15 April 2009

It wasn’t raining this morning when I woke-up, so it was a nice way to start off my morning. Japanese language class this morning was the same as always. I realized that we only have four class sessions left, so that makes me very sad. I hope I will still be motivated enough to continue studying Japanese on my own so I can at least learn to get by. After class, I got lunch with Shae and Trudy at a cheap noodle and rice bowl place on Snajo-dori. For 440 yen, I got miso soup, salad, and a beef rice bowl with raw egg. It was very good, and it was actually too much food for any of us to finish. I think this was the first time since I’ve been in Japan that I haven’t been able to completely finish a meal. It’s pretty crazy to think how much food that was! After lunch, we did the long walk to the Kyoto Community Center for our studio class. Since we got there early, I was even able to finish one page of my Japanese language homework before studio started. During class, we presented our project design, and it seemed to be well-received. Hopefully Trudy and I won’t have to do too much more work on it to finish it for the deadline next week.
Everyone seemed to be really tired today from our intense travelling yesterday, so no one wanted to go do anything after class. I felt energetic enough to check out a few places, so I ended up spending the rest of the afternoon and early evening doing stuff by myself. It is always so refreshing to travel alone, so today was a very good day. First, I decided to check out the Kyoto Handicraft Center. It was about a 15 minute walk from the Kyoto Community Center, and luckily it was still a descent day outside. Nadine McCarty had told me about the Kyoto Community Center, and I’m really glad she told me about it. It was a seven story building with multiple shops within. There was everything from kimonos to swords to paintings to dolls to jewelry to souvenirs in the building, and it was full of tourists. Even all of the employees spoke very good English. I was definitely impressed. I didn’t find anything that I couldn’t live without, but it was a nice place, and I wandered around there for about an hour. Afterwards, I wanted to check out the headquarters store of Raak, a popular textile shop in Kyoto. Don had sent us directions via email, so I was able to use my phone to follow the directions. I had to walk across town to get there, but it was better than spending 420 yen on the subway. It was nice outside, so I enjoyed the long walk. I also found a grocery store along my walk, so I bought six bananas for 198 yen and a bag of tangerines for 350 yen.
Raak was very cool, and I loved everything in the store. I had already been in about six different branches of the store during my visit here thus far, but this one had everything. I was specifically looking for a 1 meter squared handkerchief in a pattern that I liked, since they can be folded into three different styles of purses. After talking with one of the sales women for quite some time and looking at practically all of the fabrics, I found on that I liked and bought it for 2650 yen. At all of the other branches of Raak, the employees will not fold the purse for you (I know this because Shae bought one and had to fold it herself). Here, however, the two ladies collaborated to perfectly fold my purse for me. I was so excited! I even got a pamphlet on how to fold the three styles of purses. I can’t wait to start using it!
After my long adventure at Raak, I decided it was time to head back home. Since the Cocon Karasuma Building was on my way home, I decided to walk for another 10 minutes to go photograph the building, rather than jump on the subway and miss it. The interior of the mini mall was done by Kengo Kuma, so I figured I would photograph it and be able to shop around a bit. The interior was not very impressive, and I have resultantly been fairly disappointed with a lot of his work thus far. The mini mall was cool though, and window shopping was fun. Finally, I caught the subway and went home. I made pasta for dinner and put pink fish sauce with nori on it. It was really good and was way cheaper than going out. The rest of the night was spent hanging out with Trudy and Jeff, and I also did some homework. Overall, today was a great day with lots of exercise and excitement.