After we finished eating at the GreenTea shop, we walked a short distance to a very famous temple named Byoodoo-in Temple. (Pronounced Bi-Yu-oh-doe)
The temple is a famous Buddhist temple, originally built in 998 AD. The temple is shown on thr back of thr 10 Yen coin.
Learn more here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byōdō-in
We walked around and took picture of the temple. There is a museum near the temple that has many old artifacts like paintings and sculptures that were once in or on the temple. We couldn't take pictures in the museum.
Ok update time, on Thursday we went to Uji, Kyoto the city of green. There were 7 of us total Nagisa, Tomomi, Yumi, Austin, Nygel, Diana, and me. It took us roughly 45 minutes to get there by train and we spent around 4-5 hours there. The first thing we did and the focus of this post will be the food we ate. I say that Uji is the city of green because it is famous for its green tea or in Japanese 抹茶 (maccha). The focus of the town is maccha through actual tea, noodles, sweets, ice cream, etc... In the restaurant we went to everything had maccha influence wether it was desert or even the noodles. As you'll see in the pictures below I had a cold soba meal but the noodles themselves were green even though they tasted no different than other noodles. By the way cold soba noodles are probably one of my favorite meals I've had since my arrival in Japan. The way they're served is you get a plate of plain unseasoned noodles and a cup with a brown liquid in it as well as some negi (green onion) and wasabi. I've only had cold soba once so the specific vegetables you get may be different at different places but generally up you put the vegetables in the brown liquid then pick up some noodles dip them into the liquid and eat them out of the cup. After the main dish we had maccha themed desert consisting of a giant mountain of shaved ice that you pour flavored syrup on big enough to feed the whole table. And that's about it for the food we ate in Uji, later there will be a part 2 talking about byoudouin temple.
So last night we had our first ever experience with karaoke in Japan. Honestly it was a ton of fun. The way it worked for us is we got a small room with restaurant style booth seating with tables in the middle and a TV on one end. There were also 2 microphones and a small wireless touchscreen thing that lets you choose what song you want to sing. We had 6 people total Austin, Nygel, Nobu, Reina, Yuri, and myself. The amount of music to choose from was absurd they had tons and tons of American, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese music. We all tried our best to sing along with some of the Japanese songs we knew really well and like a lot but reading hiragana and kanji fast enough to keep up with a song is harder than you'd think. We rented the room for 3 hours and by the end we could hardly sing anymore because everyone's voice was gone. Overall it was a great experience and I can't wait to go again next time. Sorry for the terrible quality picture ;)
On our way home, we stopped at Hirakatashi station, the station closest to Elijah and Nygel's homes. We walked about 2 minutes from the station and went to our favorite ramen shop.
This is the same ramen shop that we went to with Nobu 2 weekends ago. We came back because the food is REALLY good.
It was incredibly hot at the festival, much too hot for me.
So we raaaan, we raaaan so far awaaaaaay.
We decided to leave the festival after about 2 hours and go to a place that Nygel wanted to go. A place that ALL Pokemon fans must go when visiting Japan. One could call it the mecca for Pokemon fans. Yes, that is right, I am of course speaking of the Pokemon Center!
Before going to the Pokemon Center, we took a break near a fountain to plan our travel path.
We fed the pigeons too. Tons of pigeons in Japan.
After our brief planning, we set off on a bus to a nearby JR Loop Train station. The Osaka JR Loop is a railway that runs in a circle around Osaka. Many cities, including Tokyo, have a similar railway. For those of you living near Charlotte, NC, the JR Loops functions similarly to the interstate 485 around Charlotte, except with trains instead of cars.
After we arrived at Osaka station, I took a moment to take pictures of the superstructure of the train station. It is actually quite amazing (at least to me).
The Pokemon Center in Osaka is located at Osaka Station on the 13th floor. Osaka station is actually a huge tower that has 27 floors with a hotel and restaurant at the top.
So, finally arriving at the Pokemon Center, Nygel went off to go.. nerd out over Pokemon. Elijah and I wandered around the store looking at stuff. I decided to take pictures, so.. here is a LOT of pictures.
I warned you :p
So yeah, after that we headed back towards home. Was fun and we will be returning to Osaka in the future to actually explore the city more. And probably more Pokemon. Definitely more Pokemon.
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Note: The second line of this post was reference to the song called "I Ran" by the band named "A Flock Of Seagulls. Good song.
