I’m glad I brought my walking shoes. Over the past twelve days, I’ve really become a hero to tourists everywhere. It’s because I’ve made it a point to get all of my sightseeing out of the way before school starts next week, and even though I’ve done and seen so much—shrines, temples, shopping districts, thrift stores—I’ve come to the firm conclusion that I still haven’t come close to seeing all that Kyoto has to offer. Doing so would likely take years, which is far more time than I have. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying.

It’s been difficult, though, being the world’s greatest tourist. This “vacation” frame of mind is making any of the actual responsibilities I may have feel almost nonexistent, like a fantasy. Every other time I’ve been on vacation, it’s been during an allocated chunk of time away from school, so being in vacation-mode whilst preparing for classes has not been easy. I’ve mainly just been relying on others in my program to tell me if there’s something I need to worry about, and if I don’t hear anything, then that means everything’s A-OK. This is bad for a whole bunch of reasons, but mainly:
A) the people around me might very well be working hard to polish up their schedules, but are not so kind as to share any of their wisdom with me, or
B) everyone is doing exactly what I am—waiting for a knight in shining armor to come lead the way… but alas, they never will.
I hope my mindset will shift once I develop an actual routine. Every day I wake up with a docket filled to the brim with something entirely new—it’s hard to stop and think about building good habits. I’ve been getting swept up. I know that once school starts, I will envy the free time I have now, so truthfully, I am not too concerned with being perfect just yet. Though, I am looking forward to more of a regimen, because amongst all the spontaneity, the eerie feeling that I am forgetting something important is always lurking around.

But enough lurking. Here’s what I’ve actually been doing:

First was my trip to Kiyomizu-dera temple, on the eastern edge of upper Kyoto, tucked into the mountains. It began with a trek up a steep path, through an expansive cemetery filled with thousands of obelisk-style gravestones.

Walking past the gravestones led us directly to the temple. It’s spring in Kyoto, and we’re at the cusp of cherry blossom season, so it was quite a zoo. I can’t be that mad, however. I am part of the problem just like everyone else.

Next was the Fushimi Inari shrine, which might be one of the most famous in all of Japan. It consists of thousands of bright red torii gates that weave their way through the shadowed, ancient forests of Mount Inari. Because the ocean of tourists was reaching high tide when we arrived, I opted to take a lesser known “short-cut,” which was really just me dragging my group up a mountain, through bamboo forests and past old, near-forgotten shrines and graves. What began as a clever, yet daring, plan to escape the crowds, turned into something much more sinister. Before we knew it, we found ourselves in the thick of rural Kyoto, with absolutely nobody around to show us the way. Not even a single sign. So, I, recognizing that I had gotten us into this mess, but harboring far too much pride to admit that I’d messed up, conjured up all the fake confidence I had to trick everyone into thinking that I still knew what I was doing. And so, we pushed on, further and further into the unknown. Eventually, and thankfully, we lucked out and merged back with the main path at the peak of Mount Inari. As I would later come to find, we had taken the back way up the mountain, which is so obscure that it didn’t show up on any of the maps we saw.

Finally, here’s a random assortment of photos from my travels which I have accrued, which I feel should be shared.