A partial update
Lo sient for the blog hiatus, the internet access has been MIA for a few days :o) and its been a pretty busy few days. Hard to believe that I was ever in Osaka! I`ll work on catching you up though :o)
That night in Osaka I went to see the castle, but it started raining so it was a short and sweet trip. The plum blossoms were out though and it was GORGEOUS! We saw the castle but didnt venture in. We went plastic food shopping instead :o) A lot of restaurants in Osaka have these ridiculously and impressively realistic plastic models of the food they offer out in front of the restaurant so that non-Japanese speakers such as myself can actually make a somewhat educated food decision :o) It actually works really well, but its kind of a funny process. We stand out in front of the restaurant, decide which model looks good and then ask the waitress to come outside and we point to what we want. Efficient and a half. It helps with the good ol language barrier :o)
At dinner the tiredness hit. I figured that at that point I had slept about 7 hours in the past 3 days...not so much and certainly not enough shut-eye. We ate, walked through a cool marketplace and then headed back to the Raizan. I went up to take a nap before Lex was supposed to get there at 10 and ended up waking up to a miss alexa and mr scott knocking on my door. Such a great awakening! We had a few minutes of awe-filled reunion. Such an amazing coincidence that we could all be there at the same place and time. Scott heading east around the world, me heading west and lex settled somewhere in the middle. Scott came bearing gifts too. Yak jerky (it turned into a yummy snack on the bus from Kyoto to Lex`s) and a 6-pack of Coors Light from China, with pull-tops none the less! (these guys made it to the hotel in Kyoto where we enjoyed them while Lex schooled me and Scott in hearts...yes scott, its here in history, you cant deny it, you got WORKED (for the third time??!!) :o) So so fun. I cant even go into how exciting it was to see them and how fun it has been to travel together these last few days (though we were certainly missing our fourth international travel fun friend...). We had about a billion `zoom out` moments. The `oh, here we are walking the streets of Japan together as if its an everyday thing` moments that boggle my mind. The reunion was energizing and we headed out to a little restaurant to get some food before heading to sleep.
The next day we went to the Osaka castle again and saw the blossoms rain-free! Then we caught a train for Nara where we saw shrines and temples galore. There were billions of deer and one of them ate Alexas map. Oops. They were really pushy though! There was one particularily pushy deer who wouldnt leave us alone and this lady came over to us, pulled purple post-its out of her purse and fed them to the deer as she excitedly exclaimed and explained how much the deers like to eat paper! and glue too apparently... We ended up making it to a night of a fire-festival in Nara. The festival lasts from March 1-14ish, but we were there for a ceremony where men rolled tumbleweed balls of fire up a hill, ran across the front of the temple with the ball and shook sparks on the people below. There were thousands of people and it was certainly an interesting tradition! Im glad we werent standing beneath the sparks though, im sure its an honor, but sometimes pretty big chunks of fire would fly down, and, regardless, people would scream each time a fire-ball was shaken even though there must have been at least 20 fireballs. Fun times :o) Alexa also introduced Scott and I to vending machine hot chocolate. yum yum yum and a perfect way to warm up on a cold day.
That night we navigated out way to Kyoto and stayed at an ADORABLE guest house. It was the bottom floor of a house, sort of like a Japanese backpacker style bed and breakfast. The family was great, there was a mom a dad and two little kids. The mom was amazing. Super energetic, helpful, SO excited to have us etc. We stayed there both nights that we were in Kyoto and LOVED it. Definitely recommed it to anyone headed that direction! It was centrally located too, major plus.
Sooo, I didnt get very far, but thats a bit for now :o) I hope all is well and Ill write more soon!
That night in Osaka I went to see the castle, but it started raining so it was a short and sweet trip. The plum blossoms were out though and it was GORGEOUS! We saw the castle but didnt venture in. We went plastic food shopping instead :o) A lot of restaurants in Osaka have these ridiculously and impressively realistic plastic models of the food they offer out in front of the restaurant so that non-Japanese speakers such as myself can actually make a somewhat educated food decision :o) It actually works really well, but its kind of a funny process. We stand out in front of the restaurant, decide which model looks good and then ask the waitress to come outside and we point to what we want. Efficient and a half. It helps with the good ol language barrier :o)
At dinner the tiredness hit. I figured that at that point I had slept about 7 hours in the past 3 days...not so much and certainly not enough shut-eye. We ate, walked through a cool marketplace and then headed back to the Raizan. I went up to take a nap before Lex was supposed to get there at 10 and ended up waking up to a miss alexa and mr scott knocking on my door. Such a great awakening! We had a few minutes of awe-filled reunion. Such an amazing coincidence that we could all be there at the same place and time. Scott heading east around the world, me heading west and lex settled somewhere in the middle. Scott came bearing gifts too. Yak jerky (it turned into a yummy snack on the bus from Kyoto to Lex`s) and a 6-pack of Coors Light from China, with pull-tops none the less! (these guys made it to the hotel in Kyoto where we enjoyed them while Lex schooled me and Scott in hearts...yes scott, its here in history, you cant deny it, you got WORKED (for the third time??!!) :o) So so fun. I cant even go into how exciting it was to see them and how fun it has been to travel together these last few days (though we were certainly missing our fourth international travel fun friend...). We had about a billion `zoom out` moments. The `oh, here we are walking the streets of Japan together as if its an everyday thing` moments that boggle my mind. The reunion was energizing and we headed out to a little restaurant to get some food before heading to sleep.
The next day we went to the Osaka castle again and saw the blossoms rain-free! Then we caught a train for Nara where we saw shrines and temples galore. There were billions of deer and one of them ate Alexas map. Oops. They were really pushy though! There was one particularily pushy deer who wouldnt leave us alone and this lady came over to us, pulled purple post-its out of her purse and fed them to the deer as she excitedly exclaimed and explained how much the deers like to eat paper! and glue too apparently... We ended up making it to a night of a fire-festival in Nara. The festival lasts from March 1-14ish, but we were there for a ceremony where men rolled tumbleweed balls of fire up a hill, ran across the front of the temple with the ball and shook sparks on the people below. There were thousands of people and it was certainly an interesting tradition! Im glad we werent standing beneath the sparks though, im sure its an honor, but sometimes pretty big chunks of fire would fly down, and, regardless, people would scream each time a fire-ball was shaken even though there must have been at least 20 fireballs. Fun times :o) Alexa also introduced Scott and I to vending machine hot chocolate. yum yum yum and a perfect way to warm up on a cold day.
That night we navigated out way to Kyoto and stayed at an ADORABLE guest house. It was the bottom floor of a house, sort of like a Japanese backpacker style bed and breakfast. The family was great, there was a mom a dad and two little kids. The mom was amazing. Super energetic, helpful, SO excited to have us etc. We stayed there both nights that we were in Kyoto and LOVED it. Definitely recommed it to anyone headed that direction! It was centrally located too, major plus.
Sooo, I didnt get very far, but thats a bit for now :o) I hope all is well and Ill write more soon!
posted by Amelia at
10:04 PM
1 Comments:
My dramatic loss was only a set up. Unfortunately you never got to see the come back of the century/hearts domination/here's a free lesson materialize as Alexa was very shrewd about not letting us play another game by sheparding us to middle school and such. I can only say that you can't trust a Cares any farther than you can throw them.
By
Scott Warren, at 2:26 PM
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