Green Tea flavored ice cream?

This has been a very long day for me. I woke up at 6 am because my sleep schedule is still off and got ready to head to the lobby at 8 am. As we headed towards the cafeteria to get some food, we realized that nothing was open on campus because everything was closed on the weekends. So we took a bus to the Kyoto station and ate at Café De Monde. I had three doughnuts and a sandwich. Needless to say, I felt very fat this morning with how much food I ate. What I found interesting though was that there wasn’t very many trash cans around and I had a hard time finding somewhere to throw away the doughnut that I didn’t like. I ended up having to throw it away in a trash can in the bathroom.

 After that mission was complete, we took a train to go to the Monkey Mountain and to the kiyomizu-temple. Monkey mountain was a lot of fun because we were able to hike up a steep mountain and it was nice to get some exercise in on such a nice day. The monkeys were interesting looking as well. Their faces were red and it looked like they were sunburned. I learned that you should not look the monkey in the eye because they could charge you. I thought that was great advice to know.

View from Monkey Mountain

I'm feeding one of the monkeys!

When we walked back to the main city area, we got ice cream in the shops. It was interesting to see all of the different flavors. I got a banana flavor, even though there was green tea, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors. I thought the green tea looked the weirdest because it was a deep green and tasted weird as well. As we were standing there, it was funny because Sam was stopped by a group of students who went to a nearby school. They had to speak to him in English and asked him what he liked about Japan and things like that. It was cute.

Noodles for Lunch!

The different flavors of ice cream

The ice cream shop

Before we got to the temple, I experienced a very cramped bus ride. It was interesting because there was literally no room and I was barely able to hold onto the handle. Visiting the temple was a beautiful experience especially the part where I got to walk through the area where they pray. It was peaceful and rather quiet which was surprising to me because of all the people that were around. One of my favorite spots at the site was an area that was dedicated to little children that had died before their parents. There were tombstones with a Buddha and others that were small to represent children. I thought it was a nice message to send to parents that a God was watching over their children.

Tombstones dedicated to children

Entrance to Kiyomizu-temple

Shrine in Kiyomizu-temple

Once we were finished visiting the temple we went souvenir shopping. I found a Hello Kitty purse for my sister and some green for me and my grandma. We then had dinner at a restaurant in the Kyoto station. It was a great time where you didn’t order any food, they just brought it to you and you ate. I enjoyed this restaurant because we had to take off our shoes and for some reason I find this experience riveting.