Day 16

KONBANWA!

What have I been doing today? Well, nothing that I was supposed to be doing. Like I said in my blog yesterday, we had a tour planned for today. My dad and I were ready and waiting for our guy in the lobby for 15 minutes when I said to my dad: "are you sure about the date and time?" So my dad checked the booklet and it said july 20th 9:30. AND THEN he checked the email that our tour dude had sent us and there it said july 21st 10:00.... So we were all confused and decided to go back to our room and there we've sent an email to our tour guy. He responded a few hours later and the tour was planned for the 21st. So we will be having the tour tomorrow instead of today :). And I am kind of glad about it, because tomorrow it will be less warm (38 degrees instead of 39, very big difference, I know, but I still appreciate it.) and tomorrow is our last day in Japan and I am happy to be spending the day with some sightseeing. 

Well than what did I do today? First of all, after we've came to realize that our tour dude was not going to show up anymore, we decided to take the train to Osaka. And why? Because my dad wanted to visit the Hard Rock Café. We were the first visitors of the day and the bartender lady was very enthusiastic about our visit. She started a conversation about where we were from and where we had already been gone to in Japan. And the most funny thing of all was that she did not look weird at us when my dad ordered a beer at 11:30 in the morning :). I on the other hand, do not drink alcohol much and especially not in the morning, so I ordered a kind of smoothie-drink thing with mango juice, pineapple juice, orange juice and sprite and if I remember correctly there was also some strawberry-stuff in it. I absolutely loved it :). When we were done drinking, we went to the Hard Rock Café shop in which my dad and I both bought a T-shirt. And also I got a glass as a souvenir, which I hope will survive the flight back home.

We hang around in Osaka for another half an hour, but there was not much to do in the area where we were and it was 39 degrees so we also did not want to stay outside very long, so we took the metro and the shinkansen back to Kyoto. And again, we held a siesta and left our hotelroom at 16:00. We walked to the nearest mall, which also had a cinema and restaurants and we decided to go to the movies. However, almost all of the movies were in Japanese except for Star Wars and Jurassic World, so we went to Jurassic World. But, the next movie started at 18:10, so we had to strech time for 2 hours. We walked to the trainstation, which had an underground mall and we did some shopping. I bought another t-shirt and two keychains, including a keychain from Hello Kitty :).

We walked back to the mall and ate some dinner at KFC and then we went to see the movie. It was more interesting than I had expected and eventhough we did not go sightseeing today, I did get another taste of the Japanese culture. And all I can say about that is: Japanese people are SO WEIRD! During the whole movie, everyone was quiet. There was no one crying, laughing, talking or sneezing and you did not even hear them eating popcorn. BUT THE WEIRDEST THING WAS: after the movie had ended, EVERYONE stayed to watch the credits. And still, no one was talking or moving or anything, NO, they just quietly sat there and watch the boring credits! And than there were my dad and me, sitting there, all confused and too scared to stand up and leave :). And when finally, after at least 10 minutes of credits, the lights went on, everyone stood up and left. And of course, when we walked out of the cinema, there was a staff person standing by the door, simply to bow at us and thank us for our visit. 

There was only one thing that I wanted to do at least once during my stay in Japan, which was to taste Japanese ice cream, and I did that right after the movie. We went to this ice cream shop where all the staff members were wearing Minion hats and guess what ice cream I had: MINION ICE CREAM (wow, what a surprise!) :) And to be honest, I don't even know what it tasted like, but it was pretty good.

And that was all I did today.

BYE