Festival Time!

On Tuesday, I went to Kendo with a few others. This was the most boring of the clubs I went to. In the other clubs, we interacted and, in karate, we even participated in one of the meetings and did many different things. For Kendo, they had us sit down and watch as well as give us a manual to read over. When they say third time's the charm, I felt I was better off stopping after two tries.

However, the weekend was a lot of fun for me.

Saturday morning I went to Kyoto. I tried finding the Gion Matsuri, but I had no luck doing so. Instead, I did a little shopping in the area and went inside the Kennin-ji Temple. I went back to the Pokemon Center to buy another Pikachu for my sister and some keychains for people back at home. I also hit up a bookstore while I was there and managed to find a couple of manga that I was looking for.

There are many zen gardens in this temple.

The roof of the inside of the temple.

This is my favorite piece of art inside of the temple.

The two gods that the temple worships.

This is the inside of the tea house where they started the tea ceremony in Japan.

Another angle of the tea house.

After I got back to Hirakata, they were handing out coupons for a sushi place at the T-Site (the area around the train station). I went up and ate some sushi for lunch.

I got to sit right in front of the head chef. He was really nice and everything was delicious.

After lunch (and some confusion), I met up with Yuuki and we went to go see the Power Rangers movie (it came out in Japan on July 15th - that weekend). It was in Japanese, so since I had already seen it in America, I could go off of memory the entire time. My personal opinion - it was better in English; the Japanese voice actors (to me) didn't sound like they had a lot of emotion behind them.

That was the most I ever spent on a movie ticket - 1500 yen!

After the movie, we went to the gift shop area inside the movie theater! It was so cool! They had souvenirs for all the movies that they were showing. I got a set of buttons for the movie.

That night, Yuuka and I went back to her hometown to spend more time with her family. Her mother made curry for dinner (which was more delicious than my own).

The next day, I got to meet Yuuka's uncle, aunt, and little cousin at lunch as well as see her grandma and grandpa again. Her aunt also went to Kansai Gaidai and could speak English as well. I had fun talking to her. Her son was scared of me. Yuuka assured me that many people in Japan are scared and awed of foreigners (the Unicorn Effect).

This food is called okonomiyaki. It is a hearty, Japanese pancake. The one I ordered has squid in it. The one in the upper right corner has yakisoba underneath of it.

I had shaved ice for dessert. Yuuka and her mother also had some shaved ice, but they had strawberry instead of mango.

After lunch, Yuuka's grandmother took us to a Japanese bakery and we bought some baked goods. It was really yummy bread and it was really cool to see the inside of one.

Afterwords, we took the train back to Hirakata, dropped our stuff off at the seminar house, and went to the Gion Matsuri with her parents, sister, and grandparents. It was huge. They closed off streets and it was practically packed shoulder to shoulder.

We just got there and there are already a lot of people. Yuuka's mother and little sister are walking in front of us.

The people on the floats play traditional Japanese flutes and drums.

I have a video of them playing music, but it was too big to upload.

Traditional Japanese lanterns.

There was some really good food there and I had the best crepe I ever ate. I also got a fan while I was there and a demon repelling charm.

Yuuka and I opened it up. They thought it was a traditional Japanese food. It was not a traditional Japanese food.

That next week was finals.

Pre travel
Week 1 Part 1
Week 1 Part 2
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7