It’s been ages since I’ve gotten back from Japan but here’s just a notification that this series will be on hold until further notice! Final year of undergrad caught me off guard so that’s a priority for now.

That being said–I’ll be back soon!

I am fully aware of how long I haven’t posted anything about this trip, and that the trip is now over HAHA. Well, here I am now, and the dates of these posts are still going to be edited to make it seem as if they were posted on the days themselves, just for the sake of organisation (and so that my slacking off isn’s as obvious)

On this Thursday, half of the Nijo crew (Sam, Ben, Erika, Emma, James) + Ines went to Uji, the land of matcha here in Kyoto. We went from Kyoto Station and caught the JR Nara line to Uji Station. Uji is a city between Kyoto City and Nara.

The Station, and the time that we reached Uji.

Everything was matcha infused–matcha is very finely milled, or powdered, green tea.

Not only was Uji a very matcha-centric little city of sorts, but they were also home to the Tale of Genji Museum. For anyone who doesn’t know, the Tale of Genji is considered to be the first published novel in history, and written by a woman during the Heian period. The last 10 chapters of the book are set in Uji, which is why the museum is in Uji, and though we didn’t have time to visit, it seems like a really interesting place to go to whether you’ve read the book or not. Apparently they have rooms and sets very elaborately depicting scenes from the story, as well as costumes and other artefacts all related to it.

Japan really loves sausage dogs.

This is me and the cutest character in Kyoto ever (and apparently the one that ranks #3 in all of Japan): ちゃちゃ王国のおうじちゃま (Chacha koku no oujichama), or The Tea Kingdom’s Pwince. And yes I did use a ‘w’ there instead of an ‘r’ because I think? That’s what they were going for with the ‘-chama‘ name, a cuter form of the Japanese ‘-sama’ suffix  which is used to nobility and rly highly positioned people, and it’s also a pun since cha (茶) is tea in Japanese. If you click here, you can watch a really cute video of the Oujichama song performed by a mascot and some cute girls hahaha.

Tanuki-san.

Uji and so much matcha.

Some chasen (茶筌), or tea whisks, to be used when preparing cups or bowls of tea. They are extremely expensive and also very delicate, as they’re made from bamboo, and even the whisk bristles are thin strips of it. I think these were going for quite a lot, and during my entire stay in Kyoto, the cheapest that I ever saw one being sold for was over ~¥4000, (AUD$40 / over RM120).

Uji streets.

We walked along the roads from the station and passed by so many places that had some amazing looking dessert and food displays.

Sweet soup and parfait.

A little alleyway.

I have no idea what this store was, I think it was possibly either a pharmacy or a little sundry shop? But anyway it wasn’t open, but I had to snap a photo because their display is covered in tapirs. And not just any tapirs, but Malayan Tapirs, as you can see by the white and black markings, and the tapir is one of my favourite Malaysian animals so this made me really happy. (They were also really cute so I was gushing pretty excitedly).

Even a tiny plum blossom tree in a pot had it’s first bloom of the season ❤

We kept walking and eventually made it to a place where we couldn’t pass the display and not want to eat there, so here you go!

Cute little window displays.

Extremely cute window displays.

The tea we were served.

Dish one: their seasonal (if I recall) parfait, with mochi, sweet chestnut, azuki, matcha pudding, matcha ice cream. and also sweet potato ice cream. The sweet potato ice cream was such a pleasant surprise and it was SO delicious.

Dish 2: cha-soba, or tea soba, which is why the noodles were green. This was SO GOOD and so amazing, it was a real delight.

Dish 3: Phoenix Pancakes. These were pretty good too, but I think we were a little bummed because the matcha was only applied externally and not actually mixed into the pancake batter. It was still good though! And those are some good stencil? Skills? Hahaha.

Some more Oujichama merchandise being sold in the cafe! Little bags of sweets and individually wrapped candy pieces. 

Our plan for the afternoon was to actually go to Byodoin (平等院) and see their famous Phoenix Hall (which is a Japanese National treasure), but it was close to closing time by the time we made it there 😦 We found out later that the Phoenix Hall is actually the building that is depicted on the back on every single 10 Yen coin:

Too bad we didn’t get to go in 😦

The entrance to Byodoin 😦

We decided to walk around to the back of it from the other side, but these places have entrance fees for a reason:

Ahh…. the sadness of being blocked by nature…

Anyway we made do with the situation and walked along this path which brought us past some cool houses and stuff.

Beautiful tree over a house’s main gate.

Phoenix decal on a door.

The city itself was really… very quiet.

This is a cute little doggy that we met on the way to checking out a river. Her name was Vivian, as told to us by her owner when we asked 🙂

Creepy abandoned shed/garage thing….

