Naka Yasumi Day 2: Kyoto and Osaka

Morning!!! It was weird to wake up in a bunk bed surrounded by people after sleeping on a futon in my own bedroom for more than a month! But it was great. I love being surrounded by my friends!

After a quick conbini breakfast, 

we went shopping again, this time in the department store right near our hostel. 

You can't pass up this photo op. A random blow up Pikachu? yes please. 

This store was dedicated to manga/ Japanese cartoon characters and such. I didn't know any of the characters, but it was still so awesome. So many products for each character!! bandaids, pencils, trading cards...

and fuzzy hats. 

With our modern day culture fix satisfied, we then went the more traditional tourist route with a jaunt to the Ginkakuji (The Silver Pavilion). 

After about a 30 minute bus ride, using our 500 円 unlimited bus pass for the day, we took the Philosopher's Path, named after Nishida Kitaro, one of Japan's most famous philosophers who practiced mediation on this path on his daily walk to Kyoto University. 

Then after passing all the temptingly delicious food stalls, we arrived at Ginkakuji!

I've been to Kyoto once before with my family, so I've done all the tourist destinations and shrines, but Ginkakuji was one of my favorites and I didn't remember it too well. So there I was!

The perfect mound of sand is amazing. It's supposed to symbolize Mount Fuji. I think it symbolizes the perfectionistic Japanese who manage to do crazy stuff like maintain a sand pile. 

The temple, unlike Kinkakuji which is covered in gold leaf, is not actually silver. It was supposed to be covered in silver foil, but...the Onin war happened. Then procrastination. Such is life. Oh well! I like it better this way anyway! More natural. 

The carefully raked sand is the most. It just makes me calm down from my normally hyped up state. 

Every element of the garden is just so beautiful! I had to narrow down my pictures since I was just taking them all over the place!

At the top, you can see the view of the temple with Kyoto in the background. We have been so lucky with the weather!

Back to the Eki!

Since we were planning on going to Osaka for the rest of the day, we had a quick conbini lunch before meeting up with Emmy, Marina, and Aidan at the Eki to catch our train. 

Cold Chinese noodles for less than 400 円. I love the conbini. 

Here is Kyoto Station. Isn't it amazing? Looks like a futuristic world of holograms and robots. 

and of course, perfectly packaged food. 

tic tac toe. three in a row! Plaid masters. 

After about a 45 minute train ride, we arrived in Osaka! We really had no plans, so we just started wandering and ended up...surprise! shopping!

We ended up in this heaven of a store called Tokyu Hands. It basically had any kind of cool Japanese thing that you could ever want, but don't really need. Like rows and rows of stickers, stationary, pens and pencils, iphone cases...it was magical!!!

They had such a cool array of weird sodas: cream puff, tomato, caramel, wasabi, matcha, kimchee, mango, peach, salt...everything. all in the most beautifully designed bottles! 

I bought the Curry flavored Ramune soda and the Almond Tofu flavored soda...just because they sounded weird. 

Just look at the labels! Art, I tell you. Art. 

Now on to Shinsai Bashi Suji Shopping arcade! It was similar to the one we went to in Kyoto. 

Just an amazing array of stores, filled with people, food, and consumption. 

These stir fried mochi soup dumplings made Marina and I make a triple take. We passed by three times and ogled the lil balls of happiness. But our group was on a mission to find a good gyuniku tabehodai place (all you can eat grilled meat), so we abstained. 

It was amazing how many people were out and about. 

It started raining, and a roof top of umbrellas unfolded. 

After our simultaneous shopping and gyuniku scouting, we finally found a restaurant fit to our liking! It was about 2,200 円, so pretty pricey, but so worth it. 

At a tabehodai restaurant, the menu lists all the cuts of meat, seafood, and vegetables that you can order to grill yourself in front of you. There are also tons of other items to order, like stonepot bibimbap and kimchi. But we were there for the MEAT. We got so many different types, I couldn't keep track.

Below is a variety of our meats thrown on our grill, along with root vegetable with cheese and bacon, bibimbap, and our trip of desserts (Japanese creme caramel, yuzu sorbet, and small cube of sponge cake). 

Kanpai!

Tripe. It was chewy. Not bad...but chewy. 

Our group with the awesome waiter. 

Look at all the people through the arcade!!!

Giant crab with the signature pointing pose = successful day in my book. 

Since all the stores were closing around 9-10 ish, we decided to play some games at the arcade!

Aidan and I played Marina and Emmy in a round of air hockey. Me and Aidan won by a mile. nbd. 

We didn't want to miss the last train going back to Kyoto so we decided to head out around 11 pm. Back to Kyoto for a second round of hostel sleeping! 

