Oh the people you'll meet...

The day of crazyness.

Today started out last night. I got into my hostel after a day of traveling and meet one of my roommates. A crazy German guy named Wolfgang, just like Mozart. He was in the country studying supply chain engineering and economics or something like that. He asked me for help planning out a nice list of things to see the next day. I told him some temples and went to sleep.

Just a note, don't eat at Big Boy in Japan. Their impression of Hamburgers sucks.

The next day I woke up early to go meet Tomo. I threw on a UW shirt and went to catch the bus. At the bus stop I ran into another UW student (my 3rd random run in on this trip). It turned out that Wolfgang and the girl from UW were getting on the same bus. I was kind of having a conversation with both of them, then the bus came. The last I saw of those two Wolfgang was just leaning over to introduce him self to the girl.

I went and meat Tomo at the train station after 40min of transit. We precoded to go a crazy amount of temples. Starting at sanjyusan something or other moving which had a thousand unique statues of Kannon.

Then we went to Kiomizudera. There were like 15 different places you could wish in that temple. The first was a stone that you had to walk to in the dark. It was pitch black and then there was just this stone in front of you. You wish on it and then move on. It was really cool. I'm rarely in a completely dark area. Next Tomo asked me if I had a girlfriend. I thought it was a bit of a strange question, but went along with it. Apparently there are these two stones where if you walk between them with your eyes closed you'll be granted happiness in future relationships. I managed to make it all the way across. Who knows that that means. The coolest part of the temple by far was the main shrine. We got really really lucky. Apparently the shrine is only open once every 25 years. There was an image of Kannon inside and a rope that was linked to it so you could shake hands with Kannon. From there it was the standard Kiomizudera temple sightseeing.

Tomo proceeded to take me on a crazy tour of West Kyoto where we saw 4 temples in a half hour. I totally forget the names of all of them. We also had a Japanese desert at a famous desert place called hageshi I think. It was very good. There were 3 different types of Mochi balls that you could eat. Finally we made it to Ginkakuji. The silver pavilion. It was just as nice as I remembered and this time I got lots of pictures.

Finally we went to the Gion district where the Geisha or the Geiko in Kansai-ben are known to be. I didn't see any, but Tomo took me to a very nice Herring Soba reastraunt. It was the first really good Japanese food I'd had in a while sadly. Curses crazy eating schedule.

As we were heading back to Kyoto Station on the subway I ran into Michael and his friends. It was a great considioince. I quickly said goodby to Tomo, thanked him for an amazing day gave him is Omeyage and meat the first College aged kids that I've really liked in a month. About 14 of us went to go sing karaoke. It was great fun. After that we went to eat some Japanese Korean food. It wasn't really Korean, but it was good anyway. One of the girls in the program has a sister that goes to the UW as well. Hopefully I'll be able to meet her. Shes just a freshman this year.

On my way home the buses stopped running. I got off a Kinkakuji and had to walk from there. I ended up walking the wrong way. Thank god I could speak a bit of Japanese. I asked a guy in a 7-11 for directions. It worked out well. I got home at 12:17 about 15 min after all the doors in my hostel were locked. Thankfully my German friend Wolfgang was right inside. Right inside the front door with 2 empty bottles of Sake, a half empty bottle of Whiskey and a very drunk girl from the UW lying on the couch. It was the best snapshot of a relationship that I've ever seen.

With that I went to bed.