Harataki Aizuwakamatsu

... though the plaque actually says that they feared their existence would cause him trouble. I'm hoping this is a mistranslation...please. The scene is actually stranger because one of the girls is apparently wounded by cannot die (the rest of the family is crumpled on the ground, plus the young kids are under a blanket) so she is begging a soldier to kill her--all heavy drama except there's no real facial expressions. Just an impassive mannquin face--all you're missing is ...

... to get there i.e. shuttle bus, and 3 trains to Kyoto, back to the hotel to collect the washing, back onto the train to Iberaki and then a taxi to Paul's. Then two loads of washing to be done and hung out and then we were off to catch a bus to the train station, where we did some shopping for picnic refreshments and then finally a train to the park in Osaka... The store where we did our food shopping was brilliant - a bit like ...

... reconstruction. The walls and moat are original, and there's a nice garden and tea house. There's a good view from the 5th storey; however, the smog was pretty awful (they do lots of burning in the fields and it was really thick on this particular day), and the town itself had nothing going for it. Most Japanese towns and cities are quite ugly - nondescript concrete ...

Now we decided to head 3 hours east to visit the apline snow monkies of the japanaese alps. Probably not the most constructive use of our time but when I heard that the young monkies dive bomb their parents in a natural hot spring I was sold. We got there and it was so true, the monkies are helarious and complete unafraid of humans, they don't really care that you are there. You should ...

... at out hotel up a long set of stone steps. When we got there we redeemed our Pass for a set of tickets at a ticket booth. We wanted to save the Toshogu Shrine, the famous resting place of the first shogun Tokogawa Ieyasu, for tomorrow. So we started at the Three Buddhas Temple and Rinno-ji. The Three Buddhas temple was really great because you could get really close to the three giant, gold, Buddha statutes, whereas in many Temples ...

... like a lot of fun, mostly because people were really taking to the positive messages. Just goes to show, despite all of our cultural differences, we are all just people learning how to cope with issues like cancer. It was a pretty quick train ride to the next city, Fukushima. Because it was so quick we had 1 hour before we needed to get the theater. I went on a search for a computer store, didn't find it, but I did find something else... a GIANT 6 ...

... got her another yet!)so we wanted to get one, the owner offered to drive us to get a new one which was really nice after we got the bag he then took us out for ramen his treat. the food at the hotel was great but even tho they had an english menu the waiter made a mistake on the second night and we had curry and rice two days in a row. we basically spent two days relaxing, we had a walk and saw a shrine, i got to know a japanese dentist in the outside bath (and no there was no gay love).

... lots of home grown vegies like shiitake mushrooms. Much better than sukiyaki in my opinion. It was accompanied by some salad, fried chicken and a vegetable soup. We also tried KUZUKIRI, a supposedly healthy noodle made from the flour of ground tree roots. We got to talking about how great Yamaguchi-san was. Apparently it was news to the Takahata's when we asked them if they knew why he disliked Americans so much. We concluded it had something to do with the SEIJI (government). The ...

... I was the only one that got what he ordered); or the fact that the cook was a young Frenchman who decided to try his hand at ramen and open up a shop of his own in the middle of a somewhat sleepy town - I thought the ramen was pretty ordinary. Too much browsing DVD/game stores and not enough paying attention to when the trains for Aizu were leaving forced us to spend another 2 hours in Kitakata (trains are rather infrequent). We checked out a sake brewery which was a waste of ...

I take back what I said about Honshu's trains looking more hi-tech than Kyushu's. Kyushu's trains are better in every aspect - more room, cleaner, more comfortable, less passengers, sexier uniforms (more like air stewardesses than train personnel) and quieter (passengers seem to talk a lot louder on the trains in Honshu). ****. All this travelling on trains has turned me into a *****er. Speaking of *****ing, my rant yesterday got me in trouble. After reading my diary, Dave ...