On New Year’s Day, we went to Kyoto. Kyoto is famous for its temples. I forget how many exactly are in Kyoto, but I think it has the most temples of any other Japanese city. It is a Japanese tradition to visit temples and say New Year’s prayers (see picture below), so everyone and their mother go to the temples. It might not have been the best day for us to go to the temples, but that’s what we had slotted for the day! We went to three temples. I’m not sure of the name of the first, but it was big and beautiful. It was a very traditional Japanese temple. The second was Sanjusangen-do and is known for its 1,000 statues of Buddha. They didn’t allow photography inside where the statues are, but that temple was so big, and all of the statues were incredibly intricate. It made me wonder how exactly people were able to create such things without the modern technology that we have today!
At the end of that temple, we had the option to choose a god for the new year. It was kind of like a fortune cookie. We put in our 100 yen and drew out a little piece of paper. Inside the paper was a little god. Luckily, what each god meant was printed in English. I had the god of victory and virtue……..also the god you pray to for babies. 
Not exactly what I was wanting (as the above picture denotes)!!! I offered to trade with anyone, but it’s bad luck to trade. Hopefully 2012 won’t bring any babies! Can you imagine if we tried to raise a baby in Japan?!? Yikes!
Our third and last temple of the day, Kiyomizu, was across town and up a mountain. That was the busiest temple of all. There was one little road up, and everyone and their mother was on that road. It was shoulder to shoulder until we left the temple! I couldn’t believe how many people could fit in such a tiny place. Kiyomizu was my favorite temple of the day. Since it sat on the mountain side, there was an amazing view of Kyoto below and the surrounding mountains. Once we were out of the main crowd, we were able to squeeze our way to the side and get some pictures.
After Kiyomizu, we decided to grab dinner before heading back to Osaka. Since we were in the Osaka area, which is famous for okonomiyaki (in picture below), we decided to eat it again. We went to this little restaurant which was definitely off the beaten tourist path. As soon as we walked in, we could tell that the restaurant workers and customers were thinking “What are they doing here? How did they find this place?” 
It wasn’t an ill-will feeling but more of a general shock that we were there. David said that he overheard the workers asking who was going to take care of our table and wondering if we knew Japanese.
On the train ride back to Osaka, we planned to meet up with Michael and Ana (in above picture). They got married on December 28th and were in Osaka on their honeymoon. It was actually really weird how many friends from Kuma-gun (our county) ended up in the Osaka area. Basically, if our friends didn’t go home or leave the country, they ended up in Osaka. As I previously said, David, Ian, and I went up together. We met up with Rachel, who spent the days before we got there in Kyoto. Justine randomly came to Osaka on a whim. Ana and Michael were there on honeymoon. I don’t think we could have planned it if we tried!
We decided to go back to Spa World for the evening. We had talked about it, and Justine was absolutely dying to go. Ana and Michael met us there for a night of relaxing. Michael and Ian had good guy time on the men’s floor while us gals soaked in jasmine scented waters in the Bali room and scrubbed the dry and tough skin off of our heels in the salt sauna. Below, there are pictures of us in the frocks that the spa provided for us to wear. In the actual onsen, no one wears clothes, but when we walked out of the onsen, we had to wear those. They were….special. Have you ever read The Giver? It was like living in that utopian society. We all agreed to meet back at 11:20 so that we could have plenty of time to catch our trains back to our hostels. So after one last dip in the sweetly scented Bali room water, we dried off, got dressed, and met the guys.
That was our last full night in Osaka. Tomorrow, I’ll blog about our final day and hopefully catch up on the end of last week.
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