i ate a live prawn......

Ohio gozai-mas!
Good morning!

It's thursday morning here, sorry I didn't get anything done last night-we got home quite late...
we spent most of the day at home, sitting around the temple and getting a japanese lesson (we're getting lightly better but it's very hard to remember!). We then went to the sort of huge homebase style shop down in kyoto to get suppplies for the exhibition, which was pretty cool, but also very frustrating - they didn't have enough of the right kind of strip lights, and trying to explain things through Kosho acting as translator was tricky... But with a bit of compromise i've got something that should do the job.

here are some photos of Otagiji, the temple where we are staying - these are the 1200 raikan statues, which were carved by people under kosho's grandfather's tutelage...

after that, we all (ross and I + Kosho's family) piled into cars and drove to a big mall/cinema complex, where we had 'proper' sushi in a busy restaurant...Apparently I don't have a very big appetite in Japanese terms, but I did my best and had to have lots of seconds! After a very safe choice by me of rolled seaweed sushi and miso soup with mussels, I had to move onto things being ordered for me, such as whole shrimps (crunchy, including the head) and 'dancing' prawns, which just have their head cut off and are skinned, meaning that they still move in your mouth! that's very fresh....

so there was much amusement at ross' and my faces, but i think we managed to retain some dignity... After a much needed cup of coffee (the first since schippol airport) we all had our photo taken in a crazy big photo booth which lets you draw all over the image and then have stickers made from the photos, before going up to the cinema... we saw Die Hard in english, which (with a big poke of pick and mix) was just the kind of thing I was ready for after the shock of eating so much fish!

So it was a bit of a quieter day, which was nice, and today I think we are going to see a very famous temple in the heart of Kyoto, and have a look at the textile market...

Hope all is good back in Scotland.
love x