Oops! I forgot to post yesterday. Sorry about that!
Anyway, I went to Kyoto this weekend with the IES group as the last field trip for fall semester. Boo! It was fun though–unfortunately it was my fourth time in Kyoto and not the first seeing the sights that we did, so I didn’t take many pictures and I don’t have much of an impression to give (though I did eat ice cream both Saturday and Sunday, hehehe).
However, when we visited one temple, it was very crowded and a friend and I decided to take a side street we saw on the way up to the temple. It was a really good idea–we climbed a whole bunch of stairs and at the top we found a smaller temple that was probably actually in use. There were no signs of touristy things anywhere, and it was dead quiet. It had a really great view of the other temple below. We walked around a little bit there but I felt bad so we left. It had a sort of Spirited Away feel to it.
And we visited a small town-like place called Arashiyama, and of course it was crowded and touristy as well. But before we left back for Nagoya I had some time to kill, so I decided to walk down the path following the river there, and I eventually found myself at an observation deck (which was up a lot of stairs at the top of the mountain; good things are at the end of stairs, apparently). There were very few people there and it had a beautiful view of the valley and the river.
I’m pretty proud of finding these things by myself! Coming from a city that gets a lot of tourists all the time, touristy things don’t impress me much (once is enough, not on the fourth time!). I think that all the best things are never advertised :)
Anyway, busy week~ I’ll be off. See you next week!