Today has been quite an interesting day, full of new experiences! 

The day began very early in the morning, at around 7:15am for us, where we got our boxed breakfast from our hotel and then promptly boarded our bus again for our last tour through Kyoto. We first went to a Buddhist temple for a Sanzen Meditation! The meditation was led by the Master Monk of the temple we were in, and was a really interesting experience! We had two 15 minute intervals that consisted of sitting on small rectangular pillows with our legs crossed and on top of one another, our backs straight and hands forming a circle on our lap, and breathing in and out slowly while looking straight ahead. The master monk slowly walked around while we meditated, and we could request he use his kaisuke (a somewhat long and flat stick made of wood, somewhat similar to baseball bat) to give us a “strong tap” on our backs to get us back into focus or prevent falling asleep. It was sort of hard to keep my back straight for so long, and my back muscles began to hurt after a little while, but overall I enjoyed learning what some zen monks go through in order to train and reach their goals. It’s not easy at all to stay focused for that long!

Afterwards, we journeyed to the Sanjusangen-do Temple, a national treasure of Japan. Inside we saw the 1,001 statues of the goddess Kannon, as well as 34 other gods, all from Buddhism. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, so I took as much time as I could to see it all and take everything in! 

After that, it was back to the historical district in Kyoto, near the Kiyomizu-dera Temple. Here, we were invited to take part in a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony! It’s a sacred ceremony with its own set of rules and etiquette that need to be strictly followed, which we learned about from our ceremony host.  There is Wa, Ka, Se, and Jaku; Wa means peace and harmony (only talking about pleasant things and no politics, countries, or things like that), Ka means respect (personal space, only doing one thing at a time, etc), Se means purity (cleansing oneself of unpure thoughts and using only the specified tools in the tea ceremony), and Jaku means tranquility (taking in the quiet space of the tea room, that is separate from all the hustle and bustle of the outside world). 

She demonstrated the process for making matcha tea, and afterwards she allowed me to drink the cup of tea she had made! It was really good, and was some of the best and most traditional matcha tea I’ve ever had. Once she had demonstrated, she then moved on to the first part of the ceremony, which was eating sweets. Sweets are always eaten before the matcha, and so this time we had a Yuzu jelly, which was a clear jelly filled with Yuzu, a lemony citrus fruit from Japan (super tasty!) After that, we got to all make out own cup of matcha as well. 

Once that was over, we then headed over to the Nishiki Market, a long narrow street filled to the brim with local street food shops! This was one of the places I had been looking forward to seeing, and it was so exciting! There was so much interesting food that I wanted to try: dango, octopus and squid on a skewer, takoyaki, tayaki, mocha, beef skewers, I could go on and on! I ended up trying some fried chicken, an ichigo daifuku (mochi bun filled with sweet bean paste and a strawberry), an octopus on a stick, and a beef skewer (was a little fatty 🙁

Overall, a fun time! By this time though, our group wanted to get moving and back to our hotel to rest up in time for bowling later, so I missed out on a chance to get a yummy looking squid meat skewer. Next time!