6 April 2009

Today began a new week, and it once again began with Japanese language class. The lessons continue to be very intense, but I’m hoping that the language will slowly begin to stick in my mind. I know most of the verbs and vocabulary that we learn from listening to my grandma talk, so I just need to practice and understand the sentence structure and tenses a bit more. After language class, I ate at Nakau again and got a small beef rice bowl for 290 yen. It was very filling, especially for how cheap it was. I have still been unable to find anything of comparable value for the amount of food that I receive there, so I’m hoping I can find another one once we move to our apartments on Thursday. After lunch, I had my Arch 420 class from 12:30-2:30pm. Since my class was taking up too much space in the hotel lounge, Don split the class into two sessions based on which language class we are in.
After both of the Arch 420 sessions were complete, Don planned to take the class to the Cherry Blossom Festival and additionally check out the Gion District. Since Trudy and I had already visited both of these sites, we opted not to go and instead planned a trip to Heian-jingu Temple. It was located fairly close to our hotel, and we were able to walk there in about 20 minutes. It is known for its beautiful garden and huge gateway. I presume the gateway must be at least 40 or 50 feet tall, and it is painted bright orange just like the temple itself. The garden cost 600 yen to get into, which seemed a bit steep, but all of the online reviews raved about how beautiful the garden was, so Trudy and I decided to just pay the admission fee. I’m glad we did because the scenery of the garden was amazingly beautiful.
For dinner, we wanted to try a new place we had never been to. Since we didn’t find anything reasonably priced around Heian-jingu Temple, we walked back towards the area our hotel is located in. About a block down the street from our hotel, we tried a place that some of our classmates had recommended. The restaurant had a large variety of Japanese and “American” foods. I ordered some chow mien noodles, and we split an order of gyoza. This meal cost me 579 yen. It was very good, and there are many things on the menu that I would like to go back and try.
The rest of the night Trudy and I worked on our architecture studio project. The final is due on Wednesday, but tomorrow we will be traveling to the Katsura Detached Palace for a tour, so we wanted to get a jump start on the work. I think we might also try to photograph Tadao Ando’s Times Building in Kyoto tomorrow morning before heading to our 2:30pm tour appointment at Katsura because it looks much better in the morning sun. We shall see if I’m able to wake up in the morning since I have been so tired lately.