29th December

Today we wanted to go to Versailles.  We were feeling a bit tried from yesterday so we slept in and then we went out to Republique and got a huge delicious breakfast bread thing.  It was delicious.  Chrissy thought it was smaller than it was, and then it was 3 times bigger.  She ate one third.

Then we caught the train to Versailles.  This took a while.  Ad then when we were in Versailles we went to the ticket office before we got to the palace and didn't have to wait in line.  Charles got in free since he's a resident of the EU and is under 26, but Chrissy had to pay 20 euro.  

Then we went up the Chateau and we went in the entrance.  It was totally confusing and we didn't know where to go.  We went into the main chateau museum and it was a long tour of identical rooms which were confusing and forgettable, even though each one was amazing.  The highlights were the room with a thing in it, and that other thing that was in a room.  Refer to photos.

Then we went to the garden which was all snowy and slushy and slippery and we walked a LONG way looking at all the fountains that were off, and eventually we got to the second building which was called the trianon which was kind of more interesting i thought.  The last building was called the little trianon, and then there were a collection of little whimsical farm buildings made for marie-antoinette to play in.  Then we had to walk back to the main house which was SO HARD, oh my god, it was bad.  then we stopped for McDonalds but it was too late for lunch and i felt bad, we both felt bad.

Then we got the train back, but instead of going home which would be sensible, we went to Muji.  Chrissy bought a bag because her other bag strap BROKE!  And then instead of getting a train home we decided to walk home, which was also totally crazy, but we passed some interesting shops, including a bookshop which was totally interesting.

Then we got some salads from the better bakery, then we got home at ate them and they were super delicious, oh my gosh.  now our legs hurt.  Our last full day in Paris!

28th December

(Christina)

Oh no!  We forgot to blog for a day!  We got home so late last night that we were too tired.  It was a huge day!

First off we met Lisa at Republique as always, and she took us to an AMAZING bakery we'd never seen before.  We had ham and cheese croissants which SOUNDS pretty average but was actually totally amazing.  We felt full and energised.  

We wanted to go to Printemps, which is a department store.  We found a brochure with a 10% discount at Printemps so thought it might be interesting.  On the way we went to UniQlo, which is a Japanese brand that just sells basic clothes - not fancy ones, but good quality and fairly cheap.  I was thrilled to find that they had a bunch of dresses that were a collaboration with Milk - another Japanese brand that is usually to expensive for the likes of me.   But since it was a collaboration with UniQlo, they were only 19 euro!  So I bought one.  I also FINALLY bought a jumper (thanks mum and dad) which is warm grey cashmere.  Charles bought a scarf and a new plain black t-shirt because he was sick of all his old plain black t-shirts.

We finally got to Printemps, but it turned out to be exactly the same as La Fayette - all really expensive name-brands.  Boring!  We took the metro to the Champs-Elysses and went to a museum called Palais de Tokyo.  It was only - ONE EURO - for each of us to enter.  The price was 1 euro for "artists" and "students studying art" so we claimed to be art students which is kind of TRUE.  We didn't need to prove anything!

The gallery was interesting contemporary art, my favourite piece being a sculpture that was a circle of jeans with concrete in them instead of legs.  We had lunch at the museum too!  It was fairly cheap!

Next we walked up the Champs-Elysses again - this time with Lisa.  She and I went to Sephora, the big cosmetics shop, and she bought some nail polish and I bought some extreme red lipstick.  It's rad!  We walked all the way up the street to the Arc, took some photos, and then took a metro away from there.

Next stop was dinner.  Lisa had a place she wanted to take us that was on the left bank.  It was a pretty classy place!  I had "vegetable soup" which turned out to be "vegetable" singular, pumpkin.  Lisa had the duck, which was not off, and Charles had a delicious beef… stew.  (his imagination was broke).  They were all really yummy!  Right outside the window next to our table there was someone in a Smart Car who was totally parked in by these two other huge cars.  We enjoyed watching him do a 7-point-turn to escape.  In Paris people just bump into the other cars to get in and out of a parallel park.

Next - Tour d'Eiffel!  We took a metro there and immediately went right to the top.  I was so scared!  The lift goes fast and it makes your ears pop because the tower is SUPER TALL.  It was foggy at the top so we couldn't really see anything, which is kind of a relief because it's scary at that height!  We went down to the second level and could see lots from there.  By the time we left it was about 10:30 and way past our bedtime!  So we went home to bed!  The end!

27th December

(Charles)

Today was our BIGGEST day YET.

We met at the bakery at République for breakfast croissants and pain au chocolat. YUM. We sort of wanted to go the the Champs Elysses again, but some museums over there were closed on Mondays so we decided to visit Montmartre instead. 

SO, we hopped in a metro out to Montmartre and wandered around for a while trying to find our way up the hill to the big church, Sacre Coeur. The church was nice, but the view from the top was really interesting. As it was approaching coffee-o-clock, we stopped for espresso and cakes. YUM. 

Suddenly I realised (with the help of LP) that there was a Dali museum in Montmartre. Christina suddenly got sparkly eyed and so we had to go, so we wandered around a bit more to find it. The museum was pretty good, a small gallery with mostly sketches and sculptures, it was a bit busy for a really relaxed look, but it was worth seeing and pretty cheap. Probably the best bit was the Dali quotes on the walls. He was clearly completely mad and totally awesome. 

NEXT, Lomography Shop Paris! I've wanted to go to a lomography shop for ages and finally we were able to go to the Paris gallery store. I was very relieved to find it open since lots of things were closed most of the day. They had ALL the fun cameras and films and things. I bought some interesting film and an awesome case for MY Diana mini camera. (Chrissy has claimed the camera AND the case. So that's that). 

Lisa and I want Lomo LCA+ cameras but they're too expensive! (250eu!!)

NOW was the time for walks in the Bastille area. We somehow decided to walk because it wasn't too far and because the big train stations are a bit tiring to figure out all the time (Gare du Nord is closest to the Lomography shop). So we walked to République and then got a metro two stops. Suddenly it became clear that it was lunchtime and we quickly stopped to eat. After food, we started walking around an "area of interest" according to LP, in the first street we found a cool contemporary art gallery, lots of great windows, and a little cute clothes shop where the shop assistant / designer was actually sewing while looking after the shop. Sometimes Paris is just too cool. As it got darker, we found more shops and more people came out to walk around. It was super fun running around all the cool shops.

Eventually we ended up at the Pompidou Centre and took lots of cool photos. 

Dinner was in two parts -- first, Crepes, second, super cheap pizza, salad and wine from a touristy sort of Italian restaurant. I ate too much cheese.

It was basically a super rad day. We three are an awesome travel team!

26th December!

(Christina)

We met Lisa at around 10:30 today an went straight to some markets in the south of Paris.  They were fun markets - lots of stalls and interesting stuff, mostly antiques.  I bought a hair thing and Lisa got a little set of kitchen scales.  It was obscenely cold and both of my feet went numb.  We stopped to have brunch at a bakery.

Then we took the metro to the left bank - or the south bank - to see a cool museum that Charles found, Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain.   It turned out that the exhibition was about a particular French comic book artist called Jean Giraud  or Gir or Moebius.  It was super interesting and awesome.  I wish I could read French!!