Finally we made it to the source of the water that we heard when walking from Byodoin, and found out that Uji has quite a massive river running through it, the Uji River. The Uji River’s source is apparently Biwako (琵琶湖) or Lake Biwa, which I had visited when I was 16 and went to Japan for the first time with my highschool!

Bridge view.

Another bridge view.

A view FROM the bridge.

Not entirely sure if this was a duck or a cormorant, as Uji River is apparently also one of the special places in Japan where fisherman still practice cormorant fishing.

Boat view.

There was a lot of construction going on by the river, and we were sad because of the damming, at first, but then we realised how big the river actually was.

Remarkable.

There were many little bridges linking up parts of the city to other parts where the river flowed between them.

The river running free.

After crossing the bridge from the Byodoin side of the river, we made it to the little park of sorts in the middle of the river, where some of us did some tree climbing.

Emma and Erika.

Ines and Emma.

Then we kept going to the other side, and the river was kinda freaky at this point with how loud and intense the current actually was.

We crossed over to the other bank and found Ujigami-jinja (宇治上神社), Ujigami Shrine, which I now know is also a registered UNESCO World Heritage Site alongside Byodoin, which Ujigami is the guardian shrine to.

Night was falling, so we had to go on our way.

The river flowing stronger than ever.

We followed this path all the way back to the main road (that we had come very far from) in order to get back to the station.

We also passed this vending machine which I found absolutely great in terms of selling only Uji-cha 🙂 It was late by then (though probably just around 5, but this is Winter nightfall we’re talking about here), and we tried to get back to Kyoto by the Keihan Line since the train station was right next to the river, but couldn’t, haha. So we walked all the way back to the JR station before getting on the Nara Line back to the city now familiar to us all ❤

After class on Wednesday, the Nijo Crew boarded the Hankyu Train and made our way to Kobe! This was after I got left behind at uni at the bus stop due to being held back at the crossing, and the rest of them just boarded the bus thinking I’d already gotten on.

Full crew cruisin’! Pic credits to Nicole!

We arrived at Sannomiya Station.

Steak Land. What a beautiful name for a restaurant in the land of Kobe beef!

I should keep a tally of how many photos of vending machines I have taken in the past 3 and a half weeks.

Ikuta Road.

We ended up eating ramen at a shop across from the station before making our way to other places.

My miso ramen.

From Sannomiya we took the subway to Rokko, because we wanted to make our way to the Rokko Cable Car station in order to go up Mount Rokko.

A Train passing by at Rokko Station.

Took the bus, and it kept snowing the entire time we were in Kobe, more or less.

Finally made it to Rokko Cable Car Station, and found out (though I had a growing suspicion) that by Cable Car, they meant a tram up the mountain. In Japan, they call cable-cars ‘ropeways’, as in the ones that are suspended on wires in the air.

Up the mountain! Pic credits to Ben.

Another shot with Ben in it this time! Pic credits to Erika ❤

The stunning view at the top of the mountain.

A panoramic shot for anyone who wants to click and view Kobe from up above.

It was freezing on that day. Mount Rokko is also famous for it’s Arima Onsen and Snow Park, where you can do skiing and snowboarding and stay in the lodge there during winter. Sadly it was pretty pricey and the recommended time to spend there was a minimum of 3 hours. By the time we were up the mountain, night was falling, and because it was snowing, literally nothing much else was open on the mountain, so we ended up just walking around the cable car station, taking photos and selfies, and bemoaning our situation in the cold.

Conversations with some nice people while standing around the only heater at the station.

A view from the other side. You can see the ropeway (closed on that day due to the weather…) leading to Arima Onsen below.

I meant to take a photo of the fairy lights here but it looks like I failed.

On the way down the cable car, we all grabbed blankets provided at the station for the short ride down. Emma and I were happy to find that our blankets somehow matched our backpacks out of pure chance.

Made it back to Sannomiya! And Kobe is not complete without Taiyaki ❤ This was special taiyaki with croissant pastry instead of the usual pancake or waffle batter.

So many choices. From top to bottom, L-R: azuki, yuzu (Japanese citron) and shiro-an (bean paste), custard, apple, kinako-an (roast soybean paste), chocolate, sakuranbo-an (cherry and bean paste), and melon-an.

So yummy.

So so yummy.

From Sannomiya Station we decided (probably against better judgement) that it would be a good idea for us to walk all the way to Kobe Harbour Land to see the tower and the lights.

It was a good walk, though a rather long one!

Nicole and James acting cute, casually sitting on a cow chair in the middle of China Town.

Kobe’s famous China Town.

A few of the others couldn’t stand the cold and the hunger, so they grabbed a quick bite of some soupy baozi in China Town.

Finally made it to the Port of Kobe!

Walked around the place and I finally saw a sight I last say 5 years ago at the end of 2009, when my first night in Japan ever was spent in Kobe Harbour Land when on my very short highschool exchange 🙂 Seeing the lights and the ferris wheel from across the water was different but still just as special as seeing it up close on the other side.

