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Soooo its our last day in Kyoto, well for a couple of weeks, until our ma's and pa's come visit!
I loved our little cosy flat in Demachiyanagi and zooming down by the river on our ET bikes everyday, will definitely miss it here. Have been practising my Japanese cooking in our kitchen too, and baked lots of slightly burnt but tasty Moomin cakes too J
We've had a very cultural month, but saving the temples and shrines till our parents come over, don't wanna get too templed out!
Sooooo we've have a go at Origami , which was way harder than it looks!!, a few Japanese classes, zen mediation, with a really cool monk! yoga classes (which very nearly had me on a headstand!). The best things are always free I believe and last Sunday proved that, we went to a cultural day and got to have a go at tea ceremony, wearing Kimono which I was very reluctant to take of it was so pretty!, the incense game, where u have to guess the smell and my super nose got it right !, calligraphy, playing this crazy lying down Japanese guitar thing and the fan throwing game all good fun. Highlight of the day though was accidentally finding a huge chocolate fair with free (very explensive) chocolate!!!!!! I thought I was in heaven think I gorged about £20 worth of chocolate hehe.
Its been a very festively month as well, mainly involving lots of fire and burning things woop!!!! On the 3rd February the Japanese celebrate the coming of Spring with the 'Setsubun' festival, where ceremonies are performed to get rid of the devils and welcome in the new year. In some of the festivals people dress up like devils and dance around, the best one was at a shrine down the road with the HUGE bonfire (which looked like it was held together with a bit of bamboo (guess health and safety's not a biggy over here ?!!!) and we were stood about a meter away from the raging inferno it was soooooooooooo toasty! I wasn't too phased until something shoot out of the fire pass about ten people and was SO close to hitting this guy in the face, then I thought it best to hide behind chris for the rest of it.
My favourite festival was the Agon Shu fire festival, which is a whole day of burning things ( bits of wood symbolising wishes for the dead, and wishes for the living). It run by a new religion called the Agon Shu, a new form of Buddhism which has only been founded about 36 years ago. Basically on the side of this mountain these guys have a big arena for these two huge fires and hundreds of people come on a pilgrimage to watch from the surrounding stands. From dawn the followers have to keep chucking on these bits of wood which people's wishes on them, to keep the fire going, and this goes on all day, they looked absolutely shattered towards the end and very sooty. The putting out the fires ceremony at the end was awesome, It felt like we were in some Indiana Jones flick, which all this super dramatic music playing, people drumming and the monks pulling down the huge logs on the fire.
Our Kyoto Apartment buddies Tre and Heather, (BFF!) turned up at just the right time as well and we've had lots of adventures with these two Americans (who certainly know how to drink and I thought the Brits were the best at that!!!) I had the best karaoke night ever with these guys, and felt very sorry for the poor waitress who was serving us all night whilst we made sure we got our monies worth on all you can drink hehehe. Following karaoke I am ashamed to say I ate chicken nuggets from a rotating sushi bar.
Best foody night was the all-you can eat (there a theme going on here) Shabu shabu night. Which is basically a LOT of meat and veg you grill and cook in a big pot yourself, and we got our own super cosy room very posh! Again I don't think they saw us coming and looked most amazed at our meat eating capabilities, I think I ate a small cow, which was well deserved after being almost veggie for 3 months. Yum yum,
So I'm sad to leave our wee flat, but being the good citizens we are, we're off to the mountains to volunteer on an organic farm sort of a place. Not really sure what to expect, or what we'll be doing there, but I do know we're getting paid in food and a place to live, doing some dog walking and making homemade pizza's and jam!!!
Love love
Holly xxxxxxxxxxxx
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