The rest of our day was spent at the famous Universal Studios Japan! (USJ for short.) It was defiantly a lot of fun, but not one of my favorite parts of the trips. I really wanted to go on a lot of rides, however the group of girls I with mostly wanted to do shopping so we ended up only going on two rides. I was pretty sore by the end of that day from all that walking.
That evening, we got back onto our buses and made a quick hour’s drive to Kyoto and checked into our “ryokan”. What’s a ryokan, you may be asking? A ryokan is a Japanese styled hotel where the rooms are very spacious and have “tatami” floors, which you can’t wear your shoes or slippers onto. There are also no beds in ryokan rooms. In the closest are folded up futons that you lay out yourself before going to bed. Now, many people may say that futons are the most uncomfortable things to sleep on, but I beg to differ; especially since the bed I sleep on currently is pretty much like sleepy on the floor. Also at ryokans, they don’t have private shower rooms. There are two separate public baths in the hotel, one for men and the other for women. Public baths are a major part of the Japanese culture, but it was very frightening for me at first, having not experienced anything like it before.
I kind of wished we were able to tour the city of Osaka a bit more, it being the third largest city in Japan and all. Hopefully in the future of my exchange I will get the chance to go back there sometime.
Day number three was what every student was looking forward to the most about the trip. The teachers were letting us loose to roam the city of Kyoto on our own (in groups of course) and I couldn’t have had a better time. Our group consisted of: Misato, Ikumi, Sayaka, Natsumi, Shouko, “Ikimen”, “Banban”, and myself. Because our group was one of the larger ones, we were able to split up for parts of the day so Ikumi, Misato, and I stuck together for the day. We did however meet up with the rest of the groups at different places to take pictures together and such.
In those four days of the trip I experienced many firsts for me and on the Kyoto day, I got to ride on my first subway and local trains as well as experience how Japanese train stations work. It was very confusing, and I am so glad I had my friends there so they could help me get the correct ticket for the train or subway I wanted to ride on.
Some of the places we visited that day included: Nijo-jō, Kinkaku-ji, (ji means temple), Ryoan-ji, Tou-ji, and this park area (I forget what the park area was called) where there were all sorts of different temples and shrines inside. Everything was just so beautiful! I’m having a really hard time describing how happy and excited I felt, that I still feel, when I saw these amazing places. There is so much history here, it’s simply incredible.
We also did our fair share of shopping in Kyoto as well. We went to Kyoto Station which is a train station but it is also their shopping mall! How crazy is that? I bought all sorts of souvenirs for myself, friends, family, and my host family. Kyoto has so many specialty sweets that you can only get in Kyoto, and they are so delicious! My favorite are called “yatsuhashi” and basically they are triangles shaped sweets made out of this special, amazing dough filled with “anko” (sweet bean paste). My favorites were cinnamon, strawberry, and chocolate. Oh my gosh, I want to hop on the Shinkansen this instant and go to Kyoto for some. Haha! I think I ended up buying four boxes of yatsuhashi. We took a break from our shopping at a little café inside of the station where we ordered these extravagant parfaits. I think Japan should be renamed as the “sweet capital of the world”! But I think I was able to walk and sweat off all the sweets I ate during the trip. (Did I mention how hot it was? It was like 30 degrees for the whole time! In October! Crazy eh?!)
Everyone was so exhausted after that day; the morning of last day of our trip came way too quickly. Despite being slightly cranky in the morning from the lack of sleep my body was suffering from, my morning brightened up very quickly when we went to a special little shop in Kyoto where we were taught how to make yatsuhashi! (I love those things so much. Haha.)
So with a bit of sugar in me, I was ready for our last stop in our school trip; Kiyomizu-dera. (Dera also means temple, but specifically referring to a Buddhist temple.) It was defiantly a great way to end the trip. We went to the temple first and were lead around by a tour guide then the teachers told us we were allowed to tour around by ourselves until lunch. Misato, Ikumi, “Udon”, and I looked around together and then went down to the “little” marketplace that was below the temple grounds. The amount of tourists that were there was shocking, I’m surprised we didn’t lose each other in the crowds.
The train ride back home seemed very long, mostly because I was completely exhausted. Was I ever grateful that we had the next day off. It defiantly took me awhile to catch up on all the sleep I lost that week. But was it ever worth it! And if you couldn't tell from the amount of pictures I have included in these school trip posts, I took WAY too many pictures. Haha! I think I almost took 500 pictures during those four days.
Yay! I can’t believe I was able to finish writing about my school trip, let alone fit three days in one post. Again, my sincere apologies about not keeping my blog update, I really owe it to you all to keep I updated. Thank you for your patience and hopefully I can get a post up about my birthday, some stuff I have done with Rotary here and my trip to Tokyo pretty quickly.
じゃあまたね!
~Stephanie
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