Great Sunday

Since arriving here, these past two Sundays have been dedicated to exploring the city by bicycle. Such a pleasure to roam around in the sunshine, finding new places and different happenings all over. Today my main mission was to get to the Museum of Modern Art. Two of the other girls hadn´t been able to find it, so I was determined I would! I set off with my map and my GPS friend Garmin, which I usually use for running - to track distance and speed and so on - into the city.
First, I just had to make a pit-stop for cold coffee, and came across an arcade/shopping market thing. I then spent a long time in the best 100 yen shops I have found so far.

The best! I managed to spend only about 11 pounds worth of mainly necessary and useful stuff but was quite tempted by a great deal more....
Best bargain was a basket which I got and attached with cable ties to the back of my bicycle, to be able to carry more shopping and so on, when out on the bike. I felt like a genius.

Then on to finding the art gallery... actually it wasn´t that hard at all - a few glances at the map and I had it. Kyoto can be a bit tricky to find some things if you go in the smaller streets which don´t appear in the map, but it has quite a grid system, so you eventually find your way somehow.

When I arrived, there were great crowds of people (not for the gallery, luckily!).... there appeared to be some sort of dance competition going on, with all ages of youngsters participating. The first one I saw was a group of about 300 all dancing in formation in costume - awesome!

These different dancing efforts went on for some time - lots of different themes too, Spanish, Hawaiian, mini-cheerleaders (super-cute) and various other stuff too. Quite a spectacle indeed...

My favourite cute thing I saw today.


Then, I saw what I thought was the art gallery with a massive queue.... but tuned out it wasn´t the museum I wanted, it was opposite, with no queues! Free entry to the permanent collection too... although I am not sure about their idea of "modern art"... it seemed as if the majority of stuff was from the beginning of LAST century.... but a worthwhile trip never the less.

Then on the way back home, I came across some sort of ceremony or maybe hobby? Not so sure.... they were lifting these large poles up, vertical. They had bells on them and the bell was ringing as the person balanced the long pole. An appreciative crowd were gathered around watching.

And then, up the hill to home...