This is PART4!! Read the others first! :)
Thursday, May 23
So we got up early this morning and hopped on the Shinkansen to Kyoto!
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| Yummay donut I got at Lawson :) |
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| Mmmm, jelly inside! |
First stop in Kyoto was Kinkakuji! There were sooo many middle schoolers there on a class trip! They kept saying hi to us like they did to me last time I was in Kyoto, haha.
Then we hopped on the train to the Sagano Bamboo Forest!
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| Another train with cute rainbow writing! |
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| Cool pillars at the Sagano station |
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| Cute drain covers! |
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| Yay! The bamboo forest! |
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| So much bamboo! It was so beautiful! |
Then we took a local train because my mom wanted to see Fushimi Inari before we left Kyoto, since my sister and I told her how it was both of our favorite shrine.
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| Lol the station stairs had calorie counts on them! |
And then we arrived at Fushimi Inari!
It was
SUCH a gorgeous day!!
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| I like this shot :) |
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| And this one, with no people :) |
We only walked up to where the paths diverge, since we didn't have too much time. When we got there, a group of middle school girls came up to us with their teacher to practice English with us and then take a picture with us.
I asked where they were from and they said Shizuoka. I told them I'd been there before, but they didn't understand, so I said it in Japanese. Then they, like, freaked out at my knowledge of Japanese and thought it was totally awesome I knew so much! I was so flattered!
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| Look how cute they are! |
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| And then they gave green tea to my sister and me! So nice!! |
And then, it was on to Nara!
I was so excited to finally see the giant Buddha!!
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| This is the building the giant Buddha lives in |
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| The giant Buddha!! |
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| See how big he is?? |
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| Here's the hand of the giant Buddha! |
And then there was a pillar with a hole the size of the Buddha's nostril that you could crawl through!!
So of course, I had to do it!
Damn, it was a tiiighhtt squeeze. I gotta cut down on all those sweets. The Japanese girls all just slipped through. But I struggled, haha.
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| Going in! |
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| Ugh, hard to fit through |
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| I can do it! |
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| I did it!!! |
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| Cute gift shop on the way out |
There were so many deer outside the Daibutsu shrine! I love deer!!
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| Right before the deer ate my dress... |
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| I'm feeding them! |
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| Awww, who's a cutie?? |
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| Hiiiii! |
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| Cute Nara drain cover! |
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| Deer crossing! |
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| Even the buses had deer on them! |
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| Deer on the bus seats :) |
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| Colored drain cover |
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| There was a giant cute deer stuffed animal at the tourist center! |
We stayed at a hotel in Nara with a
gorgeous view! And I was so, so excited because we each got our own bed and they were real beds! We wouldn't be sleeping on the floor tonight, yayyy!!
Then we went out to eat at a restaurant near the station where we ordered our food from touch screens before we sat down. It was super yummy!
Saturday, May 24
So today, I had a parfait for breakfast!!! Tons of people had told me to get the matcha/azuki/mochi parfait while in Kyoto because Kyoto is famous for it, so I had to!
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| IT WAS SOOOOOO GOOD!!!! |
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| The back. YUMMMM |
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| Nom nom nom!! |
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| And a selfie |
Next stop was Hiroshima, so we Shinkansen'd on down!
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| The Atomic Bomb Dome (Genbaku Domu) |
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| Awesome origama on one of the childrens' memorials. I think the origami flag was so, so cool!! |
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| Immobilized childrens' memorial |
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| The area was so beautiful! |
We went to the Peace Museum and spent a really long time there. It was interesting. And the last part with found artifacts of people who had been living there at the time was really, really sad!
But we really needed to leave so we could get to Miyajima. So we took the street car to the shore or Hiroshima, where we caught a ferry to Miyajima.
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| The ferry was super cute! |
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| View of the shrine and Miyajima Island from the ferry |
I'd wanted to see the shrine at both low tide
and high tide, but low tide had ended at noon, so there was no way we would have made it. :(
But it's prettier at high tide anyway! I just couldn't walk out and touch it.
