Its our last night in Japan and its been super cool! When we　arrived after a pretty horrible 10 hour flight we went through the most efficient arrival I have ever experienced! They did passport control before baggage claim so all of our bags were there as soon as we got through! Then we had a pretty ardous time navigating our way from the airport to our hostel, in the rain! I definately did not come prepared for such weather, its been just as cold as home if not worse! Once we were settled into the hostel we went in search of the main shopping district, naively thinking it would be by Tokyo station. We ended up having dinner in a little train station cafe, and then watched all the Japanese business people walking by from a coffee shop, they all looked so neat and elegant!

The next morning we got the bullet train (shinkansen) to Kyoto and made our way to our pre-booked fancy hostel! In Kyoto we saw quite a few different shrines! lol One we stumbled upon in the evening was like a sea of lanterns, it was pretty! We also went on a guided tour round Kyoto Imperial Palace because thats thats the only way they let you in and it was free! There were loads of ceremonial gates f0r various different visitors and this amazing Japanese garden where the Emperor held poetry parties where courtiers sat on rocks and had to write a 33 syllable poem before they could grab the sake that floated by in a little boat! lol. Even though we only got back to the hotel at 1.40 we ended up sleeping for about 5 hours! Got up and went for food, but I'd been pretty ill so didnt gave anything. Pretty much got an early night even though we had all all slept a bit in the day and this morning we wandered through this fish and vegetable market with some cerrrazzzzy things about.

We then had a really bouncy bus journey back to the station where we got the Shinkansen back and walked around Tokyo, we made it went to the Sony shop, which I have been excited to see! There was a showroom where they had a 3-D tv and these really cool coloured sony vaio laptops, I bought some funky headphones, the type that go right in your ear so it sounds like the music is just inside your head! I hope they're good for the twelve hour flight south to New Zealand tommorow night! Also looking forward to some warm weather after alot of bitter cold!

Lovee Rachel
xxx