Being a tourist

Everything is looking up for my tourist lifestyle!

It all began last night, when I came back to the hostel after a night out on the town at an Izakaya, basically a Japanese pub. Since I could speak Japanese, the hostel manaer took me with him when he went to his favourite drinking place. I was expecting a seedy underground joint with mould growing on the walls and a surly guy staring at you from the corner, I think its just somethin about words with Z in them. But when I got there I found a clean, white, classy place, where I was served strange, very exotic Japanese foods I'd never even heard of back home, but which tasted quite nice. One was raw octopus with wasabi, and the other was a kind of fish egg paste with cheese mixed into it (both salty and cheesy, really yum). We spent the night talking about all sorts of things, and I got a lot of recommendations of great Japanese books, movies and so on. The beers are huge here, and very frothy...

I woke up from the floor of the Japanese room at 7am, having gone to bed just past midnight. I then had the unenviable task of waking the two swedish girls (THEY WERE SWEDISH! Hahahahaha). I had no idea what I was going to do that day, but once again disorganization was the best plan. As I was up early (not by choice, they needed the room back), I talked with everyone over breakfast about where they were goin and what the best places were. I caught someone saying a japanese place name, combined with the comment "very beautiful", and said "I'll go there!". Neil, who just finished law school in Canada, and is being called to the bar in a few weeks, accompanied me there. He turned out to be the adventurous type, and we not only walked the 4km track through the mountains, but took every strenuous detour possible, with the justification that "We might as well, since we're here!". Ah...finally someone who understands my way of thinking. Not content with just spending 4 hours walking through the 10,000 vermillion gates in the mountains, we then went to a nearby zen temple, which required another hour or so of walking.

Tiredness fixed by starbucks (very culturally important), sore legs fixed by onsen (jumping in and out of boiling hot, and freezing cold baths, watched by Yakuza people), and need for adventure fixed by lots and LOTS of adventure. I'm all adventured out. Which is a real shame, beacuse my chance to relax is almost certainly not now. I have another night on the town with the manager ahead, this time a FRIDAY night!

Wish me luck...