Monday, August 15, 2011

DAY 17: WE SAW MY ONE AND ONLY JAPANESE FEAR TODAY: MUKADE

breakfast!
a really cool soup thing!

it was corn soup, and it came with this yummy flaky biscuit that you crack and place on top. it was DELICIOUS. 

we had a TON of things to do today! first was one of our FAAAAVORITE things ever...fushimi inari shrine!


lots of prayer tags and origami cranes


and here come the hundreds and hundreds of torii gates! 

this whole thing is SO fun to walk through. literally a few miles of torii gates to walk through!

fortunes that people tie in hopes they come true

cute! these are like prayer tags, but you can draw a face on them too (typically fox related because of the shrine)


more and more and more and more....


shrines to visit along the pathway


and look at this!!!!

HOW CUTE! comfy kitty with its mini torii gates hahaha...just snoozin

as we walked along, we saw this one was freshly painted (still needed the black writing to be filled in)

and a really pretty restaurant to eat at if you want while walking through the gates


but then....erik saw THIS!

MUKADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHH omg...seriously. this is the one and only thing i'm afraid of in japan. these things are TERRIBLE. they are poisonous, and they BITE and are not afraid to just come after you! very aggressive. they have been known to put people in the hospital! UGH. i hate them! i can't believe we saw one! 

running through more gates to get away! haha

we didn't walk through the whole thing (too long, and toooooo hot), so we left to go to the next thing on our list! 

train ride on our way to....

NARA!

here is where nara is on the map:
pretty close to kyoto! about an hour away by train

 we really like nara for many reasons, but literally the only reason we were going today was for some TONKATSU!!!

our friend jess told us about this tonkatsu to DIE for, so we added it to our itinerary, and let me tell you, IT WAS AMAZING. it's called tonkatsu ganko. here's mine...

and here's erik's!

and first you grind up the sesame seeds...

then add the sauce you want (garlic-y flavor, or sweeter flavor)

and you are good to go! look at this crispy breading!

it was amazing. and it's in a cute outdoor arcade that has this inside it! :) nara is known for its deer park!

on our way back to the station, we spotted an arcade, and won some prizes! for the top one (which, by the way is a combination of a cat and a mushroom hahaha) the girl working there was giving us pointers on how to win! it was for a claw-game, and she even re-arranged the prizes to be EASIER to win! can you believe it?! the bottom prize was given to me because there was some sort of special extra game to play (where i rolled a gigantic dice on the ground), and i didn't win the grand prize, but she let me pick a stuffed animal instead hahaha...seriously...SO different from games back home! you never get "tips" or have the employees re-arrange the prizes to be easier for you to win! hahaha

after we got our fun prizes, we were off to see some fireworks!!! the train...was packed. this is what it looked like once we got off the train, and the next one was just as packed. took a while to get around, but we finally got to all the street food/games before the fireworks!

here are some pics of it all!


scooping for goldfish! the scooper is made out of thin paper, so you have to scoop quickly yet gently to catch the fish!




and onto the fireworks! they were AMAZING! i took a ton of video of them too :)





firework candy!

smiley face!





towards the grand finale, they had this gigantic fire waterfall thing!!! IT WAS PHENOMENAL!



so cool to see them :) afterwards, we had to migrate through THIS to get back to the train station, and then get packed in like sardines to get back to kyoto station haha...

SO. WORTH. IT. 

4 comments:

  1. I really missed matsuri and fireworks. Your tonkatsu looked amazing. I am glad yo had so much fun in Nara and watching the fireworks.

    Looks like you had a nice day for Fushimi Inari Shrine :)

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  2. Fushimi Inari looks amazing and I have just added Tonkatsu Ganko at Nara to our list. Did you see any deer
    It will be so sad when you have to leave

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  3. @sue: no deer this time :( we had to get going to the fireworks since we were running out of time. the deer are so cute though! and they bow for crackers! if you bow at them, then they bow for you too! there are special deer crackers you can buy from vendors there. they go crazy for them!
    here is my other blog about nara last time (with deer):
    http://cherryblossomsareawesomes.blogspot.com/2010/04/day-17-happy-birthday-buddha.html

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  4. awwwwwwwwww Cute kitty!!

    The gates are really awesome. They look gorgeous in the pictures but I bet they are even more imposing in person.

    Mukade - didn't know about them, but scary!! Eww!! They look gross.

    Cool fireworks! I've never seen a display like that in the states. I wonder why Japan has so much better fireworks?

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