Kyoto and other things

Hello hello!

Yesterday was Kyoto and it was greaaat. I went with Cat and Skye and we got a tour with two guys, Tomohiro and Ken (or Kent? we think that was his nickname, since it was on his business card he gave us). I took a ton of pictures, but I still can't upload them because the CIE has my computer for virus and windows update stuff.

We visited two shrines, the second I forget the name of. The first was kinkakuji, which was a GOLDEN palace that was some 1000 years old. It had a really cool golden phoenix (ho-ou) on the top of the palace.

We took some purikura (stands for printo club, I think? So, purinto kurabu = purikura) which are those tiny little photo stickers that are crazy gaudy and fun. The purikura was in a game center with Namco-brand games. The ground level was a bunch of crane-games for 100 yen (100 yen = approximately 95 cents), but we went straight to the purikura down a level.

Purikura is INCREDIBLY popular-- they're not just these little photo booths. They have two sections to them. One section has the photo-taking, which has a green screen behind you, and you can choose all sorts of backgrounds and layouts for the pictures. It costs ￥400 to do, but you can also fit a TON of people in there. We had six people, but if you really wanted, you could fit probably 10.

Anyway, you take about 12-15 photos overall after picking 3 different backgrounds. (So, pick 3 bgs, take 3 pics, choose 3 more, take them, etc). It's a REALLY hectic rate, as you only get about 10 seconds to pick your backgrounds and then about 5 seconds to arrange yourselves for the pictures. (You can see what it will look like on the screen.) So there was a lot of "mae! mae!" yelling. ("front! front!")

When you're done taking the pictures, you go to the side, where there's another screen and two pens- this is where it gets weird- but fun. You can draw and write and put sparkles and hearts and other odd stamps onto your photos. (You pick about 6-8 of the best photos that will be printed out).

Then you can print them, and you can get up to 32 on a page- so they're really small, but they are so damn cute. You can also have them emailed to your phone, but Cat and I don't have phones yet (we have to do alien registration first, and THEN use the receipt from that to get a phone).

So. Purikura is so so so much fun.

We also ate at a more traditional Japanese restaurant, and at a traditional table (where you have to sit on little cushions). It was actually not that uncomfortable. The food was delicioooous.
Combustion mackerel, imposing noodle, and fish eyes asunder were some of the things on our menu at the restaurant-- your guess is as good as ours for what they meant. (They were printed under the Japanese in the menu.)

Tomohiro and Ken actually PAID for our meal, even after us insisting they don't. They just said "we can come visit America someday!" Awwww.

I have pictures, but again, I need to get my computer back and have internet before I can upload them.) I've been using the computer labs to post everything thus far.

Time for sweeeeeeets.