Japan Extravaganza Part 1

I've been slacking with the blog a bit, because I have been busy. Last month my friend Nicole came to Japan and we traveled around for a week. First we went to Osaka and met up with some of my friends. And what did we take Nicole out for her first night in Tokyo? Mexican food! Mmm, tastes like America. I think it wasn't exactly what she had in mind, but I promised her she would have the chance to eat plenty of Japanese food. The castle on the left is Osaka-Jo. It looks cool on the outside, but the inside is all modern. We also went to aquarium. I must say, Japanese people know how to make an aquarium. When you go to an aquarium, do you want to learn about lowland marsh ecosystems, blah, blah , blah? Heck no! You want to see kawaii (cute) animals, and the Japanese are all about all things cute, so you just get to look at a whole aquarium full of guys like this...awww. The next day we took a train to Koya-San, a sacred mountain for Japanese buddism. We stayed at a temple overnight, which was really beautiful. Dinner was a vegetarian meal with many different dishes. This is how big a dinner is when we have work parties. Japanese dinners are huge! The women who owned the temple came and spoke to us in amazing English, because she studied English Literature at Tokyo University, the best school in Japan, before World War II. It was not common for a woman to go there in those days. Nicole and I were exhausted after dinner and were told the only night activity to do was to walk to the cemetery and hour away. So we set out just intending to walk 10 minutes into town and back and wound up walking to the cemetery and back even though it took three hours. We woke up in the morning at six to do buddhist chanting and then did the whole walk again. The cemetery was so cool looking the daylight, full of tombstones and tall trees. Since I am going to bed now, I think talking about this trip is going to be broken up into multiple parts. Peace.