a night in the temple and preparations for an hexpedition.

hello!

sorry for being a bit lax with the posting - it's now tuesday night here... We've had quite a mellow couple of days... on sunday (which I thought was saturday, and wrote on the last post) after cleaning the temple a bit, we caught the train into town and did a bit of wandering around and shopping!some very nice shops, which was pretty dangerous... Then yesterday, we caught the train through to Nara, a very old city, which was the capital of Japan before Kyoto, a really long time ago! there are some big temples there - quite a different vibe from the smaller kyoto ones we've visited so far. these include Todai-ji, whose main hall is the largest wooden building in the world, built to house the largest bronze statue in the world, logically enough...

This was pretty awe-inspiring, with a full height ceiling to accomodate the statue ofthe Daibutsu (great buddha) which must be about 4 stories high, and supporting pillars which are at least 1.5m in diameter. One of the pillars had a hole taken out of it that is exactly the same size as the great buddha's nostril, and those who can squeeze through are said to be sure of enlightenment. As you can imagine, there was a fair bit of amusement , but we all managed to get through, so we're sorted!

After Todai-ji we wondered around, trying to avoid the crazy deer that inhabit the Nara park, chasing kids for the deer biscuits that you can buy for 150 yen, and ended up in a really nice wee cafe/juice bar called Drink Drank (great name), where we stocked up on carbs (I had foccaccia, and ross had a panini and a BLT) and smoothie... We were there for ages, because they seem to have much better design/travel magazines in Japan, although we couldn't really understand them, only look at the pictures, which is the norm anyway! So in an hour we had already started to set up a nice cafe and a magazine, but decided to settle for being Lonely Planet/National Geographic writers/photographers based in Japan!

We got home about 7pm, and had another big dinner and had a lot of fun trying to explain why I wanted to buy a hammock (hah-moh-kuh)...Ross and I are heading off on a wee trip over the next few days to give kosho a break from speaking english, and do a bit of exploring (so there probably won't be much happening on this blog). We're planning to get the train to Ise, where we are meeting the wife of a man who knows Takaya, who's going to show us around some shinto shrines. (the japanese sense of hospitality can be pretty extreme sometimes, and although it's wonderful, it can sometimes put you in some potentially awkward situations!We've never met her, and don't know what she looks like!) from Ise we are planning to work our way down the east coast of Kansei over the next 4 days, staying at a youth hostel tomorrow night, and hopefully sleeping out on a beach one of the other nights to soak up some pacific views! (hence the hah-moh-kuh) We were going to stay at a temple complex called koya-san one night, where you sleep in pilgrim's accomodation at one of the 50 sendo temples in town and take part in a ceremony in the morning, but we've decided not to, as last night we spent the night in the temple here, and have decided that nothing is going to be much better or authentic than that, especially a mecca for tourists like koya-san. It was pretty amazing - we didn't go up to sleep until about 1 am, but after laying down some cushions and a sheet next to the shrine in the main hall, we were asleep within minutes. I didn't wake up once the whole way through until 7 this morning, when we were woken by a hot sun in a cloudless sky. Surely there is no better way to start your day than sitting on your own on the decking of an 800 year old temple with a the sun shining directly on you. We are definitely the first westerners to sleep in the temple, and I don't think many other people have done - Kosho was worried about ghosts, but we certainly weren't disturbed...

Today has mainly been spent wandering around shops in kyoto getting stuff for this week and spending lots of money! Ross found his perfect shop, called Roger's, which sells vintage clothes and furniture, and stocked up on new old clothes and watches...even I bought something. The idea was to have an early night, but I'm not sure that's still going to happen. we leave arashiyama at 8.13 tomorrow, and plan to be back by saturday evening so we can have a day to recover before taking the exhibition down on sunday and getting on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo on monday! busy busy....

Hope you're not too fed up with the weather (today it was 38 degrees realfeel and SUNNY! Guess who forgot his sun cream this morning....)

much love. x