Arashiyama and Nara

Hi everyone!

Since I’m crazy busy with uni lately, I’m going to have to write a short blog before I forget to tell you about my weekend. Last weekend was a weekend of reliving memories and making new ones. On Friday we celebrated Georgie’s birthday, one of the Aussies in the group. We went out to an all you can eat meat place but luckily for me they also had salads and free drinks so that I didn’t pay for nothing haha. We had a lot of fun trying out the salads (which were actually quite okay, the three choices we had) and mixing our own drinks without being able to read what what was. After 2.5 hours of unlimited food the restaurant finally kicked us out, so we decided to go to a nice bar and a club afterwards to experience night life in Kyoto. It was pretty cool! There were a lot of internationals, but also some locals and we got to meet some nice people during our night out. After a while we had enough of it and took a taxi home (which is quite cheap here, about 5 euro’s each to get home).

The next morning I had to get up at 10, to leave for Arashiyama at 11.30. Arashiyama is on the west side of the city and by public transport it took us about an hour to get there, but ofcourse (as almost everything in Japan) it was worth it. We visited the free-roaming monkeys and I had the chance to feed them again, which was cool to do. After chilling with the monkeys we ate green-tea ice-cream and then went for a short walk in the bamboo forrest. Four years ago I also visted this place with my sister Tess. Here are the pictures, now you c
an guess which are from four years ago and which are from last weekend haha.On Sunday we went to Nara. In nara there’s a big park with a lot of temples and shrines, a big buddha and… thousands of deer. When walking around the deer are everywhere. They can walk wherever they want and do whatever they want. It’s a lot of fun and many tourist come to Nara to experience this. At this time of year it’s mating season for these deer, so it was also a bit hectic and scary some times. The male deer ran after a single female several times making weird noises and trying to hump her. But, let’s get on with the story. I decided not to go to the big buddha since I had already seen it. So when everyone went into the shrine, I went out for a walk by myself. I fed so many deer (with deer cookies ofcourse) and they were following me everywhere, it was hilarious. Also, when walking alone I walked into this group of fillipinos. It was so weird, but the guys really wanted to take pictures with me and afterwards the whole group, it was hilarious but also so random. Last time I experienced something like that I was in Borneo, Malaysia. Well, after this 10 minute photoshoot I continued my way back and met up with the others to visit a beautiful shrine in the woods. We walked around for a little longer, watching people, enjoying nature and we saw one of the oldest trees in Japan.

In the evening we went out for dinner at a curry place. At first I didn’t want to join since hardly any restaurant in Japan offers vegetarian options so usually I end up not eating, or not joining and getting a meal from a convenient store. This curry house, however, had a grand total of one option for me. So I decided to try it, because I was so hungry and really wanted some curry. When I finally got my meal, it wasn’t really a meal. I got a plate of rice with two bags with instant curry and I laughed my ass off because it totally wasn’t what I expected. In the end I did enjoy it though and I got to go back home with a full and satisfied stomach. So that was last weekend, hopefully I can give an update on this weekend soon because I have a lot to tell about the Giant Salamander research I joined for a day :D.

Cheers!
Hannah