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| Cute deer on the beach! |
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| I finally saw this super famous shrine! Yayyy!! |
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| One more! |
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| Ahh, such a good dessert! |
I'd been wanting to try kakigori for forever and it was so, so good! My sister got a pink one that was peach, but I liked mine better. I hate sno-cones in America because the syrup drains out so quickly and you're just left with chunks of ice all frozen together.
But I love kakigori because the ice is sliced so thinly, it literally is shavings of ice. And the syrup stayed intact the entire time! In fact, I had so much of it, I had to drink it out at the end!
We had to leave by 6 to catch the last ferry back to Hiroshima, because we didn't want to be stranded on the island!
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| Beautiful sunset! |
From the station on the shore, we took the JR to Hiroshima and then Shinkansen'd back to Nagoya.
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| Pretty mural as you entered the station |
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| Another one on the other side |
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| Super cute, fat deer mascot |
On the Shinkansen, we ate our Momijiman. I got anko and peach filled. My mom and sister got peach too, as well as matcha and chocolate.
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| The anko filled |
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| The peach filled |
Sunday, May 25
Today was a crazy, hectic day! Mom, Bridget and I went to church at the English speaking Sacred Heart place where I'd gone to Ash Wednesday mass with my friends. We met a guy there who taught English at Nanzan. He was impressed I was taking Japanese there because he thought it was a very difficult school.
Then we shopped and I bought a super cute backpack! We also got the Nagoya edition Kit Kats I've been wanting. They're red bean flavor. :)
Then I went back to my dorm to pack while Mom and Bridget bought groceries.
At 3, Manaka and her family came to the dorm and picked up all my bags for me and drove us all to the hotel we got near the airport, at Father's request!! They and Father are SO, SO nice!
On the way, I spoke with Manaka in Japanese. It was kind of hard, considering I'd been speaking English with my mom and sister all week. Gosh, I'm scared to think how I'll be this time next year! :S
At the hotel, Manaka helped us bring our bags up to our room. Then her family took us to the train station where we picked up Father and we all went out to a seafood restaurant he knew of in this resort town on the water.
There Manaka, her little sister, her older brother, her mother, her father, Father, mom, Bridget, and I all ate together!
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| The view out our tatami room. There's a barge on the water out there! |
We had a HUGE meal with all these different courses! It was so, so much food and took my mom, my sister, and me SO much time to eat, haha!
I talked a lot with Manaka's dad in Japanese, and had to translate some of the things my mom said for him.
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| It was all so, so good! |
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| Yummy soup with a cute flower shaped fish cake! |
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| This was a giant snail! It was interesting... |
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| And here's the table when we were all finished, haha! |
When we were finished, they all dropped us back at the hotel. We gave them all presents and then said goodnight. We felt really bad because they only got home after 10!
We were tired, so we went to sleep because tomorrow was the day we flew home!
Monday, May 26
Today's the day! I left Japan. It was hard, but I was excited to go home, too!
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| Nanzan University is on that sign! |
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| Beautiful sunrise as we flew into Dallas! |
We got to Dallas two hours after we left Tokyo. Damn, time travel!
So I got two Memorial Days this year!! Woot woot!
But damn I was exhausted. I didn't sleep at all on the entire 12 hour flight (well I read 400 pages of my book and watched a movie in Japanese!), so all I wanted to do was go home and sleep.
But we had an effing four hour layover in Dallas.
I was tiiireeeed....
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| My mean sister took this creeper shot of me. But, for real, can you blame me? |
When I got home, I tried the red bean Kit Kat. It was pretty nasty...
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| So much Engrish... |
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| Isn't my nail cute? ;) |
It was weird having 3G again... I can use the Internet once I leave my house... whoa!
And it was weird having everything in English. It's sad how there is literally nowhere I can go in America where I can listen to Japanese at whatever time I want. There is so much English in Japan!
But hey, now whenever I come across a hard situation, at least it won't be as hard as having to deal with it in Japan, where I can't speak the language. Because here everyone speaks the same language I've been speaking since I was born!
P.S. I made cake when I got home. I'm sorry, but I went too long without funfetti roll cake. I needed a real American dessert!
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| So beautiful! |
Also, I've been texting a whole bunch with my Japanese friends in Japanese, which is great practice. I just hope we can keep it up!
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