Place looks like the Louvre, doesn't it? It's crazy! Anyway, we walked through Higashiyama,
eventually coming upon a mysterious building complex. It was crowded and we thought it had to be a temple, but everyone was dressed in black and there were weird waiting rooms and tea rooms and directions to a bus station... and the building itself was pretty freaky. Turns out it was a mausoleum. It was a very spooky place. Behind it was an immense graveyard. Here is a small portion.
This is what it looked like when we saw the real road to the real temple (Kiyomizu-dera).
To go along with those pictures, here was the scene at the temple itself.
For a Buddhist perspective maybe you should view those pictures in reverse order. Ha ha ha ha.
The temple was partially ancient marvel, partially tourist attraction. The Shinto shrine attached to it appeared to be a sort of gimmick shrine where you could buy lucky charms to help you find a boyfriend/girlfriend, and take a test of courage walking blindfolded between two rocks of love in order to learn whether you would find luck in the future. But you know what? Even in the midst of all that, with dozens of couples running around, the atmosphere was one of being quite humbled by the natural beauty all around. Here is the austere view from the temple.
Even stray cats take care of themselves.
On the way back, we saw a pickle store, a green tea-flavored candy store, a cheap homemade jewelry store, and a novelty store. At the last one Lynn got an obscene T-shirt. In the cup you can see our fish. This photo is a summary of my day.
Here is my night: I went to the Long Island Cafe for their Halloween party dressed up as... well... some sort of thief, or maybe Bodhidharma, I am not really sure. The people there were awesome.
Julian and Daniel came dressed as Lupin and Fujiko. By the way this blog post is going to segue into obscure Japanese cultural references now. They were both very much in character and did a great job. They did an impromptu skit during the costume contest... he kissed "her" and "she" slapped him and they then kissed again.
They were promptly awarded the booby prize, a can of ramen-flavored suckers. Which were gross, by the way.
Afterwards a girl with glasses approached me and asked me if I liked "animated films". I responded in the affirmative.
- Do you know cosplay?
- Oh yeah! I saw it at the Manga Museum
- There is cosplay near Heian Jingu too, it's called the Event Center (?)
- How often?
- Once every two months. Actually, I have a cosplay costume
- Which one?
- Do you know Gin Tama? [thanks Wikipedia]
- Uh, not really...
- Which anime do you like?
- Oh, you know, Haruhi, Lucky Star... [She starts to grin and say "マジ!!", so I add] Hatsune Miku...
- You are really wotaku!
- そっか…
- I could tell... you have an wotaku aura.
- I have an... aura??
I was kind of surprised, but thinking back on it, you know, I did shout "Sieg Zeon!" when Char did his skit.
I told her about my Interweb friends who go to Comiket as well as my need to find friends in Tokyo to show me around Akihabara. She gave me her e-mail and I split in order to end the evening on a high note.*
* Fangirls are dangerous.
I apologize for this brief outburst of nerdiness. I cannot promise it won't happen again. It depends on circumstances.