Then we walked around the cool streets on the left bank, over the river from Notre Dame.  We went to Shakespeare and Co bookshop (a famous English-language bookshop, mostly run by poets and authors and beatniks), and had lunch at another bakery.  It was all very pretty, but not many shops were open because everything shuts on Sundays.

Home now yay!  Another dinner of home made sandwiches!

PS. In Paris we mostly eat sandwiches. The bread is soooooo nice.

Christmas in Paris!

Today was Christmas! yay! Unfortunately, we were both feeling a bit sick so we took the day off from doing too much stuff. Chrissy wanted to go to church, so we went to a service at Notre Dame this morning. There was a nice choir, but we were so far back that it all sounded a bit washy and unclear. Even though everything was in French, I found it only slightly more boring than a regular church service. so, not that bad?

For lunch we settled for macdonalds, since we were too tired to find somewhere good... Boring. In the afternoon we watched Xena and then for dinner we went to a supermarket and got stuff to make sandwiches. Bread in Paris is generally SUPER DELICIOUS. Yum.

More interesting stuff tomorrow!

Photos 24 December

24th December - Christmas Eve!

Today was the second day of our two-day museum pass, so we met Lisa early to go to as many museums possible!  We were a museum viewing three-headed monster!

First we went to the Louvre, obviously, and headed straight for the Mona Lisa.  Lisa and I lost Charles on the way there and discovered that we'd overshot the entrance to the Mona Lisa room by about 50 metres!  Poor Charles thought we'd left him forever!  Anyhow the Mona Lisa was pretty okay, much smaller than I thought, and kind of annoying to view because of all the billions of people there.  BILLIONS.

Other things we looked at at the Louvre: Venus, Ramses, a MUMMY, various Egyption relics, Ancient Greek stuff, lots of paintings of Jesus.  Charles and I would like to go back again!  It was really good and we hardly saw anything, even though we were there for over two hours.

THEN we went to another museum called Musee des Arts Decoratifs (or something).  It was all about hand made stuff and design, I think.  We mostly looked at a bunch of fashion by famous designers (Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christan Dior), which was cool.  Then we went into a gigantic maze of rooms with art deco stuff, art nouveu stuff, old chairs, renaissance stuff.  We felt tired and wanted to leave, but to get out you had to go through another gallery of "animal" stuff, which included crocodile skin boots, a giant metal rhinocerous, and also chairs made in the shape of dogs.  At the end I didn't really know what the museum was trying to achieve.  We also noted that there were about 5 floors we didn't even look at.

Following that, we walked in the freezing cold snowy weather to Musee d'Orangerie, which is famous for housing some of Monet's Waterlilies.  The museum was basically two large oval rooms with four huge curved paintings covering almost the entire wall space.  Look it up!  Awesome.  And beautiful too.

We were tired after three museums, so took a train to a place where Lisa said was a good Japanese restaurant.  We all had ramen, and it was pretty good DESPITE the staff all being Chinese (lisa overheard their conversation - she's a handy person to have around).

We went to a famous department store called Galleries LaFayette which was in full-on crazy mode because everyone was buying last minute presents.  We saw lots of fashion by famous designers (Vivienne Westwood, Jean Paul Gaultier, Christian Dior), which all had dresses for thousands of euros!  A BIT out of my price range, you guys!

After we got all crazied out, we all went home.  The end!  Happy Christmas!

23 December

Paris blog 2010/12/23

Paris was very snowy today! Totally annoying! The air isn't that cold, so the snow is sort of wet and sticks to you, BUT, the wind is super cold and annoying. So, we all agreed that it was too cold to wander around and we decided to do museums today and tomorrow. We met Lisa at Republique and bought a Paris Visite pass for 5 days so that we don't have to keep finding change for the metro all the time. We decided to do the Centre Pompidou first because it looks so interesting. The line to get in wasn't too bad and we bought 2 day Paris Museum passes. The first thing that happens at the Pompidou centre is that you have to go around the outside of the building on the escalators. This is totally awesome. The view was great, even though the weather outside was frightful. We took a lot of photos at the top. The main galleries are modern art to 1980 and then 1980+ and the 1980+ section had a focus on women artists. It was totally awesome. 

We then spent AGES in the bookshop and interesting thing shop. Lots of books were on special, but they were usually really heavy and annoying. Lisa and I agreed that we wanted a cool book for around 10 euros which was small enough to carry with us. We couldn't find anything meeting all three conditions.

LUNCH was at a nice place nearby that specialised in grilled cheesy sandwiches. Nice and inexpensive.

THEN, we wanted to do another museum, but it was pretty late, so we went to Musée de Arts et Metiers since I remembered it was pretty small. Getting in was a bit weird. They wanted us to produce our museum passes to get ANOTHER ticket, and then a lady waved us through while trying to get us to join a tour or something which we didn't care about and then ANOTHER person scrutinised both tickets. Weird. We had no idea what was going to be on at this museum, but the temporary exhibit was a retrospective on video games and it was totally rad. The focus was playing the games and they had lots of representative games from the last 30 years set up and ready to play. Obviously, NES had Super Mario Bros, Gameboy had Tetris, N64 had Goldeneye, there was Lemmings (Chrissy played) etc. It was super awesome. We were all blown away.

The rest of the museum was a bit dusty and tired but was still reasonably interesting (or maybe we were tired).

Luckily the museum shop wasn't selling awesome video games and consoles or charles may have spent all his money.

THEN we got tired and had to come home! Baguette and salad for dinner from the boulangerie. Yum.

Extra info: We went to a supermarket and got some deserts and some more bottled water. When we got home, the water turned out to be all salty. Weird? Who wants to drink salty water??

December 21st!

21 December

Here's a blog post detailing what we did yesterday, since we were too tired to write a blog.

We got up at 4:30 from our hotel in Stockholm and went directly to Arlanda airport.  I was feeling cautious excitement at the possibility of being in Paris by noon, and Charles was feeling cautiously grumpy at being woken up so early.  We DID make it to Paris, and we took the train into town.  Paris metro stations are easier to navigate than Japan ones because people aren't in such a pushy hurry, and because the signs aren't in Japanese.  French is easier to read than Japanese in English.

We got to our hotel to find that it is PRETTY small.  I could not swing a cat in here!  If I wanted to swing a cat.  It has a place to sleep and a place to wash, so it's okay really.

We went out immediately and had lunch at a local lebanese place.  Nice!  Then it was straight to the Champs-Elysses for a walk.  We walked all the way along the lovely street, looking at the pretty Christmas market stalls and the big shops.  It was pretty similar in feel to Omotesando-dori in Harajuku, the same wide street with big fancy shops and big fancy people.  We had a good look at the Arc de Triumphe at the end, and agreed it was pretty good.  Here's Charles wearing it like a hat!

Here's me eating it!

We just walked back down the Champs-Elysses again.  Stopped at Louis Vuitton to see what all the fuss was about, but I still don't really like chequered bags.

THEN we took the metro to the stop near the Eiffel Tower, and saw the Eiffel Tower.  It's really big and cool!  There were lots of christmas market stalls there too and we enjoyed looking through them.  Charles bought a crepe with nutella in it… delicious.  At the actual tower, there were one thousand dudes selling stuff.  Mostly they were selling miniature Eiffel Towers, which they carried around on huge rings and shook about.  Some people were selling hats and scarves, because it was really cold, and some were selling animatronic barking dogs.  Some really annoying dudes were selling roses which they kept shoving in my face.  The WORST dudes were the ones trying to tie a string around my wrist and then get 2 euro for it.

