It was the bread!

June 1, 2008

Woke up around 6 because one of our roommates started snoring and I wasn't able to get back to sleep. Did some stretches to kill time. Went to Daiichi Asahi to get some more delicious ramen for breakfast. Went to Kyoto station to check out some stores before the Noh Festival at Heian Shrine. There were lots of designer labels flying around and I couldn't understand what the fuss was all about. Winston was pretty excited about seeing the Burberry Blue label. Score one for mass consumption I guess. I went back to the hostel early to rest for a bit since I had a bit of a stomach ache. I think it was the bread that I ate in the morning after I did exercises. Never again, it'll be eaten right away or not at all. I think Winston ended up buying a couple of shirts.

Ran into Jen as we were leaving for Heian Shrine and were introduced to Ryan. We head off and manage to catch the last express bus to Heian Shrine. The gates open at 4:30 and the plays start at 5:30. We get there and there's already masses and masses of people lined up to get in. All of the good seats are taken by the time we make it in so we end up sitting on a bunch of wooden flats covered in cloth. The first play is kinda boring but one of the drummers has a crazy robotic hand motion for hitting his drum and I just end up watching him most of the first play since it makes no sense if you don't understand Japanese. Following the first play, the Mayor of Kyoto made a speech and some fires around the stage were lit. The following plays got more interesting although it would have been awesome if I could have understood any of the dialogue. I liked the one with the forgetful daimyo and his assistant the best. Pretty amusing.

The plays end and we head off to find somewhere to eat. We find a place called Chiku-ya to eat since it was recommended in Ryan's guide book. I'm feeling sleepy from waking up early and extra crappy from the bread so I'm pretty close to passing out the entire time we're there and I can't even manage to eat the whole bowl of don buri that I ordered. Everyone else got various types of udon, and our waitress was really slow so it took forever to get our food. I felt on the verge of death for a bit. Stupid bread. I welcome sleep.