Two cans of ice-cold Pocari Sweat got the day off to a good start! All the homes from Kansai so far on the train seem very higgledy-piggledy and individualistic - quite a surprise. Concrete tower blocks sit with little wooden homes nestling between them. Houses with variegated blue tiled roofs sit next to supermarkets with hoardings screaming out special offers in Katakana so stylised that a Gaijin like me has no hope of deciphering them before the fast, quiet train we're on leaves them far behind.
We arrived at our hotel at about two, having had an abortive attempt at buying the Canon IX7 APS camera I wanted, known in Japan as the EOS IX-50, but it was nearly the same price as the most expensive place to get it in Bath! All the same, we managed to sort out things to see, bus passes and I saw the outside of my first temple - the extremely impressive Higashi Hongan-ji.
Once at the Tani House hotel, we crashed out until six after a very grateful Tani-san (we brought her a present of some shortbread from Enqland) showed us that the 4200¥ room was just as nice as the one we'd booked at 4600¥... At about 6pm (gogo rokuji) we arose and went out into the hot steamy night to find somewhere to eat. We settled on what turned out to be a fish restaurant where we feasted on ebi tenpura, mijiro sashimi, grilled sanma and all manner of delights for what seemed a pretty reasonable sum. After buying breakfast for the next day we retired to our futon, as the French would say, fatigué mais heureux. A great start to our Japanese holiday.
We arrived at our hotel at about two, having had an abortive attempt at buying the Canon IX7 APS camera I wanted, known in Japan as the EOS IX-50, but it was nearly the same price as the most expensive place to get it in Bath! All the same, we managed to sort out things to see, bus passes and I saw the outside of my first temple - the extremely impressive Higashi Hongan-ji.
Once at the Tani House hotel, we crashed out until six after a very grateful Tani-san (we brought her a present of some shortbread from Enqland) showed us that the 4200¥ room was just as nice as the one we'd booked at 4600¥... At about 6pm (gogo rokuji) we arose and went out into the hot steamy night to find somewhere to eat. We settled on what turned out to be a fish restaurant where we feasted on ebi tenpura, mijiro sashimi, grilled sanma and all manner of delights for what seemed a pretty reasonable sum. After buying breakfast for the next day we retired to our futon, as the French would say, fatigué mais heureux. A great start to our Japanese holiday.
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