Tour guiding

On the 26th Mom and I made it out to Kiyomizudera and Sanjusangendo temples, along with Yasaka shrine. In general it was beautiful weather but uneventful, but we did manage to do a good deed while about to leave this lovely café that we’d found on the way down from Kiyomizudera. Just as we were getting ready to leave, a couple of foreigners (I later learned that they were from Boston) sat down at another table, and I overheard them ask for an English menu, which the café did not have. I liked the place a lot, and I knew that if they couldn’t read the menu the couple would leave, so I helped them with ordering as much as I could. They were really nice people, and I hope that they like what they ordered. On the same day we also took a walk around Gion, though we were both tired enough that we didn’t go far. We did, however, manage to see a young geisha heading into the Ichiriki teahouse in full dress. This was the first time that I’d seen a geisha dressed to go out, so it was pretty exciting for me. That was a long day but a good one.
It must have been on the 27th then that Mom and I went to Nishijin to look around and get souvenirs. That was also fun, especially since they had a different fashion show from the last two times that I’ve been there. These ones were nice, but they had some more modern features that I wasn’t as fond of, such as pink-feathered obi accessories with matching headbands. They also had a couple of ensembles that matched obi and kimono colours pretty closely instead of complementing them as is more common. On the evening of the 27th my sister arrived from the US, and we were able to talk for pretty much the first time since the year began. The shuttle that I had arranged for her had been a lot harder to find than promised, I was told that a driver would be standing outside customs waiting with her name on a card but she wound up at the hotel safe and sound anyway, so I considered it a victory.
-Nene’s street up behind Yasaka shrine is lovely, but there were more hills than I remembered.
-You can’t go into the cool Victorian hotel behind Yasaka that I went to with my host mother unless you are eating there.
-At the Nishijin Textile Centre, scarves are not as easy to find as one might think, though they are available, along with a HUGE range of neckties.