We walked all the way back to the Sannomiya area and eventually ate some soupy beef nabemono (鍋物). Probably wasn’t the highest grade of Kobe beef (obviously) but we were out of our luck with researched restaurant choices due to the fact that despite it being a weekday, almost every other place we thought of going to was already full of patrons.

Still, this was pretty delicious.

Mmmmmmm.

🙂

Thanks so much, Kobe! I’ll be back next time, and hopefully it’ll be with my famiy. Maybe next time I’ll even manage to make it to the snow park so that I can make my first snow man!

Ines and I planned the day before to go shopping together after class on Tuesday, so we did! But not before a quick visit that I wanted to make to see the Ritsumeikan Cats in the bushes they usually hang around!

It was the first time for me seeing them, and I was so in love  ❤

The three of them are absolutely adorable and very well fed. I found out later that they had bowls with catfood laid out for them and little modified plastic containers with blankets in them for shelter, all placed around the bushes near Ritsumeikan’s entrance.

So round…

I was caught!

I was caught more than once…

They weren’t the most friendly cats, but they tolerated my presence enough for me to get some cute photos.

Soft kitty.

Wary kitty.

Anyway! Took the bus with Ines to Shijo and got off at Karasuma, then walked to Kawaramachi’s side to get to Teramachi and Shinkyogoku.

Teramachi ❤

I really love the cute signs that staff put up to advertise their shos/cafes. This is Boogaloo Cafe’s special lunch menu.

PUNK&GOTHICなSHOPです! Featuring Ted.

This photo features another amazing part of Japan that I marvel at: how the fake food displays always look so delicious!

Took a photo of this cute place called “Shin-setsu”. Shinsetsu (親切) was one of the first adjectives I learnt last year, and it means “kind”. I think that this place, where the ground floor is a cream soda cafe and the upper floor a pancake cafe, is worthy of such a lovely name.

The alleyway by Shin-setsu.

Saw this cute sign, and Ines told me that the French, “Un moulin de la Romance”, translates to “the windmill of romance”.

Lovely wind chime made of sand-dollars.

We walked more and found a manga shop.

First display by the door was an entire table-top of Tsubasa. Oh, my childhood.

This plane was the entrance sign of a mini games-arcade full of UFO Catchers.

I took this photo of this chalkboard advertising ¥500 coloured-contact lenses purely because my friend Diya’s name was all over it. Maybe it’s a brand?

Ines and I entered 3COINS again and we were stuck in there for a while looking at the cute accessories and whatnot.

The earrings were soooo cute.

And the socks… Oh the socks. My biggest weakness.

Forget birthday suits, dress in your best birthday socks!

A super cute abut also expensive backpack that was in anther store.

Cute signage.

I think I see a giant crab in Japan no mater what city I visit.

I took this photo because well…¥390 is very specific!

Shingokyoku.

Kansai is not complete without Kanjani8, and seeing this gacha machine with the picture of them in their Ranger outfits made me laugh really hard. (I’m a big fan of this band, I just spend most of my time laughing at them, is all).

Japan… Every shop is so tempting to me when socks are involved…

Shop named Pasar! Pasar means market in Malay.

Walked past a game center and saw these Rilakkuma and Snoopy UFO Catchers.

Also I am waiting desperately for the day that Japan gets over its Frozen (and Olaf) obsession :O

Final stop was at OLIVE des OLIVE, a cute place where I bought an adorable bag that I will someday post a picture of on the blog.

“Moderate attentive upward glance”. Sounds like the kind of look students give teachers when they’re asking for the answer to a question that no one wants to respond to.

Adorable decor!!!

I love how these streets look all lit up.

THIS! Was the highlight of the day, honestly. A giant, floating, omu-rice display? Sign me up for the ride, I’m definitely going to Restaurant STAR in the future to try the omu-rice there.

Oh, Japan, will I ever not marvel at how good your fake food looks?

Hello all! This day will have a short post because we weren’t really allowed to take photos of the museum itself. It’s honestly more of a library with some cool exhibits both temporary and permanent. There were so many people just happily reading manga in it, it was great.

Anyway, have some shots from school.

Say hello to some of Japan’s adorable packaging.

Also, this is what happens when my phone gets passed to people here in Kyoto:

People keep telling me that they want to feature on this blog, so say hello to Ines, aka Ainesu-chan (アイネズちゃん, as written in wrong the wrong katakana and the wrong pronunciation in the nametag she was given on the first day of the programme)! She’s one of my closest friends in this program and the person I sit next to everyday in class, and we’re in the same group for activities so we literally see each other every single day. Let’s not be さびしい (lonely) ever again, especially when we have each other!!1!

Okay, so manga museum.

I took this photo before I knew photos were prohibited HAHA.

