Last Saturday at Kyoto

So I uploaded a bunch of pictures to my dropbox that I linked earlier.  Hopefully everyone can see those just fine.  Some of those pictures were from what I did on saturday, the others from sunday.

Last saturday was the last of the 2 school trips I was going on.  This one was to the capital city Kyoto.  Except, we didn't go to the center of kyoto but to the outskirts instead for whatever reason.  I don't get why they would do that.

Anyway, what we did get to see was cool.  We took a train as usual, but very far out all the way to another province which was about an hour ride.  The school group was going to then take a scenic train up the mountains, and get a boat ride back.

To get to the scenic train we needed to cross through a forest.  Except it wasn't a normal forest but instead a bamboo forest.  I didn't take pictures of it but instead took one very long video of the whole walk through the forest.  Very tall trees with no branches except at the very top.  Gives a really cool appearance.  And of course a forest was welcome since it was a very hot day.  Japanese fanta grape soda was also welcome once I reached the train station.

So, next was the scenic train in which I took a lot of pictures which you will notice as the ones with bars through them, since trains arent the best place for pictures.  But I did get some views from above the river that I later took a boat ride down.  And it was pretty nice looking.

The boat ride itself was interesting.  It was a 1 paddle boat but rowing like 20 people.  The rower sat toward us students and had to row crew-style.  Then, someone way at the front of the boat was designated as the big pole guy.  That is, his job was to take a long bamboo pole and stick it in to the bottom of the river or against rocks in order to steer the boat.  And then there was one last guy in the back who controlled a rudder to steer the boat even more.  So, it was some sort of traditional boat.

The river itself was really nice, and so were the mountains above as you can probably see from the pictures I took.  The boat people spoke entirely in japanese but that was okay, since we could understand them for the most part.  They were really nice and did some tricks on the water when they weren't busy - like the long-pole-guy threw the pole down into the water a few times and then caught it as it jumped back out of the water a few feet away while the boat was moving.

The most shocking thing of the day though was the boat merchant.  I don't think I got a video or picture of it which is really sad, but basically there was a boat about the size of the one that we were on, except with 3 people on board manning registers and portable stoves.  It was a little mobile food stop.  They cooked and served everything standing up on not much more than a row boat.  It was really cool.

Oh, also, me and my classmates are all polite as we should be to everyone we see in the country, and so we had thanked the people on the boat for the ride, only to find out that in the region we were in, the normal standard japanese word for thank you isn't used in that region.  That's one thing that's different from america - japan has dialects that vary by region in the way that UK and US english do.  Certain words have different meanings or aren't used.  It's probably not a big deal to adjust to it, but there are these regional differences in language.  Apparently textbook japanese isn't any specific dialect but an average of them all to find what's most normal.  Luckily my host mother says she speaks textbook japanese as a result of having been relocated so much as a kid since her father was a businessperson.

After all of that, the class trip was over but I went farther into the city with my friends and visited an extra large temple as well as some souvenir shops.  You can see pictures of the temple as well.  I went to go home at 5:30pm which is just before dinner time but unfortunately I didn't get back until 7pm, but I had bought a prepaid cellphone so I was able to call my host family and tell them the situation!  What a relief.  And then with my family we went out to dinner and I had something that you would describe as breaded chicken, over an omelet, over rice.  Japanese food can be both awesome and terrible, but fried food and eggs are things they do well.  Luckily I had both.


Well, that's it for saturday.  I did some more stuff sunday which I will write about hopefully tomorrow.  But right now I think I'll sleep instead, since it is after midnight here.