Week 4: Days 20-26

Sunday:
Nothing exciting... just schoolwork...

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Monday:
Today we tried to get our JR Passes exchanged at the Kyoto station... we went to 2 different places that were at the station to try and get our tickets... they checked our visas at both places (legally we aren't supposed to be able to exchange our JR Passes because our visas are for 6 months and only 3 month visas are allowed to exchange). We'll try again tomorrow...

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Tuesday:

From Japan: Day 022

Can you guess what this picture is made from? (see answer below)

After much fuss, transportation costs, and time, we finally got our JR passes exchanged! Yay! Now we can take the Shinkansen. We went back to Kyoto station today to try to get it exchanged again, but when we failed we decided to go all the way to Kansai Airport (where I came in) to the south. $20 and a couple hours later we had no trouble getting our JR passes. At the airport I saw the pictures above and took a couple of photos (have you figured out what it is made from yet?). On the way back I decided to take some pictures from the train (should give you some idea of what I saw/would have seen on my bus ride from the airport on the first day, though from a slightly different path). The last picture in the album is a video from the train. After getting back I decided to hang around with two of the people I was with and went with them to the main Doshisha University campus at Kyotanabe (a much larger campus than the Imadegawa campus I go to). It was a long trek uphill to where we were meeting with the rock climbing club. They have their own rock climbing wall(s), the building is the left one in the 2nd to last photo (the last photo being the video). Only one of the members of the club really spoke any English (I think there are supposed to be around 16 members). While the other two people I was with did some rock climbing, I declined because: 1) I was tired and didn't really want to, 2) my feet are way too big for any shoes they had for climbing, 3) I wasn't really wearing clothes for climbing. Unless I can somehow get climbing shoes that are my size here (yeah... right...), I don't think I'll be doing any rock climbing, plus the Kyotanabe campus is pretty far away (unfortunately that's where pretty much all the clubs meet).

Picture answer: used tickets (pretty neat)

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Wednesday:
Argh... starting to feel sick... everyone is getting sick... Apparently people who went to Kyoto station today to exchange their JR passes had no trouble (grrr... -_-).

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Thursday:
Bah... still sick...

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Friday:

From Japan: Day 025

Toriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Lots of fun today. After class and lunch I went with two other people to the Kita no Tenmangu Shrine Flea Market (one of three flea markets held each month, each are held at 3 different places, one at Chionji Temple on the 15th, one at Toji Temple on the 21st, and this one at Kita no Tenmangu Shrine on the 25th). This was huge. Many, many stalls stretching for many blocks featuring a wide variety of foods, arts, crafts, games, clothing, you name it. We visited the shrine and then walked around the market some more until it started closing at 4. We then took the subway & train to Fushimi Inari-taisha, a shrine famous for its many, MANY Torii (as you can tell from the picture above and the many pictures I took). It was a long climb up , but was fun. We saw lots of Torii, lots of cats, and got several good views of Kyoto, especially while the sun was setting (unfortunately my camera batteries decided to die, so I was stuck taking the last few pictures with the camera from my phone).

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Saturday:

From Japan: Day 026

Haha... yeah... awesome...

This was the Col. Sanders outside the KFC at the train station I go to every day. I think they dressed him up just for Golden Week, usually he looks normal (if you look closely, I think he is wearing a Santa suit under the armor... hehe...). Not much going on today. I took a couple of pictures outside the train station... that's about it...

Monday I'm going to Kyushu for Golden Week with 6 other people. We'll be going to Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Beppu, and Fukuoka. We return next Sunday and might go to Tokyo for a day. Stay tuned for lots of pictures and stories. I also need to get a new Picasa account since this one is full...