Around the world in 106 days: Japan Day 4- Kyoto

It’s been a long day of sleeping and relaxing. We ate dinner, watched Tarzan in the Union (large room where we can all gather with a big projector) and they gave us free popcorn which was a big deal. After we surprised my friend in my room with a mini birthday party because we haven’t had a lot of time to really celebrate between classes and school. So we made a cake out of rice crispies and laid out a bunch of junk food, we all sat an talked and now were watching a movie before bed.

Jan 30th

The next morning we were dropped off at a street corner at 6:15 am… it was still dark outside. We were all pretty groggy and dying for a shower. But we luckily were near a restaurant that was open. In order to order, you had to place your money into a vending machine and press the picture of the meal you wanted. It was so cool because it helped with the language barrier. For breakfast I had an egg which was fried and fully cooked, some miso soup, rice and bacon! I usually don’t care for bacon but it was kind of like comfort food after all of the different foods we had had over the past few days. We sat for about an hour as we woke up a bit and then headed out at almost 8am to go to our first of 2 destinations. Our first place was the golden temple. Known as one of the most beautiful temples in the world with is a Shinto treasure. We paid to get in, but it was worth it. The temple has a pond out in front and reflected off the water so beautifully. All over the area was mini shrines and beautiful things to look at. In the summer and spring it is full of flowers and looks very much like a garden.

Me and Angela really took our time and soaked it in. We really started to really realize where we were and how so many people save their whole life to have this opportunity. We sat by a bridge for a good 45 minutes and took In everything. People praying, `people doing rituals, people just walking around. We took it in and enjoyed it. We even went along and tried out some of the rituals. The first one was washing your hand in a fountain to clean your hands and then putting the water in your mouth and spitting it out to “clean your mouth”, second was lighting a candle with good luck., I chose one for a healthy family, lit it and then moved onto the next ritual. This next ritual was a ringing of a large bell that they believe wakes up the spirit that lives in the shrine. After ringing the bell you clap twice and then bow while you pray to the spirit and then the last ritual we tried was trying to throw a coin into a jar for good luck. After walking through the rest of the temple we met up with the rest of our group and then took a bus to the Kyoto station so we could figure out how to get to the Fushimi Inari shrine which is famous for its thousands of red arches and was in the movies memoirs of a geisha.

At the station we asked around for directions and we finally found a guy who looked at our map and spoke some English. He was having trouble reading our map though so he was about to give up when out of nowhere a man in a long coat came up and said “Hello, can I help you?” which was like words from heaven after a long day of traveling and trying to get around. Finally someone who spoke English! We told him where we wanted go and that we needed to get to Kobe after. He told us he could help us get a good price and walked us pretty far to a building in the station that was like a tour agency or something. He talked to the ladies at the counter and they gave us discounted train tickets to our destination and then to Kobe to meet the ship! Apparently it had something to do with a group rate and us being students. But we saved about 8 dollars each for our trains. He also gave us his number after bringing us back to the train station entrance and said to give him a call is we got lost. His name was Koji and was one of the nicest people I have ever met. It’s crazy what someone’s kindness can do for your overall experience. I mean of course I was cautious weather or not this guy was legit, but he was and thank goodness he was there for us J

We took the train to the shrine, in the entrance was a huge arch and temple. It took about 30 minutes until we got to the back of the temple that we noticed the trail of arches that went on for miles. We walked around until we came to an end of one section, enjoyed another temple and kept on walking. We decided to take a small path out of the way because it went up a hill and off to a less populated area. After passing a beautiful bamboo tree forest, we stumbled upon another shrine. At the shrine was paper you could write a wish and then tie it to a fence, it was really pretty so I did it also to try it out also. Although I don’t believe in any of it spiritually it was neat to experience it in an anthropological way to see what they do and learn why. We spent a lot of time hiking around and taking in the beauty. After we found our train to Kobe, ate dinner on the ship and called it a night pretty early since it had been a long trip.