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Monday, December 26, 2011 @ 6:21 PM
Day 5 in Kyoto: Toba and Heian High School Exchange

We‘re going to Kyoto today! Kyoto is an hour away from Osaka. By this time on our trip in Osaka in Japan, the weather has already become colder and our teachers told us that Kyoto is even colder. So we suited up our thermal wear in the bus and slept in the bus. On our way there, the glass of the bus froze up and we could barely see through the glass. Finally after an hour, we have arrived at Yasaka Shrine.





Yasaka Shrine was first built in 656 AD. It was dedicated to Susa-no-o, the god of prosperity and good health, and his wife and 8 children. It was a very beautiful temple. After walking through the temple, we went to the Gion town which was one of kyoto’s famous geisha district. Many of us tried to spot a geisha but only some of us saw the geisha in a taxi. The Geisha was probably going to the host house to perform. We were given awhile to shop here. After that is done, we went to the Kiyomizu Temple.





After the sightseeing in the temple, we had lunch at Baizan do, a steamboat like lunch.




After that satisfying meal, we finally head for the band exchange with Heian and Toba high school at Heian itself.

When we arrived at Heian, we headed for the hall to tune up and get ready. They had ushers to guide us around the school. We were the first band to perform. But before that, one of the Heian students read out a message in English to address their welcome to this exchange and similarly we had Irfan to do the same for Heian and Toba. Then, we finally started. We gave all our best into that performance and the students clapped happily along to our pop piece love-ing. After that, Heian and Toba performed. They performed 2 songs. Both of which was very impressive. The second song was a Japanese folk song and they had the chorus group to sing it and coupled with some gimmicks. The performance was very pleasant to watch. Soon after that, we had interaction time with the Heian and Toba students. We were grouped according to our sections. Most of us started off by introducing our names and some of us felt that we did not know what to do, but after awhile i think we have warmed up to them. Many of us presented our gifts to them and some of us even exchanged games with them. We asked them for a Japenese game then we teached them our very own game. I think that they had been a very good host to us as their attitude towards us without fail was really nice and they were very polite.

After we took our last few pictures, we had to head back for our hotel already. Many of us exchanged contacts with them. We waved to them as we rode on the bus and slept on our way back to the hotel.