Stairway to Heaven, Part 3

Waking up this morning was rough. It was dark and rainy outside, not a great day to go anywhere. Although I went to bed before Nick and Tala, I found it hard to get out of bed when my alarm went off. I slept for another 15 minutes before realizing that we would be late for breakfast. I brushed my teeth, put on clothes, and woke up the guys. It's always really horrible to have to wake people up - even when it's necessary, they're never happy about it, and they usually take it out on you. Not that it can be helped of course.

Finally, the three of us headed downstairs. Compared to the day before, we had a much 'simpler' breakfast than the day before. It was still a better and bigger breakfast than I get at home, so I wasn't complaining. She did put out these funky tiny fish, which are usually fine, but today they were kind of hard. I finished them all anyway. The miso soup was really good this morning as well.

Although we were leaving in the afternoon, we decided to check out "View Land", an amusement park on the mountain just behind the ryokan we stayed in. The obasan of the inn gave us free VIP tickets, so we headed up right after we ate. After asking directions at the convenience store (the nice old man wasn't there though), we found our way to the lift. It was pouring, so we took the monorail instead of the chair lift. Tala amused himself by taking super hipster photos on his iPhone, and I was mesmerized by the colors of the fall foliage as seen through the foggy window.

When we reached the top, we looked down at Amanohashidate, which could barely be seen through the thick clouds. We did have a number of great photo-ops, what with the clouds and everything. It was like something from a Japanese folding screen painting. Unfortunately, all the rides were closed! I'm not sure if it was due to rain or mechanical issues, but it seemed like nothing was open. We wound up playing a couple rounds of Taiko no Tatsujin, walking around on the sky bridge, and heading back down. We almost missed the monorail, but the driver waited for us.

Back on the ground, we decided to grab lunch before taking the bus back to Kyoto. We passed through the Daimaru "department store", possibly the smallest in Japan. It was one floor just for souvenirs and such. Nothing at all compared to the one in Kyoto.

We decided to have lunch at another of the main street restaurants. This time, Nick picked a place, because they had a tempura and soba combo set that he wanted to eat. Me and Tala went for donburi this time. I have to say, Nick’s was definitely the nicest of the bunch. Not that ours was bad, but I don’t see tempura look that good very often. I guess you really do find the best cuisine when you go out into rural Japan! 

As we headed back to the ryokan, I decided to get a fortune at the temple. It was kind of cool – instead of the usual long papers fortunes are usually written on, they had these little paper fan fortunes. I was lucky enough to get Great Luck, the best of the bunch. Here’s hoping it actually works: Sam could always use more luck.

We arrived at the bus stop with a little bit of time to spare, but there was already someone there waiting for us. A station attendant told us that the bus was running behind schedule, and that we had to wait another 40 minutes or so before it would get there. We chilled out in the station, and I went around looking for some cool souvenirs (didn’t find anything I liked though). Before too long, the bus arrived, and off we went back to Kyoto. 

Given that we hadn’t slept all that much over the two days we were there, I nodded off on the bus while writing this blog. When we got back to the city, I opted to go home, rather than to Doshisha’s school festival. There were still two days left in break that I could go there, after all. And boy, were they going to be awesome!