Another great visit has come to an end. Tsuyoshi´s family was really sweet and Tsuyoshi showed me around in the Kansai area (The area within which Osaka and Kyoto are situated). Tsuyoshi´s family´s apartment in Takatsuki is on the nineth floor so there was a great view over the city. When the weather is clear you can see all the way to the skyscrapers in Osaka. Right next to the building was an ancient place where clay figures called Haniwa were made from the 3rd century. Also there were kofun tombs (equally old large keyhole shaped graves) nearby. 

Tsuyoshi´s home was one of the most hi-tech homes I have been in. The whole building must have been built pretty recently. But it was a bit confusing at times. When going to the bathroom and trying to turn off the light I pressed what turned out to be a kind of emergency button that sounded for a while. Since it was late at night it was quite embarrasing...

The first day we went to Osaka together with a couple of friends of Tsuyoshi´s. Yasushi and Toshiharu are their names and they were really funny. Unfortunately it seemed I was a hare-otoko no more because the weather was grey and it rained a bit. It has been fine weather since then though (although the weather report predicted otherwise). Maybe it was only Osaka´s way of greeting me... anyway, first we went to a building in which there was a big red whale hanging in the air. Then we went to an even higher skyscraper and looked at the rainy view. You could actually see pretty far in spite of the weather and I saw an elevator girl for the first time. (A woman who opened the elevator doors and welcomed those getting in and saying good bye to those getting out.) Then we went to a place that is apparently often shown when there are pictures from Osaka but it seemed that they had never been there before. There were a lot of funny signs and shops everywhere including the famous giant moving crab outside a crab restaurant. And a drummer doll that apparently is famous all over Japan. I have to find out why sometime. There were also a suprisingly big number of fugu restaurants. I haven´t seen so many of them before and if I´m not mistaken Fukuoka is the place famous for Fugu. then we entered some kind of shopping street with a lot o small interesting and funny shops. At the end of the street was a place where famous comedians trained in a comedian school named Yoshimoto performed. Continuing down a similar small shopping street we came to a larger street where some girls showed how practical the "airboard" is. The "airboard" is apparently a wireless flat screen that you click and point with a kind of pen on. It seems to be a light version of a normal computer after all I have heard and seen. Writing emails with the pen doesn´t seem very convenient either. Anyway, we got to the Osaka Tower and went up to the second floor and then down again when we realized that it was too expensive. Then we went inside some kind of amusement house with a rollercoaster above and a choose-your-favourite-fantasy-onsen  (lumberjack cabin, roman style etc). Finally we took the train passing the Osaka Castle to take a picture. Unfortunately it was already dark so the photo of the lit-up castle far away looks like an electric toy robot in the dark or something. Finally we went back to Tsuyoshi´s station and went for some famous Osaka okonomiyaki together. It was great. Then there was the sad good bye to Yasushi and Toshiharu at the station.

The next day Tsuyoshi and I went to Kyoto and the weather was as clear as ever. First we went to the famous Kinkakuji temple, which is covered in gold, and we strolled around in the garden for a while. Then we went to see the famous Ryouanji zen stone garden. It was quite funny. A flock of people sat on rows watching the garden as if they were waiting for the show to begin. I don´t think these kind of places can be enjoyed properly unless you are there by yourself. I got the feeling everybody (including me I´m sad to say) was there because it was a famous place rather than because it was beautiful or soothing or something. Even more impressing than the actual golden temple and stone garden was the gardens in which they are situated and the beautiful flowers, trees, moss lawns and ponds. This was also the first day I saw sakura trees in bloom on this trip. They were just beginning to bloom but it was still beautiful. I wish I could be there when all the sakura trees along the streets and around the temples are in full bloom. After feeling finished looking at the gardens we went on of the stuffed busses to central Kyoto and grabbed a bite to eat (tonkatsu - yum!) and proceeded to a place I don´t know the name of but just as we came there they closed so we never got to the very building we wanted to go to. We got to see the sun set behind the mountains beyond Kyoto anyway. So we strolled back and down to the Gion district to see if we could spot any Geishas and we saw one in a taxi and one running past but they were too quick for my camera in the dark light of the street lamps. Well we continued to Kyoto central station which was a huge futuristic place finished 3 years ago. It was awsome and it felt like I was in Bladerunner or Judge Dredd or something. When we went home again we passed Tsuyoshi´s old high school and a train to a famous samurai movie studio. 

