Copious Amounts of Cake

I got up around 9 on Saturday and headed downstairs for breakfast.  Okaasan and I were supposed to head out around 10, but something came up and we didn't end up leaving until after 11.  She ran a few quick errands before finding a place to have the car parked.  Then we made our way into Hirakata Park.

Said park is more or less a Bonfante/Gilroy Gardens type place with flowers and rides and is mostly aimed at little kids.  They had a Ryouma chrysanthemum exhibit she wanted to see, so we headed through there first.  Ryouma was a samurai around the Meiji restoration; the chrysanthemum is the Japanese national flower.  There were people working on putting the displays together so we got to see the framework of the figures.  It was neat, but Okaasan just cruised through, so it was a bit boring.

From there we wandered through a rose garden she didn't know was there.  Her favorite flower is the rose, so we were wandering through for quite a while.  The flowers were all in bloom, though, despite it being so cold recently.  It was pretty.

We had McDonald's for lunch because she didn't want to wander and find a better place to eat.

Afterward, we bought tickets for the house of illusions; M.C. Escher drawings, optial illusions, tilted room type stuff.  Knowing how the things work really takes away the fun of it.  Blasted logic.  She bought us a handful of corks for a shooting game in the arcade but neither of us hit the target.  Over in the rides area, she decided she wanted me to go on one of the rides even though she was scared to death of them.  She ended up pushing me onto the Drop Zone equivalent with two Japanese girls who screamed the whole way up and down.

They had a very small animal section with four red pandas, a handful of otters and a petting zoo we didn't go in.  We went through a maze that was meant for small children.  They gave us wands that lit up and throughout the maze were points that would light up with the same color as the wands; we had to find them and touch the wands to them to get points.  We got some sort of trading cards at the end and gave them to a little boy who ran after us as we were leaving to thank us.

After an ice cream from McDonald's, we were on our way.

The first stop on the way home was the pet shop to get medicine for the goldish.  I cleaned the tank during the week and discovered they had ick--really bad.  Seven of them died within a half hour of cleaning the tank and we were down to four by time we treated the water.  She didn't want to get a heater, though, so when we got home, she suspended a bag of hot water in the tank.

I made dinner; boiled chicken, stir-fried carrots, bell peppers, onions, cauliflower and diced tomatoes mixed together and served over rice.  It was pretty tasty, but could have done with some cinnamon or other spice.

Sunday morning there was only one fish left.  I had breakfast before getting on the bus to meet Arianna at the station to head to the big Kyoto fleamarket.  Two girls in the seminar house room we had been in joined us; Isabelle and Kelsey.

After arriving, our first walking destination was Kyoto station so Arianna could buy her shinkansen ticket to Tokyo when she leaves in December.  The rest of us headed to the underground mall while she was in line so Isabelle could get a Kyoto-specific travel mug from Starbucks.  There was some sort of performance outside the store; guys with flags.  They were juggling them with their legs.  The Starbucks had little Christmas tree danishes and sweet potato muffins that both looked delicious.  I didn't get any, but if I see them again, I might.

Then we walked to Toji temple, where the flea market is held the 21st of each month.  There were so many people.  I thought there were a lot of people when we went to Todaiji... there were, but that was a much larget space.  This is the first time I've felt crowded--uncomfortably crowded.  And unlike in America, where a violation of personal bubbles warrents at least a half-hearted "sorry," no one in Japan says anything when they run into anyone else--AND they look at you funny if you apologize.  And they push!  There's nowhere to go, otherwise I would have!  Feebas, people!

The four of us quickly got split up; Arianna and I stuck together and I assume Isabelle and Kelsey stuck together.  Arianna and I shared a bag of donut-like things that were delicious.  I got some sweet potato fries.  We wandered around, looking at wares and feeling bad for the people who were actually there for the temple.  I bought a coat meant to go over a kimono or yukata (much easier to put on), she ended up buying a set of chopsticks for her mother, a backpack and two knives.

The other girls headed back when we finally fought our way out of the crowd and we headed towards Kiyomizu temple.  We walked along the river for quite a ways.  Under one of the bridges, we came across a very young kitten that was mewling rather loudly.  Looking up, we discovered that mom had had her litter on a board propped under the bridge.  There were a couple chairs nearby, so we moved one to see if we could reach the board to return the kitten to its mother, but we couldn't reach.  The old lady who'd stopped with us stopped a tallish guy on a bike.  He couldn't quite reach, but all of us held the chair in place so he could stand on the back and he managed to get the kitten up on the board.

We stood and watched for a few minutes to make sure mom accepted it again and all freaked out when it slipped trying to get away from the edge.  Luckily, it was only its back legs and it didn't fall again.  I had a couple little marks from where it attached itself to my neck in fear while we were trying to figure out how to get it back up with its mother.  It was adorable and terrified!

Arianna and I made it to our destination: Sweets Paradise.  For 1480 yen, we got 70 minutes all-you-can-eat sweets buffet.  There was real food, too, but the main attraction was all the cakes.  There also had to be at least 20 types of tea to choose from.  We started with the tea and each came back with a plate of real food to get started.  Two plates' worth of cakes and 3-4 types of tea later, we were pleasantly full and feeling rather good about the day.

The thing to understand about how this works is that Japanese sweets aren't terribly sweet.  They aren't heavy and it's very rare to find something we'd consider rich.  Ice cream was actually frozen yogurt and the fondue fountain was filled with a green tea sauce rather than chocolate.  It was so good.

Then it was back on the trains and back home... where dinner was waiting!  I forgot to let the family know I probably wouldn't need it.  So half of my omlette-rice (heaps of rice covered in fried egg) ended up my lunch the next day.  Misa fried some sweet potato wedges, put a scoop of ice cream on top and drizzled honey over the whole thing for dessert.  Then we watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Oh, and the last fish was dead when I got home.

One otter...



Two otters...



Three otters...



And THE BISHOP for Hailey!