Alright, let's keep this rolling~

First of all, a reply to April's last comment!
Oh shoot, "handed"! Epic fail. Late night blogging is not good for me. And right now it's 11:30! So get ready for more typos!
Yeah they do have hobos in Japan! It's one thing to see them in Portland, but seeing them in the train stations themselves, with quite wealthy looking people walking right by them without seeming to notice at all. It's... sad, really.
Oh no, I meant the trains stop running at 24:00 (12:00PM), so the station closes shortly after that. I really don't know what they do about the hobos in that case, though...
I'll try to post more Engrish photos! Trust me, there is tons of Engrish here, I'm just too used to it now haha.

OK! Now let's move on!

Sunday Oct 31st: Second day in Kyoto!

So for our second day, Leah had church, so we planned to meet up later. In the meantime, we all left the Youth Hostel and went to Nijou Castle by ourselves. But not before stopping for a photo shoot with the hostel's Halloween decorations:

KC!

Marie!
I would post the picture of me next to my new best friend, Mr. Pumpkin Man, but I just realized that in that picture my dress is hanging all weird and makes me look like a Sumo wrestler. So let's not post that one. Moving on!

Gate! We took pictures of (almost) all of us outside the gate, but I think KC has those on her camera. I'll have to get them soon!

Moat!

Extreme close-up of some doll! Featuring Brenna's reflection.

This is not the castle. This is just a corner of the wall guarding the castle. Seems that with this epic of a corner, the castle would be AMAZING right?

Amazing gate! It can only get better right??

WRONG.

Boring looking castle was boring. Especially after Odawara. Notice the lack of pictures of the castle itself.

The gardens within the grounds were really pretty though~

I have lots more pictures of the gardens. But eh, we have trees and mini-waterfalls in Oregon, right?

After the castle "experience", Emily went off to a Manga museum, while the rest of us went shopping. I got a very adorable blazer in navy. Nice choice, me, nice choice.

Afterwards, we all met up again with Leah for parfaits! So where we are, around Yokohama, crepes are really popular, but apparently its parfaits over in the Kyoto area. Take a look:

UMM delicious. But dinner was definitely unnecessary after that.
Good day! Now back to the hostel!

Monday Nov 1st: Day in Nara and getting attacked by deer!

Oh hey, here is the view from our room in the hostel:

Clouds and buildings as far as the eye can see!

We got to Nara station, and I made a new friend:

BFF.
Then we got to the main tourist-y place in Nara, and I made some more... friends.

Yeah. They were that close. And EVERYWHERE. And pooing EVERYWHERE. Not okay, deer, not okay.

This baby one was cute though!
They were selling deer crackers everywhere, and so KC decided to buy some and try feeding the deer.

She gave some to Brenna, too:


Run, KC!! I just now noticed; instead of having red-eye in photos, deer have white-eye. Scary.


Some gate to some shrine. I've seen so many, ho hum.

But this shrine (temple?) had horns!
Not really Engrish, but some amusing pictures nonetheless:

I especially like the one where the deer knocks down the old lady. Classic.

But it's true, really, this sign does not lie. One of the deer ate half of KC's map. Another chewed on her belt a bit. She was a little too popular with them, to be honest.


We had to pay to get in, and although beyond those gates somewhere was another big Buddha, I decided not to venture in. It would've probably been one of those really gorgeous golden (read: gold plated) ones that we're not allowed to take pictures of. So there was no point in paying the 700 yen to get in. But thanks to camera-zoom, I was able to get this picture!

Afterwards, we walked through a park with more deer. Here's some cool... gate...thing:

What up with all the gates?

This deer statue owns the place! He knows what's up.

More buildings we would have had to pay to get into.

All of us outside yet another gate! From the right: Marie, me, KC, Emily, Brenna.

We kept walking and finally came upon a ton on these little heart-shaped boards hanging up. While they aren't normally heart-shaped, what people do is buy one of these boards and write a wish on it, usually for health or success in love, and then hang it up. I can't remember what they're called. Regardless, each of these particular boards cost about 1300 yen each, so of course none of us bought one. But we had fun taking pictures and seeing the different languages that were written on them. Such as:

Spanish!

Arabic!

Japanese, of course.

And English!

Another pretty part of the park:


Afterwards we went back to the deer-ridden street and bought some souvenirs, then went back to the hostel.


Argh. It's 12:12 and I'm really tired. I'll finish up (or try to at least) tomorrow!

Goodnight~