Anyhow we saw the lights come on, but it wasn't super spectacular because it was so foggy!  What a terrible day to go up the tower!  Good thing we didn't go up.  Saving that for a better day.

Then: home to our hotel!  Yay what a lovely day!  By the way, there's a REALLY NICE view of Paris from our window.  Not like a spectacular panorama, but a nice view of parisian streets.  Cute!

22nd December

22nd December

Today was our first full day in Paris.  We met Lisa at our hotel at around 11am.  We walked all the way from our hotel to Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, through Bastille. It should've been around a 30 minute walk but there were many interesting camera shops that we were all interested in.  At Baby, I tried on a few dresses but one Alice and the Pirates dress was really nice.  I didn't buy it, but I DID think about it all day.  Might go back and buy it tomorrow.  What do you think?

We had lunch at a nice restaurant, and I foolishly got an entree AND a main (they had some special lunch deal), which turned out to be a ridiculous amount of food.  I didn't finish, but I did nearly explode.  Lisa and Charles had normal amounts of food.

We decided to walk to Angelic Pretty and then to Notre Dame.  On the way to AP we spotted a Muji and had a nice time in there.  Muji is a really cool shop.  We bought a couple of things and best of all, picked up a catalogue.  Awesome perusin' ensued!

We went to the address where AP was supposed to be, but found a shop called Boddywood instead.  It stocked a lot of Milk dresses, and also Hellcat Punks (not want), Vivienne Westwood stuff, and Melissa shoes.  I could tell that before I saw them because of their heady perfume.

We figured out that AP was actually ABOVE the shop, and asked a shop girl who took us around the back and up to a bright pink apartment where they had the Angelic Pretty shop.  It was kind of awkward - a super tiny room with bright pink and red walls and huge dresses, while the shop girl stood and looked at us, and I tried to be casual… but I did not buy any AP dresses.  They're too crazy!  Oh my gosh!

After that experience, we took the metro to Notre Dame.  When we got outside again, it was raining!  We hurried into the cathedral, where it was warm and dry, and especially beautiful.  It was SO nice.  It's really big.  I don't know… it's great.  It's real good.  Go there?

We walked to the city hall (Hôtel de Ville) where there was an  an outdoor ice-skating rink.  For christmas i guess?  It was pretty, and the roof of Hôtel de Ville lights up!  Over the road was a famous department store called Bazaar Hôtel de Ville, where we spent a while perusing and having coffees.  It was nice!

Then: it was raining even more!  We took the metro home and picked up some delicious cold salads and tarts from the bakery.  We're eating in our hotel room!  Fighting over who gets to eat what salad!  (ps the prosciutto salad is the best)

Last Day! 8th February

Today was our last day in Japan!! Luckily we did as much as two normal days just to wear ourselves out for the overnight flight in the evening.

I woke up early to look out the window again! I could see Mt Fuji again and also some skyscrapers in Yokohama.

After window viewing, we went downstairs... to the twentieth floor... to have breakfast. We got to sit right at the corner of the building looking over the tracks of Shinjuku station all the way south to Harajuku and Shibuya. It was so much fun watching trains that we almost forgot to eat!

After eating as much of the buffet as we could, we got all our stuff packed up and checked out, leaving our bags at the hotel. This was at about 10:15, just in time for our first appointment at Tokyu Hands which opens at 10. We took the torturous one minute walk to Tokyu Hands which was right across the tracks from our hotel. The MAIN thing I wanted to look at was Porter bags, but we also wanted to check out their toy cameras and other such things! It was fun and we spent a bunch of our remaining cash on cameras. 

Having potentially chosen a bag I wanted to buy, we moved on to our second destination, Daikanyama, which is an area near Shibuya. I wanted to go to *another* bag shop before leaving Tokyo! (thankyou for understanding, Christina...) We took the Yamanote line for free to Shibuya then changed to a private line for a short ride to Daikanyama. Lucky for us, Daikanyama is the most awesome place ever. It is super fashionable. We were there about 12, just when shops start opening, so it was a bit deserted, but the few people we saw were amazingly fashionable. Awesome. The bag shop wasn't hard to find. It's the only place where you can buy Monocle x Porter bags in Tokyo. I got to fondle all the amazing bags, but the ones I wanted were sold out :-( which is lucky because they were about $600. Wow, expensive.

Having left the bag shop we wandered around for a while oogling the cool shops. We stopped for lunch an italian style cafe named Eataly. It was delicious! I had nice coffee and nice sandwich and Christina had an amazing spherical cake and disappointing tea. Yay. I opened up my new Diana Mini camera and loaded film to take pictures!

We headed back to the station and on the way photographers were photographing a model who was modelling. Awesome.

Back at Shinjuku we quickly went back to Tokyu Hands and I bought my new bag yay. THEN we went to Marui One which was only a short walk away. I think this was the first day that Charles activities came before Lolita activities. Wow!

Chrles just got a severe tickling for that. HRRUMPH.

Marui one was fun but Christina didn't find anything good to buy that we could afford so we left. On the walk back to the station we stopped at a few places and looked around Shinjuku for the last time (for now!). 

It was easy to pick up our bags and get the station early for our 4:10 train! We spent some time on the platform watching the trains and taking fun photos. 

The Narita express was a nice trip. It was good to be on it while it was still light so that we could see the scenery. Interesting!

Checking in for our flight, we were distressed to find that we couldn't have seats together! We complained to the lady since we were very upset and luckily they upgraded us to premium economy so that we could be together! It was horrible! But it worked out ok...

The flight back was just tiring... I would have liked to sleep or relax more but they keep coming up with more activities... dinners... breakfasts.... cups of tea...  too many!

Finally we got to Sydney and got our bags through customs etc. I had assumed that you could go to some kind of desk and buy a bus ticket. This was not the case... we found the bus terminal... but there was no official people or anything...

In the end, we bought a ticket for an 8:30 Greyhound bus from their website. When it turned up, the driver didn't have our names on his sophisticated passenger tracking system... a piece of paper... eventually we got on the bus after he'd inspected the "e-ticket" on our iPhone. It was so depressing after travelling on Shinkansen for ages... Australian things suck sometimes.

Anyway, we got home quite early. Trip finished!! Until next time Japan! Mata ne?

7th February again!

So Emi had told us that we'd be dining at a good udon restaurant today for lunch, so we would have a small breakfast. She said maybe a piece of bread, and then some bacon and eggs (Japanese bacon and eggs are smaller than Australian). When we got to the breakfast table, it was ham and egg sandwiches and lots of fruits. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was big.

We packed up all our stuff, which took a while. Emi took us out to the 100 yen shop again because we wanted to buy some more lollies for presents. We got stamps at the post office on the way back to Emi's, which took ages because the lady was worrying that we were sending giant postcards.

We went out to the udon restaurant with Emi's parents and her sister's family. Udon is a kind of thick noodle which is served in a soup, like ramen. Emi ordered a small one for me, but it looked full size and I couldn't finish. It was delicious though. The noodles were about two metres long.

