Monday 1st February!

Today is rainy and cold. We ignored that fact and went to the Inari shrine, which has a really long walk through a tunnel of Toris. We took an umbrella from our hotel, and bought a small one at the 7-11. We had to take the JR Nara line from Kyoto station.

Everyone got off at our station, and there was this huge hoarde of people with umbrellas going to the same shrine as us. It was bedlam! A sea of umbrellas! We kept getting caught on other people's umbrellas because apparently the Japanese don't look where they're going.

We stood around and watched people for a while. Everyone was ringing the bells at the shrines and clapping, so Charles made a recording while Christina stood in the rain and was pointed at by two little girls. She made a face at them.

Next we did the tori walk up the hill. It was dotted with lots of smaller shrines and wound through rainforest. Some way up the hill was a lake with duckies swimming around. We got really cold and wet so we came back down again. We bought what we thought was nice hot dango (a delicious sweet) which was actually konnyaku balls (rubbery salty stuff). Weird.

We took the train back to Kyoto station and got a coffee and croissant. It was only about 2pm and we had planned to do the Philosopher's Walk, but it was just horrible outside. So instead we went to Isetan, the Kyoto station department store, just to browse. It was very posh, but Charles bought some pens.

We walked back to our hotel, buying some lunch food at the 7-11 on the way. We stayed in the foyer, eating and watching a T.V. show. Christina's shoes were completely soaked through, despite all the waterproofing she did before she left. We hung out all our wet things.

We booked our hotel in Takayama for Wednesday night - we'll be staying at a J-Hoppers hostel. Yay! We called them up and the receptionist said it's snowing right now! Yay!

We went to the sento (public bath house) around the corner. This time there were no embarrassing events, but Christina did go in a weird bath where she got electric shocks. She did not stay in long. If only we could read!!

Now we're considering dinner but aren't very hungry or motivated to go and get something. It's still really awful outside.