I took this photo after… I knew that photos weren’t allowed, but how amazing is it that LAT’s Kampung Boy made it to the museum’s 2nd highest “Most Interesting” and well liked comic from out of Japan? This really made me feel some pride 🙂

The workshop started at 1.30pm, and we were guided by a mangaka and her assistant in drawing our own 4 panel manga.

The workshop.

A helpful guide to emotions and expressions.

Below is what I drew on that day, and I am extremely proud of it! Everyone tells me I’m a horrible person for creating such a heartbreaking tear-jerker, however. (Content warning, highlight to read: character death)

🙂

Anyway after the manga workshop Ines, Jian, Diya, and I went back to my area and ended up eating Mos Burger for dinner. After months of reading about the almost ~mystical~ Mos Burger and how it played a part in the romance plot between the characters in… my Japanese text book, I finally went there!

And it was really goooooood! ❤

On Sunday the 25th, it was my mum’s birthday ❤ Happy birthday mum. I am so sorry that I wasn’t home to celebrate with you this year, the first time in my entire life that we haven’t celebrated a birthday together. I love you ❤

Caught the bus with my Nijo peeps and went to Kitano-Tenmangu Shrine for their monthly market. Just like how Tōji’s flea was called Kobo-san, Kitano-Tenmangu’s monthly flea’s name is Tenjin-san (天神さん)!

One of the main reasons why I wanted to go to the flea market was because of the tragedy that befell my poor mug that I bought at Kobo-san, if you remember my blog post from before.

Luckily enough, I found the same seller! And he remembered me. I did not tell him of the ill-fated way that my previous mug perished, but I picked up another mug in the same style (all of them are different and asymmetrical in shape) and some stuff for my mum that I’ll give her when I get back. Hush hush, it’s a secret 🙂

Some of the other lovely things he was selling.

Kitano-Tenmangu is also extremely famous for their plum groves, and their plum-blossom viewing. I now know that plum-blossoms bloom a lot earlier than the sakura do, and on the day of Tenjin-san, I was happily met with this view when I finally made it out of the market crowd to have a look around the actual shrine grounds.

The first plum blossoms of the year!

It was when I was taking photos of the blossoms that I realised that my camera that I had been happily taking shots of the market with actually contained no SD Card whatsoever!

… Yay me! Go Sam! 😡

So all of the photos here that you see were hastily retaken photos that I took with my phone.

Stepping through the gate to the shrine grounds.

The crowd was insane.

I honestly don’t actually know what this is, but a quick google search of the sign on the right (that says “kigurage”) tells me that I’m looking at mushroom. What was done to these mushrooms or how they came to look this shredded, I’m not too sure, however.

Oh. My. God.

King crab legs on a grill right in front of your eyes! ❤ I didn’t eat this, but I saw lots of people holding the skewers as I walked along. They were going for ¥500, or about AUD$5/RM15 per stick.

Fried little fish.

I have no idea what this is but it looks delicious.

Salmon!

Really really fresh looking salmon.

Anyway I walked around for a while and actually met Harry, who is in my class but doesn’t stay in Nijo. We ended up walking to the front of the grounds by the main road near the bus stops where the whole Nijo crew was meant to meet by a certain time. After a while it was just me, Jian, Diya, and James who were on time waiting by the side of the road.

We all meant to get on the bus together and take a trip to Kawaramachi to have a little look-see, but man… Man, I gotta hand it to the older generation in Japan (or maybe in general) because they sure are feisty. All of them were on a mission to get on or off the buss and shop at the market, and we got hustled around when lining up for the right bus, and when Jian and I finally got onto the bus we needed, 2 seconds later the door closed with James and Diya still standing on the roadside with the most incredulous and half-offended faces on, hahaha.

Anyway! We agreed to meet up at Nishiki (錦) Market in Kawaramachi after catching our respective and separate buses, and I was excited to go because I knew it was a shopping street nestled between Teramachi (寺町) and Shinkyogoku (新京極商) shopping arcades.

Shinkyogoku.

Huge radishes spotten along Nishiki Market’s lanes.

Adorable pouches in a specialty store.

Adorable vinyl stickers in the same specialty store.

Met up with Diya and James and the four of us ended up getting some light things to eat/drink at Tully’s Cafe. I got the cranberry mocha thing on the left, and on the right is DIya’s slightly-smaller-than-expected portion of ice cream.

I didn’t get too much shopping done (or at all) on that day because I was feeling tired out for some reason, but here are some cute pictures from a lovely store called 3COINS, where things cost ¥300 per item.

I took this picture because I fully agree with the philosophy written on this label: “Dressing up starts with choosing the right socks“. If you know me well enough, you will know that I adore socks, all kinds, but primarily adorable patterned or character socks. Just a heads up if my birthday is coming and you don’t know what to get for me!

