Many trips!

Hello again!!! Time is weird it just keeps going and going but luckily that means we get to keep living on and doing more cool stuff! So yay. Coming back atcha with I guess another two weeks worth of updates if I'm able to get through it all in one go. I had some pretty beautiful travels these weeks so, many pictures are to follow.

First of all, I went to Wazuka! 

Wazuka is a town pop. ~3500 people known for its tea fields, where the famous Ujicha is grown (tea from the Uji region). It's also on the list of Japan's most beautiful villages which I didn't know until after I went, but it was super beautiful!

I did a tour of a small tea farm and factory, and got to taste lots of different types of tea (surprisingly the black tea was maybe my favorite, but I also tried tea brewed with toasted rice kernels (genmaicha), really high quality green tea, sencha I think and maybe some other ones). I did not know before this that black tea and green tea are made from the same plant!!

Wazuka at sunset aka 5pm

And I ended up buying lots of tea items to further entrench myself in my consistently denied possible caffeine dependency. The jury is out on if that's real but my matcha intake has definitely gone up since being here woohoo!!! Pro tip put ice cream in your matcha latte to start your day off right

Back in Kyoto went to a cool Nihonga exhibit (I think that's what it was...Nihonga is Japanese-style art, "Nihon" being "Japan" in Japanese 日本) at the Kyoto MoMA with my friend Kaidi

And then we all took a Stanford trip to Awajishima (Awaji Island)! It's kind of a medium sized island about a two hour drive from Kyoto. And I got this spread which I still haven't opened yet but it looks nice.

This architect that I think is pretty famous made a weird concrete complex where we spent an oddly long amount of time

But it also had these cool step gardens so that was nice

And a pretty legit botanical garden

In the evening we went to a (fancy-seeming) Zen center where we had a yoga and meditation session and then a vegan dinner which was very fancily prepared, and because it was a bit cold we all put on these snuggie things

I just liked these I don't really know what they are

Me and Kaidi again in an onion! Awaji is famous for its onions and beef. 

On our second day we returned to the Zen place for another vegan meal. You can see the vibes. 

This was actually on the first day but we also went to a farm where we learned about fermentation and naturally grown vegetables! And got to pick some carrots.

On the way back from Awaji I hung out in Kobe with Janice, and we went up the gondola to the Kobe herb garden

Unfortunately we did not have any Kobe beef so I may have to return

Garden!

Back in Kyoto city once again, I found MEXICAN FOOD!!! And it was so amazing. I will be going back tomorrow.

And some Halloween karaoke! Here I am as a nun with Aiko

And then if you can believe it I went to ANOTHER matcha town - the famous Uji itself! If you're confused the cars didn't actually look like this this is just a panorama

Did another tea factory tour, this one was much bigger and specifically focused on matcha. Matcha's really good for you partially I think because you're actually eating the ground up leaves so all the nutrients from the plant actually go into your body whereas with normal tea I would imagine they don't really. But honestly what do I know

A tasting of course

And all with Kaidi!

Soooooooo beautiful yay for Uji

Blogger is glitching out once again so I think that's my sign to sign off here and do the rest tomorrow! Thanks for watching and see you next time on Disney Channel