Amanohashidate + Momiji season in Kyoto

 This happens every single post!!!! Truly on November 7 I was like, I'll post the rest of these photos tomorrow. And now here we are. I'm going to try a new style this post that will include more things but maybe make less sense because basically I'm going to drop all the photos into the post at once and likely they are not going to go in order for some reason because blogger. Butttt how fun is that! Let's find out.

This was from today actually so perhaps we are going backwards in time. This is once again my friend Aiko who is lovely and basically one of my two Japanese friends ;,D We met in Osaka because she lives in Kobe so met in the middle, got pizza, walked around, went to a cafe. A very nice way to spend a Sunday.

Before meeting Aiko I took a walk around the pond/lake by the international conference center (Kokusaikaikan) which is super beautiful. It is "momiji" aka fall colors season so everything is turning all yelloworangered

This is kind of a funny picture but in my Japanese class we had a reading/vocab unit about izakaya which is the name for sort of a Japanese pub/bar/restaurant, so we all went as a class to one near the dorm. I had a chocolate milk it was tuesday okay!!!

Earlier this week I took another visit to Ohara to see the momiji there as well and took a little hikewalk up to this waterfall with my shiso(beefsteak plant???) and yuzu ice cream. Last time I didn't make it up to the waterfall because there was a sign saying you should wear pants because of land leeches so I got sketched out but this time I was wearing pants so all good

This was Ohara as well at Sanzen-in Temple

And this too

Bought some eggs

And took a lovely hike up Daimonji! This is one of the couple main mountains surrounding Kyoto. The hike didn't take very long but I started late so I made it to the top around sunset and was heading down in the dark a bit. Definitely worth it though

My pilates studio had its 4 year anniversary party! Really sweet community, everyone I meet there is so kind

This picture and the one above are from a "hike" I did with Liliko (2/2 Japanese friend) and Serena (Stanford friend) up Shigisan. Anytime you hear -san it either means someone is talking about a person or a mountain which I really love. There were lots of temples on the way up here and a really good view of Osaka and Kyoto at the top. It was also pocky day (11/11) so we ate wayyyyy too many pocky!!

This picture is sideways but it was a delicious meal I had which is a type of hot pot called sukiyaki. First they cook one piece of meat on your pan and you eat it after dipping it in a raw egg (Japan is very into raw eggs but the eggs here just hit different hence the header of the blog being eggs). Then they add all the other stuff + dashi (broth) and you eat it like shabu shabu or nabe. Still figuring out the difference between those two but I think I just haven't had nabe before and shabu shabu you add things one by one and eat them.

Kyoto has a monkey park! These guys were very cute actually but it is a bit scary sometimes if they're screaming and jumping across trees over your head

Me with big tree! I went on a hike from Kifune shrine to Kurama temple. This was on the list I made at home of things I wanted to do in Japan so I was glad to make it happen. More touristy than I was expecting I think but still very beautiful. This was November 7 and I think my first real taste of the Momiji.

I posted about the Awajishima trip in the last post but I wanted to share this photo from it because someone caught on camera my first successful crow pose since I was like 11!! Very exciting stuff. Yay for daily yoga

These next few photos are from our Zazen meditation overnight class. This was a very cool experience, we stayed overnight in Taizo-in, ate dinner and breakfast there, chanted, did sutra writing, three sets of zazen meditation, bath, and (above) cleaning! The cleaning was hard honestly we were all sweating by the end and it was quite cold but I really enjoyed it.

Chanting the sutra before meditation in VERY old temple like 400 years old

Evening meditation

Sutra writing. This was probably my most successful 'moving meditation' in terms of actual mindfulness 10/10 would do again (we were not actually just writing sutras that would be way too hard for us we were tracing them XD)

One of the meals. These monks served us and were sort of intimidating and there were all these procedures we had to follow; reading the sutras before the meal, only setting the chopsticks down when everyone was finished, using hand signals instead of speaking, etc. This was probably the most intense part of the experience just because we were being perceived by these other monks besides our teacher and there were so many things to remember to do right that we had just learned right before.

We're back to my Kifune/Kurama hike! Photo roulette. This was in Kurama before I headed back to Kyoto

hike still

also hike

it was a really pretty hike ok

hike... look at the red it's crazy

LOOK AT IT!!!

And the trees here look insane

Food pictures sideways are the name of the game today I guess. You'd thhhhink there'd be a way to turn it but I don't know. This was a lemon ramen which was the "rainy day special" for the day only served on rainy days! So I felt very lucky to be able to eat it

Kelechi and I went to Kinkakuji (Golden Temple not pictured) and then went to this random park / tiny mountain in the rain and did a small trek to a nice rainy view

Here's me just the same exact picture but I like it

and saw this funny sign. Please note the speech bubble in the corner was originally in English: "Keep Your Gentlemen Ship Wan" Hahahahah. Wan is like woof

Oh! Here is Ginkakuji the golden temple. It was kind of smaller than I expected but very nice. And I talked to some missionaries there. I just yelled at them "are you from Utah!" because I saw their well ironed white shirts from afar

Every temple has an ice cream

Aaaaaaand the following pictures are all from my trip to Amanohashidate! This is one of the Three Views of Japan and sooooo beautiful. I feel like pictures really do not do it justice at all. See below though they're still cool

just nice

This hot pot was sooo amazing. I think it was yellowtail I'm not sure but wow yeah it was so good.

On boat

This was in Ine, a fishing village closer to Amanohashidate which is also super beautiful

I took a boat tour in Ine and the birds all know that the people will feed them so they swarm around the boat and it is insane. There were 5 hawks yeah HAWKS flying over us with the gulls and eating out of people's hands. SKETCH but very cool as well

To look at the view of Amanohashidate you take the "Matanozoki" pose (which google translate says means "another peep"??? I don't know). This supposedly makes the land bridge look like a dragon going up to the heavens. It doesn't make sense really but if you do it it does kinda work

I hiked up past the main viewing point and got this increddddddddddible view with NO one around!!! 

A lot of famous places (including temples, mountains, and apparently Amanohashidate) have little characters that are kind of their mascot. This guy is named Kasabo

On the other side of the landbridge from the above pics (but actually I went to this side first), there is kind of a mini theme park where you can do a little cart ride thing and look over the view

so pretty!

And here was on the train heading from Kyoto there, so we are back to November 4!

And with that, I have genuinely caught you all up on pretty much everything I've done since the beginning of November. It's wild, we have four weeks left which is the same length as the entire time I was in Barcelona, but it feels so short! There's a lot I'm still hoping to do so stayyyyy tuned and send some love while you're at it I'd love to hear from you all!!! Thanks for reading byeeeeeee <3