And some cute bowls!

After that I just headed back to my room by bus and did my homework and had a lazy night in. All in all a pleasant day!

Goooooood day to all! Last Saturday I spent the day in Arashiyama (嵐山) with the Nijo Crew! The Nijo Crew are my beloved friends who live in the same building as me, we are also alternatively known as #theseeds. Random fact: despite our building being called Nijo (二条), literally Second Street, it’s actually on Sanjo (三条), Third Street!

Anyway, we met at around 10am and then took the bus up to Arashiyama under the kind guidance of Nodoka, one of our buddies who was nice enough to bring us to the bus stop we needed and up to the place itself, even though she had an interview in the latter half of the day!

Arashiyama! And a view of the Hozu River. At least I think it’s the Hozu River?

We decided to go to the Iwatayama Monkey Park first, and boy was it a trek up the mountain.

The entrance fee was ¥550.

By a real trek, I mean a real, real trek.

The morning light was really pretty that day, and the skies were really clear. It was one of the best days to get out of our apartment block!

More walking up the path.

I’m sure this would have been beautiful during the kōyo (紅葉) or red leaf/autumn season.

A view of Kyoto from high above!

This was how high up the actual monkey “park” was. The monkeys aren’t kept in captivity or anything, though the people have kinda banked on them being there as an attraction that they can earn money out of, the monkeys seemed pretty happy to just bum around by the little hut where we could feed them (from the inside).

Love this tree.

MONKEYS! These were the first two we saw up close.

The one lying down enjoying his special de-bugging treatment actually has heterochromia. His right eye is blue and the other is yellow–you can see it if you click on my photo and zoom in. We were staring a little and snapping photos until the staff said to move along because apparently he’s pretty aggressive.

What a cute little guy.

Okay, whether we ended up liking the monkeys or not, the view from on top of the mountain was stunning.

Here’s Diya.

Here’s Jian.

Here’s Sam!

And some more monkeys.

The rolling hills were so spectacular. Kyoto is truly in a lovely part of Japan, nestled between mountains and just so much amazing nature, heritage, and well preserved beauty in its history.

Pensive little guy.

Pensive guy #2.

Sitting on this tree-stump like no big deal.

We entered the little hut then and got some peanuts to feed the monkeys! They were A LOT SCARIER than before, especially when fighting over food. We basically held out peanuts to the monkeys, with the nuts just sitting on our palms that had to face upwards. Apparently holding whatever food between your fingers is dangerous because they could grab and snatch at your hands instead.

Glorious sunlight!

Their feet are so cute!

Sam feeding monkeys: Part 1.

Sam feeding monkeys: Part 2.

Here you have three fine specimens holding up monkey masks and signs that we wrote on. You have greetings from #theseeds in three languages here. Left: Sam, Right: Diya, Bottom: Erika. Extreme left: Japanese macaque.

This is when we discovered that opening your mouth at the monkeys would get them to do it too. It was cute until they started getting annoyed at us for making them do it instead of feed them peanuts.

Can I just say I am very proud of this shot?

After spending quite a while at the top of the mountain we decided to go down, and the way down ended up taking a lot longer than it could have because we kept stopping to have fun on the various things we found along the path.

Like a playground that very clearly stated “FOR CHILDREN”.

20 year old and 21 year old children, yes.

Out of the park, and we walked back to the main street of Arashiyama.

Made it to Togetsukyo (渡月橋), or Moon Crossing Bridge that goes over the Hozu River.

The mountains that you see in the surroundings are supposed to be very beautiful during Spring and Autumn. The river itself has cherry blossom trees alongside the banks, but alas. In winter there is nothing much in terms of beautiful foliage or blossoms.

Statues outside Tenryuuji, where we came for our Zen meditation session the Monday before.

We wandered further and eventually got lunch along the main street! I don’t have a good picture of the Japanese style “hamburger” patty that I had, but it was super delicious.

Finally we made it to Arashiyama’s famous chikurin no michi (竹林の道), or bamboo path/trail!

Deep in the bamboo.

Train tracks running through the trail.

L-R: Erika, Ben, Sam, Jian, Diya, Emma, Nicole!

Picture credits to Nicle ❤ Here’s the gang! Without James who decided he would go off alone somewhere. Again. He always ditches us on Saturdays for some reason 😡 but whatever man, because we always have Ben who I hope is more than happy to play the older brother in our funny family.

On the other side!

After getting out of the bamboo we just wandered around until we saw this adorable dog!

Aaaaaaah what a sweetheart! Her name is Cherry-chan (it’s also written on her little shirt), and she’s about 10 years old.

