Kon'nichiwa from Kyoto

Dressed up as a Samurai

こんにちは

Kon'nichiwa from Kyoto! That means hello in Japanese. 

We have been to Kyoto. We took a train from Osaka to Kyoto. It took us about 30 minutes to get there.

Kyoto is a place with a lot of temples! I mean, a lot of temples… 1600 to be exact.  Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan and was the emperor’s home starting in 794 until it moved to Tokyo in 1868.  Kyoto has lots of culture and history.  

We saw quite a few temples when we were in Kyoto.  1 was the most popular temple because it was one of the first built.  Chio-in is the head temple of the Jodo sect of Japanese Buddhism. some people say it was built by a Japanese God. There were a bunch of different buildings inside he grounds. There was also a big bell tower.

 

My favourite part of Kyoto was when we went to the samurai and ninja museum. 

We actually had lessons on how to throw ninja stars, shoot blow darts and hold real samurai swords. The swords were heavy. 

Throwing ninja stars

blowdarts

blowdarts

We got dress up like a samurai, the armour was heavy too. 

We also saw a samurai demonstration. We learned about samurai manners, about how focused the samurais were and sword moves. I loved that.   

We learned about history of samurai. 

One of the first stories we learned about was the 47 ronin. Ronin are leaderless samurai.  They were fighting the person who killed their master.   Out of the 47 Ronin, all died but one.  They killed themselves (called suppuku)  by cutting  there belly in half. actually there were 48 counting there leader but the youngest did not die so 47 died out of 48.  They killed themselves because they committed a crime by fighting, winning the battle and drawing a sword in a castle.  They wanted a honourable death, so that is why they committed suppuku.  

We also learned about the Japanese Feudal System.  The Emperor is on the top, and the Shogun was below him, but the Shogun really ran the country. 

  We learned about the Last Samurai too. 

the last samurai

  (We watched the movie with Tom Cruise in it that night too I would recommend it but according to the people at the museum it wasn’t as true as it could have been) There is also a movie about the 47 ronin don’t watch it.  .

On the final day, we saw a temple called Kiyomizu-dera. The Kiyomizu-dera temple is on the world heritages site list and is very famous. 

Also, we saw the Buddahs trail where there are Buddahs everywhere.   I patted 3, one for bravery, another for kindness and another for good luck. I think it is working.   

I don't have a picture of the buddahs :(

We were also introduced to button toilets. They can spray fresh water on your butt :). At first I didn’t want to try it, but I decided to.  Guess what? It was great.   

See ya later alligator !

Nate