Saturday, May 30, 2009

Hey there... Team JAC.... It's necessary



Greetings from Shanghai!! We're a little behind in the blogging... and have discovered that we are unable to access blogspot due to the 'great firewall of China' (please, don't give us the credit for that catchy term we're not nearly nerdy nor funny enough to think of that ourselves).

For the time being we are emailing our blog posts to Amy's sister, Cath, who will update our blog for us.... love you long-time, Cath. We'll put some photos up when we get to Vietnam in about a month, but in the meantime, here are links to our facebook photo albums from Japan:

... back to Kyoto.

You may have noticed that we weren't exactly impressed with our hostel, so we searched the town for a decent place to rest our heads - and what a decent place we found!! It was an earthly version of paradise in our book - particularly the all you can eat (or eat all you can) buffet breakfast... eggs, potato, sausage, bread - yes REAL bread, cheese, fruit, yoghurt, cereal, coffee and even salad! Our friends in Korea will understand just how exciting this breakfast is due to the complete lack of such wonderous food establishments in Korea. We were overjoyed with this find to say the least and set off with a spring in our step to explore the temples and old laneways of Kyoto.

Things were looking up for us in Kyoto. To add to this, we were eagerly anticipating the arrival of a dear, firey-headed friend of ours from Korea... Jesse-shi!!

Jesse has spent a while living in Japan prior to moving to Korea, so not only did we have a chum to 'talk jive' with, we also had our own personal, Japanese speaking tour guide to show us the ins and outs of Kyoto. Whoot whoot!! Our time with Jesse was spent by the river drinking beer from the convenience store, having ice-cream viciously stolen by swooping hawks, riding bikes around Kyoto, competing in pizza eating competitions, and walking... a lot.

Another of our favourite passtimes was speculating about the identities of our hostel roommates. Based on the headwear we found on their beds, coupled with an unfortunate experience Jesse once had with an angry Norwegian (involving Jesse being strangled in an elevator and forced into a tumble dryer), we decided we were sharing a dorm room with Indiana Jones and a giant albino Swede.

Turns out Indiana Jones was a German with an imaginary pet monkey that could travel through space and time (so he never knew where the monkey was or when he was... he just knew he was)... and the giant albino Swede was a very small English boy with a lot of luggage (but there was a giant almost albino Canadian wondering around the hostel who gave us much amusement). A late check-in saw the arrival of another roommate... we call her Befana. She wasn't our favourite person in the world, so let's just leave it at that. Oh, and we're pretty sure we met the ghost of Scatman-John in a Family-Mart too... Fact.

Claire, Jesse and Amy find some impressive headwear of their own

We took a day trip to Nara where we played with deer, looked at temples and shrines, got harrassed by a man selling terrible poetry, and got our fortunes read. Turns out Jesse is a lot luckier than we are. Amy's fortune was "Late Luck", while Claire's was "Half Luck". According to Buddha, the people we are waiting for will not come... well, that's just awesome... so much to look forward to.

Shopping deer

That night, Jesse and his friend Mai took us to an Izakaya for dinner and drinks followed by a bout of Karaoke (all you can drink Karaoke, mind you!). Our tight budget in Japan didn't allow for such luxuries, so a big thank you to Jesse and Mai for taking us out and showing us a side of Japan we would have missed out on otherwise! Phil says thankssss too.

The Big Bang love affair continues


As any right minded traveler would do, we headed to Osaka in the midst of a swine flu outbreak. With over 100 infections overnight, Osakans were wearing face masks like they were going out of fashion (which they actually are). We opted for no face mask, but even if we had wanted one, we wouldn't have been able to buy them. Apparently they were sold out (cough cough). Osaka was a cool city - much grittier than the rest of Japan. In a way, it felt a little like Melbourne. Osaka highlights include; the night views from the sky building, a shopping center with a ferris wheel on top, people watching in Namba... especially the male hosts with hair bigger than Bon Jovi, sushi sushi sushi, hanging out with old people at a temple flea market and once again, getting very very lost.

Two weeks in Japan flew by in an expensive blur. We loved every minute.

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