Long weekend!

Two of the three days of long weekend have gone by.  Then we will have three days of class.  Then we will have another long weekend.  (The program director tells us this was on purpose, to give us a chance to make friends and explore a little before the real work sets in.  I personally appreciate it!) As I said before, Friday was spent at a Noh play. The pictures below are a little blurry because it was dim and I didn't want to use flash in a theater, but you get the idea.

Audience members sit on tatami mats.

The bridge (left) leads from offstage to onstage, and is considered part of the stage itself.

There's always a pine tree painted for scenery, theoretically because noh was originally performed in shrines (the style is based on shrine dances), which often have large pine trees around.

The stage sticks out and the audience sits on 2 sides of it. 

On Saturday, I spent the day wandering around Shijo again with lots of people.  We ended up with a group of like 11 people.  o.o  Too many for a crowded shopping area.  We ended up doing a lot of waiting while a couple people looked through a store they thought was interesting.  It was fun to hang out and talk, though, and I got to know a couple people better, which was nice.  Also I got the layout of the place a little better.  We've been going to Teramachi, which is a hangout for young people, full of coffee shops and lots of different styles of clothes and accessories stores and restaurants and game arcades and all sorts of *stuff*.

Today (Sunday) I spent the morning sleeping in, then went to Doshisha to meet up with a group of people.  A couple of us were AKP people, but others were exchange students from other programs and Doshisha students, so I met a lot of new people too.  We hung out and played Super Smash Bros (yes, I lost pretty badly, but it was fun anyways) and talked and snacked and generally had a good time.  And then I went shopping again, this time with just one other person.  Teramachi is a lot more manageable in small groups, and I feel like I got a lot better look at it this time around.  They have lots of cool stuff!  Like, Jen, we found a Lolita store full of super-kawaii (super-expensive) dresses and petticoats and shirts and bows and bags and shoes and stuff.  Course, it's all way way too small for me, so I don't have to worry about accidentally spending too much.  >.>  We also found lots of stores that sell cute hats and scarves and phone charms and stuff, which I CAN buy, so shopping isn't a completely impossible thing for me here, at least.

One thing that I also really like about Kyoto is that you never know what you'll run into.  Like on our way from the train station to Teramachi, we ran into this.

 It was this little temple, just stuck in the street, with a bunch of people chanting Buddhist sutras and incense burning and a willow tree decorated with prayer strips and a waterfall lined with these statues.  It was really pretty and peaceful, and completely out of place on a street mostly filled with businesses and restaurants.  

There's also a little old temple in the middle of the fashionable shopping street of Teramachi.  Kyoto is covered with these small temples and shrines--there are little roadside shrines near school and near my house that are little more than a roof and an incense holder, there are this kind of small temple for the neighborhood, and there are things as famous as Kiyomizudera and Kinkakuji.  Even houses, you see brand new ones standing next to buildings that're clearly several centuries old.  It's impossible to avoid seeing things like that (though I don't know why you'd really WANT to avoid it).  I personally like seeing what I can come across just while walking around doing something else.