Kami visits Japan - Day 1
6:30 - 8:00 I get out of bed at about 6:30. I set an alarm yesterday, but I also shut off my phone completely to save power, so it wouldn't have played. Luckily for me, the alarm was supposed to be at 7, so no harm done.
After watching YouTube for a bit, brushing my teeth and applying sunscreen, I make my way downstairs to eat breakfast.
The hotel I'm staying at has two options for breakfast: Traditional Japanese food on the second floor, or "western" food on the first floor. I'm putting western in quotation marks here, because japanese Western food usually has little in common with any sort of western dish. However, I can't tell you whether or not that was the case here because I went with the Japanese breakfast. What's the point in going on an expensive trip to Japan and not eating Japanese food?
The breakfast was... Well, a traditional japanese breakfast. Rice and a bunch of pickled things I do not know the name of. Oh, and some kind of fish. Salmon, maybe? I've had similar stuff back when I was staying with my guest family last year.
Traditional Japanese breakfast isn't exactly an explosion of flavor. It won't wow you, but it is a really nice way to start your day. You never finish feeling too full, and slowly picking away at the four or five small bowls of pickled stuff while sipping on some tea is a rather serene way of starting the day. It's relaxing.
Anyways, I finish my breakfast and head downstairs, almost walking past the exit of the restaurant. The waitress corrects me with a こちらですね, pointing to the door. Pointing to the exit made it pretty obvious, but it's nice that i also understand what she's saying. At least some of my Japanese studies have paid off, even if I'm still at a rather basic level. It's now about half an hour until the rest of the group gets here and we leave to do... Something? Honestly, I haven't looked at the plan. I'm sure it'll be fun though.
8:00 - 12:00 I went out and got a melon cream soda from a nearby vending machine, mostly out of curiosity. It was... Alright? Tasted like pure sugar with a mild artificial melon aftertaste.
Anyways, I met back up with the travel group, and as it turns out, we're going zo Inari shrine! Inari is the god of rice, apparently. Sounds like kind of a boring thing to be a god of, but hey, someones gotta do it i suppose. We arrived at the shrine after a fairly short subway ride. I quickly noticed a vending machine selling 1000 yen commemorative ice cream fans. You might think this is completely useless and absurdly overpriced, and you would be right. So anyways, I bought one. It tasted... Fine. Ice cream was very average, but hey, the packaging is nice.
Inari shrine also has these red gates you've probably seen a bajillion pictures of if you use instagram. They were insanely crowded, so i decided to explore somewhere else instead. There was this really nice path through a bamboo forest that basically noone was using. I took a couple of pictures before arriving at a dead end and going back to the main shrine.
12:00 - 15:00
After a long walk and another train ride, we finally arrive at Kyokozu Dera temple. I've been here before on a previous trip, so it's not particularly exciting. I mainly just rest, my feet hurt from walking to much. Also it's insanely hot out here. Leading up to the shrine there was also this shopping street where I purchased some matcha. They gave out fee samples beforehand, and it tasted pretty good :3
...I also accidentally bought some sencha, thinking it was matcha, but we don't talk about that.
15 - 17:11
At least, group activities are done. I've now got pretty much the whole rest of the day to do whatever. I got lured in by a nearby tower records and accidentally bought 10.000 yen worth of cds because i didn't look at the price tags. Oh well, worth it. After about a 30 minute walk i finally get back to my hotel room. My feet hurt so much from all this walking. If I had to guess, today must've been at least 25.000 steps so far.
21:22 - 22:00
After I got to my hotel room i pretty much immediately feel asleep. As it turns out, I was still kind of jet-lagged. Woke up at 20:22, and saw a WhatsApp message that apparently my travel group would meet up near this river to eat some food. The view was really nice.
22:30 - 0:00 After we were done, i went back and bought a band-aid. For some reason I've got this small wound on my leg that was chafing against my clothes, which was really annoying. Went back to the hotel afterwards to relax a bit. I'll probably go out again in about an hour and see if there's any restaurants that are still open. But hey, that'll technically be tomorrow, so... I suppose that's it for this blogpost! Hope you had fun reading :3