Look at me on a big trip

I like free days here a lot.  The tour was not so bad even though one of the museums we planned to visit was closed, so I am pretty glad I went instead of sitting at home.



This first picture is of a real geisha, but on TV.  My mom wanted me to take a picture of one if I saw one, but it's not very likely I will in this area.  I figured this was the next best thing.

This seems to be the Tsurugashima mascot.  I took a picture because he looks hilarious.  Western dragons almost never get this kind of treatment.

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT BOOK OFF.  Book Off is a used book/CD/DVD store, and it is probably the best thing ever.  These two things were RIGHT next to each other, and they are both things I wanted.  Seeing as how it's unlikely I'll ever play Clock Tower, though, I just went with 3x3 Eyes.  Here's the best part:  guess how much it cost.  If you guessed anything besides "fifty cents", you guessed wrong.  I looked on the back for the original price, and when that game came out it sold for about $78.  Probably the best deal I have ever found in my life, and it was right down the street.  I will be returning to Book Off frequently.

On the tour, we went to Kitain Temple in Kawagoe.  It was super neat, but astoundingly was not the most enjoyable super-Japanese thing I saw all day.  More on that later.  Anyway, here's one of the buildings.

This was outside the entrance to the museum area.  It looks nice.

Here is the garden area of the temple.  I just kind of sat there for a while, because it was very pleasant.  It didn't even matter that the weather was not exactly good today; the garden areas were just that nice.

This is the stature garden.  It was actually much, much bigger than this (there are about 500 statues of similar size), but there were so many people that the overall ambiance was kind of ruined.  Each statue represents a different disciple of the Buddha, and supposedly if you sneak in at night and touch all of them, the one that best represents you will be warm.  This is discouraged by barbed wire, so I will not be trying it.

I have no idea how this happened, but this is one of the pagoda-looking things lots of temples have.  They are constructed to be both nice-looking and earthquake-proof, so enjoy that.

This is an old building built in an old style.  It looks heavily reinforced because it is built to deter fires, as those were a common problem in a city made almost entirely of wood.

This is the fire watchtower.  If a fire was spotted, the bell would be rung and the fire brigade would hurry to the site.  Hilariously, this tower has burned down several times.

In America, people compete with their neighbors by way of having a greener lawn or a nicer garden.  In old Japan, it was done by buying the biggest, most expensive roof piece you could afford.

THIS IS SWEET POTATO ICE CREAM.  In Japan, each area has a food for which it is famous, and in Kawagoe that food is sweet potatoes for whatever reason.  For that reason, you can buy sweet potato everything, including this ice cream.  It is now my favorite flavor, and when I get home I am going to be very sad that I can't get it in America at all.

Now we come to my favorite Japanese thing of the day.  As Wesley, another student, and I were walking around Crea Mall, we found a side street that looked like it lead to something fun.  After following it for a bit, we realized we were in a graveyard.  At night.  I was super excited.

Here is me praying to no one in particular at the shrine in the graveyard. 

More graveyard.

There was another book off in Crea Mall, as well as a Kinokuniya, so it was shopping time all over again.  I bought more CDs, because that's my thing and you're going to be seeing a lot of it.  The top right  CD is Soft Ballet's "Incubate", and I got it at Book Off for about five dollars.  The remaining CDs are Yousei Teikoku's "Valkyrja", which is one of the few remaining Yousei Teikoku CDs I need to buy to complete my collection, and Perfume's "JPN", with which I fell in love just before leaving America.

Tomorrow is more school stuff.  I am not really looking forward to it, but that's okay because I'm in Japan.  On Friday we're going to Tokyo, finally, so look forward to that.