And here’s her owner. He stopped to ask us where we were from, and very excitedly told us that he’d been to Melbourne and Sydney multiple times before on holiday. He was really sweet and very enthusiastic, telling us about his travels and about the countries he’s visited, and when he asked us where we wanted to go he told us which path to take at the fork in the road to reach some temples. He was a really gentle man, constantly smiling at us, and when he was talking to us he reminded me a little bit of both of my grandfathers in only the nicest ways 🙂

We followed his advice and kept walking, then came across a little shop that was selling half-boiled eggs, sweet wine, and also the most amazing pudding. The lady that sold us some of the pudding was really lovely too.

Pudding.

Signs on the mountain.

Little displays outside a shop.

A little boutique!

Arashiyama was truly full of surprises.

A pleasant little path.

Kyoto has SO MANY of these adorable cabbage plant flower pots, and by the end of this programme I will probably have dozens of photos of them.

Another quiet path.

This is My Crew, Part 2: Nicole, Diya, Emma, Jian, Ben, Erika!

Another path leading further up the mountain.

More bamboo.

A photo of a little vegetable patch that I stuck my camera lens in through a gate for.

Walked by a house with all of these empty fishtanks outside of it. They also had big pots full of wilted lily/lotus plants in them.

Back to bamboo.

By that point we’d walked along the bamboo trail and back through the sidestreets, and when we were closer to the main street we had more snacks.

Tried my first mitarashi dango (みたらし団子) that I very gladly took from one of my friends who didn’t want it. Dango is basicaly a ball of mochi, and these were glazed with a thick, sweet soy sauce.

A quick walk to the Arashiyama Station meant that we had some time to go to the foot bath, or ashi yu (足湯), which was a little space tucked between the two train tracks at the station’s platform itself. It cost us ¥200 and we were meant to stay for about 10 minutes? But we dragged it out to half an hour of sitting with our feet in the hotspring water fed to the little pool-like structure.

Towel and ticket!

The sign and a statue to welcome us.

Our shoes in the shelf.

#Family time!

All in all, it was a beautiful day to be out in the countryside and just walk around. We were all pretty pumped out throughout the day and our excitement levels fluctuated, but all of us stayed pretty smiley and I think it was a lovely day well spent!

On Friday we made our very own Udon!

This is a view of Kyoto Terrsa from the bus that our programme hired.

This is shisho (師匠)! He’s the owner of Gaina Udon, and our teacher for the day. He was honestly one of the most amazing teachers–full of enthusiasm and love for his job and the people he serves his udon to. Throughout the session he called our udon dough “aka-chan”, or baby, which was… very entertaining to say the least.

First we have this flour. We took turns sticking our hands in it and mixing it around to get some air in, then mixed in a set amount of salt-water that shisho prepared for each table. We mixed the flour with the water, and didn’t roll it into a big lump, instead we ripped it into smaller pieces of dough (I’m guessing for more air), before pressing and punching it to one side of the bowl to form a very flat piece of udon dough baby.

Before I move on, here is a picture of my wonderful team: Kate and Sehwan!

Next came the most interesting part HAHA we got to step on our dough baby! (Saying that sounds terrible but seriously on the day itself we were all cooing at our dough and making baby noises.)

The first step is the strangest…

After taking turns stepping on the dough, we rolled it up again to form this roll before repeating the process.

It’s flat again once more!

Kate and Sehwan and our dough.

After stepping on it the second time, we folded it into a square. Here is our squarectangle! ft. Sehwan’s stripy socks.

Final steps.

I don’t have many photos of the next few steps, which involve hugging our dough for ten minutes (to introduce warmth? heat?), and then rolling it out into a thin 2mm sheet after beating it with a stick, but when I fish out the photos from my phone I’ll edit this post again. For now we have my photos from my camera!

Aaand this photo I just stole from Sehwan’s facebook page! L-R: Elly, Kirsten, Sam, Tessa, Sehwan. Featuring two of our dough babies.

This was when shisho was teaching us how to use his fancy chopper to cut up our freshly made udon!

Fresh udon!

This is when I got to try my hand at chopping our udon up into strands.

Success?

Success? Did we cut hard enough? Did we manage to cut all the way through the dough?

Yes we did! And I don’t know where I’m looking at all in this photo but this was awesome 😀 At least Sehwan is looking at the camera? Also there’s flour all over all three of our faces courtesy of Sehwan and our bowl of cornflour.

This is one of my programme coordinators, Tanaka-san, looking particularly uh, adorable in his pink apron. He was helping shisho to separate all of our strands of udon and package them into bags for us to take home and cook later.

Mmmm.

Udon!

We got to eat this at the place itself: fresh ontama bukkake udon. Udon cooked just right with an added dash of shoyu, tempura crumbs, negi spring onion, a poached egg, and some added shichimi (七味) for more flavour ❤

After class on Thursday I went with Ines, Erika, Misato, and James to Gion to go and find Tsujiri (都路里), a pretty famous cafe in Kyoto known for their matcha parfaits. It took us a little while from uni to the other side of time, but I can jus say that it was very very worth it.

