Floating Gazebo that was really beautiful in the setting sun.

The bamboo forest I had wanted to see so badly! :D

My weekend in the Kansai area started out with waking up at 6am in order to make it into Kochi Station and get on the Kochi-Osaka high way bus at 8:50. The bus took 5 hours to get to Osaka station (got there at 1:50 aprox) and met with my Tokyo orientation roomy Julienne for a bit at HEP5. We ate the most fantastic parfaits... none of that fake crap. These had real cake and ice cream in them.
At five she had to head to a concert, so I headed my way over to Kyoto to chill with Kai (who had orientation that day). We walked around Kyoto, looking for food and shopping a little. We had the most amazing (but EXPENSIVE) yakiniku.

The next morning we went to Nara, and apparently they were prepping for a little festival. After seeing the various shrines and playing with the deer, we went to watch some dancing and eat festival food. It was a pretty chill night, and i was exhausted so we got a movie and watched DROP (about middle school drop-outs in a gang).

Sunday we got up earlier and went to meet Makoto in Kyoto. I wanted to see a bamboo forest I had seen in a shojyo manga so we took a train to Arashiyama and walked through the forest. It was really cool and refreshing in the forest compared to the unbearable heat outside of it. Next, we went to Gion and walked around until finding my FAVORITE izakaya from my study-abroad time... Torikizoku. Everything chicken, and everything 280 yen. Once home, we watched Kung fu Hustle (finally got around to seeing it!).

Monday was an odd day. After leaving Kai's, I headed off to Hirakata to surprise visit my Host Family. They weren't home and I figured they'd gone shopping because their bikes weren't there, but the car was. I gave myself a time limit (only 45 min of waiting before I'd leave). It was 5 to 11am when one of my Host mom's friends drove by, recognized me, and told me they had moved to Kagoshima. She then went on to take me out to lunch and back to her house for a tea ceremony. It was such an odd occurance... and I totally remembered her from last year. One night we had gone over to her house for dinner. I remembered because the little girl (who was adorable and talkative) was the fattest baby when I was there and didn't do anything but eat and scream. She was so fat looking I had wanted to punt her back then... but she was very adorable now. I could only imagine how cute Nansei must be now that he can properly talk!