Day three was Nara-day. But first we went down and had a look at the Haniwa pottery. It was interesting but it´s difficult to tell about it without showing all the pictures. Anyway, then we went to the Osaka station and took the train to Nara. Nara is on the other side of some mountains so there was a great view over Osaka from the train. Finally in Nara we immediately encountered some deer on the street. Nara is known for that. It is also known for it´s many shrines and not least the giant buddha-statue inside the world´s largest wooden building in Todaiji temple. We went for the buddha statue right away. the building was truly huge. I had read about it at a glance in a Japan-guide I have but I misread it as that it was in Kyoto and was sad I had missed it so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it. Of course you can´t understand it´s size from this picture ut it is actually 14.85 meters (48.72 feet) high. Also, there were four other statues almost as huge around it. Unfortunately you were not permitted to go near it so I couldn´t take very good pictures. The building was actually originally 30% larger but it was burned down in wars twice so the present building is the third generation. We went to several interesting buidings and encountered deer everywhere. The most amusing encounter was a mother with her friend and two children sitting on a bench feeding a flock of deer. Since the deer were so eager to eat the food the children were a bit frightened but the curiosness was stronger apparently. We had some trouble finding food for ourselves though. We decided that eating a deer was a bad idea so after going to see a huge pagoda we headed to the station area where there were restaurants and grabbed a bite to eat and then we headed home, exhausted after three days of walking around in cities. Before we were let on the train back to Osaka the seats automatically spun around and arranged themselves differently from when it arrived. The trains in Japan are interesting. More common than these automatic seats are seats where you can turn the seat forwards of backwards by yourself. And there are a lof of different types of trains ranging from the regular trains which stop at every station to the shinkansen which is a high speed bullet train that runs on special tracks and makes very few stops. Between these types there are for example rapid, express, limited express and super express. If you go to Japan for the first time you should know that you can choose between the regular (futsuu) and rapid (kaisoku) trains so that you can go to your station as quickly as possible, but the limited express (tokkyuu) and faster trains usually have an extra charge. And there are different types of shinkansen too. If you take the shinkansen train from Osaka to Tokyo you can get there in 2.5 hours while it will take me over 10 hours with regular and rapid trains.

Do You have the feeling something is missing? That You´re not getting the full Travel Log experience? Does reading the text and watching the pictures not satisfy You completely? Now here is what You´ve been waiting for! Music at it´s best in The Travel Log Original SoundtrackEA! Some of the best CDs I am listening to during this trip is now available in Your local record store*! Prepare yourself for an amazing experience!  The Travel Log Original SoundtrackEA Part I    Håkan Hellström - Känn ingen sorg för mig Göteborg    AJICO - 深緑 (Fukamidori)    Love Psychedelico - The Greatest Hits    Cocco - ブーゲンビリア (Bourgainvillea)    Art of Noise - In Visible Silence    Front 242 - 06:21:03:11 UP EVIL   *Assuming your local record store carries all these albums. If it does, let me know where I can find it!

I forgot to write earlier that I bought a can of Sakuma´s Drops (a kind of candy) in Fukuoka. It is the very same can that the main characters eats in the Ghibli anime Hotaru no Haka (Grave of the Fireflies). Everyone keeps telling me that. Another thing I forgot to write is about fruits and vegetables in Japanese stores. For one thing it much more expensive here and comes in small packages. While in Sweden there are small mountains of potatoes, apples, oranges etc from which you take them and put them into a bag and pay by weight, In Japan there are packages of about 4 or 5 medium or lagre potatoes and apples are often packaged and priced one by one. I have even seen strawberries packaged one by one. Also, the fruit are almost always super fresh. If you wonder what happens to the fruit that is fully edible but not in the best condition I saw a box of strawberries for use in juice and jam only in Fukuoka. Oh, and I saw a sort of apple I´ve never seen before. It was called sekai ichi (number one in the world) and was huge. Like a small melon. And that was the day after I saw the number one crater in the world too. Ain´t that a coincidence.