Journals Day 13

I woke up the next morning with a large knock at the door. We had about an hour and a half to be ready for breakfast downstairs. I rolled out of bed and got ready to take my shower. After my nice hot shower, I went down to the lobby and found a few friends of mine. They were all waiting for their leader to come down and give them their meal coupon to take to one of the 7 restaurants we could go to and eat. I used my waiting time at the phone bank and using a calling card, gave my loved ones a nice hello and welcoming them to the day that I was starting as their day was wrapping up. My leader arrived and gave me my food coupon, I went to the buffet. After breakfast we met and discussed our agenda for the day and headed off to the bus.

The first place on our tour was the former imperial palace in Kyoto. This palace housed the emperor up until the mid 19th century when Europe and especially America forced their good onto the Japanese people. The Japanese decided to move the capitol to Edo, the largest port town at the time, and the city was renamed to Tokyo which means 'eastern capitol'. The palace was unlike some of the others we had seen up until now. At this palace their were high gates like all the others but the palace was not as large vertically as it was in Tokyo and all the other palaces we had seen all over Japan. The thing that set this palace apart was the special floor they Japanese designed so no assassin could ever sneak inside the castle. The floor is known as the nightingale floor. The floor actually coos like a nightingale as one walks on the floor. The sound comes from the nails in the floor as they rub against the wooden supports as foot pressure is applied to them. The palace itself was ornately decorated and many of the ancient paint was still holding up considering the damage of time on it. After the tour, we went to the small store nearby and took a look at the beautiful gardens surrounding the palace. I loved all the koi ponds and at the store, I found a glass coca-cola bottle written in Japanese.

After the tour, we left the palace and took a long ride to a movie studio in Kyoto. This movie studio is like Universal studios in America; they have games, rides and shows, and at any one moment, you may find yourself in an actual movie set. We hurried to the cafeteria where lunch had already been served waiting for us to arrive. After lunch we all were let loose inside the the studio. We wandered around between the small souvenir shops and ice cream stands until we found this show that everyone else seemed to be going to. The show was all in Japanese (no surprise there) but it looked as if they were showing us how they go about filming a fight scene in Japanese movies. They broke down the action shot by shot until the good guy slayed the bad guy. Then they ran it once all the way through without stopping, All was going well until the lines got mixed up and the bad guy won. The director liked it and much to the good guy's dismay, he kept the shot and the curtain fell. We all left and found another show about a guy trying to save his village but ends up dying and continued wandering around playing games until I found something that shook me to my core.

I walked into a room where I was greeted by this large robot looking thing. At first glance it was unrecognizable but then when I took a second look it hit me like a sack of bricks, This was a megazord like the ones in POWER RANGERS! I caught my escaping breath and told myself that it couldn't be. I continued into the room and realized I was wrong. I found something like a shrine to power rangers inside. All the power rangers I had ever seen were there. Their costumes all lined up taunting me. I looked around the room and saw other shows from my youth, the VR Troopers and the Beetle Borgs. I felt like I was 8 again looking at what had shaped my youth and been the source of many childhood dreams and fantasies. As I walked out of the room, I felt that I had in some small way, reconnected with my inner 8 year old pernanently. I headed back toward the main entrance and looked at the large souvenir shop up their until it was time to reboard the bus.

Our next stop for today was the famous Golden Pavillion in Kyoto. The Golden Pavillion is so amazing because the main temple building itself looks as if it had been made completely out of gold! The building burned down a long time ago and was rebuilt on the ashes of the first but one would never be able to tell. Many foreign dignitaries come to the pavilion for state functions and to look at the beauty. We left the bus and walked through the main gate into the surrounding garden. We had to walk for about 100 yds until we saw it. The building itself looked as though it was made from 24K gold! I stared in awe as the green of the trees and the backdrop of the mountain seemed to make the entire pavillion rise up and come to life before my eyes. We walked around the pavillion and had our books shrined as we took pictures of the Pavillions beauty. After pictures were taken and books shrined, we boarded the bus and headed down to our last stop before dinner.

We arrived at a large shrine. This shrine is special because as all shrines have a sacred god that lives at the shrine, this shrines god was the god of good test scores and high school entrance. Many students from all over Japan flock to this shrine every year to pray to the gods to help them get into high school and pass their finals. This shrine itself was very cool with plenty of statues and ornate buildings. We once again had our books shrined and wandered around the shrine taking all of the culture in.

Finally, we boarded the bus and headed to our final destination, dinner. We went to a small restaurant but it felt like the first restaurant we visited back in Tokyo. We were given meat like chicken, beef, and pork and with large skewers, cooked the food over the open flame and ate it. Our table was the last served but the first done. We were all so hungry as we were the ones always running making sure everyone was keeping up. After dinner we went back to our hotels and had one final meeting about what was going on tomorrow. We would be leaving so I, with a heavy heart began to pack my bags one last time and set out my P2P uniform for the morning.