It's da bomb

Okay... that was in poor taste, but I couldn't resist.

Our night and day at the temple were pricey (11000 yen each for the night. For you Canadian folk, if you divide by 100, you get the price in USD... roughly). The food was fantastic though -- I was a little skeptical about the whole vegetarian thing, but it worked out okay.

The grounds themselves were beautiful. We ended up going to bed pretty early on account of the whole wanting to catch the service at 6:05 AM thing. Unfortunately, the next two rooms didn't feel like going to bed at a reasonable hour, and didn't really understand the concept of indoor voices. (I remember that lecture still from Gr. 2, but hey... who's counting). Add on top of that the paper thin (lol... literally - the doors are made of paper) walls and... well... good thing call rooms have taught me to sleep through earthquakes.

I got awoken at 5 AM by the monks. Apparently, even though we can control our lights using the pull switches, so can they. They turned on our room lights at 5 AM. My roomies kept on sleeping. I started to fall back asleep but the monks must be telepathic or something. They must have realized that and started flicking the lights on and off right as I put my head back down on the pillow. Actually, speaking of telepathic, they have this eerie ability to knock on your door to take the finish trays of food out, usually only a minute or so after you're done eating. Creepy.

The service itself was unique, and our only opportunity to view to main hall (which was beautifully decorated. I didn't feel quite right taking photos though, so there are none). I really wish I could understand what they were saying. I tried kneeling like everybody else... but I must have been very fidgety. After 10 minutes, a friendly japanese guy behind me tried to explain using finger signs that I could sit down cross-legged.

I ended up cheaping out and doing that (and here I was trying to be all hardcore and all that). Despite that, both my legs fell asleep (I asked Jack about the anatomy of that. He was actually able to explain it quite well. We're such geeks...). The same friendly Japanese guy tried to tell me that I could get up and walk around after the ceremony to view the shrine. I didn't know how to sign back to him that I would fall on my face if I tried, hence me crawling around...

Anyhoos.

After that, we had our breakfast (also vegetarian) and returned to Osaka. Jack had some frustrations cashing his traveller's cheques. (They get really uppity if you try and cash them on the same day you're travelling somewhere. We must look sketchy). Then we bullet (super-express all the way!) trained it to Hiroshima. Thus, we continue to flee the influenza outbreak.

So far, all we've seen is the original gate. There are ALOT of foreign tourists here... more than we've seen the entire trip. (Like... 50-60% caucasians on the shore we were visiting). This unfortunately included a blonde bimbo who kept on screaming at the top of her lungs every time she got approached by a deer. The maps clearly warn you in big letters that the deer are wild and they love to eat souveineers, so I'm not sure why she was surprised when they ate her paintbrushes...

<3 amarichans.

We watched the sunset, and then watched as somebody drove their boat through the remains of the Hiroshima gate. I idly wondered how much trouble they'd be in if they acidentally bumped the gate.

Updated Gallery: Koya-San

New Galleries:
Hiroshima
Food (Round 3 :P)