Japan Day 6: Never Mind Nara

We decided we needed a slower day on Thursday after feeling like we had been on the go since we set foot in Japan. We originally had planned to take the Shinkasen to Nara (an hour away), but decided we didn't need to see the big Buddha and shrine there. Instead we stayed in Kyoto to check out Kinkakuji (not to be confused with kinky coochie as Steve and I joked), the golden temple.

Tacky huh? I think I prefer the hazmat orange. I turned my back for a minute to check out the vending machine and when I went back to Steve, he was surrounded by students again wanting to practice their English. Here he is pointing out to the boy where he's from.

This little guy was on a dual-purpose field trip: check out the temple and practice English. He even gave Steve a card he made to thank him for his time.

We needed to stop at the post office to exchange some money so we took the train back to town. The post offices here serve as what we consider a post office and a bank. And their train stations aren't just stations, they're malls - big malls. It was close to my feeding time so we grabbed some yummy shrimp okonomiyaki at the mall.

Fushi Inari was our final destination for the day. There are thousands of torii gates that go on for about 4km. We didn't realize this and walked a good half hour before thinking to find out how much further we'd have to go to reach the end. Walking uphill was not on our agenda so we turned around figuring it'd continue to look the same. Only one side of the gates had writing and we joked that it probably said something like, "Sponsored by Bob's Pizza." I told my co-worker who lived in Japan this and turns out we were close. It's considered good luck to sponsor a gate so the backsides actually do say something about who sponsored the gate.