Tuesday Night

This is Adam.

Only one full day to go. I'm presently sitting in the lounge of our hostel. There are sixteen other folks here...mostly Europeans. A large number of them are French speakers of some sort. That's the way of this hostel--there are a few Japanese people here and there, but it's mostly Americans and Europeans.

Today was another day of shopping and shrines/temples. (Steve finally explained the difference to me: shrines are Shinto, and temples are Buddhist.) We got up early and tried to visit one of them near us, but it was too early (they opened at 8:00). So we ended up going to a craft market that's at one of the larger temples, which was a bit of a walk. From there we took a taxi back to the hostel, and took a short break.

It was very wet the whole time...we're all very grateful for the free umbrella loans that the hostel has. Unfortunately, their first-come-first-served nature means that sometimes we're stuck with some pretty awful choices. When we went out again in the afternoon, I could only find a single old, cheap plastic umbrella with holes in it. It had to do.

We went shopping then, at a kind of combination Japanese craft/department store. Seven floors, each devoted to a different kind of art or craft. We bought a ton of things there. Then we went to one of the local shrines, that had extensive gardens. From there back to the hostel, and finally out for yakitori.

Now, Bob has been pushing us toward yakitori since we've been here. Unfortunately, we haven't always been successful in identifying yakitori restaurants. He thought that any place with a red lantern hanging out front meant yakitori. Nope...it turns out that most of the red lantern places are just bars. But Steve managed to find one today, and we went back for dinner. It was decent, though a tad expensive. But Bob was especially enchanted by the evening. He says he ranks it as one of his best dinners, ever. So hey--overall a success, right? Bob and Steve are currently upstairs in our room, sleeping off the dinner and sake.

Tomorrow we have a couple more shrines to see, plus Nijo Castle. I'll post more pictures tomorrow. Then on Thursday we take the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, and from there to Narita and back to the States. We'll post more pictures tomorrow.