Japan Day 3 - Seeing the Old to Influence the New

We started out today by going to see a traditional Japanese home. Its location was a bit surprising- it was on the edge of the shopping district. The city of Kyoto has the building on loan from the owner to run as a museum. It was very cool to see the traditional construction and layout that you don't see as often here as the country become more western. It had very a nice courtyard in the back. the original owners were fairly wealthy because they were able to have both a Shinto Alter and Buddhist Alter in their home. Following both religions is common here. Stan talked to the curator and found out that it is going to be returned to the owner next year and will likely be torn down since the property is worth so much being on the main shopping street. It will be sad to it go. A similar house across the street was torn down earlier in the year.

For lunch, A few of us went to local restaurant. I ordered a fried chicken like dish and it was very good. the locals at the table next to us complimented us on our chopstick skills. They make their rice here a lot more sticky so its easy to eat with chop sticks.

In the afternoon we returned to the site of our project to pick where we want to locate our building. I chose the triangle of land next to the train station because it one of the block in need of the most improvement and it will be cool to incorporate a new entrance to the station in my design. While we were, we had one local lady come up to us who was curious about we were doing there. Her English was very good and after learning that we were architecture students she wanted to know why we cared so much about this area (being that it's not the best). She told us that the JR (japan Rail) has been neglecting the station there, that it's the largest one that doesn't have an escalator or elevator.

We hung out around there for quite a while and on the way back to hotel, I stopped by the grocery store for dinner. They had a large selection of premade food. so I grab something that looked interesting. All the labels were in Japanese so I'm sure exactly what i bought, but it tastiest like pork. Soft drink choices here are much like Europe, with only the main Coke, Fanta, and Pepsi. I couldn't resist getting an Orange Fanta. It tasted a lot like the Fanta in France that has some real orange juice in it.

Pictures Day 3