Japan (Tonami-Kyoto-Osaka-Kansai) - Day 4 - 19 May 2012

At 7.45 in the morning, we departed from the hotel to our next destination, Kyoto. When were about to leave from the parking lot, all the employees of the hotel we stayed in, gathered in front of the gate and waved their hands to us! What a warm welcome and goodbye! I was touched by their sincerity.

The journey to Kyoto took about 4 hours, and before going to Kyomizu Temple, we stopped by at a hotel called Avanshell Kyoto to have out western buffet style. The food was quite nice, especially the corn soup! I really love Japanese style corn soup, so tasty!

The delicious western-buffet lunch

After lunch, we directly went to Kyomizu Temple, or commonly called Kyomizudera (-dera, from the word tera - which means temple). We had went to this temple before, in 2003, so we actually not very excited about this visit. But yeah, there are a lot of cultural activities you can do at a temple. So first, we queued up for the omikuji (fortune-telling), where you had to shake the container until a stick with a number written on it came out. I got a so-so fortune while my sister got a bad one (we knew our results after asking one of the employee  - because we cannot read kanji :p), so we looked for a place to tie the paper of her bad result as what suggested.


After that we queued up in the water fountain to drink up the water. There are 3 fountains here, one is believed to give health, the other to give fortune, and the last is to give love. I didn't know which fountain gave what, so I just drank randomly. Later I found out that I drank the fountain of fortune, yay! Hehehe :D

The fountain and the queue!

  Because the queue for the fountain was so long, we almost didn't have time to take a look around, because we only had a few minutes left. So my sister just scurried around to see some phone straps, while I wandered around, looking for a cone of mattcha (green tea) ice-cream. We finally departed from Kyomizudera at 5pm, heading to our next destination, the Shinsaibashi shopping area!

Indonesians love to shop, I must admit that. Even my sister and I also like shopping, although we cannot afford expensive and branded things. So, during our free shopping time at Shinsaibashi, we just strolled around the area, bought a few accessories and snacks, and tried to look for cheap bags and boots (which all too expensive for our wallet).   

After the free shopping time, we had our lunch at a Chinese restaurant, and then headed back to Stargate Kansai Hotel. After arriving at the hotel, we quickly booked the spots for the shuttle bus to the airport in the morning, because we would separate from the group to have our own journey! Because we had a full itinerary the next day, and the group would leave the hotel at 9am, so we thought we should leave by ourselves by shuttle bus at 7.30 am. After giving our goodbyes to all the people we know, we hurriedly packed our luggage and got a rest to gain energy for our journey tomorrow!