Kyoto

Hey Everyone

I am now in Kyoto, it is huge and exciting. Today we travelled to Uji, the sister city of Kamloops, where we met the mayor and took a tour of the gold Buddha and temple and a tea factory, as Uji is the tea capital of Japan. It was amazing. We also went to Nara, the oldest city in Japan, and saw the great wooden Buddha, it is the largest in the world.

The place that we were supposed to stay at last night, tonight, and tomorrow night (here in Kyoto) has a bed bug infestation so they made other arangements for us however, it means that we are changing inns daily rather than being stationary for three night. Oh well.

Tomorrow we have a free day and I am not sure what I am going to do yet. It would be nice to explore Kyoto, but I am a little afraid I will get lost since it is so big and I definately do not want to stay with the group since I am getting rather irritated with them for a number of reasons. Tom is going to Kobe, one of the major ports in Japan, so I think that I might go with him and learn something as well as sightsee. I am discovering that I am not much of a tourist type traveller, I am sick of temples and castles already and I want to learn about the places and see the non-tourist side of things rather than just the tourist attractions. My other option for tomorrow is returning to Uji (and possibly Nara) and exploring them a bit more since we did not have much of a chance to. One thing that I would really like to see is a museum in Uji, that I have no clue how to spell it, but it is a dedication to the first novel and novelist, who just happens to be female, ever. It is the 1000 aniversary of the book this year so there is many special events occuring.

I am doing very well and am enjoying myself very much. Those that I am with are starting to get on my nerves but I think the day away from them tomorrow will really help with that. I am hoping that most of it is just the result of too much time together in such a fast paced atmosphere. I had better go now since I have to get some writing done and I want to have a shower and get to bed. I will post again when I can find a computer (some places, such as this one, have a computer that we can use and if not there are internet cafes). Well I will talk to you all later. God Bless and have a great night. Miss you all.

Oh yeah Happy Victoria Day.