Kyoto Trip #3

I dub this the Official Trip of No Personal Space.

Our group, now having Andra back from her Saturday plans, was back together for this third trip to Kyoto. This time to the second most famous flea markets in Japan. It happens on the 21st of each month, and lucky for us February and March both have the 21st on Sundays. ( Meaning we don't have to skip class to go) The flea market is on the temple grounds of Toji in Kyoto. Kyoto being the most convenient and easy place to get to, it's obvious we like going there, and will continue to go for the remainder of the semester. At Toji station we weren't sure of how to exactly get to the temple. We had the brilliant plan of 'lets just follow the big crowd.' Usually that doesn't work in a place like Japan, .. or the US but it suprisingly brought us to the front gate of the temple grounds and we made our way in and around the shops. Walking around was a pain because half of Japan was here and being a foreigner didn't give me any perks today. Usually foreigners get more personal space because the Japanese want to avoid you. Nope. Not that day. People didn't have a problem pushing into you, bumping you, standing in your way, and coming to a complete stop while you are trying to catch up to your friends whom you had lost 5 minutes prior...! Ok.. enough complaining. I did buy a few things for shits and giggles but Emily and Andra were on a mission to buy Kimonos for themselves and for their mothers. New kimonos are rediculously exspensive, think one to a couple thousand dollars. There were nice kimonos for 3,000 yen to 60,000 yen. (30$-600$) VERY nice deals and the quality was still pretty good even for the cheap ones. There was a lot of antiques here and I was struggling with my love/obsession for old useless dirty 'things'. I was at the ends of my self-control on shopping through all of the antiques. Luckily I thought ahead and didn't bring a lot of money. Otherwise I'd be shoving huge pieces of antique pottery into my suitcase at the end of my study abroad experience. I had a candy apple (er sortta) and takoyaki for lunch. (takoyaki is really hot breaded ball of octopus) and the others had okinomiyaki (the fried cabbage pancake thing). We went early because the flea market only goes to 3pm, and by that time everyone was done with what shopping they were going to do and we headed back home. I had dinner with my host family that night.