Also, the (original) title of the post was Day 3: Kyoto (White Day) - yet I don't give any explanation of what that is. So I googled it now, and turns out that it's the 'opposite' of Valentine's. It's celebrated on the 14th of March (i.e. a month after Valentine's). On Valentine's, as we all know, men give women chocolate or roses or whatever, and basically, on White Day, women who received something on Valentine's must return the favour. Thinking back to some of the stuff I do recall, that actually explains one of things I remember seeing (depicted in one of the photos below that I've added for this blog entry) where a whitely-dressed...man? Woman?...was riding in a carriage. I think it must have been related to this White Day.
Lastly, this entry has a very abrupt ending, and I have no idea what we did for the rest of the day, quite unfortunately. I would have liked to know what we had for dinner for example. Anyway, hope you enjoy my short style of writing:
14 March 2008
So...today we slept to 11.30 AM because dad had turned the alarm off when he woke up at like 8 and then fallen back asleep. Very clever...
Anyway, we went to what seemed like a Japanese fast-food place, but it still tasted pretty nice and healthy, much unlike the fast-food places at home where you can smell the deep-frying fats before you even get inside. We took a guess at our orders by pointing at the pictures that looked the most delicious, but all the descriptions were in Japanese, so goodness knows what we were eating. I think it was some kind of meat in teriyaki sauce with rice though, and miso soup - of course.
After eating, we went to a really boring museum, or at least I thought it was boring. The only thing I found cool there was that they had holograms. Pretty cool indeed.
Afterwards, we went to an insanely big mall underground. It was very empty and, even though it was so huge, there weren't all that many shops. I found another Claire's though (like the third one or something) and I bought some really completely pink clip-on hoops (earrings).
We returned to the hotel to leave the earrings and some paper dad had bought at the museum. That museum shop had like ONLY had paper for origami (or other Japanese paper stuff things)! Pretty amazing.
Then like an hour later, we took a cab from the hotel. The man who works outside the hotel to assists guests get taxis ran, as if for life, out on the street to get us a taxi as soon as he saw us. I joked with dad that they probably need to take a running test before they get hired.
We got to...I don't know actually where, but to some temple that is on UNESCO's heritage list where we spent the rest of the day walking around, watching temples and lit-up trees and stuff.