First day in Kyoto

I feel like so much has happened, and it makes me feel like we've been here for a long time but this is only our second day!

But let's see.. when we got settled in our room yesterday we sent out a mass text message/email to our friends who live in the area, and then got bombarded by replies!  It was nice that they were all so excited and eager to see us. :)  But texting on phones in Japanese is kinda a bitch, and it took forever to reply to everyone lol.  Hopefully i'll get used to it soon.

Anyway, our friend R that we met at UW in Autumn Quarter last year wanted to see us after he got out of class.  So S and i did a little walking around, got some lunch at a neat little udon shop just around the corner from us, then went and got some necessities at the little drug store down the road before we met up with him.  He took us to the little downtown area of Kyoto, which was just one stop away on the subway.  We walked all around the little shopping district and looked in the stores, and he even treated us to 30 minutes in a neko cafe, or cat cafe, where you pay for time and a drink and get to sit and pet all the cute little kitties that live there!

Delicious, warm udon on a cold day

The little udon shop, the menu's up there along the top

Pretty river in Kyoto

Sass!

R, our awesome guide for the day!

Cute kitty at the neko cafe!

Cute little kitty kisses, or a kitty bath maybe

Woo yeah!

R trying on some crazy goggles

And S trying on some crazy classes

Tiny tits

There was a temple in the shopping center, just right amongst all of the stores, and a shrine too that we got to explore.

The torii, or gate to the shrine

Nishikitenmanguu shrine

More purty lanterns

Lots of ema

Making a wish to the gods

Then we took a little sit-down break at a cafe and waited for our little T-chan to come over from Osaka and meet us!  S and i were so excited, we met him at UW and spent a lot of time together last year but hadn't seen him since he went back to Japan in August.  We embarrassed him plenty by giving him lots of hugs in public.  R had to leave then, but T-chan drove us around, to some park (i can't remember the name) that had some cherry blossom trees illuminated by lanterns, and a temple and other cool things.  It was pretty dark, but still neat.  Afterward we were all pretty hungry, but it was pretty late so we drove around forever looking for someplace that was open to eat.  Finally found ガスト (Gast? Gust? Not sure how to write it in English, or what it's supposed to mean), a Denny's-ish restaurant that's open late and has lots of delicious food-things to eat.  Then T-chan dropped us back at our place before he headed home himself.

Taking a break at the cafe

Our little boy, all grown up with his hair cut and back to black to look for jobs, being all serious and such! *sniffle*

Driving us around town, cuz he's cool like that

Statue of some famous samurai (whose names i can't remember) at the park we went to

Pretty lanterns in the dark, lighting up the trees

I got the mayo-corn pizza set from the restaurant, it came with a salad and a corn potage soup. (The pic's from their website, i forgot to take a picture of it..)

T-chan's gangsta face!

S and i didn't have anyone to meet up with today, so we slept in, took our time getting ready, then stopped by the Seven-Eleven down the street to get some things for lunch before walking up to the 清水寺 (Kiyomizu Temple).  It was really pretty, we spent a good few hours there and i got lots of pictures.  My throat is really sore though, has been since i woke up this morning, and i'm pretty tired so i'll post a lot of those pictures tomorrow.