Nick's student exchange life in both Japan & Taiwan: First trip to Kyoto

Kyoto

At the first weekend after we reached Japan, the CIE office in my university arrange a Kyoto trip for us. However, the trip is really casual. They just assign us, the foreign students with a group of local Japanese student that will be our tourist guide for the whole day. We are free to decide where we want to visit in Kyoto and what we want to eat either.

Here are the groups of Japanese friends that will take us around for the whole days.

There are total six of them.

This is the water in front of the temple. Usually people will wash their hand using the

water before they enter the temple to pray.

This is the Todaiji Temple in Kyoto

Hera is our group picture in Todaiji

After that, we went to Kiyomizu Dera which is one of the most popular temples to visit in Kyoto. Along the path to the temple, there are a lot of shops at both sides of the path. There are some souvenir shops, traditional clothing shops, Japanese sweets shop and restaurants. We have an enjoyable journey before we finally reach the top of the hill, where the Kiyomizu Dera Temple is located.

Night view in Kyoto. Less crowded compared to Osaka.

Here is the restaurant we have our dinner.

It is a “Tabehodai” which means eat all you can but only in 90 minutes.

We are free to take any of the foods ourselves at the counter there.

There are plenty of choices for the sources.

So what we need to do is put the food inside the milk to make it wet. Then we need to dip the foods with the nestum before we fry it in the hot boiling oil. We need to estimate correctly the time we fried the foods if not it will be black when we take it out.

Here are the foods that cooked by me. There are prawn, fish and potato.

Me, Andy & Tsubasa

Me & our tourist guides

Hera is the others two tourist guides

After that, we went to a entertainment centre to take the Purikura photo. The centre is so big with all six floors together. Every floor have the different entertainment machine.