Temples and recycling

Today I was back out and about with the college kids after taking an office day to finish up my newsletter.

I met Kikuchi-san at the station and then we joined the group who were coming from Yagi so they were already on the train. We were taking a tour to Kiyomizudera and Koudaiji, a couple of temples.

We had to ride the bus to get there...which was quite an ordeal. Trying to keep a group of 10 foreigners together on a bus, especially when a few of them are already drunk or at least hung over.

As usual Jared and Jon found girls to hit on. There were two girls currently living in Korea on the bus. They had randomly decided to visit Japan for the weekend and were staying in Tokyo and decided to visit Kyoto for a day. They were trying to find a bunch of temples to see and didn't know where they were going so they unofficially joined our group.

I pretty much ignored them and laughed whenever the boys were acting like idiots to get their attention.

After Kiyomizudera we got lunch at an okonomiyaki place before heading to Koudaiji. Koudaiji is another big temple in the area and were were given a bit of a special tour.

As usual Hsu was making everyone go through quickly. I had never been there before so I was enjoying the walk through the gardens myself. Koudaiji has a lot larger area than I had thought. Inside it has a few gardens and a bamboo forest, as well as a huge zen rock garden. It was built by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his wife (he was a very important military leader in the Japanese feudal period).



After we finished sightseeing at Koudaiji, we went back to the guest house in Kameoka for a special party. I sometimes participate with the Reuse Group in Kameoka, called Rose Rock. They get together and re-sell items they no longer use/wear. They put on a big feast, drank, and then had the OSU kids look at their stuff. I have been to these many times and they always make me buy stuff I don't want...but the kids actually seemed really interested.

Kim and Meredith bought the uniforms from Kameoka High School as a joke. Everyone got something...whether it was some jewelry or some kind of decoration or bag or something. Jonathan was looking at a picture and asked me what it said, but I wasn't sure. I asked Fujita-san and he tried to explain it to me in English...but his English is terrible. I mean, really bad. He tried to talk to me about what he wanted to do at Fushimi inari with me in English and I barely understood him. It was awful. I know he was trying and he's really sweet but I just got so frustrated that I wanted to yell at him to speak Japanese. So he tried to explain this picture...something about "when you catch fish, um, uh, um, hit person...even if you get hit, you uh, um, uuuuhhhhh, keep uh, um, uh, try um trying."

That's basically a direct quote.

I shouldn't be mean about anyone trying to study a language...but argh! I bet people feel like that when talking to me though.