Mm, I'm eating a tasty Pumpkin KitKat, (I am saving you one, Dave, whether you like it or not) which the Japanese seem to be obsessed with, as you can see from the list in that link.

So, I've decided that I better catch up with yesterday and today just now, because tomorrow is Jidai Matsuri, the mother of all Kyoto festivals.

I'll start with yesterday (Friday). After uni, Matt and I decided that we should probably go downtown and find some stuff for our Halloween costumes, as they are mandatory for the big Halloween party next Friday. So, after finding out that in Japan cheesecake actually tastes like cheese, we caught the bus, and stopped off at the big "Book-Off" on the way, which is an amazing second-hand bookstore where most of the books are 105 yen, and there are second hand games and dvds galore. I picked up a couple of Banana Yoshimoto books - in Japanese! There's also a branch just five minutes away from us, but this one is bigger.



Just to be a loser, there it is to the left, (本) and that is also the biggest overpass I have ever seen/walked on. It goes all the way round.

So, then we caught the bus to Kyoto Station, where we had a quick !explore! then headed to Shijo-Kawaramachi, where the shops are.

Our shopping mission was successful! This is quite a feat, given that the first time we went we ended up in a) a gun shop, then right afterwards b) the all-hentai floor of a dvd shop, then when we tried to escape that, we ended up on the all-porn floor. And, of course, the last time we went we ended up in that creepy shop. But we managed to get Matt a manbag at last, and I sort of half-found a costume for myself that involved following a bunny girl with a mini shopping basket around a shop before deciding that I wanted what she had, then conjuring up a crappy excuse to buy myself a tutu. So I'm all set!