Before going back to Emi's, we went to a Japanese sweet shop where we went last time. Emi's parents insisted on buying us four small sweets, that we could eat in our hotel that night. I bought some other sweets too. They're expensive because they're handmade and special. On arriving back at Emi's, however, we were presented with two giant boxes of sweets for our families. Somehow we managed to fit everything in our bags. We went off to the station to catch the Kodama to Tokyo.

Our hotel was Shinjuku Hotel Century Southern Tower, which is very close to the station. In fact, it is on top of the station. So we exited the station and there was a live band busking on the street! They were really good! A real rock band! They were called Bring, and were advertising some upcoming concerts. After they finished, we clapped and the frontman came up to us to talk! We had a conversation in Japanese, and he said that he was really happy that Westerners could enjoy Japanese music. We told him that we're musicians too, and he said he was EMBARRASSED.

We walked 20 metres to our hotel along Shinjuku Terrace, and found that the lobby is on the 20th floor. The lift was glass again, and we could see Tokyo spread our before us as we rose. The view from the lobby was spectacular! Our room was on the 32nd floor. It had an even better view, and we could even see the sun setting over Fuji-san. We spent ages just looking at the view.

We dressed up to go out that night. I put on my Victorian Maiden outfit and new shoes and beret, Charles donned his new trousers and scarf and we looked like real cosmopolitan peeps. We were proud to be seen with each other. We took the Yamanote line to Harajuku to visit KiddyLand in Omotesando street. We had dinner at a Lotteria first. At KiddyLand we had a lot of fun, but didn't buy anything. Afterwards, we walked up Takeshita Dori, where all the shops were closed. We saw a few Decora girls (or boys?) around too, which were bright. We took the train back to Shinjuku and I had to go and change my shoes. It hurt.

We went back out and walked to Don Quixote, which sells everything ever, which is in the night-clubby area of Shinjuku. Despite it being 11pm, the shop was packed. It's a 24-hour shop. I got what I came for - a tiny suitcase that I can use as a lappy case/handbag. It's red. After that we had to leave because it was too crowded. We went back to our hotel and looked at Tokyo at night. It was super!

Last full day - 7th feb

- Anjo City small breakfast turned out to be huge
- Gigantic Lunch at udon restaurant
- received one billion presents
- to shinjuku
- saw an amazing band who talked to us
- rocked the party
- our hotel is amazingly amazing.
- out to omotesando kiddyland wearing rad outfits both of us
- Dinner at lotteria
- back to shinjuku to change shoes
- out to don quixote (massive shop) and bought a thing to carry things in. a thing carrier.
- to hotel to look at tokyo from above.
-will expand on dot points tomorrow. TSUKARERU.

February 6th!

Today we woke up in Anjo city (same place we went to sleep) and there was snow everywhere! So much for Emi telling us that it will never snow in Anjo! It wasn't as much as Takayama, but still! Smow!

After breakfast the three of us went to a shopping centre in Anjo called Apita. It was a small mall, but there were some lovely shops and we could happily spend time there. Charles bought some magazines, for a change! We had lunch there at a bakery/cafe as usual!

One funny thing we noticed about some shopping centres: lots of shops sell both grown-up clothes and kids' clothes, and the kids' clothes are exactly the same as the adults' clothes. A mother and daughter could wear matching sensible skirts, blouses and blazers. In Isetan in Kyoto, there was a whole floor of brands for kids - like Comme Ca Kids, Burberry for Children, etc. The same brands as the grown-ups! We find this totally weird, but when we talked to Emi about it, she said it was normal for kids to wear those kids of clothes to graduations from kindergarten.

After the mall, we went straight to Emi's brother's house to visit her niece and nephew and sister-in-law. We brought them some presents and they were happy. We had fun playing jenga together, and then we played some games on the Nintendo Wii. It was really nice and we made friends with the kids again.

Back at Emi's place we had an early tea and have been relaxing with the TV all evening. Right now we're watching a movie called "Hula Girls" which is the exact same plot as Billy Elliott, except instead of a small Irish boy doing ballet, it's a group of poverty-stricken Japanese women doing Hawaiian dancing. Same coal-mining town and intolerence and abusive fathers etc. It's really touching even though we can't understand the words.

5th of February!

We got up today and had breakfast with Emi and then went out so that Christina could get her hair cut. Chrissy wanted to go to the same hairdresser she went to last time we were in Japan. While she was getting her hair done I got to read some men's fashion magazines in detail as well as a book about cafes. I love the way Japanese people examine themselves - there are lots of magazines about local travel, and people seem to like knowing about the "interesting thing" about each town and "local specialties". The book was something like "Interesting Cafes of Aichi Prefecture" and had some nice places that we might visit if we have a chance tomorrow.

After the haircut which looks lovely, we caught a train to Nagoya and looked around for a place to have lunch. Eventually we found a nice cafe and had a lunch set each consisting of a sandwich, half-croissant, extra piece of bread, small salad and drink. It was delicious. I had found a map of Nagoya and looked for interesting places to go / art galleries. We decided to go to a shopping area and work our way towards "Nagoya City Art Gallery".

It was a short train ride to this area and we were immediately presented with "Nagoya TV Tower" outside the station. Nagoya tower is a smaller version of Tokyo Tower which is smaller than the Eiffel tower. So it's a bit weird, but pretty in it's own weird way.

We wandered around the area for a while and worked our way towards the art gallery. Around this time, we started to notice that it was extremely cold and we couldn't wait to find a place to go inside.

Finally, we reached the art gallery, but, as usual, they were in between exhibitions and we only got to see their permanent gallery. The permanent gallery was a bit small, but had a few nice pieces. I was more interested in their guides to other galleries in the foyer where I found out that there are a lot of very interesting contemporary art shows in Aichi prefecture all starting.... next week. :-(

After the gallery we went back outside to look at some shops including one that sells ONLY Porter bags yay. I want another Porter bag to go with my wallet!

We saw a few interesting things, but as it got darker it was too cold to stay out so we took the train back to Anjo city and arrived back at Emi's house.

In the evening we chatted with the family and played with Riku, Emi's nephew, who likes us now. Dinner was prepared by Emi and her grandmother and was delicious.

4/2 - Thursday

We woke up in our lovely comfy tatami room in Takayama and I opened the window and looked out on the snowy road. Yay!

I have another story: When we decided to come to Takayama for one night I wanted to stay at "Spa Hotel Alpina". The last time we were in Takayama I wasn't very happy with our hotel and to rub it in they had ads for "Spa Hotel Alpina" in our room. Unfortunately SHA was booked out and we got a room in a fun hostel instead. HOWEVER, to rub things in, SHA was right next to the J-Hoppers Hostel. Everytime I opened a window, I saw Spa Hotel Alpina. I'll get you Spa Hotel Alpina! If it's the last thing I dooooooo!!!!!

We woke up and had mandarins for breakfast since it was all we had with us. After packing up and checking out we walked around Takayama, looking at the morning market and having a delicious second breakfast at a little cafe. We didn't do anything in particular, but we had a nice morning wandering around looking at the snowy town.

At 11:30 we got on our train back to Nagoya. Both of us were sleepy and relaxed on the train, watching the mountains above and rocky river below.

