Weekend in Kyoto

I am ded. So fucking dead and tired and I think I want to go home, lie down in bed, and just sleep and sleep and sleep for as long as I fucking can.

(When're you coming in tomorrow, Eike? I suppose I should call you.)

Anyhoos, did I mention that I'm dead?

So here's a recap of the weekend:

On Friday afternoon I packed some extra clothes and all my travel goodies and headed over to Umeda to pick up Mel's friend, Rudy, who wanted to go to Den Den Town. He was a little late coming into Himeji, but it was a good thing because Mel happened to get there about the same time as us, and we all walked around, browsed the Animate, Mandarake, and the new K-Books they opened there after I left. I tried to hold myself back getting doujinshi, but we all know how that eventually ends up. -_-;; Didn't spend as much as I could have, mind you, but I did get all the of the Luffy/Zoro/Sanji-line books, as the covers were pretty and shiny and made me happy. ^_^ (And they were only 210yen each!)

I'm actually glad I didn't spend as much as I could have, because I only about 100yen on me by the time I made it home Monday afternoon. O_o;;

(Swag: One Piece Grand Battle 3, Gakuen Heaven 18+ original, 8 doujinshi)

After the Den Den Town adventure we headed over to Namba to eat dinner and have fun doing the karaoke, which Mel and I always seem to enjoy extremely. It was a good time, and we made it back to her pad to crash.

We got up around 6am in the morning to make it to Kyoto by 7am, where we met a bunch of the rest of the MIT Japan interns at a very small (and very crappy, IMHO) sento. We could only spend a few hours there before hauling ass over to all the Kyoto attractions. I can't remember exactly, but I think we hit Kinkakuji, Ginkakuji, Tofukuji, and Heian Jingu all in one day, which is quite a feat for a group of 24 college-age obnoxious, slow-moving gaijin. We ended the night at NAIST (Nara Institute of Science and Technology) where we had dinner and slept for the night. Or rather, the rest of the kids from Tokyo stayed the night there, and all of Mel's friends and the ATR interns went back to their collection of apartments. There we drank a little more, smoked some (Dan managed to find some weed here in Japan), and then crashed. (There was also an interesting event involving a shower, Rudy, Dan, and me, but it's just amusing and there are no juicy details to speak of, so...carry on, carry on.)

I was late in waking up the next morning, being too tired to even deal with 8 hours of sleep. I think I slept somewhere close to 9 hours before I got up, and with my excellent timing got to Nara just as the rest of the kids were about to board a bus to Todaiji. I was seriously lucky that day. Todaiji is gorgeous because it's home to the largest indoor statue of Buddha in Japan, and boy was it huge. O_o;; At least 2 or 3 stories. After spending a couple of hours there we took the train back to Kyoto and hung around at the Kawai Kanjiro museum before heading off to Kiyomizu-dera. I don't actually like it as much as Gingakuji, which is actually my favorite, but it's a great temple and gives a great view of Kyoto.

There, I met Eike and her carnivorous friend, Kevin (he's really eats nothing but meat, no joke) and we went down to the Gion district to shop and chill. There we (including Mel and Rudy, who I really got to get close to this time 'round) took some silly purikura (short for Print Clubs, you know, those little photo stickers) and had a good time making fun of ourselves in various ways. After dinner at a yakitori place Mel, Benazeer, Dan, Rocco (who is secretly gay, except for being a frat boy, I swear), Eike, Kevin, Rudy, and I went to the infamous A-Bar, this small theme bar in Kyoto where Mel and Benazeer, as well as my good old KCJS friends, Destra, Ian, and Dave like to hang. It was wonderful there, and I can see why Destra and the gang chose it as "their bar."

There we had arguments about the merits of ZoroLu vs. ZoroSan (I think Mel was just siding with ZoroSan to push my buttons--something she likes to do), the awesomeness leprosy (most of this discussion was actually done while I was drunk and high on Saturday night, wherein Rudy and I, who both think leprosy is quite cool and interesting informed everybody else in the room on our vast knowledge of leprosy. I told him to watch Kingdom of Heaven, cause he's the type who'd like it.), and the hotness of Edward Norton. It was almost unanimous that Edward Norton was hot, the only dissenters being Benazeer and Eike. Hell, even all the guys admitted to Edward Norton being t3h hotness. ^_^v It's still a win for Edward Norton. :D

Dan found this awesome smoke shop in Kyoto, and bought some Japanese tabacco as well as interesting metal pipe which served rather well as a bong. *laughs* So I was high at A-Bar too, and screaming about Edward Norton's hotness. :D We weren't quite sure where to take the debate of whether Johnny Depp was as awesome as Willem Dafoe or Christopher Walken, as a lot of the people at the table had no idea who either of those two people were. It was very sad. I want the Christopher Walken/Fatboy Slim music video. Anybody wanna hook me up?

Eike and I started notebook-roleplaying some Knives/Legato smut, and I was extremely amused while at the bar. :D There needs to be more abusive hot Knives/Legato action in the world. (Yes, I am aware that at the moment I'm not doing much to help the quota here. I'm hacking away at Miles 05. I fucking swear! ...I also happen to be hacking at three other things in my head at the moment.) We're going to continue our RP tomorrow, when Eike comes over to visit and we have nothing better to do with ourselves. ^_^

I spent Monday lazily in bed and accompanying Rudy on his last day in Japan. ^_^ We went to Sanjyusangen-do in Kyoto (where they have a thousand statues of the Buddhist deity Kannon) and barely made it back to JR Kyoto in time for him to catch his train to Kansai Airport. I'll miss you, Rudy. *sniffles*

Anyways, I'm off to crash. Pictures forthcoming, I promise. O_O;;