Phil and Red's Excellent Adventure

I was woken up by the train outside of the hotel around 530am. Grabbed a shower. Met up with Gary and David and had a nice Japanese breakfast at the hotel. We hit up the train station and took a train to Kyoto. Once we got to the massive kyoto train terminal, we dumped our bags off in lockers and went for a quick morning of sightseeing before catching the bus to Fukui. We walked around the city for a bit on our way to the major stop that we were taking. We stopped at one large Buddhist temple/school. Then made our way to the Kiyomizu Temple in the east. There was this long, narrow uphill street lined with tons of little tourist shops. We got to the Kiyomuzi Temple and it was gorgeous. This huge huge temple set up on the eastern outskirts of the city and it seperated the city from the wooden areas and mountains. It was huge. Gary kept telling David about how he wants him to build a deck like the one that was there at the temple. David is a carpenter and builder. He was geeking out about the temple. He was looking at how the temple was made by caressing the wood and looking at all the edges and grooves n stuff. It was quite humorous.
We took fotos and looked at stuff and then hit up the LOVE SHRINE. There is a shinto shrine just to the right of the temple and looks like it was attached but its not. It was just there by chance. The shinto shrine is dedicated to the LOVE god or something. They had this statue of a guy with the "Hammer of Love". They also had the LOVE STONES. They were two stones sitting at about 30 meters apart inbetween two altars. It said that if you could walk from one stone to the other with your eyes closed then your love will be realized. So i tried it. I was going to have to walk thru a throng of japanese people, so I closed my eyes, held out my hands and started walking. I kept repeating the word, "Sumimasen" which is excuse me. I only bumped into like one person. I heard a group of Japanese girls giggle at me off to my right. I found the stone and was all, "Im badass."
I found a giant Preying Mantis on one of the altars as well. I was like, "Zorack".
After all the sightseeing, we grabbed some food at the cafe and we headed back to the train station. We searched for our chartered bus all over the grounds and on the map. The map didn't have a directions on it, so we figured we were in the right spot. But the bus was on the south side, we were on the north side. So we rushed thru the station to the south side and found the charter bus. We got on it. Our bus was sorta empty, it only carried about 15 of us. The other buses were crowded. We headed out for Fukui. The total trip was about 4 hours plus a service stop. Fukui was far and out of the way of everything. Some people were very frustrated and said that the planning of this trip was done very badly. They think that there was some political reason that they chose Fukui for the location of the Taikai. I think so as well, but I wasn't bored one bit by the distance. It offered me a great glimpse of the japanese countryside, which I wanted. It was very beautiful. Drives thru the mountains and rural areas. Very very pretty. I liked it alot. It reminded me alot about my trip to Yunnan in China when we had to drive everywhere in the buses. The scenery was so good that the distances didn't bother me. I used Gary's fone to call Mitch and Jeff.
We arrived at the hotel/Ryokan, which is a hotel, but with traditional styled rooms. So we had tatami floors and japanese western toilet and baths. There was also an Onsen in the hotel (traditional public bath). The first thing David did when he got into the room was to check all the wood work to see how it was made and look at its construction. The first thing Gary did when we got into the room was get a giant splinter in his foot from the Shogi track. He wasn't able to get it fully out until tomorrow.
We walked around the area and had some dinner in the resturant. They had a buffet and it was ridiculously overpriced. I wanted to pay for the bill right now, but they were like, No, we put it to your room. So when Gary came later, i needed to get them to bring up the correct bill. That took awhile. Very frustrating to make them understand that I need to put another dinner and beer onto the chit card. Oh well. I figure they wont make any mistakes when I try to pay the bill when we leave.......
After dinner, Tony arrived. He was visiting his in-laws and finally reached the hotel. We chatted a bit. Then I went to the Japanese bath. You go into this room with a bunch of other dudes, strip down, then wash yourself off at these faucet areas and clean all the dirt off of you, then you hop into the bath with the others. So you dont get the water dirty in there or spread germs. Apparently getting soap in the water is a big no no.
Right when I stepped in the water, immediately, I felt really relaxed. The water was really hot and I was right by the jets. However, the water was so hot that it made the room very humid. Since I am not really used to that, after about 5 minutes in the water, i started to feel sick. After about 15 minutes i needed to leave. I felt absolutely terrible. The humidity was just too much. For the rest of the night i was really tired and felt sick. I took a shower to cool off a bit. That helped a little.
I talked with Tony a bit then fell asleep at like 9pm.
Goodnite.