We left for the train station in Fukuoka, where our train left at 07.23. We waved a lot inside the train, and there was a whole lot of Japanese home stay families waving their hands off on the station. We had been given a newspaper each, where there were pictures from our visit to the school. As the article is in Japanese, we have no idea what it says, but there is a picture of Frøy which we can look at. We shared some home stay experiences while waiting for Kanazawa station, where we got off to change trains at 08.00. We managed to get off all our stuff and people and get to the next train which left at 08.05. It was a Thunderbird train, heading for Kyoto, where we arrived around 10. 
We were met by our guide at the station, a Japanese lady with a stick with a blue flower on, which she held up over her head and we followed. 
As the toilets had been closed on the train, we invaded the nearest shopping mall and created a heap of luggage and enormous toilet queues. We got out and stuffed our stuff in the bus, and took off.No rest for the wicked; we went straight to the sightseeing. We went first to the Nijo Castle, which was built in 1603 as the official Kyoto residence of the Tokugawa shoguns and is now on the UNESCO list. The shogun was kind of like a prime minister, he had a lot of power, and he had command over the army.
We went inside the Ninomaru Palace, which is 3300 square meters and has over 800 tatami mats on the floor. The floorboards in the hallways were intentionally creaking musically to alert the shogun of intruders, which is why ninjas had to be sneaky. If you killed a shogun, you could become a shogun yourself. We also went outside and saw the Ninomaru Garden, which is a pretty garden with a pond with three islands: Crane Island, Turtle Island, and the Island of Eternal Happiness.
We got back into the bus, and went to Rokuon-ji Temple (the Golden Pavilion) which is also on the UNESCO list. It is basically an old fancy Japanese building coated with gold.
a 600 year-old (enormous) bonsai-tree
a 600 year-old (enormous) bonsai-treeWe then went to the Kiyomizu Temple, where we got 1h free time first in order to get some food. It was 2pm, and we hadn’t eaten since 6am, so we were quite hungry. We crowded the local restaurants in the nearby souvenir street, and got some food. I had dinner with Anna and Iselin, and I ordered some fried rice with fried egg on top. It was quite eatable. We went up to the temple where we met up with the lady with the flowerstick, and she showed us the temple. I was so tired and I ended up in the back of the group, so I have no idea what she said. Therefore I have no idea of what I really saw, but I did take some nice pictures of it.
It’s a temple, so probably religion has something to do with it. There were also two lovestones, and if you touched them while thinking of the one you loved, you would get married.
Also, if you walked with your eyes closed from one stone to the other, you would certainly get married. A few of the single girls in our class had a go, which was quite funny as there was some distance and quite a lot of Japanese people in between the stones. It resulted in some funny videos on my camera. One of the stones were quite suitably placed right at the top of a staircase, and Tengyo and Mikal had apparently just managed to stop a few of the ‘blindfolded’ girls on their way past the stone and about to fall down the stairs. We went back down to the bus, which took us to the Tozankaku Hotel, where we would be staying. 
We arrived around 4pm, and go our keys. Hanne and me were sharing with Hege and Kristine, and we were very happy to discover that the elevator was out of order and that we would be staying on the 6th floor. Luckily, it turned out that the entrance to the hotel was on the 3rd floor. Logical. We were staying Ryokan style, which is the traditional Japanese style. It is actually kind of half and half, as half our hotel room has two normal beds and normal floor, and half is elevated with tatami mats, low table and pillows to sit on. Hege and Kristine had the normal beds, and Hanne and I had the futons (mattress on the tatami floor). We actually got to rest for almost two hours, before we were to have a traditional Japanese dinner. We had to dress up in our bathrobes (we suspect it is because Kjell thinks they look cool) and sit on the floor. We were serves all sorts of weird stuff, like raw fish, raw squid, raw prawns, more squid, fried squid, weird fish soup, fish fish fish and more fish. I didn’t eat much, but I gave away most of it, so that it actually looked like I had eaten things. 
Some of us decided to go out afterwards. Hanne were staying at the hotel since she would be going to see a friend the next day and had to get up early. We were 14 students and the two ‘companions’ (Kjell and Tengyo), and we took 4 taxis to Super Jankara, a karaoke bar. We rented our own room for 3 hours, we each paid 3500 yen (235 NOK) and it was all we could drink for those 3 hours. I did not really profit from it, since I only had two diet cokes, but the others certainly got their money’s worth.
It was a lot of fun, and we got back around 1am, trying not to wake up the others.
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