Any Colour You Like

1) Politeness is a virtue
Even when you walk into a fast food restaurant and order a burger you get a formal bow, a greeting, an extra polite ‘aragato gozaimas’, and another bow in acknowledgement of your thanks. An not just from the member of staff serving you but from all of the members of staff. Nothing is better for the self esteem and feeling of importance.

2) The Japanese have a sense of humour
They have a coffee house chain called Excelsio Cafe. The logo is circular and pretty familiar, the colours are blue and green like a somewhat famous international competitor, and even the font is a direct copy of starbucks. The best bit is everything is a bit cheaper and a bit better than starbucks.

3) Conveyor belt sushi is cool
I discovered that this evening by getting far too excited and eating far too much. It was still pretty cheap and good value though. Not quite gormet sushi, but tasty, fast paced, competitive and fun.

4) One bonus observation
The Japanese are very bad at cycling. Watch out if you are walking down the cycle path!

It turns out that Kyoto is a lot bigger than it’s maps would have you believe. We thought we were walking a mere 4 blocks to the Toji wooden pagoda but it ended up taking well over an hour in the muggy heat. It was worth it though. The halls of wooden statues covered in gold leaf were amazing. Each one was carved out of a single block of wood and the biggest had to be over 3m in diameter. We also visited Nijo castle and walked around it’s beautiful gardens. I thoroughly intend to create the same effect with my own garden at some point in the future. The actual rooms in the castle palace were rather strange. There were many and they were huge, but all were empty save tatami mats on the floors and beautiful paintings on the sliding walls. The best bit was the design of the floor boards in the hallways. Each plank was suspended on a metal cylinder in order to make a sqeaking noise whenever any unexpected visitors walk by…