>>Downtown Kyoto - Three Times in Three Days<<

After you sit in your room enough, you tend to grow bored of the Japanese infomercials for face cream and foot massagers. I chose to take the bus downtown on Monday. Downtown Kyoto is mostly two main drags lined with shops. Most are clothing and cell phone shops, though there are a few interesting ones like the Elvis eatery pictured below. I also went to Teramachi which is a covered shopping area downtown. Teramachi features tons of shops aimed at selling gaijin souvenirs they don’t really need but are oddly fascinated by such as papier-mâché sumo wrestler cats and hamburger shaped CD cases.

I did a fair amount of shopping over the three days I was downtown. I bought the Gizmo cell phone strap you see attached to Ikanago and a few accessories for Ikagano as well. Other purchases made were a new album called “Sorezoreni” by Atari Kousuke with the beautiful title song of the same name (it really is superb), and practice books for the Japanese proficiency exam.

I returned downtown on Tuesday with my friend Kevin. We looked around the same area, with the added change of visiting a café for overpriced coffee. They give you sugar syrup instead of cane sugar oftentimes in Japan. So you get your coffee and then you pour in this goopy clear syrup.

I returned downtown on Wednesday with my host mom Misako to buy gifts for Kevin (different Kevin). This Kevin is the American boy Daisuke stayed with when he studied abroad in California for a year. He is coming to Japan and staying at our house for a couple days next week. We looked around the same area as before, with the added change of freaking out over what to buy King Kevin, the golden child.

I won’t go into my rant about how the Murata family didn’t go out to eat when I moved in, but Kevin gets a Chinese Buffet. Or how Misako suddenly switches to English because she is so worried about what Kevin will think, or about the gifts Kevin gets. I wouldn’t let Misako buy the $75 T-shirt she wanted to get Kevin – the thought of buying a t-shirt for that much was enough to make me throw-up my delicious Shakey’s pizza buffet lunch. We compromised on $50 dollar sandals for Kevin. Misako would later go to the mall and buy T-shirts on her own for Kevin. Sneaky…very sneaky.

B.E.W.