Beware the swine flu!

Today I was supposed to go to the Exchange Center to finish up my newsletter
Supposed to go to office, but apparently a whopping 40 people have the swine flu in Osaka so the Department of Health decided that the OSU students could not be put at risk (ie. Kyoto cannot be put at risk because of the moving around of a bunch of foreigners), so their trip was canceled.

To make up for this, I went out and met the group at Kyoto Station early in the morning to go to Nijo Castle, Umekoji Park, and Higashi Honganji Temple. This was my 5th time, I think, going to Nijo Castle, but my first for the rest, so I was looking forward to it.

It was, in general, a pretty uneventful day. Nijo Castle was fun, as always. Professor Hsu (the chaperon/professor who began the program) was for some reason a huge stickler about time...even though we had all day and only 3 places to visit...
so we didn't go in to the second part of the castle grounds, which was ok by me. The students sketched for a while.

On the way back to the subway station they found a store selling samurai swords...trust the college tourists to find that. Almost all of them tried to cram themselves into this tiny store. They each bought a ninja throwing star...(*´ο`*)=3

Next we went to Kyoto Station for lunch. We split up this time. Thankfully I wound up with the group that wasn't hungover/drinking. Three of them had woken up that morning hungover and decided to finish off the Syoutyuu (really strong Japanese wine)...so they were a disaster. I introduced my group to takoyaki, okonomiyaki, and yakisoba. My ordering Hiroshimayaki turned out to be a bad idea...I was super super full by the end of it.

Next we walked to Umekoji Park. I have passed by that park on the train so many times and have always thought that it might be nice to go there...but it looked like just a concrete trail and a small fountain so I never took the trouble.

But wow. That is a gorgeous park. If you follow the trail around, you get to this amazing Japanese style garden...but the cool part is that it is a modern interpretation of a traditional Japanese garden. We sat around in there for a little over an hour. The weather was beautiful and it was just an awesome way to spend the afternoon. I hope to go back there someday.

Then we took a detour to Bic Camera so Kim could look for a camera charger. They were sold out of her version...but the rest of the kids went straight for the alcohol (seriously? at an electronics store? )

Next we went to Higashi Honganji　Temple, which is just down the street from Kyoto Station. I have walked past it before but never gone it. It is under construction now so it wasn't really all that impressive to look at. I think we just went because Professor Hsu wanted to feed the pigeons. He had been talking about that all day.

I had been texting with Atsushi yesterday and we decided that if we both got off work on time we would meet for dinner tonight so I went straight home after work. I was exhausted and kind of hoping he wouldn't call...but he did ヘ(^_^ヘ)(ノ^_^)ノ