first night in kyoto is grand..j hoppers hostel is fine..apart from taking the shoes off at the door and the big troughs for brushing your teeth...but the toilet seat is heated and the toilets are western style aswell...not that we've been avoiding the holes in hte ground....you no us we'd try anything once!! first day here we did walking tour of kinkakuji (the golden temple), Ryoanji (rock and sand garden) where we get a english speaking walking tour from a student who wanted to practise her english.....laura's thinking of starting up doing these walking tours herself she's becoming a walking lonely planet! well we planned on doing some meditation the next day...got up bout 8 and found this temple that meditation was meant to be from 9 til 11 but temple being rennovated.....we were really goin to be at one with ourselves...find out more about ourselves on this journey of self discovery..anyway..we didnt!! did more temples/shrines in kyoto.....ginkakuji (silver temple), took a long lingering walk on the path of philosophy (another step on our journey of self discovery!) adn Heian Jingu Shrine where we retraced scarlett johansons steps through the stepping stones in lost in translation! had our first real japanese meal in Omen....laura had tempura i had noodles and tofu..yes not chicken! went geisha spotting next day...well we tried to go to a geisha show in gion but surprise surprise we got the days mixed up so jus walked around for a while..didnt see any geishas but gion pretty cool..then found an irish bar for few drinks....only 2other people there...got so locked and had to be carried home by two geishas...we woke up in a tea house adn we had kimonos on and white makeup...yeah only joking...we only went out for a couple of drinks!! From kyoto went to nara to see biggest buddah in japan...it was big! and went to see bamboo forest...it was made of bamboo! we tried to reconstruct scenes from house of flying daggers! had ramen noodles which you get from vending machines....you can get everthing in vending machines..hot ones cold ones cigarettes drink geishas...everything! as you can see nikki and laura are going wild!