On Tuesday was the trip to Kyoto with my host mom. We had to get up really early. We left the house at 6:50. We drove to the train station and took the train to Nagoya train station where we could catch our bullet train to Kyoto. The bullet trains are called "shinkansen" in Japanese. I learned the kanji for shinkansen back in Japanese 101 or 102 but I have since forgotten it b/c I never have the opportunity to use it. I love the shinkansen though, so fast. It took 40/45 minutes to get to Kyoto!! That's fast, take my word for it.
We ate breakfast on the train. When we got to Kyoto station we took a bus to Heian Jingu, a shrine. It was really nice. It had a huge tori gate. We participated in a tea tasting which was cool. The tea was supposed to be really high quality stuff. It tasted really bitter. We then walked around the garden and grounds. I saw a few miko (mee-koe), which are shrine maidens. But you're not really allowed to take pictures of them. There was also a double wedding ceremony going on!
Then we took a taxi to a temple called Sanjusan Gendou. It is famous b/c it houses 1001 statues of Kannon, who is a bodhisattva of compassion. In Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a person who has vowed to help others attain enlightenment.
Then we took a train to Sagano. Sagano is a section of Kyoto. We had lunch which was a traditional Japanese lunch. We saw a garden and walked the streets to different shops. We saw a bamboo forest and visited a shrine dedicated to hair. You go there to pray for heathy hair for your entire life. My host mom insisted we go for my sake. Since I have such long hair. :D There were four male high school students at the shrine with long, well groomed hair all praying too. That made me smile. My host mom bought me a fan which is so beautiful I probably won't use it much.
We then took the train back to the shinkansen station. We bought dinner, two bento boxed lunches and caught our bullet train home. It was a really fantastic day. I love Kyoto.
Today was my first day back to school. I had to be there by noon to take my final oral test. Went well but I sorta got weird at the end and forgot a vocab word. XP I had a good history of tea ceremony class. It was our last class. The teacher is going back to Shanghai on the 17th. I really liked him and his class.
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