Too busy having fun to write about it.

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Kyoto is long gone, but I will document it as best I can using my Brain and Memory.

We stayed in a hostel/sake bar (but never actually got sake there, convenience store/vending machine beer is cheaper) in Gion, the geisha district, which I worked out after noticing that we were surrounded by a surprisingly large number of brothels and 'ladys bars'.

We had our first 'Steve' encounter here, more about that later if I can be bothered.
The first day we were all pretty pooped, so we spent the day lazing around the manga museum, learning and colouring and reading horror/teenage girl manga.
The next day was mildly disappointing, starting with the boring Imperial Palace, followed by the crafts museum, a nice temple where we were too stingy to pay to look at the garden, the contemporary arts museum that was inexplicably closed, and finishing off with some tasty but overpriced little vegan burgers.
Our last day in Kyoto we went to a zen garden and chilled out before heading off to OSAKA! This is an interesting place; the first night Liam and Tom went off on a boys only capsule adventure (for some reason women are not allowed to stay in capsules??) while I stayed in a crappy place that felt like a boat, mainly because of the narrow corridors and strange metal doors. In Japan you can often guage the quality of the neighbourhood by the price of the vending machine drinks. In America-mura, where the boys were, and where a chunk of 90s America had apparently come to land and been happily inhabited by fashionable Japanese youths, a drink would cost you ¥120-150. Just outside my hostel was a ¥50 machine.

Osaka castle was probably my favourite castle yet, but on advice from somebody somewhere we didn't pay to go in and instead admired the plum grove and the three moats and the castle from the outside.

We also went to the aquarium, which was well worth the entry fee. There were sea otters, probably my favourite kind of otter, and even a capybara!!! And a stingray that could totally fit me and three clones on its back cross-legged playing mini-cluedo!!! There was even a 'Cook Strait' section, which apparently is interesting enough to warrant a giant tank of interesting coloured fish and a big kame (turtle, if you don't know Japanese/are not a DBZ fan).

Stay tuned for:

Hiroshima (Depressing museums)

Nagano (Monkeys in a spa)

Long train trips (Self explanatory)

Sapporo (Snow and beer)

aaaaaand Tokyo (Just got here, I'll let you know).

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