At 14:40 we arrived at MikawaAnjo station and Emi was waiting for us at the gates with her sister in the car. For the rest of the afternoon we hung around the house talking with everybody and playing with Emi's little nephew. We all went for a walk together, and Emi and us two ended up at the enormous 100 yen shop down the road.  We had a nice time there as it's the BEST 100 yen shop in all of Japan.  We assisted with dinner and learned from Emi's grandmother how to make chicken/egg rice which is one of our favourite Japanese foods. We're both very tired from all of our activities and appreciated the quiet afternoon.

February 3rd - Setsubun in Takayama!

Today we got up reasonably early, checked out and took the train to Takayama at about 10:56. The train was booked out so we had to use the non-reserved car, where we easily found seats. It became pretty crowded after a while, it seems everyone was going to Takayama. I slept for about an hour while Charles ate some strange sandwiches with tasty mystery foodstuffs. When I woke up, the scenery was starting to be really beautiful. The train goes along a river up into the mountains, and the water is an amazing colour green. The higher we went, the snowier it became outside, until the whole landscape was covered in snow. It was super lovely!! We took a bajillion photos.

At Takayama, where it was much colder than inside the train, it was actually snowing! There were snowflakes that stayed on my nose and eyelashes! It was a very short fun walk to our hotel, where we hung around and had a cup of tea. We were both feeling a bit sniffly, probably because of the weather.

We head out to look at a nearby shrine, because today was Setsubun. Setsubun is the festival where people usher out devils (Oni) and welcome in good luck. There were a bunch of men all dressed up as devils and gods at the shrine, freaking out babies. It must be good luck to hand your screaming baby to a devil for a photo. It was like photos with Santa! One Oni saw us and posed with me because I was a foreigner.

We followed the group down the street. The Oni went into every shop, and was "chased" (followed) out by the gods, who handed out dried beans. They were chanting the whole way "Devils outside! Luck inside!". I thought people were supposed to throw the beans at the devil, but we only saw some kids throwing them at each other.

We popped into a coffee shop/glassware shop where we had a delicious cake and coffee set each. It was right next to the river, and we could see the bridge and ducks. We saw the Oni go by on the bridge.

We walked along the bridge and came to the "old private houses" of Takayama. These wooden houses are shops that sell all manner of touristy stuff, as well as sake and food. When we wound our way back to our hotel, we ran into the Oni again and he shook my hand because he recognised me. They're a riot!

After a little rest, we headed out to a restaurant where Charles' parents went while they were here, and where we went last time too. I had sukiyaki, and Charles had something like sukiyaki, but with miso paste. It was all very delicious. The waitress told us that her son was in the Setsubun procession today as a god. Then who should show up but the Oni and his party of gods, scattering beans everywhere. He spotted us and said something like "YOU AGAIN!!!" but in Japanese. The waitress' son was with the party and she caught him and told the restaurant "THIS IS MY SON!!" and we all waved at him. She was really proud. It was the best. They made a big mess with beans everywhere.

Back at the hotel we watched T.V. for a while in the common room. Nobody came to join us but there were a bunch of annoying "travelling type" people in the kitchen talking about eating live fish and stuff. Gross.

Our room here is quite nice and we have really nice futon to sleep on, but we don't have our own bathroom or even our own hot water machine. Also we have to walk up stairs to the fourth floor which is REALLY HARD. Charles had to carry both bags (one by one).

In conclusion, snow is pretty.

February 2nd - Kyoto!

Today started out cold and cloudy but not rainy, so we caught the subway to Nanzen-ji temple to look around and follow the Philosopher's Walk between Eikan-do and Ginkaku-ji temples. FIRST, we visited the Turtle and Crane garden as recommended by Charles' parents. It was lovely! Some of the garden's we've visited have been a bit sad because it's the middle of winter, but this garden was full of evergreen plants and moss and was beautiful. We wandered through the grounds and spent a long time contemplating the rock garden.

Our next stop was Nanzen-ji temple which has a huge wooden gate. The grounds of Nanzen-ji are fun to look around and we explored and took photos and sound recorded etc. We followed the aqueduct as far as we could in both directions. One way led to a tunnel and we had to stop, the other way went around the mountain on a perilous path to a big, cool, strange, pumping station. Awesome. Very "Wonder Japan".



We wandered along the path of philosophy looking at cats and shops, but it was quiet and cold so we didn't stop anywhere for too long. Before Ginkaku-ji temple we stopped at a Japanese restaurant for lunch. The menu seemed to be in hiragana so we turned down extra help, but it turned out to be mostly in kanji. We ended up ordering the first two items. "Nishisoba" and "Tororosoba". We knew that "soba" means soba buckwheat noodles, but we weren't sure what Nishi and Tororo were. Nishi turned out to be the black dried strong fish that we had tried a few days before and Tororo was a kind of broth with semi-raw egg on top. Both were O.K, maybe a combination of difficult food and a sort of lame restaurant. Our menu reading skills are improving a lot over this trip. We can read kanji for lots of meats and can read words for noodles etc. We can also identify the kanji for "teishoku" which means "set meal". That's a good one to know.

After the restaurant we walked up to Ginkaku-ji temple for the second ever time. We had a nice walk around and it started to rain so we didn't linger. It was nice, but after the amazing Crane and Turtle garden we weren't as impressed. We did get a nice rainy view of Kyoto though!

After temple exploring we caught a bus into town to do some more city exploring. We got off the bus near the bridge over the "duck river" Kamokawa and walked across looking at the nice view. School was just out and we got to observe some classic Japanese teenager nonsense involving two girls, a bicycle, two policeman and a convenience store. It was all very interesting. Apparently the girls gave Charles a threatening/horrified look in the convenience store.

We walked from the bridge to the centre of fashionable Sanjo-dori and wandered around little shops and had coffee. It got very cold and started to rain a little bit so we took refuge in one of Kyoto's museums and looked at a free exhibition of japanese classical style artworks (kimonos, vases, dolls, prints etc). The lady gave us an inpenetrable pamphlet so we gave it back.

After the museum we zig-zagged through the streets finding interesting new places. We found a Uniqlo and Christina bought Charles some pants. They have three sorts of pockets on the front on each side, a regular jeans-style pocket, a zip pocket AND a button flap pocket. Flexibility plus!

We also went to a Loft so that Christina could look at BB cream (makeup) for ages. She *finally* found the one she wanted and bought a proper sized packet. Charles got to look at more Porter bags.

By this time we had gotten *ridiculously* tired from all of our exploring, so we walked back to our restaurant near home and had a nice teishoku each and then went back to the hotel. After relaxing for a bit we went out to the sento to warm up. We've mostly got the hang of public baths in Japan now. Christina says that the women all giggle and chat in bath. Charles says that groups of men sit down seriously with their elbows on their knees and growl things to each other.

Now we're all warmed up we're going to sleep in preparation for our trip to Takayama tomorrow. Yay!

Monday 1st February!

Today is rainy and cold. We ignored that fact and went to the Inari shrine, which has a really long walk through a tunnel of Toris. We took an umbrella from our hotel, and bought a small one at the 7-11. We had to take the JR Nara line from Kyoto station.

Everyone got off at our station, and there was this huge hoarde of people with umbrellas going to the same shrine as us. It was bedlam! A sea of umbrellas! We kept getting caught on other people's umbrellas because apparently the Japanese don't look where they're going.

We stood around and watched people for a while. Everyone was ringing the bells at the shrines and clapping, so Charles made a recording while Christina stood in the rain and was pointed at by two little girls. She made a face at them.

