Japan 2013 (Day 5 - 16th July)

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry for the lack of posts but I'll try to keep up with them in one way or another!

If you were a reader back when i went to Japan the last time you probably remember me talking about sausages... it sounds silly but these japanese sausages make me drool... its like eating toro (now japanese people will laugh at me even more for the ridiculous comparison haha)... you put a bit of some food and you start chewing and this sense of happiness appear from the deliciousness? That's how i feel when i eat these sausages that just click when you take a bite. haha And this post starts with something silly, go me.

In the morning we rushed a bit because my husband was so busy that day.

I cannot believe how much effort that man puts into his work, always going around with books from place to place (did you know we carried books from Portugal because of his work? crazy huh?), trying to spend time with me, his parents, our daughter and trying to find spots in his schedule to take me to some places... anyway even with all that we went by car to some far away spot in the prefecture (i mean really, they only have one place for that in all of Nara?!) just to renew his japanese drivers licence. Apparently since the renovation period expired people are forced to have a 1 hour and something class on safe driving. As if that is going to make the difference haha. But we went anyway. Instead of waiting for him we got some fast lunch from a convenience store and went home where I changed to some special clothes because we were going to do something i'll call (even though it isn't really that) tourism-ish for a change.

Take out food from a convenience store. They are everywhere and you can eat a lot of different sort of dishes.

We finally got to the place and my husband got in the car so we could get to a train station. The streets we got in were so narrow, i am always surprised at how cars can circulate so smoothly in what seem to be tiny roads. Well the cars aren't very big either.
The train station was located in the middle or an area that had a festival (matsuri) of some sort because the decorations were still up and it made it look rather pretty.

My husband getting us our tickets. For some reason he always got our tickets when we visit so i'm not the best with doing this sort of thing here and have yet to reach a stage where i'm 100% independant which is bad. 

 My husband poiting at the nice paper lanters on display in the train platform.

We saw a grown up girl in yukata for the first time during our stay in Japan. Since we are in a residencial area unless there's a festival going on they are nowhere to be seen which is a shame if you ask me. 

We were going to Kyoto, to check out an actual famous matsuri (traditional festival) in Japan, the Gion Matsuri which in that particular day (night time) is called Yoiyama 宵山. Obviously because of that we were bond to see a lot more people wearing yukata.

This is the Kyoto station. It's huge and like most big stations, there's tunels everywhere and shopping malls and stores. It's huge and a big mess so you can get lost if you are distracted. I always kind of do. 

HA! Fooled you (some of you?), that was me all along. I bought another yukata set just to attend this. I figured I wanted to try new things and its no fun to be there in the summer and not wear a yukata. Of course I wanted to feel confortable and respectful so I wore it traditionally even though i did want to wear my all stars with it if i could. My mother in law said I shouldn't even wear sandals even though I can do anything because I'm foreign. When i got to the actual matsuri japanese girls were breaking all the rules, i even saw one wearing a yukata with crocs! I am not kidding you. You can clearly see the generation gap happening here hehe. (i am open minded but crocs???) 

I borrowed this bag from my mother in law, i had my tote bag but this is much nicer! ^_^;

When we got there it was still day time and it was rather empty as you can see. We were glad to feel a bit of the wind blow and not be under intense heat as well because it had been super hot the previous day. We spotted people in yukata everywhere from kyoto station to the subway to our last destination, kyoto's main shopping street. 

To cool themselves off, japanese eat this thing... its not really ice cream, its not just ice... its ice with a topping that gives it flavor. It is called kakigori and you can read about it if you would like. I picked lemon because its more refreshing but there were 6 o7 different flavours to choose from.

Men in Yukata. I love how men look in their yukatas, more than girls I guess but that's maybe because men in my country would very hardly be caught wearing anything that resembles a skirt out in a serious manner. I must say it is kind of charming.

After an hour or so it started getting a lot more crowded. The streets had food stalls and other interesting festival sort of stalls in both sides for kms!

Women in Yukata. Being slimm is a plus because that belt is not flattering on anyone although they have accessories and tricks to make it more so (like some sort of thick ruller looking things that they wear on the inside for the obi not to have a folded look like mine did after a while ha.) 

Balloon stall for kids. Always a must in every festival anywhere I suppose.

A game stall. You have a sort of tiny raquet with a white paper to catch a fish. If you catch it you can take it home with you. 

One of my favorites, a Takoyaki stall. I haven't had any this time though but i plan to. Anyway they are a snack with a ball shape that are made from octopus, some sort of batter and other things for taste. They are then coated with sauce. It's really good, i like it a lot.

The main attractione were not the people (although for me it always is), the food, the open houses showing their treasures for the only time of the year (people open their homes for visitors to check old relics or familly treasures!) but of course the yamaboko floats which are a sort of cart that is stopped during this event but with their "staff" in playing music, showing off a special float detail or doing something else. The floats are decorated with lanters and are divided in two types, bigger ones and smaller ones. Of corse the bigger ones need more people to make it advance and are heavier. 

I must admit that after all the walking, loads and loads of people, photo taking and geta walking I was beat. So we decided it was time to start thinking about getting back and so we left the alleys and went back to the main street where we saw...

...something slightly disturbing. A marketing strategy that made me feel sad to be a woman in this world. They got this girl, told her to wear a skimpy outfit in public and dance on a plastic box with a monkey in between her breasts. And there were kids around which eliminates that whole idea they nothing negative can be done/shown at x time. I admit i was not expecting that there... and by the look on everyone else's face, nor were they. I just hope they are paying her enough... if there's such a thing.

We were also a bit tired so we stopped by a coffee shop, ate half a sandwich each and drank very strong "dutch coffee". It was pretty damn good. 

See? I am now in charge of buying all the tickets so i get used to it. I also got that tea for the ride home, there's nothing like drinking something cold when facing japan's heat. We also walked a lot but ended up still taking the subway because i was on the verge of just sleeping on the street, those damn geta!

And this is what a regular train looks like. An interesting thing is you can turn the seats around to face the other side and not be forced to ride backwards. 

When we arrived at the local station we went in Lawson and bought a couple of onigiri because we had only eaten half a sandwich and started heading home which is about 10min by foot from the station.

This is where my inlaws live, its a big appartment building a bit in the middle of nowhere, its really peacefull and rather pretty with all the trees and the river.

I'm going to post this one for my older brother. It's not new that in Japan people are not very often stealing other people's things but the faith they put into that is for me something that I can only dream of having in Portugal. Here's an example: In the entrance of the appartment building there's a "garage" for bikes and it is open, with no gate... and the bikes are only locked to prevent people from riding out of there with one. Nothing is done to prevent them from being carried out of that place and they just stay there and in reality they do not disappear. Amazing, I know. 

The main difference besides the location obviously of this house from the other one is that now there's an elevator, no more carrying heavy things up the stairs for my inlaws. I think everyone's very happy about that!

We finally arrived and of course kisses our daughter to death because she is the cutest thing ever and we miss her! The second thing was, eating. I ended up being able to eat both because my husband found something else that he would rather eat, score! hehe

And that was it for the day. A very different busy day. I hope you liked reading!

Kisses,

Jo