Matsuo Taisha, Episode Three - But Mostly Arashiyama

I went to Arashiyama again, this time with Hamid and Alessandra. We wandered around the shops a little bit and took random pictures. Pictures like the one at right are, I'm sure, pretty much required by everybody who ever goes to Arashiyama.
Saw the shoes at left while we were there. Hamid pointed them out and I had taken the picture before he had finished his "Wow, look at those shoes!"-like sentence. I have to wonder if they're any more difficult to walk in than normal high-heeled shoes, or pretty much the same. I guess it's possible they'd be easier, since the sole is at least more regular.
These Hello Kitty cups were pretty cool, too. Almost bought one for Jes on accident.
Wandered up to a spot where we always go swimming at night and discovered that it there are lots of fishes and frogs in the water. I had a staring contest with a frog, but completely lost. I walked off and came back five minutes later and he still hadn't looked anywhere else but where I had been standing. This frog picture is from a different day, but I like it because it has a tadpole of bigness.
I also found a 毛虫 ("hair bug") up there. You might recall these from Super Mario World for the SNES. I was very surprised to learn the things actually exist. They dangle from trees by a string and have very long hairs, presumably to get caught on things and travel.
And speaking of bugs, it's worth mentioning that the mosquitoes here are not to be ignored. Or rather, you're going to have to try very hard if you intend to ignore them. You can see poor Alessandra's ankle in this picture at left.
I don't scratch mine nearly as much, but I have four bites on one side of my right ankle, and four on my left hand, in addition to random bites in other places. I've recently been taking more precautions, but it's too hot to wear anything with sleeves and even jeans are pretty uncomfortable.
Hamid wanted to play with my camera, so I got this shot at far left, along with about 20 more that are the exact same or very nearly so.

I convinced her to pose with me a little more, saying that my parents get sad if I don't show them I'm hanging out with cute girls at least once in a while. Here we posed to illustrate our difference in size, and I think you can see it pretty clearly at right. Notice also that I'm wearing sandals and have one of my legs bent so I'm standing up straight instead of sloping sideways.
She's usually pretty shy, but Hamid seems to have rubbed off on her a little, 'cause she actually asked us to take pictures of her.

A little later, we actually got around to going to Matsuo Taisha and stopped in to get some Mitarashii dango (prounced "meet-ah-rah-she dahn-goh", if that makes sense), which the shop is famous for. You can see both the dango and Hamid's reaction to their slimy mess at left.
That brown sauce is a kind of sweet soy-based goo, while the dango themselves are a basically a ball of rice cake. The whole thing is a dessert.
Between the dango and the sauce, you have to drink about a glass of water for each kebab of 'em that you eat.
Once we were done, I convinced two of the girls working there to pose with my friends, and they got all giggly, as Japanese girls tend to do when you ask to take pictures of them.


I've been threatening to upload a nice, high-resolution panorama composite for months now, and I'm finally making good on that. If you click on the picture, you'll see the nice, sane, 120KB JPG version. Should load decently quickly, even on 56k. Anyway, this is the downstairs part of a shop we went into. If this shop doesn't yell "Tourist trap!" or "Leavenworth!" to you, then... Well, it should, in any case.And then there's the ridiculously high-resolution version (33MB PNG), which will take a while even on a fast connection. It's something like 10,000 pixels horizontally.