on holiday

O hai! I'm so tired right now and I'm actually planning to write a post on several days' worth of adventures so bear with me if I can't remember the exact days when these activities took place. We've got a few days of holidays now, as if there has been much to do, anyway, since it's only the orientation period that's going on now. But of course on holidays you need to be out and about doing exciting things so we went to Fushimi Inari Taisha - which, to some, may not be that exciting but to me it's probably the farthest I've been from the dorm so far. Fushimi Inari Taisha is a huge, beautiful shrine, and the area is packed with tourists, especially on a Sunday (so yes, this was on Sunday). We probably had picked another day if only we had thought about it beforehand - I mean, when you're on holiday you don't really pay attention to which day it is.

Just a random shot at the Fushimi Inari station.

Let me take a selfie.

I can feel the electricity in the air.

Beyond the main grounds of the shrine (if you can make it through the masses of people), there's a trail leading up to the mountain called Inari, and it's lined with a kazillion of torii gates that apparently different companies etc. have donated. Apparently people usually come here for the mountain trail since the Taisha is actually nothing compared to the experience of walking through the trail and arriving to the top (or the halfway point in our case) to the most amazing view of Kyoto city. Apparently it's not really worth it to climb all the way to the top since it gets so cloudy that you don't really see much from up there. So we left it to those who really wanted a good exercise. And the halfway point view was still amazing, it was such a good weather that we could actually see all the way down to Osaka!

I just hope they're sturdy enough as not to collapse on me...

I guess not.

Well worth the climb.

At this point we gave up.

Almost back to where we started.

Wish away!

Dressed for a show that we just missed.

Back in central Kyoto, we decided we hadn't yet gotten enough of high places, so we went up to the roof of Kyoto Station, which I hadn't even realized was possible. And, to think of it, I didn't even know the building was as high as it turned out to be. Amazing views from there as well; if only they didn't have the stupid grey windows lining the entire terrace you'd be able to get a bunch of neat aerial shots around the city!

On top of Kyoto Station

Ghosts above Kyoto

Well, then, that was Sunday. Today, which is... Tuesday (took me a minute and I'm still not quite sure but let's go with that), we had made up our minds to go see the Jidai Matsuri, which is some sort of a festival for God knows what reason. I'm so ignorant about all this stuff, I don't even know why we're having the holiday now; and it's not like I'm the only one, I've been asking around and nobody else seems to have any clue, either! Anyways, so we went to the Imperial Palace where the Matsuri is supposed to begin, but there's nobody there. Finally we asked a couple of nice ladies who were just chilling in the park, and they were kind enough to inform us that it takes places on the 22nd of October. So as it's now September, we need to wait for another month to see the Matsuri.

Dressed for the occasion.

"Where is everybody?"

Instead, we went to have lunch, which we were planning to do afterwards, anyway. I was kinda happy about this turn of events because my stomach was already churning when we waiting for the Matsuri that never took place. We rode the chikatetsu to Shijo and then walked for a bit, so again I'm not quite sure where we ended up having lunch, but it was delicious, again. Japanese food never fails to tickle my taste buds. Unfortunately, as I just picked a random portion that looked good on the menu, my food was very much insufficient at my stage of hunger. Lucky for me, though, the girls' okonomiyaki were a tad too big for them to finish on their own so of course I had to be a good friend and help out...

I love it how you actually have a stove on your tabletop.

For dessert, we wanted to go get some soy ice cream at a place that was supposedly very famous for it, but we were too full to have that right away, so we walked around the Shijo-Sanjo area a little bit. And of course this had to be done at some point, so why not now? Not really going to publish the final result, though - not that it wasn't pretty, but now that we actually went there I decided to go full Japanese kawaii desu desu, and that was just kinda embarrassing.

Here it is!