End of the JR period

I slept night quite well. Futons might not look that pleasant beds but are surprisingly cosy. Especially this time as we had two blankets to cover us with. Which was though needed as the temple was also the coldest place I have ever slept. BRRR! Reason occured to me on the morning when I went to the morning prayer. The temple pathways are pretty much directly connected to the outside with no doors or walls between. Then outer door of my room isn't solid so outside air has practically unoppossed access to inner door that leads to my room. And that room has walls made out of...paper. Paper not being exactly known for it's insulative properties not suprising it's cold here. And the pathways are decidedly chilly. It's mid november and we are over 800 meters above sea level

 That's a shot straight from the walking paths inside the building. No glass, no nothing between me and the chilly autumn air.

 Outer door of my room. That's solid...air between outer air and inside door(made of paper).
 

Two shots from inside temple. Didn't succeed that well. Too dark I suppose.

And this being old temple there's no central heating in rooms. Instead there's this portable heater but it shuts itself down every 3 hours unless button is pressed(I suppose it could be source of fire accident if left continue on its own. Looks like some sort of gas heater). So when I woke up it was chilly outside the blankets so waking up I got out of blankets, put in heater and dove straight back to the blankets again before room temperature came up from ”refrigerator” level :D

After finally getting up and doing basic morning preparations I waited for the morning prayer to begin. Assembly was sounded by bell ringing 10 minutes before start. This prayer everybody is required to attend so if you find idea of taking part(as spectator) for buddhist morning prayer don't go to a temple lodgning.

Prayer was conducted by 4 men all with shaved heads. Wonder if there are female priests? Haven't heard of one though. One(who looked oldest) had this muted orange/darkish sand coloured kimono. 2 had black kimono with purple part at bottom+purple sash. Youngest looking had white instead of purple. Wonder if colours indicate some sort of rank?

Didn't understand the prayer(done in chanting style). Maybe some sort of old Japanese? (this IS over thousand year religion. Maybe they haven't updated the language to more modern Japanese?) Some words here and there. But listening it was quite hypnotic. Chanting was accompanied by various bell sounds.

Not quite the same(more priests) and no idea if it's actually same song but gives the idea at least.

After morning prayer it was time for breakfast. Similar to last time(and this time I remembered the camera!) though on smaller scale.

 Okay so on left there's "something" floating in some sort of liquid, maybe water. Not sure what it is and not my favourite part of meal. No real taste and bit spongy feeling. Though have eaten worse stuff.

Below and right of it were some sort of vegetables. Big black bowl in bottom center is miso soup, bit different from yesterday. Some beans right of it, soy sauce over it and over soy sauce is nori seaweed leaves. These are eaten interestingly. You have bowl of rice(on right) from which you put to cup on bottom left. Then you put leave of seaweed over rice and with chopsticks you then sort of wrap bit of rice inside the leave which you then put to your mouth. Trick is to not rip the leaves apart when you do it.

Bit like sushi without filling actually. But since there's no vinegar in the rice it's not sushi(for those of you who don't know "raw fish" does not sushi make. It's the vinegar mix you put to rice. Filling can be anything).

Anyway on right there's the bowl of rice, tea and tea cup.

Good start for morning!

 Tea was bit different colour than yesterday. Yesterday it was clearly green but now it's reddish. Didn't taste same as regular tea in Finland. Wonder what sort of tea it was?

 After breakfast I prepared to leave. Guess I could have stayed for visiting in places but with big bag that didn't appeal and I'm not too fond of bus traveling. Bit of annoyance when you don't know that well schedules or stops or anything!

 Riding the bus.

 Quite a different view to Tokyo for sure!

 Trip to Shin-osaka was fairly uneventful. There bought myself box of obento. Yet again something I have never eaten before. There seems to be unlimited variety of obentos.

I also got my first taste of shochu which is Japanese distilled spirit. Dictionary claims its similar to vodka but only by way of doing it then. At least this melon flavoured one wasn't that strong(8%) and quite sweet actually.