Next we did the tori walk up the hill. It was dotted with lots of smaller shrines and wound through rainforest. Some way up the hill was a lake with duckies swimming around. We got really cold and wet so we came back down again. We bought what we thought was nice hot dango (a delicious sweet) which was actually konnyaku balls (rubbery salty stuff). Weird.

We took the train back to Kyoto station and got a coffee and croissant. It was only about 2pm and we had planned to do the Philosopher's Walk, but it was just horrible outside. So instead we went to Isetan, the Kyoto station department store, just to browse. It was very posh, but Charles bought some pens.

We walked back to our hotel, buying some lunch food at the 7-11 on the way. We stayed in the foyer, eating and watching a T.V. show. Christina's shoes were completely soaked through, despite all the waterproofing she did before she left. We hung out all our wet things.

We booked our hotel in Takayama for Wednesday night - we'll be staying at a J-Hoppers hostel. Yay! We called them up and the receptionist said it's snowing right now! Yay!

We went to the sento (public bath house) around the corner. This time there were no embarrassing events, but Christina did go in a weird bath where she got electric shocks. She did not stay in long. If only we could read!!

Now we're considering dinner but aren't very hungry or motivated to go and get something. It's still really awful outside.

Sunday 31/01/10 - Kyoto central

Today we were thinking of going to some temples in Kyoto but when we woke up it was raining...

So we chaged our plan to go to some shops in central Kyoto and walk around and find fun things.

The first weird thing that happened today was my big breakfast mistake. I went to a takeaway shop to order some bentos for breakfast and instead of two, I ended up with three. One too many. The silver lining was that one was really awful due to it's strange fried squid content and so we didn't eat that one. The other two were nice.

We left the house and took the subway up the street aiming for "Kyoto Art Centre" which has some galleries. Unfortunately there were no exhibitions on, but as we were walking out we saw people pounding mochi across the road. We went over to have a look and were accosted by some old gentlemen who wanted us to sign a little visitors book. They gave us some weird tickets and a little kids puzzle. It turns out that since it's the end of January there's a mochi festival in that local area and lots of families with kids had come out to this old kindergarten to eat mochi and have a nice time. There were ladies in a big kitchen cooking up the rice, and guys outside pounding it into dough. Each of the kids was given a turn pounding.

A nice man who could speak a little bit of english came and showed us around, then he led us inside to where some ladies gave us three sorts of mochi to eat which is what everyone was getting. The first was a box with mochi that had anko and some that had a brown powder that we can't identify. Probably ground husk of some grain or something. The second was mochi in anko soup like we had previously. The nice man insisted that we try them all and sit in the hall where everybody else was. He also gave us some tea.

The official way for kids to eat mochi at the mochi festival was by letting their parents eat it while they run around and accidentally tip over cups of mochi soup. We tried very hard to be good and finish all ours, but they gave us SO MUCH. It was very difficult. Mochi is gummy and hard to chew and swallow so it took us a long time, all while we felt out of place.  It was delicious though!

After the mochi festival we decided to walk to the Kaleidoscope museum and had a coffee to calm down. We also went to a big cubic mall that we'd been to before. This time it was packed with people watching a dancing competition on a big stage, so we watched too. Most of the dancers were high school students and they were really good. It was rad. Some kids did robot dancing and were really really really good. Super good. Wow.

We went to a few shops and then continued on our kaleidoscopic quest. The kaleidoscopes were fun and mostly different from last year. A lady explained to me in great detail about a kaleidoscope but I only understood a bit.

After kaleidoscopes we wandered through the streets looking at interesting shops. We remembered that there was a button shop around somewhere and searched for it. Christina found a bead shop instead, so I had to stand outside for hours (minutes -ed.) taking photos etc. We also found the button shop but Christina didn't buy anything.

We wandered around for ages looking at all kinds of alternative and expensive fashions, bicycles etc. Eventually we ended up at the Teramachi arcades and we went in there to look around for more interesting stuff. The most interesting thing we found was another coffee which we drank while people watching from the second floor of a Starbucks. People are cool. I looked in another bag shop and Christina looked at shoes. We ended up at a department store looking at men's clothes and I tried on a jacket but didn't buy it. It was too small. I also had a conversation with a man about jeans and also didn't buy any.

On the way home, Christina looked at some frilly clothes shops and we also went to ANOTHER camera shop called "naniwa camera". I thought it would be the same as regular camera shops, but this one had a huge collection of second hand film cameras which was fun to look at (Charles took HOURS -ed.).

On the way home we stopped at our regular restaurant to get dinner. I ordered a beef/rice/egg bowl and, in her first serious misstep, Christina accidentally ordered beansprouts and liver which we didn't like at all. The beansprouts were nice though.  She is still in shock that she ate liver.  Gross.

30 January - Osaka

Today we got up and went straight back to Osaka. Charles wanted to see the Umeda Sky Building. It's really two towers which are joined at the top with an enormous disc and some huge escalators. We took the lift to the 35th floor, and were surprised and terrified when the lift was glass and we could see all around us. It was shockingly scary and rad. We paid a fee to go to the upper disc and had to go up a giant escalator that was also in glass and was also scary. It was pretty empty, but they had a campaign for Valentine's Day on, so everything was for lovers. It was totally weird. In Australia apparently nobody is ever in love (according to the media?), but in Japan love is all the rage. It would suck if you went up the Umeda Sky Building without a boy/girlfriend because of all the love stuff. Anyway... we had a coffee.

We went up onto the observation deck where we could see all of Osaka. It was windy and bright, and there was a place that was "reserved for lovers", possibly because it was romantic during sunset or something. Since it was midday there was no difference between that place and anywhere else on the deck. Weird?

Down on the ground again we went back to Shinsaibashi, where we had spent a lot of last night. We went to the underground mall called Crysta, where we had spent a lot of time in our 2008 trip. It was not nearly as cool as we remembered, but we also remembered that we had never actually bought anything at Crysta last time either. We had lunch in an Okonomiyaki restaurant down there, which was pretty nice. Osaka okonomiyaki has noodles in it as well as cabbage.

Next we took a train further south (or something) back to Namba to look again at the interesting people and places. There were lots of boys/men with long leather shoes, tall blonded hair, leather, chains, and eyeliner. There were also lots of girls/women with tall shoes, tall blonded hair, fake fur, bling, and false eyelashes. We went to Tokyu Hands which is one of Charles' favourite shops (along with Loft and Muji) and Christina bought him a pocket knife, and we bought a cool toy camera that takes FOUR PHOTOS in ONE SECOND and works on film and is cute. We wanted one ever since our friend had one that was cool. We're going to load it up and take photos tomorrow but we can't upload them to the internet!

Christina found a few interesting shops - an Atelier Pierrot, Marble (had never seen this one before, and didn't like it much), and Baby, The Stars Shine Bright. This is how we know she's not a real Lolita (even hate writing that name): she doesn't really like Baby. We bypassed all the dresses save an Alice and the Pirates one, and ended up only buying some cute earrings that were half price.

We went to a Beams for Men shop which had a lot of great clothes that Charles sort of liked, but he's "not into fads" so didn't buy anything except for a small Porter change purse. Not into fads, but into bag brands. He's happy now and puts his small change in it.

