How my Indecisiveness Helped me End Up With Two Ice Creams - Kealia Haitsuka '19

HPA
Mar 17, 2018
2 min read

Konnichiwa!!!!! Well, it’s been a few days since I last wrote here and I can’t even begin to describe the beautiful places we have visited, the things we have done, and just how incredible everything has been. I’ve eaten so much food; I didn’t even know eating that much food was possible. Speaking of food, this morning we ate breakfast at our traditional Japanese inn, where we had western style food. This was the most “western” food I’ve eaten since coming to Japan and it wasn’t something that I would’ve picked for myself. We had corn soup, salad, and lychee, but it was still delicious! After leaving the inn, we took the train to our first shrine in Kyoto (Fushimi Inari). I was very excited to see this, but was disappointed at how crowded it was with tourists. It was still utsukushii (beautiful), just different than how I imagined it to be. After this, we took a bus to the Golden Pavilion. This was very traditional and a sight not to be missed. Here, we all decided to get soft serve ice cream. There were only four flavors: vanilla, matcha, vanilla-matcha swirl, and black sesame. Fisher, Ivanni, Kamea, and I decided to get one of each so we could try all the different flavors. My designated flavor ended up being black sesame because it intrigued me the most. I couldn’t decide if I actually liked the flavor and I had an especially difficult time deciding on what I liked after trying Kamea’s matcha-swirl. I ended up walking around with both ice cream cones going back and forth until both were half way gone. I eventually chose the matcha-swirl as the dominating flavor. I guess now I owe Kamea another cone. We ate lunch after our ice cream (not an unusual move for us), which was delicious ramen from a small shop with Death Note inspired menus. We then hopped onto another bus to get to the education shrine (Kitano Tenmangu), where we went through a ceremony where we were all blessed to do well in every academic aspect. We then hopped onto yet another bus, then shinkansen, and now we are in Akashi (Hyogo) for two nights! I’m happy to be in a new part of Japan, but I sure miss the deer in Nara! Oyasumi!