 Traditionally I get off from Shinkansen at the Shinagawa but with JR pass still on I decided to make one last trip to Akihabara for some shopping and on route stop by Tokyo station. It's closer to Akihabara than Shinagawa and I have actually never seen Tokyo station outside. Last time I went there couple times(before realizing shinagawa is better place to board to shinkansen as it's closer) but didn't go outside.

Doesn't really look railstation(particularly as big as Tokyo). More appropriate for school in England! Interesting design they settled for.

Anyway continuing to Akihabara for some more shopping. I went again for the book off there(unlike nearest book off to my home this has FOR SURE all the volumes of manga I'm reading currently). After that continued for another shop with my bloody heavy bag. Which being big is for the record bit of inconvenient to have around in the crowded Japanese stores. I swear I said more "sumimasens" today than I say usually in two weeks here and "sumimasen" is fairly common word to use(you use it to start a question for example. "Excuse me but where is X station?" "sumimasen ga, X eki ha doko desu ka?").

This is handy place for me as it marks starting point for the one route I do know to the store I look. This is also fairly hard to miss as it's right next to one of the exits of station. Guess that store could be also called "mekka of nerds" in Japan :D I never can get head around the popularity of that group. Okay so basic appeal I can understand. Pretty girls dancing isn't unsurprisingly popular(it's not like I can claim of not finding that appealing having gone to two concerts of similar style with 2 more coming up) but the sheer SCALE of AKB48 fandom is mind boggling. Okay so it's still fairly small group of Japanese that buy the stuff(there is 120 million + change Japanese and this group sells like 1M singles) but still...1M cd's ain't that bad result consistently. And they manage to attract fans who are nuts enough to actually buy boxful of cd's. Same ones! Just to improve chances of their favourite girl being leading singer in next song.

Nuts. The guy who came up with that bands idea hit a bloody gold mine with that one. Like printing money or stealing candies from kids.

Anyway I said that's fairly hard to miss...Well after leaving that store I then realized I might be better off going for toilet while I have a chance. Back to the station. Back to...Ummm...I got lost. BLOODY hell! How can I NOT find that store again? Hahahaha! Luckily by the time I realized I got lost I also realized I might actually be approaching target store the street I was going back last time. Turns out my sense of direction was actually spot on for a change.

My day kept going hairy at the store. Store where you write down what you want from lists around and then staff picks stuff up. Well my hand writing isn't top notch at the best of times and was worse today(I blame the shochu and beer) so it was lots of "this number is what?". Then I picked up item that was sold out(well that wasn't my fault) and 2 items that haven't been released yet(not like they weren't clearly marked so in lists. I just managed to skip that part). Also picked up completely wrong item though at least it was possible to cancel it. Kyaaah. I kept saying lots of "sumimasen" again.

Not my day.

Heading back toward home bad day STILL continues as on Shibuya station entering to ticket barrier I first get stuck by the bag, then swiping wallet to the gate whole bunch of coins fly out of wallet and it takes me what feels like ages to untangle myself. Note: Ticket barrier gates are not designed with bloody big bags in mind!

Sheesh. After getting back to Tokyo nothing seemed to be working!

At least got home safe...

Next few days are going to be bit less interesting especially on photo side. Tomorrow I'll be going to Kanagawa as there's free Kalafina mini-live to promote their newest single(available also tomorrow) so hoping to sneak in. Found park and temple from around that section.

On thursday will be meeting with Japanese I met last year. Plan is to actually make soba(the noodles if I understood right). Sounds interesting.

Friday will be washing clothes+yet another meeting.

Saturday odaiba evening marathon and on sunday disaster prevention drill so earthquake experience. Neither of those promise to be good for photographing(being middle of earthquake I'm fairly sure you are not supposed to concentrate on taking photos and anyway photos would just be blurry mess of room so what's the point).