We were tired then and made our way back to Osaka station to take the shinkansen back to Kyoto. We were the only ones in the entire carriage. Once back in Kyoto, we got some takeaway katsudon and oyakodon from a place close to our hotel. It was delicious!

Friday 29th January - Osaka

Today was the best day ever. We basically went to Osaka from Kyoto to go shopping and it was awesome.

We got up a bit late and walked to the station, taking a "local" train to Osaka which was about half an hour. At Osaka station, we got completely lost looking for a Tourist Information Centre where we could get a city map. Eventually we found it and got a map.

Our first item was to go to the head shop of Chrissy's favourite lolita brand "Victorian Maiden". The head shop is in an apartment building which seems totally weird. They seem to have another apartment in the building which I guess is their office where they run the business, so the shop is their special show room.

Anyway, the tricky thing was, Chrissy sent an email (in Japanese) saying when she would like to visit their shop but they didn't reply which was a bit upsetting. We decided to go the shop anyway but the directions on their website was in Japanese and really confusing. So we went out to the place on the map which was tricky in itself and followed the directionts to the highlighted building, but it didn't seem right. In fact we went up the correct apartment and it just seemed like a normal apartment. Then we went to about 3 other local apartment buildings looking for the right one. Eventually we decided to have a break and get a coffee. In the shop, I was looking at the map and asked the waitress if she knew where to go, she got her manager who knew about it and led me outside to point to where to go.

After our coffee we went out again and found it easily. We had been in the right place, but on the wrong side of the block. Their aparment letter box and intercom were labelled so we knew we were right. In hindsight, the google translated directions make sense, kind of. The "Coffee Museum" is the coffee shop we stopped at.

We had to call up the shop to work out how to use the intercom but eventually we got to the shop and a shop girl came down from the office to meet us, I think she knew we were coming even though she hadn't replied to the email. Christina will tell all about her adventure in trying on clothes (even I had a pretty nice time).

Christina:

I had attempted to do my hair nicely to visit Victorian Maiden, and I actually did a pretty good job, but what started as an up-do ended up as a side-down-do. Slippery hair?

At the VM shop, there was a small ante-chamber where there was a mannequin and some bits and brochures. The main room had several racks of clothes, two small tables and a display cabinet with beautiful hair things and jewellery and ornaments, a fitting room, and the soundtrack was Easy Piano Duets (a book I know well). Frilly parasols adorned every other place. Everything was old-fashioned and pretty. The shop girl was extremely cute and helpful, although she couldn't speak a word of English. I tried on lots of clothes, many were too big for me. Here is a list of all the clothes I tried on:

Noble Stripe Pintuck Blouse in both brown and blue. It fit like a glove. I didn't like the brown so much, but it was hard to find something nice that went with the blue one. It's made of light semi-silky fabric which is slightly striped.
Tulip Garden Scallops Skirt in the dusky colour. This skirt fit well because it had lacing at the back. It is lined and the fabric feels delightful. I liked this skirt.
Charlotte Mermaid Skirt in black (they didn't seem to have the cream). I really loved this on the website, but in real life it didn't fit me at all. I don't get it, it just looked completely wrong. Too big for me, and so it sat too low on my waist, and so it ruined the hipline.
Christina Dress in black. Everyone knows how much I love this one. The girl got it out for me especially because she realised that it is NAMED AFTER ME. I had high hopes, but it was too big. It should be called the Slightly Bigger Than Christina Dress. The collar was cool though, I would have liked another like that.
Ribbon Mielche Dress in red flowery. It was pretty but a bit overwhelming and too big for me.
Lady Check Mermaid Dress in black and white tartan. It was a totally weird fit. Looked cool on the website!
Reginental Stripe Frill Dress in light grey. This was really beautiful. It fits well and has a nice shape. The fabric is beautiful. I can imagine myself wearing this one to work!
Dorothy Dress in pink. What a lovely dress! It fit well and suited me, and had the look of a collar at the top - all pintucks and lace edgings. Super lovely.
Adele Bustier Dress in black patterned. This was really nice, I tried it on twice actually, once with my blouse and once with the VM blouse. It was really pretty and fit perfectly.

I got two items. Can you guess which ones? Guess first and then read. Go on.

I spent a good hour and a half in the shop, because I wanted to be sure about my purchases. When I bought them, the girl also put two postcards and a lovely VM phone strap in the bag too. She told me they were presents and we had a small conversation. Charles told me later that she'd been writing me a postcard every time I was in the changeroom (often) using a little translator which beeped (I had been wondering about the beeping) and she'd asked him which colour phone strap I'd prefer. Then Charles took a photo of her and I together in the part of the shop where photography was allowed. She told me I was cute! The cutest girl in Japan told me I'm cute! I didn't stop smiling all day.

(I bought the pintuck blouse in blue, and the tulip garden skirt in dusky. They go well together and I'm so happy with them!)

Back to Charles:

After VM we realised we actually had no plan about what to do. We looked in our city guide from the information booth and decided to go to the south shopping part of the city which is imaginatively named Minami (south). We had been here last year for a little bit but still thought we could find something new. We took a JR train on the Osaka loop line for a while and then remembered we were hungry. As the train pulled into a station, Christina spotted a "Lotteria" burger place on the platform and we jumped of the train and right into the shop.

We hadn't tried Lotteria yet and the food was not super great, but passable given how hungry we are. Burger places in Japan have an "American" feel and definately play themselves up as novelties. They usually have jazz over the speakers which is nice and are filled with people who buy some chips or a coffee and then sit down to sleep/study/chat etc. We're kind of sick of cheap Japanese food and the burgers are usually good quality.

After Lotteria we got back on another train and worked our way to Namba station with one change to a different line (? Mysteriously). Namba has a huge underground mall "Namba Walk" which we got lost in for a little while. Actually I thought we were in a DIFFERENT underground mall called "Crysta" but all underground malls look the same and I was completely wrong. Our plan was to walk through cool places and find a shop we had been to before called "Aranzi Aronzo" which sells cute things. We escaped Namba Walk and ended up on Shinsaibashi street which was awesome because it is probably the most fun street in the world. Mum and Dad - you've seen Teramachi covered arcades, but Osaka is king of covered arcades. Shinsaibashi is sooo long and it has others going in each directions as far as you can see. It is madness.

We stopped for a coffee at Starbucks and people watched for a while, Osaka people have a distinct and rad style compared to Tokyo and Kyoto. After coffee we walked out to the river which bisects Minami and features awesome lighted signs and lots of suspended giant crabs. I got to see the big "Glico Man" sign which is a famous landmark of the area. Everybody else on the bridge was taking photos of it as well. Also a guy was beatboxing by himself and was good.

We walked through the arcades for a while and I decided that I wanted to find a musical instrument store to buy my little Korg controlled in BLACK. We found one small one but it was really only a Yamaha shop. Christina and I were discussing how hard it is to find a musical instrument shop when we suddenly saw an awesome shop right in front of us. I went in and asked for what I wanted and got it. Yay. Also, Japan wants me to buy a Yamaha Tenori-On. Even Christina likes them. I would but they're kind of a Toy with a capital T, and also about $800. A Korg Wavedrum is a possibility as well, but I don't think I will buy one.

We also went to Loft which was fun and then hightailed it to Aranzi Aronzo, seeing all kinds of fun shops on the way. Osaka is full of cool bikes.

