Day #7

Today was a day of shopping and hanging out! We went to the department stores in Kyoto. The odd thing about the department stores is that they have food in them like grocery stores. The set up of the department stores in general are weird. I guess they are kind of like malls but without the hall-like look of malls and you can hardly tell the seperation of the different stores. So actually it looks like a department store but you buy from different vendors. It's hard to explain. The funniest thing is that when you go into any store the person who works in the store greets you by saying something like "masumasen" but in a nasily, annoying, valleygirl-like way. At the department stores though you can hear everyone saying it. At one point there were 2 or 3 girls who worked in this one part of the department store and they were all just saying "masumasen" over and over in their annoying way REALLY loud! It was so annoying and so funny at the same time that Rach had to videotape it so that we could remember it always! :)

The fashion in general there was funny and cool, depending on what it was. The "in" style was to wear pants under skirts and HUGE socks that look like leg warmers. The other thing was wearing t-shirts with English on it. The funny part of the English t-shirts was that a lot of the shirts said some pretty funny things. Like at Disney we saw a girl with a shirt that said, "ALCOHOLIC" (thanks Rachel!). They also had shirts that you could tell were created by the Japanese because the grammar was incorrect. They were shirts that we would be throwing out, giving away to the salvation army or selling at a yard sale. The cool fashions were the hippie style clothes that they had. I bought a rope belt with little wood beads and also a silver shawl thing that you tie around your waist. SO CUTE! They had a lot of tops that I wanted to buy but they were a little too expensive, plus I wasn't sure how the fitting room thing worked. I did see that you were suppose to put on slippers to go into the fitting room but I didn't feel like trying it out. Lazy, I guess.

Hope HAD to buy the big socks before she came home to the US so she pondered over what length to get. She finally decided on the Medium size ones that were practically as tall as her. :)



We ate ice cream in the mall (which tasted pretty buttery) and I snagged a sandwich and a Fanta grape.



Hope and Rach ate a Japanses meal in a restarant later on.



We walked around Kyoto more trying to find Gieshas because they were rumored to be out on the street we were walking on at the time we were there. We didn't see any Gieshas but we found a Print Club store.

The Print Club store just had Print Club machines in it. There were millions of teeny boppers with their friends. It's like going to an arcade in the US. We stuck out like a sore thumb there and we got a lot of people staring and curious as to why three twentysomething Americans were waiting in line to do Print Club. HEHE! We had such a good time there....we must have spent a few hours hanging out there. The Print Club machines in this place was 500% better than the one in the Kyoto Tower. The first one we went to was the best and those photos came out the best too. You put in your money, chose a setting and it starts. We chose the setting that mixed the camera shots around. There were 3 cameras, one up high, one in the middle and one down real low. There were screens that showed you what the cameras were seeing so that you can make sure that everyone is in the shot. This was the fun part. Once the machine starts it gives you a countdown (in Japanese) and flashes the light of the camera that it's going to take a picture from. You have to get everyone in the screen and do a funny pose or whatever you want. Then this repeats for a few minutes. So it's pretty much an aerobic workout because you are looking to see what camera is going to take the picture jump or squat to get in the frame, pose and then find what camera is going to take the next photo.....so much fun!! After the aerobic workout and hysterical laughter you are prompted to pick the poses you like the best and decorate them with backgrounds, writing, little clip art, etc. You also pick how many stickers you want and then it prints it out for you. Somehow though the other machines were not as fun as the original one and even when we went back to that same machine Hope couldn't figure out how to choose that same setting that makes you jump around at each camera. We did get a few other shots that were good but none like the first round.

We shopped at more stores after Print Club and then walked around the small little roads by a river....so quaint and cute! It reminded me a little of the riverwalk in San Antonio except way more peaceful. After our walk we went back to the Kyoto Station and had dinner at an Italian restaurant (well, the Japanese version of Italian...hehe) and then sat in the Kyoto Tower for a long time while we waited for our overnight bus to Nagano (we stored all of our luggage in the lockers at the station for the day). I remember playing a little game at the top of Kyoto Tower where you put in money and you had to open 3 of 9 doors. One of the doors had a prize in it. I won the first time and got a keychain with a cute character on it. I tried a few more times and so did Rachel. When you lost it made this funny "loser" sound so the people still in the tower with us were watching us be losers and laughed until we had no more coins left.....hehe!

The overnight bus ride this time was HELL!!!! My neck was in incredible pain and I think I slept maybe an hour or two on an off. It was torture, I opened my eyes every 10 or 15 minutes. I really didn't think we were ever going to get there.....or I was going to make it. VERY BAD!!!!