Noren at Tsujiri with their logo on it, a traditional chawan (茶碗) and chasen (茶筅), or tea bowl and tea whisk.

The same logo on their menu.

What the inside of their menu looks like. Look at all those parfait choices!

This is the parfait that Erika and I decided on. Tsujiri’s signiture Tsujiri Parfait. It had layers of matcha ice cream, whipped cream, sweetened azuki (小豆) paste, matcha jelly, houjicha (ほうじ茶) or roasted tea jelly, and also sweetened chestnuts.

Misato and Ines both decided on this matcha yoghurt parfait, topped with fruits and a matcha cookie of sorts.

Our parfaits all lined up and looking delicious! James’ matcha castella parfait is in the top left corner.

And here we are! No true outing is complete without a selfie proof shot. From L-R: Ines, Me, Misato, Erika, and James.

After eating our parfaits happily and sitting in the cafe for way longer than we should have sipping at our tea, we left to go walk around Kawaramachi. Walked into many many shops and buildings.

I very sadly do not remember where we were when we took this. I think it might have been in Marui? But i don’t recall at all. Anyway look at this cute little display with the cute frog and mini chair.

Another one of Japan’s amazing vending machines, this one complete with a heart-shaped drink option layout.

We left wherever we were and walked to OPA further along.

“Oh! Bargain. Change your clothes change your fate.” I really like this and will make this my philosophy from now on, honestly.

This is the most amazing shirt I have seen in Japan thusfar, and it totally trumps the kakkoi shirt that we saw at H&M last weekend. This plain white T-Shirt would just be a normal T-Shirt if it didn’t have this one line written on it: アバンギャルドヒップスター, or avant-garde hipster.

Took this photo so I could remember which store the avant-garde hipster shirt came from, but the store display also made me smile so here you have it. Thank you GYDA in OPA on Kawaramachi.

We walked further down Shijo and finally made it to Loft, a huge and amazing store that reminded me of Tokyu Hands–full of quirky cute items for all your fashion/home/lifestyle/wants and needs.

This was just the first floor.

Went down stairs to the floor with all the super cute character goods and promptly fell in love.

Alllllllll the love for Baymax from Big Hero Six ❤

I found the Moomin section and I swear there were hearts in my eyes.

Very cute phone cases! Sadly all for iPhone. Japan is I think a very iPhone loving country, though I’ve realised in my time here in Kyoto and my trip last month to Tokyo that a LOT of people actually own Android phones, so I don’t understand why all the accessories that seem to be the most mass-manufactured are all for Apple products.

Right next to the Moomin section was this super weird and, to me, extremely cute and amusing new character from San-X (the creator of Rilakkuma, Sumikko Gurashi, etc), called Shirasutai (しらす隊), basically little anchovies (and tiny shrimp) that are used as toppings on food wanting to go back to the ocean, LOL. Their tagline, from what I read on the signs and notebooks, is “人生はサバイバル”, or “life is survival“. Here’s a link to their official page if you want to see a full character list.

I really love this character already HAHA.

On another wall was a lovely Snoopy/Peanuts display ❤

Loft also had a gachapon (ガチャポン), or capsule toy, machine section full of cute and also strange things.

In terms of strange things they had this:

Yes… I truly want a figurine of an extremely hunched cat to add to my trinkets collection.

Before I talk about the flea market, here are some shots from daily life as a student in Ritsumeikan.

I have three hours of Japanese class a day! Every hour we get 10 minutes break to keep our minds from exploding from all the learning we’re doing. During this time my classmates and I usually just chat and share snacks together, or go to the vending machine to get a hot drink.

Here are two bottles of the same tea that my friends Ines and Harry had. It’s the same tea, but the winter packaging is different on each one; you can see the pattern and colour of the scarves on the plastic labels are different 🙂

After classes end at noon, we usually grab lunch. We either buy food from the cafeteria or from the convenience store, or bring stuff from home if we have any. If whatever groups we’re in has an outing in the afternoon, the meeting time for that is usually at 1.00p.m., so we get an hour’s worth of time for lunch.

This is what Ines had for lunch. Cheese hamburger patty, fish, some pumpkin and salad.

This is what Tiffany had for lunch. Ontama negi udon, some veggies, and tiramisu.

Mmmmm. That egg.

Anyway, the three of us had lunch in the cafeteria before taking two buses (requiring one transfer) and about 40 minutes to get to Tōji (東寺) for their  flea market that only opens on the 21st of each month, known fondly to many Kyoto residents as Kobo-san.

Right through the gates we see this.

Lots and lots of fabric.

Stalls and people. We kind of noticed on the bus that we were amongst the youngest people aboard it, and the flea market was actually really popular with the older crowd of Japanese people, though there were a whole bunch of us students and tourists as well I think! A lot of their items are antiques or second hand, and many things are considered by a lot of younger people as just for old people, I think. I don’t know, I really enjoyed it and thought the market had so much charm and character.

