unlocked o.o his car, his apartment, there’s like no fear of theft. his neighbourhood is also pretty quiet tho, we passed a lot of countryside to get here, where there’s still some civilization.

anyways, after chilling for about half an hour, it got dark outside, and we went off to meet up with two of his friends, keith and rie, at some restaurant they go to. we ordered some chicken dish, which was pretty good… keith and david are usually pretty quiet ppl, apparently, and i’m already really quiet too, so there are random and odd spaces of silence, which are a little bit awkward… but i guess that’s inevitable for people who have just met and don’t know what to talk about… meh. they were both pretty nice, keith’s from… some other state in the u.s. and rie’s from japan. we just all talked about places in japan, how we knew each other, their friends, random stuff like that.

afterwards we went off to ‘dragon kitchen’ a chinese-type dessert place (sorta) where michelle and i had parfaits and they had bbt and sherbet and… other stuff. again, more random conversations and then we started critiquing the business card, which was…. pretty bad, for such a nice looking place. the printing was nasty too :S o well…

and after a bit, we all headed home. we would see keith and rie again on saturday, for some dinner party… we’re gonna meet a lot of interesting and random ppl through david…

back at his place, we have two futons setup and we took over his closet with our luggage. both of us stayed up for a while before showering or sleeping just on the internet updating our blogs and doing random stuff. david had work the next day so he was asleep… we were to head off to kumamoto castle, suizenji park, and the small covered shopping streets in the kumamoto area.

started to feel a little homesick… but that might be because leon left, we brought him to the airport… the trip changes, and then there was the stressful 6 or 7 hour shinkansen/subway/train trip to get to david’s place in hikari no mori… *sigh*… leon, come back! 😛

leon going through security, where we couldn’t follow him any longer.
he doesn’t look sad at all! lol

me at my friend’s, david’s (dythim), place

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 300¥ 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)