The cripple won the race!!

This is some serious backtracking, but on the day we went to Kyoto, it was roughly mid-day - which is actually pretty early for us! We all dragged our sorry arses out of bed and headed for Shin-Osaka for the train to Kyoto.. which was only 15 minutes from the Shin-Osaka line. IT was great!



When we got to Kyoto, we headed straight for the famous Inari Fushimi shrine, which is the fox temple and it's in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha.. and that movie was wrong in so many ways!! But that's for another time. Anyways, the temple was.. dare I say? AWESOME!! That had to be my favourite temple, by far!! And I've seen quite a few temples. It's just so.. I dunno.. I was left speechless.. and then breathless after the climb. We were under the impression that it wasn't that big a deal to climb since one of my friends had been there before (Tina) and she assured us it wasn't that big a deal. I believed her because she's about as fit as my sister (and Train gets tired after going up a flight of stairs)



Anyways, before all that happened, I knew I was in for a bad one because the back of my leg was hurting badly. I couldn't even bend it! My right ankle had swollen up and it looked like I had cankles =\ so pretty much when I walked, I had to walk with a limp because I couldn't physically bend my leg properly. It killed.



Oh wells. When we got there we looked around, took some photos, tried random dried fruits and bought a bag of dried mangos. (That's what the group did, I limped ahead to try and avoid the sun here) After a little rest, we headed up the mountain... and it took us a little over an hour to get up the damn thing. It was tough. We had a couple of breaks along the way.. but I've come to the realisation, that of the whole group, I am the fittest (which says quite alot about the people I hang out with.. we're unfit, game freaks lol)

When Tina went to climb Fushima last time.. turns out she went a quarter, or a third of the way up.. so the actual climb took a lot longer than we thought. Which was fine by me I was actually having fun. The temple was quite a site. The whole place was dotted with smaller shrines, where a few had cobwebs and strange things growing/hanging on it.. just off the main path, which I wandered down to, and it was quite a site!! I think they were actual head stones.. but don't quote me on that!! I just thought it was great. At one part, I was just wandering around and I heard a noise just to my left. I nearly had heart failure because I'm shit scared of ghosts.. there's few things in the world that scare the crap out of me, and the two scariest thing for me are spiders and ghosts. But not to fret, it was just a kitty stretching out and making a contented kinda noise. Although it did take a while for my heart to settle.. only to have my sister hounding me and telling me to get bakc on the main part of the shrine.. she hates it when I wander off by myself.. but it was alright for me, I often wander around aimlessly by myself. I prefer my own company in such places. Because I tend to wander off the straight and narrow path, I'm often the last one to reach a certain destination.. but it worked out well, because I ended up overtaking everyone and reached the top first.. gimp leg and all!!

When we reached the top, we were rather excited. I even took photos with two enthusiastic thumbs up! But unfortuantely my celebration was a little premature because we had another.. few rounds of stairs to go up. Seriously, the group just lost all hope.. you know that feeling of just tiredness from climing up,　and just wondering if you'd ever reach the end? And when you reach what you thought was the end, and it's not only to realise you got mroe to go.. it's just crushing. Eventually when we got to the real real top, we were too tired to celebrate and just headed downhill.. it took us.. I think.. almost one and a half hours to get up that damn shrine (oops! don't mind those damning words.. I don't really mean it.. honest!) But on the way down.. we got to truely appreciate the shrine. On the back of those red.. shinto shrine. I had to look it up, otherwise I'd have to keep describing it as those red things. But on the back of the shinto shrine as you go down, there are words inscribed on each seperate shrine.. I don't know what they say, but apparently, they're words of motivation/enlightenment/positive inscriptions to keep you going. We even got to see the whole of Osaka! Which was really cool.. it just didn't look like a city.. not like Melbourne.. but more.. Asian styles.. I can't explain.

By the time we made it back to the bottom of the shrine.. it was too late for us to attend the festival at another temple/shrine in Kyoto.. and besides, we were pooped!! Although, on the way down, Garry and I raced down the temple.. it was sooo funny. Everyone we passed who was going up were huffing nad puffing and resting on the side of the pillars or holding their stomach.. and here was two Asians racing down the shrine and laughing hysterically (OK, only I was laughing hysterically) and probably cursing us. I heard an American guy say to his American girlfriend in his American accent that it probably can't be that much further (he looked really really really unfit. And his face was red) And it was so funny I laughed harder.. only coz the poor sucker was half-way and the part he trekked so far was easy! But I didn't want to burst his bubble.. I wanted to win! Which I did.. coz I led Garry down the wrong way.. then ran for it in the opposite direction laughing my evil laugh.

We went home after and just.. passed out I guess.

That was prtetty much it for Kyoto.. apart from the place being hella expensive!! I guess considering it's a tourist hotspot.. but to live there would be pricey as well..
Oh wells. So that boys and girls.. ends my trip at Kyoto.

And it took me... 5 hours to write!! It's hard to write when you're here, the TV is on in Japanese, so you have ot watch the show just to see wat it's on about.. and hten you realise you've only written a paragraph.. yeh.

seeya!! xx