Naka Yasumi Day 1:Kanazawa to Kyoto

Alrighty!!! It's been a great while. Reason? I officially ended my first semester of Intermediate Japanese (covering material normally learned from September through January at Princeton) with a big ol' final! I worked for the three hours straight, with a short ten minute oral final in the middle of the written test, so it was a MARATHON. Not so fun at all. I couldn't speak English nor Japanese after the final, so nonsensical gibberish was rolling out of my mouth for the rest of the day. 

Now for the fun stuff...

Naka Yasumi! 

(Naka, meaning inside, middle, center etc, and yasumi, meaning vacation or rest)

Time to take a trip to Kyoto!

I woke up to this great breakfast my mom made before heading to the train station. I met up with about 15 other PII students at 8:20 am to take our reserved bus ride to Kyoto!

On the way, we took quite a few bathroom/food stops. The mini markets and bathroom stops are way way way cooler than any Burger King, Taco Bell/Pizza Hut mash up truck stop I always pass when I'm on a long drive in the US! Just look at this vending machine! It sells takoyaki, grilled onigiri, taki yaki, AND it calls it "casual frozen foods." Ya know...keepin' it casual. 

After about four hours of jammin on my iPhone, we arrived in Kyoto! 

This was Marina Kaneko's MK Tour bus. We roll in style. 

The Kyoto Station is an architectural amalgamation of AWESOME. 

More pictures of the interior to come...

Our first order of duty was to drop off all our nimotsu at the hostel, 

a short walk away from the train station. 

TA Daaaaaa!! I was really surprised how nice it was!

 I stayed in a Dormitory-style room with 7 other people. Our PII group shared three rooms total (I think), so we were a large traveling pack! 

Here was the cafe/ bar inside the hostel. Nice, amirite?!

After our quick hostel pit stop, a large group of us walked around Kyoto. 

We walked along the Kamo River until we found a cheap place for lunch. 

I love these restaurants! They are basically fast food taken to a more efficient level of deliciousness.
Step 1: Look at all the signs. Lot's of promotional specials and pictures to help out the Gaijin.
2:  Insert a certain amount of money into the machine. The item choices that you can afford with that amount of money will light up.
3. Press any one of those options to order.
4. Take the ticket. It's your important order!
5. Bring the ticket to the counter, sit down, and a few minutes later, your order arrives at your table! Magical stuff.

I order the cold udon. It was only 150 円! Nommmm. 

After lunch, we went shopping in the downtown area. Our first stop was a multilevel bookstore in a department store with stacks and stacks and shelves upon shelves of colorful books! 

Lucas, who is quite the experienced chef, and I were pretty dang impressed by the cook books. The photos and page layouts were unparalleled. Lucas's face says it all. 

 One of my favorite books that I looked at was a book dedicated layout designs of magazines/ads/ business cards/ signs/ etc. Of course the Japanese would have a book solely dedicated to layouts of books and other bound stuffs. 

Then we made a quick stop in the bazillion storied gaming center before more shopping!

A Japanese stationary/home goods/ awesome unnecessary Japanese chotsky store. It was great. 

So many stores. Kawaramachi and Teramachi Dori = an endless arcade maze of stores and restaurants everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I had no idea Japan was such a consumer haven. 

The weirdest part is that most of the clothing and accessory stores sell almost the exact same merchandise! I don't get it. They are all the same.

Shin Kyogoku Shopping Arcade

Rage. Always. With Hugh's awk squat in the middle. 

There was also a very strange hippie town flower child explosion of a store playing Reggae Whitney Houston. Interesting. I smell some incense!

Here was our shopping group! Left to right: Hugh, Adrian, Grace, Marina, Lucas, and me! Peace. 

I love the stores that specialize in one item. This one was dedicated solely to handkerchiefs. Adorbs. 

We ended up shopping to the evening. I actually think that you get a great sense of the Japanese culture through wandering through the streets, shopping and looking at all the styles and trends at the moment. Definitely a consumer culture. The stores are crammed with stuff everywhere. 

After we completed out fare share of shopping exploration, we met up with some other PII students for dinner! I split off from my shopping group and had ramen with the rest of the peeps. 

While Kyoto isn't necessarily a specialty of Kyoto, we are students on a budget, so some cheap ramen got the job done! 

And it was quite nommms. 

Ume shio ramen with char siu pork slices. 

After dinner, it was a beautiful night, neither hot nor rainy, so we popped a squat along the river and enjoyed the night together!

After our fun by the river, we returned to the hostel for a good nights sleep! I missed sleeping in a dorm like room with other people to hang out with! I miss college! Princeton, come back! 

Great start to the Naka Yasumi.