In the end, Aranzi Aronzo was not that good, but we bought some little postcards we liked. We plotted our route home to a subway station and walked back down a different street, aiming to get a small park where kids gather to have fun. On the way, *I* saw a lolita shop and Chrissy stopped to look while I went to an awesome book shop called Village Vanguard after the New York jazz club. Village Vanguard is a self-proclaimed "Exciting Life Book Store" and sells CDs, novelties, fashion accessories and magazines. It's madness in a Village Vanguard, they feature CDs throughout the shop with each one in it's own CD player playing all at once. The books are organised by kind of genre with little enclaves of particular interests (fetishes?). My interest was piqued by a corner of books about industrial architecture/abandoned buildings/bizarre places featuring my favourite Japanese magazine "Wonder Japan" and also picture books about dams, floodgates, expressway junctions photographed at night, etc. Chrissy got lost in a lolita fashion section. This particular store was giant and we had to leave because it was too overwhelming. Wow.

We decided to break for dinner since Chrissy saw a "Freshness Burger" which is her favourite burger chain. On finishing our burgers, we realised it was 9 oclock and would have to start going home. We quickly found a subway station and zipped back to Shin-Osaka hoping to get a shinkansen back to Kyoto. We got the last Hikari at 9:33. The ticket lady was hesitant to give us tickets since it was 9:27 but she underestimated our shinkansen catching abilities and we were fine. I think it the last one because there was some damage to the line further up from Kyoto as illustrated on a little sign at Osaka. At Kyoto their was a huge crowd of people at the Shinkansen gates who were all stuck because of it and were being dealt with somehow. We squeezed through to escape unscathed.

Finally we walked home from Kyoto station dodging parties of good-tempered business people out for their Friday night drinks.

28th January!

Today we headed down to the station so Charles could look at another Bic Camera. It had 7 floors! He enjoyed looking at all the cameras and headphones and video recorders. Chrissy had fun listening to Jamiroquai on the display headphones.
We had a coffee and cake at a Dotour shop and caught the bus out to the University of Art and Design to meet a lady named Emi who we had arranged to have a cooking class from. When we got there, she was waiting there with one other lady who had joined the class. We walked to her house, where she began telling us all about what we were going to cook and all the ingredients.
We made a meal with five dishes: a salad with sesame seasoning; grilled marinated fish steaks; tofu-skin spring rolls; boiled turnips with chicken sauce; and mochi rice balls with various fruits and sweets. Along the way, she gave us three types of tea and a glass of ume-chu each. Ume-chu is really sweet plum sake. It was an amazing experience and we recommend it to anyone visiting Kyoto. Emi was just lovely and she clearly enjoys sharing her kitchen with us.
We took the bus to the Teramachi covered arcades so that I could visit the shops I didn't get to the other day - Metamorphose, Milk and Emily Temple Cute. I was just going to look, because tomorrow we're visiting Victorian Maiden and I want to see everything before I buy (if I buy at all). First, Metamorphose. I can't believe how different their stock is from last time. Last time it was all leopard prints and disgusting colours, but now they have taken a more classical turn. Some really nice dresses, lovely pintucked blouses, and some socks that I almost bought. Next, Milk. It's not really Lolita, but some of their clothes are frilly and all of them are cute. I tried on a pair of shorts, but they were too big. Too big! Emily Temple Cute was really nice, they had a lot of stock, and a lot of their stuff was on sale half price. Some lovely cardigans and tops, some nice stuff coming in their spring collection too. And the shop girls were the lovliest I've seen in Japan.
We walked to the McDonald's near our hotel, but weren't terribly hungry because of our humongous meal today. We didn't feel like eating more Japanese food.
We washed our clothes tonight. Hah! It's been a while. What a relief.

We'll blog tomorrow.

TSUKARERU *flops on bed*

Wednesday, 27th January

Today we woke up late in Kyoto without knowing what to do. Continuing our list of things from last time we were here, we decided to go to Arashiyama in western Kyoto to have a look at the famous bamboo forest.

Cleverly, we worked out how to get out there on a  JR line so we wouldn't have to pay a fare. The subway kind of expensive in Kyoto.  Out in Arashiyama we looked around for the Buddhist temple, Tennoji. It has a famous garden and connects to the bamboo forest. We payed to have a look at the garden and spent a while sitting in contemplation at the nice pond and reading about it. As seems to be the case with all Kyoto temples, it was built in the 1300s, but unfotunately burned down... eight times... since then. So it's not really very old. Except in tradition.

The garden was very nice but a bit wintery, on the other hand it was pretty quiet. The exit of the garden walks right into the bamboo forest which was also nice and only marginally spoiled by workers cleaning up with chainsaws and hammers (don't worry, we went back later after the chainsaw guys left and taxis started driving through instead). We took lots of photos that look exactly like other photos in books of the same place. We observed and skipped some bits from the Lonely Planet guide and started wandering along the edge of the mountains looking at the interesting houses and other japanese tourists. Our favourite tourists are little groups (usually trios) of old ladies who all  huddle together on the train. They all wear little knitted hats and walk slowly and quietly with only the occaissional "hon to neeeeeee?". They're all polite and sometimes say "konnichiwa" to us. The worst tourists are embarrassing Australians who yell out at each other across parks and gardens and stuff. Ew. Luckily we only saw a few today.

We saw a house where Basho's student used to live, which was pretty, and some weird fields, and some ninja guys pulling carts with japanese tourists. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant that mainly serves traditional japanese sweets and and tea. We wanted food so we ordered two different sets based around green tea flavoured Soba noodles. My set had a pile of cold noodles and some sauce and condiments to dip them in, as well as a little bit of fish and some pickles (sukimono = things you like) and some salty red beany rice balls. Chrissy had soba in salty soup with a big bit of fish on top + sukimono and a bowl of rice with tiny fish. We ate it all and it was delicious. Soba noodles are great. The restaurant was nice and quiet and we sat for a while looking at their garden.

Our next stop was Gio-ji which is a mini temple which Errol + Pamela had visited in November. It has a mossy garden started by a Buddhist nun hudreds of years ago and was really pretty. My favourite thing of the day. It's surrounded by bamboo forests and the cool air was falling down from the hills above us. We met some japanese tourists and admired a cat which seemed to live in the temple building.

One of the tourists had an old fashioned style reflex camera with the view finder on top. I think I mentioned already that film cameras are totally in this year, especially weird ones. Every time we go sight-seeing I see tourists with novelty cameras or old Canon SLRs. Sorry Peter and Errol - no Minoltas. Also, it's mostly girls. Chrissy where's your tilt-shift colour-filtered Holga toy camera?

After walking through the bamboo forest again we took the JR line back to town, changing to a subway so that we could go visit the Teramachi arcades. We wandered around for a while and had McDonalds for dinner. After that we got serious about shopping and went straight to the bag shop. I was going to buy a Porter wallet but Chrissy said that the zip was too big and would break so I didn't. We also went to two music shops, one only sold guitars but the other had a pretty cool selection of stuff. Chrissy got to try a real Moog theremin which was awesome, we both played with Yamaha Tenori-on (synthesiser toys from Yamaha which are a grid of lighted buttons, rad and cool, but also $800). I wanted to buy a little Korg controller but they only had it in white and not black so I didn't.

Maybe I'll buy a Korg wavedrum drum synth. Only $500? Maybe not.