Ignorant Gaijin!

Hi all,

Feels like a long time since i've posted, Jen's been hogging :)

So when you last read we were in Kobe having just come back from Hiroshima...

The next day we did not much, it was nice to have a little break from travelling and siting seeing. We just went into Sannomiya and shopped a little with Becky and Raukara. Also we met up with Beth who is another english teacher, but she lives out in the rural lands. And later that night met Tim, who is an expat New Zealander living near Osaka, and Ryota and we all went to "all you can eat and drink japanese" - i know there is a name for this but i can't remember it... Ignorant Gajin!

Anyway it was good times we tried some new foods, everyone got a bit tipsy and some food was thrown :)

Now we were off to Karaoke but on the way we meet some equally tipsy japanese men in the lift, who did a strip dance for us. I'm not sure how that happened but they were good fun.

Then at Karaoke we all sang and drank and had a jolly good time. There are photos to prove it. Jen might post them soon, once the messier ones are culled :)

So the next day we were on the train to Nara where we would be staying at a nice traditional style hostel. After a bit of to and fro on the train (we missed our stop) we got to Oji and found Yougendo.

Yougendo was awesome. Everything was little paper doors and pretty gardens. But amongst all these traditionally restored rooms was a massive TV and a Nintendo Wii :D
Our room was nice, we got Kimonos to wear, hmm i don't think that's the right spelling and they are probably not called that. Someone will correct me :)
In the morning they made us a nice breakfast, i ordered bacon and eggs, but they gave me ham and cheese sandwhich anyway :( maybe there was a miscommunication.
The Yougendo was run/maintained by cute little japanese women and the bar managed by an english guy. The girls were so nice, they even remembered which shoes were ours and laid them out, and when we left all the ones there came out and talked to us and waved us good bye down the street. Those cuties :)

Anyway that day we were in Nara, we got some bikes which was awesome! (I love biking around tourist attractions in Japan! :D ) And saw a bunch of cool temples, most of which you couldn't take photos of :( and the ones you could all had a bunch of markets inside where you could by trinkets and cute little cats. Kind of cheapened it a bit. Also all these places seem to have hundreds of school children on tours, and heaps of tour guides with mega phones calling out hilirious commentaries (i assume they were hilarious, or japanese school kids like to laugh in unison a lot)

We got a bunch of photos where we could, Jen took a few secretly in places where you shouldn't. But we paid our 500¥ so hopefully Buddha will forgive us.

Also there are dear in Nara, seems to be a common theme for tourist attractions in Japan. These ones looked nicer but were no less desprate for our food.

The main attraction in Nara is the Todai-ji, a massive, statue of Buddha, and a whole bunch of equally impressive statues around it. There is this hole in one of the support beams there, which is apparently as big as the Buddha's nostrel and if you can fit through you will be guaranteed enlightenment. Seems a little bit like silly lies to make Gaijin do funny things, I guess there is a weight restriction on enlightenment. Needless to say Jen and I are guaranteed enlightenment, and we bought some trinkets to prove it :)

So then we were off to Kyoto where we met up with Tim for dinner. After a bit of a mission we managed to locate a Ramen house, this one was pretty nasty and had a pungent aroma, but that could have just been all the Japanese business men in there, who all watched us as we came in and then continued to watch us while Tim talked about the atmosphere and the fact that twelve japanese guys were stairing at us. Apparently one of them knew a little english and it was all very funny. The Ramen was quite nice, although apparently our standards of good ramen are not high.

It was getting late so we got into our hostel, this time we were staying in a dorm with bunk beds, so it was a little less comfortable. Made worse by two major faux pas on my behalf within the space of fifteen mintues. First i opened the door on a girl in the toilets. That was bad enough, then i walked into the wrong dorm... the girls dorm no less, and girls were changing and screaming at the crazy guy who was peeping in. So i was pretty glad when we checked out of that place. The beds were crap anyway.

So in Kyoto we didn't really see that much, we underestimated how long buses would take to get everywhere. But we did manage to see the Golden Temple, which is another temple, but this time its plated in gold, which was pretty. What made it even cooler for me was the awesome garden and lake around it, which was immaculately maintained. We bought some trinkets there and moved on to the Gion district which is known for Giesha and other cool things apparently. We looked around a nice park that was built there which also had the most impressive cemetary i have ever seen. But we managed to miss most of the awesomeness of gion apparently. But by this time we were both getting pretty hot and sweaty, and i had my first poo experience in a squating toilet, so that put us in a mood to go home.

We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) back to Kobe which was pretty uneventful. And today we did pretty much nothing, having a wee break from all this holidaying :) which is awesome.

So tommorow we are off to Sendai, where we will be staying with Jen's friend Nigel for a night, maybe we will stop in Tokyo for a little bit too.

Phew, gratulations for reading this far. Most of the preceeding is mindless brain fartings, so feel free to comment on my lack of gramma and hilarious speeling mistakes.

kthxbye!