Kyoto day 3

So we started off the day with showering and packing. The trip turned suddenly mysterious when I found an anonymous "I love you"-note in my bag. Not in a handwriting I recognised. I decided not to inquire anymore and just left it at that, it was nice anyway :) After checking out we went to lock our stuff away in some coin lockers at the Kyoto station and then we went to Kyoto International Manga Museum. In there we spent around an hour just reading manga after we had walked around and looked. It was as big as a library with nothing but manga on the shelves - heaven. Instead of trying something new in a language I'm not very good at yet I decided to read Paradise Kiss in Japanese. It's for young adults, which meant some kanjis didn't have hiragana next to them, but I understood most of it - probably thanks to the fact that I've already read it in English :P After reading manga for an hour we went to a small show of kamishibai, which is a kind of paper picture show. A guy telling stories with the aid of pictures. All in Japanese but since that was for children I could understand most of it :D

Then we went for the fun part - Arashiyama. There was a bridge there that Chappie wanted to see, but I wanted to go up the mountain to the monkey park - and we did. After climbing and climbing for forever (there was a sign after a while that said this is about the same height as Kyoto Tower - 135m, so I've practically climbed Kyoto Tower) we finally got to the park. We got a photo taken together with a monkey then we went inside the house. On the veranda of the house they have put like a net, big enough for the monkeys to put their hands through. In that house you could pay 100yen for a bag of "monkey food" (chestnuts, peanuts or apples) and then you could feed the monkeys. That was really really fun :D
After feeding the monkeys we went down the mountain and to a temple called Tenryuji (Temple of Heavenly Dragon). It had been a villa where an important Buddhist-person had grown up and lived and when he had died it had been transformed into a temple. That place was so beautiful. But once again - no cameras allowed inside.

When we exited the villa's garden we entered a bamboo forest. It was awesome xD The bamboo was so high and grew so thickly that you could hardly see through it. We walked there for a while before deciding to go back to Kyoto station, buy a bentou (lunch box) and take the Shinkansen back to Tokyo.
On the way we entered a small souvenir shop where they had geisha products, like for keeping the skin nice. One thing I really liked - it's paper, but when it gets wet you can use it as soap and wash your face. That soap gets so thick you could even use it as a face mask for like two or three minutes. For the first time in my life I bought skin products.

For the train home we had also bought non-reserved seats. We went to the platform and watched three Nozomi trains go by packed with people. They stopped of course but we decided to wait for the next one instead of entering. In the end we entered a Kodama train, which was stupid because that train stops at around 15 stations before Tokyo where Nozomi only stops a 3. We got seats at the Kodama anyway so we could eat our bentous. Then we decided to switch trains at Nagoya station and entered a Nozomi, but there were of course no seats and we had to stand for the next 1½ hours before coming back to Tokyo.

It was really nice being back in Tokyo. It felt familiar. My first impression of Kyoto was: "where are all the people?" and everything in Kyoto was old, even the new things had been around for at least 25 years. Tokyo is great :)