Japan Part II

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Hey everyone,

Firstly, please accept our apologies for not updating sooner. We will try to be comprehensive in our update here so that you know what we've been up to.

When last we wrote we were in Kyoto, Japan. A beautiful place, we ended up staying there longer than we initially anticipated because of the depth of culture and the way in which the city makes you think you haven't been there too long when in actual fact you have been and time is whizzing past in the real world! (anyone that's read it might note the similar feeling the Fellowship of the Ring have in Lothlorien in the Lord of the Rings!-but enough of that.....).

After Kyoto we headed to Osaka on the train which is only about an hour's journey away and is one of the other major connurbations in the Kansai region of Japan. At first glimpse the city is pretty faceless-it seems to be nothing but a sprawling mass of grey buildings with little to offer the traveller seeking culture of the traditionally valued variety. However, on the first day we visited a really good Aquarium which houses it's very own Whale Shark-measuring 5 metres in one of the biggest tanks in the world! The Aquarium seems to be geared heavily towards raising awareness of environmental issues such as global warming, waste diposal, over fishing etc. and even (much to our surprise) had a brief note on Whaling in New Zealand that we thought rather hypocritical given Japan's stance on this practice!

A strange thing happened later that day, Janice and I had had a nice drink and put the world to rights for a while in a pretty little bar by the river in downtown Osaka and were just heading home when I looked up and thought I saw a face that I recognised-it was none other than my old school friend Stephen Marshall! I knew Stephen was teaching in the city and we had exchanged an email or two recently with a view to meet up but even more to my surprise he had another of my school friends visiting him at the time-William Park!!! (this will probably only really be relevant to my immediate family). So we arranged to meet up a few nights later and a raucous Karaoke session once again ensued!

On the following day we visited Nara which was Japan's first real capital city as a unified nation. Nara Park (Nara-Koen in romanised Japanese) houses a few UNESCO world heritage sites so we thought "why not head there". Of particular mention was Todai-Ji, a temple complex which has within it's boundaries the world's largest all-wooden building called Dobutsen-Dai. Amazingly, the current structure (which is a faithful copy of the orginal that burnt down and was rebuilt in 1709) is 33% smaller than the original building!!!! Inside the temple is a 16 metre high Buddha that is made of 100's of tons of Gold and Bronze-it's also pretty spectacular in it's own right. Janice achieved guaranteed enlightenment by squeezing through a hole in one of the pillars which is exactly the same size as one of the Great Buddha's nostrils, I'm too big to fit however, so no enlightenment for me!!!!

On our last night in Japan we decided to catch a bit of real, traditional Japanese sports action and headed to a baseball game!! It was a fun way to leave Japan and the game had a nail biting finish with Osaka winning by a few runs-the home crowd were delighted!

Next on to Vietnam!

Adam and Janice.xxxxxxx

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