The first shop we stopped at was a hat stall.

Tiffany modelling a cute beanie.

Me and Tiffany modelling.

Some little ceramic items going for cheap at one of the stalls.

Colourful pin cushions!

Some crystal and stone trinkets and pendants.

I love the plate with the crab on it so much ❤

I don’t know what these are at all but they were so adorable! Little dragon? Monster? Deities? I have no clue but they were so so so cute and full of personality!

Just look! I don’t think it would have been possible to pick just one–a pair would be the best option.

Another little stall selling tiny figurines. The stall was manned by an old man who watched amusedly as the three of us squealed over all the cute things.

Out of every animal and little human present on the table, we found three little kappa (河童), lit. ‘river child‘, a creature from Japanese folklore. According to my tiny bit of research, I now know that they’re supposed to be antagonistic to animals and humans, and have a great appetite for human children. The only thing they love more than human children is the cucumber, which is why these three tiny adorable things have a cucumber each 🙂 Ines’ is on the left, mine is in the middle, and TIffany’s is the one on the right. Since we’re in Japan we were like, “well if we’re going to get any of these out of the wide range of choices, we might as well choose the most Japanese ones!”

More pincushions, I think?

The actual pagoda of the temple. I’m so sorry to Tōji but we didn’t want to pay the extra entrance fee to see the pagoda. Your monthly market, however, was stunning and lovely. The pagoda was nice from this distance too!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I love taking photos of roofs.

Some sweet little clay figures.

My favourite is the little cockatoo-looking bird.

Another roof.

Japanese candy.

Stopped by a stall selling Japanese chopsticks, where Ines agonised over being spoilt for choice.

A close up shot of some beautiful glass beads being sold at another stall.

The main hall of the temple grounds.

We came upon this hilarious stall selling signs that had all these amazing cats painted onto them.

On both of these signs: “なにか!” which… Kind of translates to “What (is it)!” in this context, I think?

The stall had even more amazing noren (暖簾), Japanese hanging dividers/door curtains.

We walked around more and ended up at another great stall where we met a man who was selling his hand crafted ceramic works. We loved EVERYTHING at that stall, and some of his items were too cute to be true. I was so enamoured that I forgot to snap a shot while I was choosing a mug for myself. We took quite a while picking stuff out for each of us, and the stall owner was really friendly and chatted with us. By the time we paid for things, I knew that he liked J-Pop, AKB48, and Hashimoto Hikari.

These aren’t from the same stall that I was talking about, but they’re also lovely.

Seen at a stall selling takoyaki (たこ焼き), or Japanese octopus balls.

After we left the market, we got back on the bus. I went on my way to join a large number of the others for dinner with our Buddies, as well as meet some other students also on exchange from Adelaide University. I said bye to Ines and Tiffany somewhere along the way, and only got off at Shijo-Kawaramachi station.

Our meeting place.

Here’s where the saddest thing happened ever. I met up with Ben and Maho, one of the buddies, and while I was fumbling for money (the buddies were collecting the payment for dinner first, so that money wouldn’t be hard to deal with after the meal), I dropped the plastic bag that held my mug.

</3 All I can say is that my heart is as broken as my once beautiful mug 😦

I didn’t get over it quickly, and I’m still upset over this. I get easily attached to things that I really like, no matter how cheap or trinket-like and little they might be. I’m a sentimental person like that, I suppose.

Anyway we went from Shijo and walked all the way to Gion until we saw Yasaka-jinja (八坂神社), then turned left at the T-junction. At some point we made it to the restaurant where we had our all-you-can-eat sukiyaki and shabu shabu.

Meat. This was one plate out of many that we demolished.

Veggies! Good for us and also very much appreciated by my vegan friend, Tessa.

Sukiyaki/Shabu shabu in action.

A quick dip into some raw egg!

P-p-p-party! Super sorry to Kihun whose face got blocked by Derek’s head.

Thank you very much Tessa for taking a selfie on my phone before taking the next photo.

Sorry to Emma for this photo! :O

And here’s one from my camera! At least everyone looking towards the camera can be seen this time.

Got back to our building at about 9-ish, then received and invite from Ben and my Korean neighbours (Kihun and Sehwan) to come over and chat and drink LOL So most of our building congregated in their room, and the 9 of us (Kihun, Sehwan, Chanwoo, Ben, James, Jian, Diya, Nicole and I) talked and laughed, ate chips and played some drinking games for a couple of hours. It was super fun and also a challenge to communicate in bursts Japanese (and some English) considering we mainly speak English and they mainly speak Korean, so a lot of gesturing facial expressions came in handy.

All in all a good day, despite me breaking my mug </3