Awesome times with Auntie Darcy Part 1

Awesome times with Auntie Darcy Part 1


We went to pick up our Aunt Darcy from Alberta, at the Osaka airport.
She is my mom’s sister and she will be staying with us for 2 weeks!! I was excited to see her. 

Nate and my Dad went to the nintendo check in and played video games, while my mom and I waited for her at the arrivals gate.

We decided to go to Dotonbori to check out it out and for dinner. My Aunt Darcy loved going to Dotonbori. When we were there we met up with our friends, Paul and Beth, again it was very fun.

The next day, we went to Kyoto!! 

on the train to Kyoto

When we got there we went to a fox temple. It was called Fushimi Inari. It was cool. We went there because my mom’s maiden name was fox. There were a bunch of fox statues at this temple because the foxes are the messengers of the rice god Inari. There were also hundreds of red / orange gates. I thought it was pretty and cool.

one of the foxes

We also went to see the snow monkeys and the bamboo forest. Unfortunately, the monkeys are not using the hot springs right now because it is the end of the summer here and is 40 degrees :( :( but it still was cool to see them in the wild. 

The Arashiyama Bamboo forest was big and green. As you can probably imagine, the forest had lots of bamboo. 

We walked through the town and to make our way to the monkeys.

We had to hike up a mountain to get to the monkeys. It took us  about 35 minutes to walk up the mountain.  When we got to the top, we saw a bunch of monkeys just wandering around. There was also this building that I went inside and we could feed the monkeys through a gate. The monkey's fingers were soft and we fed them apples and peanuts. It was really cool.We also saw two monkeys wrestle. It was weird . 

We went to a golden temple, called Kinkaki-ji.

It was a temple that was golden. We wandered the grounds. When we were at got to one of the shrines,  we light incenses. The Buddhists believe that you should light them to purify the body of the people who are visiting the temples. They also believe that the smells from the incenses heal the body.   I thought it was cool. 

After we left the temple, some school kids interviewed us for a school project. They wanted to know why we came to Japan, what food we have enjoyed and where we lived.   

We went to Nara Park. Nara is a place where wild deer roam and you can feed them.  You have to be careful though, because they can become a little bit aggressive.  Dad & Auntie Darcy got bitten by one of them.

When we first got there, we saw a little baby deer. It was sooooo cute. I really enjoyed being with the deer.  It was such a fun time. We stayed there for about 2 hours.

Bye Sammy