Kiyomizuderu

After seeing Sanjusangendo, we headed off to Kiyomizudera. My first reaction: Gah! it`s swarming with gakusei! (students). there were students in their uniforms everywhere. It was insane. The temple itself was pretty cool, and there was a great view. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the whole temple was made without using any nails. I also heard that if people wanted more courage, they would jump off the bridge. That bridge was high up. Would anyone survive that fall? Apparently some people did or they would not have that story.

While I was there, I slipped on the stone staircase while taking a picture and scraped my hand and my camera. The zoom part of the camera got slightly knocked, and for a few minutes I thought I would have a broken camera for the rest of the trip. James saved my camera for me, so it all turned out ok. Note to self: don`t move AT ALL while standing on slick stone staircases to take a picture.

We also visited this shrine with two rocks. If you can walk the ten meters in a straight line between them with your eyes closed, it is said that you will have good luck in love. Well, a few of us tried it. Thanks to years in marching band, it was easy. I will even admit that I used the marching band glide step to make sure I was staying straight. I will say though, I was a little off on the distance. I ran into a person and stopped, and thought I had a little ways left to go. I took another step or two, and ran into the rock. Surprise!

After that we were interviewed by a group of students studying English. They were so cute. One or two of them could speak pretty well, but most of them were very shy. After they finished, one girl gave us some hand-drawn pictures of a Japanese comic character - Anpanman. I am keeping that. It is fun to talk to the students here (sometimes scaring them half to death) in English or Japanese. If I talk to them in English they freak out, and if I talk to them in Japanese they are way suprised. It`s kind of fun.

Also one thing that made me smile: I passed a group of junior high girls, and they all started chattering about me. They kept saying `kawai, kawai!`. That basically means cute. They didn`t know I could understand them.

After that we went shopping for an hour. I bought a few souveneirs plus some mochi. There was a mochi store with all kinds of flavors. They had samples of all of the different kinds. My favorite kind was Lychee, but that kind didn`t come in a small box, so I bought Peach and Ramune flavors. I figured I would share one in the car and save the other for later. They were actually pretty cheap - about 200 hundred yen for a small box. There were so many shops that I didn`t know where to start. There were all sorts of little things to look at. They were all the way up the hill, and we were supposed to meet at the bottom in an hour. I didn`t even make it half way down the hill in that time. I didn`t have time to look through all the shops, which is too bad. Apparently there was one that just had Totoro stuff (from My Neighbor Totoro). Sad. I would have bought something there.

By that time it was raining, so everyone brought out their umbrellas. It is a little hard to walk in those crowded narrow streets when everyone is holding an umbrella. I do wish that I had taken a picture of all of the colorful umbrellas. It is getting into the rainy season, so I`m sure I will have plenty of chances.