Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe

I'm three days into Japan and typing this on a Japanese Mac which has the punctuation in weird spots and is probably going to make this a little incoherent. The reason for this trip is that my cousin is getting married on on Sunday to a lovely Japanese woman name Yuka. I'm here visiting along with my parents. Until the wedding our days are being filled with an intense campervan ride around the country. I arrived on Monday and we didn't have much time to do anything except drive to Kyoto and book into an intensely traditional hotel. We had to take off our shoes and kneel on the floor for dinner etc. which was fine by me but my dad didn't seem to appreciate the strain on his knees very much, and I got the most severe pins and needles of my life after about twenty minutes and had to resort to cross-legged stance. We saw a guy walking the streets tapping a piece of wood which is apparently a reminder to be careful with fires. This seemed quite strange until the tour the next day when most of the city that we saw was constructed of wood and quite condensed - a big fire would decimate the place easily. Kyoto seems to have resisted westernisation and is really beautiful - kind of a time warp and pretty eye-opening culturally. We visited several shrines, temples, and gardens. I had my fortune read - this was done by shaking a barrel full of sticks and removing one from a small hole which I appreciated as it seemed to be a bit more honest about the lottery nature of these things. The stick had a number on it that corresponded with a slip of paper with the fortune on it. My cousin translated it for me and he says I got "supreme good luck" which is supposed to be the best one - I'll have a long life, be happy in my career, and most importantly perhaps, my career will satisfy my wife. Good news. There was also a fountain coming down off Mount Kiyomizudera that had three jets shooting over a balcony. You can drink the water from this by standing underneath the balcony and sticking out a kind of tumbler on a pole. You're only supposed to drink from one of the jets as they magically make you either more intelligent, better looking, or give you good health. I went for the good health one as I'm kind of satisfied with my intelligence and I feel more unhealthy than ugly most of the time. It seemed like a bit of a laugh but some people obviously take it seriously - I saw one woman filling up what looked like a 2 litre bottle with water from the "beauty" shoot. My mum saw this as well and said she considered yelling out "you're not that ugly" at her. Would have been awesome if she had but then again they seem a bit sensitive about honour and stuff like that here so maybe not.

From Kyoto we went to Osaka, which is totally different again. MASSIVE - 6 million people which I think is actually smaller then London, but London doesn't have the sprawl of skyscrapers and lights to show for itself that Osaka does. Nor the dense smog covering the city. We had dinner with the boss of the brides father at an ultra fancy restaurant. It was unlike any Japanese food I've had before and I have to say it tested even my usually adventurous tastebuds. I can't really describe much of it because I have no idea what is was, but the presentation was impressive and the sake was good. Also the desert had gold dust sprinkled on the top of it. Mine had formed the shape of a horse which I interpreted as a portent of good luck, and the locals seemed to agree with me. Today we woke up and did some more exploring and went up the Osaka Sky Building which is the tallest building around (sorry, I'm totally ignorant on the specifics - google it yourself if you're bothered). Really amazing views. Imagine the heart of the Auckland CBD cut out and tiled about a hundred times. I couldn't see to the edge of the city as the smog was thick and the buildings just faded into it in the distance in every direction. From there we came to Kobe. If that's ringing any bells it's probably because Kobe had a really major earthquake in the 90's. Which is interesting because I'm sitting here on the thirteenth floor of the hotel writing this and about 10 minutes ago we just had a bit of a tremor. Nothing major but the glass shook and made some noise and I felt a very definite sway lasting about 30 seconds. Kobe is hot. Really nice clean modern architecture, upmarket types of people and places, very urban, but built on what seems like a relatively small space right between an island spotted sea, and deep green mountains. The hotel we're in is uber-swanky - it's built right out onto the sea (like the Auckland Hilton but three times taller, a more interesting shape, not surrounded by ugly dock stuff and loaded hog patrons). The hotel has its own cruise ship that we went out on for dinner and viewed the city lights from. Fancy.

It's 12:45 here and I need to sleep as we've got another big day tomorrow, but I'll put some more down soon.

Zài jiàn
( 再见)

D.O.