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Tuesday, December 28th

On the 28th we left Kyoto and headed to Tokyo. By Shinkansen it would cost 12,710 yen and take about two hours and 20 minutes. However, we took local trains and it took us about 8 hours and 40 minutes. We took advantage of the Seishun 18 Kippu.

The Seishun 18 Kippu costs 11,500 yen and it's good for 5 days of unlimited travel on JR local (non-express, non-shinkansen) trains. Each day you use it, it gets stamped like this:

Two people can use it in the same day. It just counts as two days then. It took a long time to travel between Kyoto and Tokyo, but it was really cheap. It was only 2,300 yen!

Without the ticket, the local train ticket costs 7,980 yen, which I don't think would be worth it since it takes so long. Normally I think the shinkansen would make more sense. The Seishun 18 Kippu is only available at certain times. Luckily, Christmas Break was one of those times! :)

You can find more information here: Seishun 18 Kippu

It was overall a pretty boring day, but it wasn't horrible. We had to switch 5 times so our trip was split up a lot. It helped it not seem quite so long.

At one station I bought this Strawberry Oreo bar.



I also bought an Aquarius (sorta like Gatorade) out of a vending machine. I put in a 1000 yen bill and the machine ate it! I wanted to hurry onto the train so that's why I put in 1000 instead of counting out change. I really needed a drink though so then I threw a handful of coins into the machine and got a drink. It was a 1150 yen drink. :(

That's the first problem I've had with a vending machine in Japan. In the US I would never ever put a 10 dollar bill into a vending machine. I trusted Japanese vending machines a lot more. Not anymore. :( Well, I guess I still trust them a lot, but not as much as before.

Wednesday, December 29th

The next day we went to several places in Tokyo.  We went to Shibuya, Ginza, Harajuku, and Roppongi.

The road leading up to Ginkakuji is lined with shops. I bought some really cute Hello Kitty stamps!


We also stopped to get some ice cream. I got blueberry. Yum! :)


Next was Nanzenji. I wasn't too interested in seeing the temple itself, but I wanted to go because it has an interesting aqueduct.




This place was very different compared to all the other touristy places in Kyoto. The aqueduct just doesn't look very Japanese. It was great for photos! :)

You can walk along the top of part of it.



Then we took a bus back to Kyoto station so that we could take a train to Byodoin. While on the bus I noticed something funny about the map we had been using. Read the text in the bottom right corner.












On the way back to the station we stopped in a store that had a lot of cute stuff like jewelry and hair clips. I bought a really cute cell phone charm. It's a green tea crepe.

Saturday, December 25th

Those pictures aren't the best. I haven't found a good way to take pictures of things in my apartment with the bad fluorescent lighting.

Underneath the bowl was a wooden box. It's really nice and cute! :)


The J is purple. It looks a little blue in that picture, at least on my computer.

That day we planned to see a few places in Kyoto. First we went to Kinkakuji. We took a bus from Kyoto Station. The bus was extremely crowded and we had to stand for a long time. It was difficult to stay balanced. Also, there was some crazy woman who was really really loud and obnoxious.I was very glad when we got off the bus!










I threw several coins. One of them hit the edge of the bowl and bounced off. Another one went into the bowl and bounced out. :( It's tricky!

Next we went to Ryoanji. Jonathan had been there before, but it was my first time.





Towards the end it started getting pretty chilly and it wasn't too long until sunset anyway, so we headed back. We had to take two different buses. However, when we got off the first bus to switch, we couldn't really figure out where the next bus would arrive. We were in a very lively area and were outside of an arcade. We went in to check out the arcade and ended up staying quite a while.

The arcade was awesome! It wasn't as crowded as the ones in Tokyo and it had tons of stuff. It even had DDR! I had been in a couple arcades in Tokyo, but none of them had had DDR. However, I didn't get a chance to play DDR because this one guy was playing it forever. He had a gym bag and towels... he was serious and prepared! He was good too!

The top floor had darts so we played a few games. I had never really played darts. It was a lot of fun! :) I'm very bad at it though.


Overall, it was a fun day. We didn't fit in as much as we hoped though. It's a bit difficult in the winter because the sun sets so early and once the sun goes down it gets pretty cold. But oh well. It was a good Christmas even though it didn't feel like Christmas at all.

Friday, December 24th

On the day of Christmas Even we went to Nara. As we exited the station I saw a Mr. Donut across the street. I had been talking about Mr. Donut earlier so I got really excited and had to go! :)
When we arrived at Mr. Donut I got even more excited because of the Rilakkuma banner outside. They had Rilakkuma bags too! :)

Aren't the deer adorable? I just love how they roam around freely and many of them even let you pet them.




We walked around for a while and then bought some senbei (crackers) to feed the deer. Several deer were waiting around the senbei stand before we even bought them.
















After Todaiji we briefly stopped at Nigatsu-do, which is a temple that has a view sorta overlooking Nara.


We also visited a garden called Isuien. It was very pretty! :)  For the majority of the time, we were the only two people there so it was very nice!




I was very surprised to see sakura blooming! I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be blooming in the winter or if it was just confused. But then at another place, I saw the same tree with a tag and I recognized the kanji for "winter" so I assume that it is supposed to flower in the winter. Either way, it's really cool! :)

There's another garden next to Isuien, called Yoshikien. It's not as impressive as Isuien, but it's free for foreigners so it's still worth it.




On the way back to the train station, we tried to find a good place to eat. We didn't have any luck, but I did get a picture of the creepy Nara mascot (Sento-kun) dressed as Santa.


We ended up heading back to Kyoto and eating in Porta again. This time we ate at a Japanese noodle place. After a nice (and cheap!) dinner we hurried to make it to church in time. We had found a church online that said there were English services. However, the day before we learned that none of the Christmas Eve services were in English. We didn't have any time to try and find a different church though. So we decided to just go even though it was in Japanese.

We arrived at the church with only a few minutes to spare. It was packed! I hadn't really expected that in Japan.

The experience was... interesting... but kind of how I expected it to be. I understood very little of what was said. Except I understood the very beginning of the sermon. He said something about how in English, "Christ" is part of the word "Christmas." In Japan it's called Kurisumasu and their word for Christ is Kurisuto, so it's not the same for them. However, after that I was lost, though I heard the words "birth" and "God" a few times.

I didn't even recognize most of the songs with the exception of Oh Holy Night and one other that I can't remember now. It was really hot and I got tired of standing. It seemed to take a really long time and still didn't make it feel like Christmas, but I'm still glad I went. It was definitely an interesting experience!