The Unfortunate New Single, from Horse-Face.

Picture of the day



Seen: The Ukyo-Ku Ward Office.

Not much going on this weekend, I have a big test on Monday and also a presentation to do on a robot-themed card game that I bought, (of course) so I will not be going on any exploring missions this weekend. Just as well perhaps, as last night was our Halloween party, after which we went out and didn't get back till after 6am. But today I'm as fresh as a daisy, must have been the 40 minute bike ride there and back that did it. Anyway, some pictures.



Gon, myself and Alice.



Matt is out hunting rabbits. Oh dear.



Matt striking his 'Psychotic Killer' pose. Worryingly, it looks so natural on him.



The Lovely Ladies: Bjorn, AJ and Brody.



The buddies were all dressed up too :)



Mandatory "kawaii!" photo!



The Edinburgh Crew: AJ, Matt H, P-Matt, and myself.

Jidai Matsuri

One of Kyoto's great three annual festivals, Jidai Matsuri celebrates the eras during which Kyoto was the capital of Japan (a span of over 1000 years) by hosting a big parade, in which over 2000 participants dress up in costumes to represent each specific era, and spend 5 hours walking from the Imperial Palace to the Heian Shrine. Onlookers gather in the streets, and if they're lucky enough, outside the Imperial Palace or the Heian Shrine to watch the procession go by. Standing in one place, it takes around 2 hours 40 minutes to see the whole parade.

So, on Sunday morning, Emily and I got up bright and early, as we had decided that we were going to find ourselves a good spot outside the Imperial Palace, where seats in advance were going for 2000 yen a time. (Of course, we had to stand). We tried to catch an early bus, but it was so crammed full of people that there was no way we could squeeze on. So, we waited 20 minutes for the next bus, which was almost as full, but we managed to squeeze on and stand on the steps as the doors shut about an inch away from our noses. And yet, at every stop, the driver continued to let more people on, so in the end we felt like grains of sand. In Kyoto, people get on the bus at the back, then pay at the front when they get off, but of course no-one was getting off. But we made it, and quickly nabbed one of the last good places in the Imperial Gardens. This meant that our photos would have lovely background scenery, rather then shops and McDonalds, and we were getting everyone fresh as they just left the palace, and not 5 hours later.

As we were so early, we had to stand in the same place for a while, a long time even before the parade started. We had brief conversations with the usual people who were curious as to where we came from and why we were here, and we picked up small booklets detailing the order of the parade. Then, we were approached by the cutest group of elementary kids, with their teacher, who were doing a questionnaire to practice their English, and were obviously picking out any friendly looking non-Japanese that they came across. We answered their questions (their English was actually quite good) and they gave us origami shapes that they had made as a thank-you gift. Then, they asked if they could have their photo taken with us, so we got a photo from everyone's camera:



Emily, myself, the children, and a strange posing man in the background.

Oh! And I saw my first blimp!



It was one of these things that are terrifying to look at, but you just... can't... stop... staring... Well, it doesn't look too scary in that photo, but scary it was. There was also a large bird of prey hovering around above the gardens throughout the whole parade, I suppose it had the best view of all.

So, after much waiting (we thought the parade started at 10.30am, nope, turns out it was 12 noon) it began...



I'm not putting these in any order, I wish I could, but there were so many photos and in the end I found it hard to distinguish one era from the next. So I'm just picking out a few of the best ones, (out of about 200) and sadly my camera battery ran out about 10 minutes from the end, but I'm going to steal photos from Emily later. So enjoy the costumes!





























Many, many photos, and they can't all go up...

Today I bought my first kimono! Our speaking class went to a flea market at a local temple where we had to buy something to present as a 'Show & Tell' in our next class. So I bought a robot Karuta set (a Japanese card game which we all learned in our first tutorial in 1st year) and then I saw a pretty pretty kimono stall. I started sifting through them all, and before long I was being attended to by the two women on the stall, who were having fun dressing me up as a doll in all the different colours and patterns and finding one to go best with my blonde hair. Eventually I picked a pattern and we looked for an appropriate obi (the belt thing) to go with it. We found one and they tied it up and put me in front of a mirror, I quite liked it, and I seemed to be drawing quite a crowd of women who were stopping at the stall and saying "kirei!" or "kawaii!" ("pretty!" and "cute!") They seemed to like the fact that I was trying on kimonos :)

I will put a photo up soon, but as it's second-hand I want to give it a bit of a wash first. And I need to learn how to tie the obi myself. However, I did get a pretty picture of the floral court outside my window, which is now in bloom:



You go up to the little hut, and for 200 yen (under £1) they let you cut your own bunch of flowers. So now I need to head to the 100 yen shop and find a vase...

Still sorting through Jidai Matsuri photos, so maybe I'll get some up tomorrow. But for now...



I'll leave you all to ponder, is the new ice-cream sundae that they're advertising in our uni cafe supposed to resemble a hideous gremlin?

So I was walking back from Jidai Matsuri, which I will talk about later, as I'm still sifting through hundreds of photos, thinking that what I've seen this weekend couldn't get any better. Then something to top everything appeared right in front of me, in front of I-House. I'll let the pictures do the talking.











By the way, if you don't recognise this, you need to see Tonari no Totoro.

Now I can talk about today, and this is probably dated tomorrow by now, because the internet connection is acting up and I just finished writing about yesterday and it took me all this time. Mmm, time.

Today I got up and decided to go for a quick random walk before doing some studying or something. But it was such a nice day that I kept on walking, as I do, until I reached a mysterious bamboo forest. I didn't really know where I was, I knew that I'd been heading in Arashiyama direction, but I was under the impression that it was miles away. But that's where I was, ish.



So, I explored the forest a bit, before meeting an old man on the road selling postcards. I have been searching everywhere for postcards, so I was quite happy. He explained to me that he'd painted them himself, of the surrounding area. Oh, I wanted to buy them all. I should have bought two of each because now I don't want to send them away to people. Some of them are very much like the backgrounds of Kay Nielsen's colour pieces, fairy-tale ish, but the area is still completely recognisable. I'm going back to find him again.



Around the corner I came across a small shrine, the Nonomiya-Jinja. After spending a while there, I headed further along the bamboo path. I saw some interesting trees and buildings, and eventually I hit gold; the North entrance to Tenryu-ji, a big temple. I'd had no idea that it was there or even existed, but I decided to go in and see the gardens.

(As always, remember to click for bigger!)























So beautiful, those are about one tenth of all the pictures I took. After extensively viewing the gardens, I decided to head into the actual main temple building itself, as this and some of the walkways were also open to visitors.











But don't forget... Kyoto City is still in the background.

I think I spent about two hours at that temple, as away from the main part there were more gardens and small buildings, and by the time I'd seen them all it was about to get dark. Luckily I found a cute little street near the exit gate, and Arashiyama Station was just across the road.







The Arashiyama Monkey Park is nearby!

I got a tram back, as it had taken me an hour and a half to walk there, but then I hadn't planned it. And now I'm going to sleep! Tomorrow I'm up early for Jidai Matsuri with Emily, so expect more photos (sorry if anyone's on dial-up) tomorrow! Goodnight!