I love Japan!  The people here are great, they are so nice and polite!  I got bowed to the other day when I left an observation deck!! Although I now understand what my sister was talking about with regard to overstaffing!  People have some funny and seemingly unnecessary jobs in this country!  I have been to a few temples in the last few days and at every one there would be about 4 people selling tickets, which is fantastic customer service considering only a handful of people wander through the gate every half hour!  Even better is the guy standing right next to the ticket gate who checks your ticket that you just bought off the girl in the window right next to him!!! hehehehehehehehehe.  Sounds like what Mum and Dad saw in China as well.  They also have people manning the parking lots with like 10 spaces in them!  He must have to direct about 15 people a day into their parking spots!  Surely there is some machine that can do this job.... maybe a boom gate?

Everything is entertaining for me here!  The billboards mean nothing to me but I love their use of roman characters like exclamation marks which conveys excitement about a word I have no idea about!  The models they use here are absolutely amazing!  I am in love with the Japan Post girl!

The train system is fantastic! even better possibly than New York! I have had no problems at all figuring out how to get to places even involving 1 or 2 transfers!  Japan uses quite a lot of romanised names so a bunch of Kanji characters I don't understand becomes something I can understand like Shin-Imimiya or Kyoto station..... This means the language isn't really a barrier to travelling here.  Also there language is so cool that however it is written is how it is pronounced.... Rachel would be able to tell you more, but they break up the words into syllables which are said the same way regardless of context! This basically means that there are no tricks with pronunciation like there are with English (silent letters etc...)

I have seen the Golden Pavillion here in Kyoto, and the temple of Koyizudera which were both amazing, the golden pavillion was breathtaking.  Koyizudera had the love shrine and two rocks which if you could go between with your eyes closed promised luck in love.  I managed to do it without falling down the stairs convieniently placed right behind the second rock!  So if you miss the rock you not only have bad luck in love but you go to hospital as well!

Today I went to Nara, the first capital of Japan way back in like the 700's.  I went to the biggest statue of Buddha in Japan (also in world?) which was great.  I got to crawl through Buddha's belly button which promised to deliver eternal happiness...

Also I saw the deer which frolic around in Nara Park.  They are everywhere! In the markets and temples chasing locals and tourists alike for food.  I went to pat one but didn't have any food... so he ate my map!!! prick!  Lucky I knew where I was going and also in true Japanese fashion, the landmarks were very well signposted.  Although the first 600m of the track took about 10seconds and the second 600m took about 5mins! hmmmm