Day Twelve- My favorite cultural pass time

Today I wrangled a day away from BF and set off to do what I do best. Shopping. The shopping here is unbelievable, GU and Uniqlo are great and H&M and Forever 21 are pretty damn good as well. If you are a crafty person they have a department store dedicated to craft, a seven-story department store called Tokyu hands (http://www.tokyu-hands.co.jp/foreign.html). I had a great day alternating between shops and cafes and keeping out of the heat. Kyoto has just opened a new Sanrio Gallery which is four floors of Hello Kitty madness

Kyoto is gearing up for their Gion festival, which is a festival to appease the gods that are thought to cause fire, floods and earthquakes. As I was walking across the street I managed to stumble across a float coming down the main street was a pretty rad sight.

BF and I met up for dinner

and came accross this bar called the 'Old Japanese bar'. We wandered in, the owner was was a older gentleman who used to be a formula 2 driver in Japan. He was also into old Italian movies so we managed to have a conversation about that. His bartender was a performing arts student and we talked about movies with her. We stayed there for longer than anticipated and ended up stumbling out looking for somewhere decent to eat. We ended up eating at a japanese fast food plate and was evered by a really nice Phillipino waiter who gave us gifts :).