Sep
20
Kyoto, 3rd Encounter
Filed Under Newspost
I haven’t written any entries lately is mainly because I have been too busy not writing them. Makes perfect sense.
The forecast typhoon eventually did not hit Osaka hard enough for classes to be canceled and I had to finish everything I had worked for on Friday. Eventually, I passed the re-placement exam in a breeze and found myself in the level 3 Japanese class with Komura-sensei. Now I finally don’t have to worry about changing classes anymore, everything is definite.
Chasing downstream
Saturday was one of the most anticipated days in a while, mostly because I was hoping for our rafting trip to get canceled due to the typhoon threat so I could spend the 6200¥ it took from my pocket on other things. What a waste it would have been if my wishes had come true. Rafting, much unlike Doritos, was an intense experience. Since I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in several days thanks to the horrendous amount of schoolwork, it required considerable effort for me to get out of the bed at 5:30 and head to Kyoto with a bunch of other people I was not acquainted with.
The principle of organized river rafting is quite simple: navigating down a whitewater river and enjoying the scenery with a group of friends while the guide works his ass off trying to prevent us from getting killed. What made the trip even more unique was the surrounding scenery. The entire 5-kilometer-long track was surrounded by massive forest-covered hills in every direction. The interesting thing about all of this is that since nobody had a waterproof camera, we have no pictures from the actual rafting. I can, however, assure everyone that it was this awesome: <———-> (not to scale)
Monkey Boy & co.
The company organizing the rafting provided us with all the equipment and basic information needed to safely spend the morning in the raft. When all the preparations were made, we moved on to the riverbank and initialized a 2-hour ride downstream. The river itself would probably be classified as level 3 whitewater, and as such, it wasn’t too dangerous even for a raftful of stupid gaijins. Besides sitting and paddling while enjoying the surroundings, we also stopped the raft a few times, went swimming, turned the raft upside- down and even had the opportunity to jump from a small cliff ledge into the river. All of this combined to be one of the most exciting days I have experienced here so far. And when I say day, I mean the morning, because there was much more to Kyoto that day than just rafting.
Mount of Sky Dragon
Having recovered from the rafting, everyone was starving so we headed to our next destination, the Tenryu-ji, and went to eat in a restaurant right in front of it. Bad idea. Tourist area is synonym for rip-off, and that fact alone suddenly turns soba noodles into some goddamn luxury meal that costs twice the price it would cost anywhere else on the map. Also, it barely saved me from starvation and I was still hungry afterwards.
Moving on to more positive topics, the Tenryu-ji (translated as temple of the Heavenly Dragon or Sky Dragon) was a sight. There had to be a reason why the place is part of the UNESCO world heritage and that reason is very clear to me now. Samples from what the temple, and especially its enthralling garden, looked like can be found on the recently added link on the right sidebar. (good luck finding it.)
I’m out.
-Antti