Beautiful Autumn in Nara

I had a pretty interesting weekend. Took the train to Nara on Saturday morning to meet up with Akemi, a Japanese girl who I met at Mt A. She took me to Saidaiji temple, where we went to a tea ceremony. This temple is famous because the bowls that it uses for it's tea ceremony are gigantic!! It was very laid back because it was so funny to see everyone attempting to drink out of these huge bowls. Hard to be serious. After the ceremony, a 91 year-old man whom Akemi's father knows, took us on a tour of the buildings around the temple. He has been going there to worship for 25 years, so he knows it well. He explained alot of the history, statues and architecture, and it was to Akemi to translate what she could into English so that I would understand. (She did a marvellous job:))

We then went to Yakushiji Temple, another famous temple in Nara. Here I found out my fortune. There is a box containing many small envelopes. You take one in exchange for 200 or so yen (~$2), and read the fortune. If it is a good fortune, you can tie the strip of paper to a rope with many other people's fortunes. Mine was good, although it told me that I should work harder, so I tied it on.

I met Akemi's family over dinner, and they were so nice to me!! I really enjoyed spending time with them, and her mom even made me pinky swear to come back again!!

On Sunday, Akemi and I went to Osaka Castle (really more of a museum now), which was really interesting, and beautiful. The highlight of the day was when I got to try on battle gear and pose for pictures. You should've seen the crowd gathered to watch me make a fool of myself. It was awesome!!

We also saw Tsutenkaku Tower, which is surrounded by streets with small shops, only most of the shops were closed!! When Akemi asked a shopowner why, he said that the sons of the families that owned them didn't want the shops, so they had no one to run them. Only about half, or maybe less, of the shops there were open. It gave the area the atmosphere of a ghost town.

Finally we went to Namba, a fashionable shopping/ dining district in Osaka. We shopped for a bit, had dinner, and then it was time for me to head back to the country. I'm not sure why, because I think Taki is at around the same latitude as Nara (don't quote me on that), but the leaves have changed colour there and are beautiful in red, yellow and orange, while almost everything here is still green:(