Day 2: The Land of Water

We had quite the adventure on day 2 of our Japan trip. We set out pretty early in the morning and ate a Japanese breakfast consisting of potatoes, chicken nuggets and salmon? Then we headed on to two Ando projects via Japan public transit. And once again our journey took about 5 times as long as we expected it to. But first we took about 3 trains and two buses and made it out to Awaji Island to see the garden of 100 steps and Westin Hotel. The gardens were absolutely beautiful, and looking back at the pictures it actually looks fake to me.

It is so perfect it is kind of surreal. It started raining while we were at the gardens and then didn't stop for days. We ate lunch at the Westin which consisted of ice cream and candy and then we watched the typhoon weather roll in. Then we were stuck at the Westin hotel waiting for our bus for over an hour, but at least they had free wifi.

We finally made it on the bus and luckily the bus made it through the typhoon, but then it dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and we walked to the Water Temple also by Tadao Ando. The rain did not let up and our teacher told us we had to be completely soaked in order to enter the Water Temple, and yes we were. This was the first Buddhist temple I have ever been to, and we all had to take our shoes off before we entered, and then walked around in our soggy socks. Had they known I think they would have rather had us keep our shoes on. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the temple but we could photograph the architecture around the exterior.

I've seen this place so many times in photographs, but it is such a different experience getting to be there and explore anywhere you want to and getting to actually touch and smell the place. That's definitely something a photograph will never be able to achieve. After visiting the temple our real adventure began. We hiked back down the road to our lovely bus stop and then learned that the bus would not be coming for an hour, and then later learned that there was no bus that would take us directly where we wanted to go. So after an hour of standing out in the rain in soggy socks we ended up right back at our favorite Westin. Thank goodness for that free wifi. But we all survived the typhoon and many hours later we landed safe and sound right back at our hotel.

Since we had a terrible lunch today I went out to eat a good dinner with a few people in my group. We were eager to try some real authentic Japanese food so we walked down a small alley right near our hotel and found a cute little restaurant to try. It is fun trying to order food in Japan because the waitresses don't speak a lot of English but they can understand a little if you are able to act it out. They are so eager to help and try and they are just generally such nice people here. Our waitress found out we were American and they made us these little desserts before we left and we took photographs with them. It was such a great experience and now at least we know what the name of the restaurant is. It is very hard to blog about food and restaurants because I cannot distinguish the name of anything from the Japanese characters. But I have been trying a lot of different foods and I am slowly learning a few Japanese characters. 

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Osaka and move onto another island.