After wandering through the streets of Kyoto for a day, my legs felt like Jello. But the OMU came calling with another assignment: a journey through Tennoji. With a less than ideal sleep and no breakfast, I was on my way to the Tennoji station to meet with my OMU buddies to travel around and complete the necessary field work for the OMU presentation.
The first step was to get something to eat as none of my friends had breakfast. So, we ate a well known fried food place. I personally had some fried salmon and prawns with watermelon soda. All of these were good, but the watermelon soda was particularly good. It was sweet and had a rich flavor that complimented the deep fried entrees. The meal also came with some lettuce and sauce. Because I was hungry, I started to eat too much lettuce. But you were supposed to use the lettuce to scoop up extra sauce for the deep fried salmon and prawns. My OMU buddies pointed this out and I felt embarrassed, but it was fun and I thoroughly enjoyed the food. The experience helped me to appreciate Japanese food and expand my palate of foods I like.
After lunch, we took a quick stop to view the tower. The tower is quite famous for having a good view of the entire city of Osaka, but we did not enter the building as we were time limited. According to my OMU friend Mark, the lights on the tower lit up red during covid hours. If I remember correctly, the red for Japanese symbolizes peace. I assume that the tower was lit red to inspire hope during the covid year. This was really cool because the place I lived would just tell you to stay at home with no support. I am mostly talking about Phoenix, Arizona. The tower reminded me of the Seattle space needle. It brought up some memories of high school and made me realize just how fun the architecture was.
Before heading off to the local shrine, we walked back through a natural looking scape. It had some beautiful plantscapes around the main pond. But no fish were present which disappointed me (I like fish for some reason).
After the photo, the OMU group with some extra friends visited the Shitenno-ji shrine. It was one of the oldest in Japan. It had some creepy, yet beautifully made statues. I would assume them to be some kind of buddhist gods. The shrine had an inner structure that was inaccessible. But the red highlights of the structure were beautiful. The temple had colorful lamps everywhere which highlighted the deep heritage behind the Buddhist religion. The temple contained a pond with many turtles. Generally, Buddhists deeply appreciate nature and wildlife, soi the turtle pond resonated with this fact. After this visit, the group headed to OMU.
My feet hurt after walking so much. But we decided to head to the international building to give the presentations on the field work we did. The presentation went okay. The group did not have a great idea on how to make the presentation good. Hopefully, next time is a bit better. We chose to go second in order to get the presentation done, even though we could have been last if we wanted too.
Before we did the presentation, we went to a tea ceremony hosted by the tea club. It was a great experience. The students taught us how to properly serve tea in a traditional Japanese ceremony. They went step-by-step through the process. They handed out snacks and we would bow in respect. The tea master handed out the tea in a cup with various colors. You had to make sure the side you were drinking did not have the gold leaf. My guess for this was drinking from the gold side would bring you bad luck or was disrespectful to the tea master. The snacks and tea were delicious. I would hope to have the ceremony again.
After the ceremony, we presented. It went just fine. We talked about our trip to Kyoto and answered questions from the OMU professor. He did not seem super impressed with our presentation, but that was just my opinion.
I had a great day of walking, seeing the culture and presenting a goofy presentation. I am still bummed I did win the prize for the best presentation. After eating some curry with the group, I headed back to write this blog as I did not want to write it tomorrow as I am seeing the Osaka aquarium (I am very excited to see this)!
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