21 April 2009

I woke up around 6am this morning so Jeff and I could get a jump start on the flea market held at Toji Temple. It technically started at 5am, but the website said most of the booths wouldn’t be ready until 9am. Since it is regarded as the largest flea market in Kyoto, we figured we could get there early and possibly have enough time to pass through it twice. It was only a short 10 minute walk away from our weekly mansion, but the weather was on the verge of rain. It was gloomy, but the humidity keeps the air fairly warm. We arrived at the flea market, and it seemed to go on for a long ways. We leisurely wandered through the maze of booths, but it was much different than flea markets I have been to in the U.S. Most of the booths actually had new stuff, but the items were very characteristic to Kyoto. There were very few booths actually selling used items, and the prices were in the middle range. I bought a few small items for friends, but I didn’t find any spectacular buys. Jeff found a lot of Japanese fabrics to buy for his mother since she sews. I really had a good time browsing, and it was interesting to see how many other tourists were there as well.
After the flea market, we were scheduled to meet up with Don at 1pm. We had an appointment to visit Endo Shuhei’s office in Osaka at 6pm, so Don wanted us to leave earlier in order for us to see a few of his projects before meeting him in person. We took the train and got off at Osaka Castle. On the Osaka Castle grounds, there were three very small Shuhei projects: two public restrooms and one café. Shuhei is well-known for his simplicity and experimentation in architecture, but the scale was a bit small to get an overall feel for his work. It was raining very hard for most of the time we were walking too, so all of us were soaking wet by the end. We took another subway line to get to Shuhei’s office. We arrived 15 minutes early, but he was with a client, and we ended up having to wait for about an hour for him to finish up. By then, most of us were very tired and extremely hungry. Once entering his office, we quickly realized he did not speak English. Don translated the entire time he was talking, but everyone could tell a lot of information was lost in translation. After his presentation, we weren’t even allowed to see his office. It was kind of lame, but I’m assuming it was just really small.
By the end of his presentation, everyone was completely exhausted. One of Shuhei’s coworkers walked us to a very good Chinese restaurant. I ordered a Chinese ramen, and it was really good. It was also very oily and greasy, so that’s probably why it tasted so good. Haha. After dinner, it was already after 9pm. We still had an hour long train ride to look forward to in order to get back home to Kyoto. I completely passed out on the ride back, and I wrote a paper for my architectural theory class before going to sleep.