Rained Out

4/22

Horrible rainy day.  Got up and moved to the other hostel around 10 and tried to plan a worthwhile day.  I'd wanted to either go out to Nara for the day or do my Kyoto sightseeing, but it was pouring rain, really pouring, so I just went to Higashi-Honganji temple, which was large and nice, but the most interesting thing there was the giant spool of rope made of human hair.  From there, in the cold, fish-drowning rain, I walked to the Nishikikoji food market that merges with/into a regular market.

It was interesting and had a very cool Japanese knife shop, but nothing else I hadn't seen before, save this:

I wandered through a traditional area with interesting houses, a Japanese graveyard (where no one is buried, because they are all cremated, so the families just put up a marker in their memory) a small temple and this memorial plaque.  It doesn't look particularly interesting, but I liked it because of this line about Gyokudo Urakami:

"Along with his clan duties, Gyokudo played the koto, recited poems, practiced brush calligraphy, painted when under the influence of alcohol, living free from worldly cares as a man of literary significance."

I thought it was great to finally find someone else who preferred to work (paint/write/whatever) while drunk!

Moving on, I bought a pair of thick tights to fight the cold, despite the fact that it is mid-freaking-April and there is nowhere in the entire world that it should be cold now, except Antarctica.

I headed back to the hostel to rest then went around the corner for yakitori (meat on sticks) for dinner.  Some of it was actually quite different from anything I'd had so far.  I tried a few, but the best ones were: quail egg wrapped in bacon, duck and leek, and chicken that was simply boiled, but served with the most interesting plum sauce that was somehow sweet and salty and sour all at the same time.

For a while, I tried hanging out in the hostel common room, but after writing the part below, decided it was time to go to bed.

The backpacking couple sitting across from me at the moment both look like they should be in middle school, but are obviously here, together, otherwise unaccompanied.  It's really very weird, and I feel like I should accuse one of them of pedophila, but I don't know which one!