Todays the day!!! The day of wearing Kimonos!! I was so excited since I made the reservation two days in advance and I even woke up buzzing with excitement. At around 7:05am, Belle, Chloe, and I headed out to the Kiyomizu-dera area ( this is the place with the old looking pretty streets and temple that looks over Kyoto). Our reservation was at 8am and we ended up getting there at around 7:45am. We walked around for a bit then headed in. We were greeting by this middle aged Japanese lady that spoke pretty good English! Being the try hard student I am, I tried to speak Japanese the entire time we were there, the women there said I had a good accent!

We all chose our kimonos, belts, and accessories and the women there got to work. I never realized how many layers a kimono had but there was alot. There was a white under cover, a lot of straps to tie it together, towels to keep the shape firm, the actual designed kimono cover, the belt, and accessories. Overall it took 30 minutes to get dressed and about 15 minutes for them to do our hair. It was a really fun experience as I tried to speak through it.

Once we got out we headed towards Kiyomizu-dera to take so many photos. The plan was to go early to miss the crowds but the crowd was still there. We took some photos at the top then headed down the hill. A lot of other foreigners asked to take photos with us which was kinda weird but we said no. Here’s some photos though of the temple with us in it!

We headed down the hill to the shopping area. Belle and Chloe got some goods from the stores and we took photos along the way as we could. It did get crowded fast but we managed. The worst part of the kimonos were the shoes. The shoes are basically wedged flip flops that were a little too small and you had to wear socks with a little cut for the flip flop. Here’s a photo of what it kind of looked like.

We walked around a while. I headed to the Ghibli and freaked out for a bit ( as in I bought a cute mug with Spirited Away and sat next to JiJi from Kiki’s Delivery Service). After our shopping was over we went to a couple other area for photos then headed back to the kimono shop to get undressed. We were lucky it was cloudy in the morning but the afternoon started to get really warm, especially in all those layers.

After we got back in our regular clothes, we took a walk to the Pokémon Center of Kyoto. I already went earlier in the week so I won’t go into much detail there. And No I didn’t spend more money at the center this time I held back. After the Pokémon center we went exploring near Nishiki market and all it’s cool stores. We went to the otter café but it was full sadly but we explored instead! We saw a sticker store that was really cool. It kind of reminded me of Zumiez at home. We also went through some anime stores with many many figures and a thrift store that was too expensive to be thrift. We had to be back to our hotel at 4pm for our next schedule event so I grabbed a cream puff ( shuu-cream in Japanese) and we all headed to the station.

We made it home just in time for our class time and got on the bus to KCG. We were going to a pizza party and meeting the student we were going to be working with! We arrived at the school and got a tour of the grad program and meet our teammates.

Tangent time: we got pizza from a popular chain around here called pizza-la. To be honest it was really sweet and didn’t sit well in my tummy but it’s ok. There was only 1 plain pizza though the others were overly topped for my taste. There was chicken nuggets though! Ok tangent over.

We met with our groups, hung out for a bit, then headed home. We got a nice group pic on the bus ride home though!

After wards us RIT kids went to family mart for some snacks and drinks and played jackbox party pack together since it was an early night. That was pretty much my free day! I keep forgetting to take pictures of my merch but think of it as a surprise for my last post when I show everything I’ve gotten ( cause I’m not done yet we have a whole week in the anime fans center of the world Akihabara)

See you next time blog!