Back on home soil! (well will be by the time this is on the website! I'm on the plane home now )

It has been an amazing trip:
4 days in Osaka
5 days in Kyoto
3 days in Tokyo
3 Days in Shiga Kogen
2 Days in Kanazawa
1 Day in the air

I saw so many temples, castles and gardens over this time and had such a good time. Japan is such beautiful and spiritual place to visit and the food is great too! I think I spent a lot of the time eating at fast food places but when those places are doing guydon and katsudon then I don't care .

I didn't even have any real problems communicating with people. I think there was about three times when I just put on a blank face when I had no idea what was being said. Most times my basic Japanese was enough (yes, no, excuse me, sorry, thank you and one to ten) with gestures (although I expect to answer "hai" instead of "yes" for the next week ). The only problem with knowing only very little Japanese was finding food (especially in Kanazawa! I don't think they are used to gaijin there), it wasn't too bad in the major cities as most places had example dishes out the front.

For the first week and a half there I thought I was being very lucky and getting to see cherry blossoms flowering - nope, I suck at botany and it was plum blossoms *slaps forehead*. Fortunately the cherry blossoms were blooming in Kyoto and Osaka when I was on the way home .

About the only thing I didn't get to do that I had hoped was go to a golf driving range.

The last two days were a bit rough as I ran out of money - especially the second last day where I was down to 220 yen ($4) and none of the ATMs in Japan would accept my card. It looks like only Citibank ATMs will work with Cirrus cards. I turned around about 50 metres short of the Citbank ATM in Kyoto (it was pissing down rain, I was soaked and worried about not having any money for the last two days!) I got some money at the hostel in Kyoto only to run out again after paying for the accomdation in Osaka (I had 550 yen this time!). I found the Osaka Citibank and all was good again

I even got to see a day of the Osaka Sumo tournament today (unfortunately I had to leave before I got to see Sad Sack face off - Sad Sack is one of the wrestlers that always had a scowl on his face when he was on TV. He also happens to be one of the two best wrestlers in Japan at the moment and was 9-0 before todays bout). But I did get to see him enter the ring during the ceremony at the start of the champions group.

I also did things that I didn't when I was last in Japan. I played pachinko - and had no idea what I was doing. Getting the balls to fall in the middle section was easy but then you have features thrown at you like on the pokies, only I had no idea what they were and what I was meant to do I also visited an onsen - I wish we had these in Australia!! Sooo relaxing!

The culture was funny. Bikes rule the road and no-one wears a helmet (I did like that aspect - it felt nice having the wind run through it!). Bikes would just ride on whatever side of the road they wished and would come out of lanesways without checking if anything was coming (I have a healthy regard for my life so I wasn't doing that!). It is apparently still really xenophobic over there - I only really encountered it last night when I went to see if I could get into a strip club (don't judge me - I need to pay for company ok ) and got turned away from them as I wasn't Japanese. There probably are clubs I could get into but that just seemed like effort to find (a perv and lazy - what a combo ). At the sumo I was talking with a guy from Canada and he was saying how some people in Japan show displeasure at you by cough, spitting or burping in your direction - I had just been assuming they had a cold while I was over there (they need to work on their slights, it is way to subtle for me! They need to say something so then I can fart in their general direction! )

They also seemed to think I was weird for wearing shorts all the time (it was over 5C, perfect for shorts ) but girls would go around with the shortest skirts I have ever seen on (*starts humming "short skirt, long jacket" by Cake*). At least the shorts made it to the knees And I'm sure that it will be pointed out that this is a good thing but it didn't do that much for me

I managed to use most forms of transport while in Japan too:
Bike
Taxi
Bus
Train
Shinkansen (yes, it could be considered a train too but soo much more fun )
Snowboard
Cable Car
Ropeway Train (trains connected via a rope where the trains act as counter-weights)

While I was at the snow, I made sure to do one of the runs that was used in the 1998 Winter Olympics. I won't be representing Australia anytime soon with the time it took (well unless it is in the 50m bum slide - in which case I think I'm in with a medal chance I cleared a nice path in the snow). And like the last three times I have been to the snow, it was perfectly fine and the temperature was in the positive range. I'm yet to experience a snow storm!

It was also nice to leave Osaka airport in a happy mood. Last time I was there it was one of the worst feeling days in my life so it was good to add a better mood to that location in my mind .

I think I ended up taking about 3500 photos during this trip (I'm not sure if this is good or bad!). I have some of them up on flickr but I was using UFRaw to open the RAW files and I'm not convinced that the colours are right on some of them. I need to get home and open up Photoshop and do them all again (and I can make them bigger then for on flickr). I will also load them up on here (give me a while though!)

Oh well, back to the real world now (well slowly - thanks to a couple of days off and public holidays, I won't do a full week of work in April )

Later,
Steve