Travelling around Kyoto

uji_fireworks
Originally uploaded by 0ranginia.

It's been a wild week...

I was in Kyoto for a JET orientation last week with a bunch of the other high school AETs for a few days... Due to the O Bon holidays,
I got 3 additional unexpedted days off! My orientation roommate, Ilona, lived only a few stops outside of Kyoto, and she invited me to crash with her for the weekend and our days off. And this is how friendships get started.

So fireworks are big at this time of the year... We went to Uji, a nearby city, where tens of thousands of exceptionally well behaved Japanese gathered to watch the fireworks, eat, and celebrate. It was amazing to see the full regalia of the "yukatas" (summer kimonos) out in full force. At one point, the police were stopping people to keep them from overcrowding the train platforms and still there were no riots or stomping on eachothers toes. In America, there definitely would've been a few shoves and definitely a few words exchanged...