Rhod and Anna's World Adventure

There has been a posting delay due to a lack of free internet in this hostel. So this is a few days in one hit.

Saturday

It`s typical! You wait all day for a sumo and then 2 come along at once! We were wandering around Tokyo station indulging in my new favourite sport of hitting small japanese people with a large rucksack (I`m good at it. 4 on one tube journey!) when we finally spotted some! 2 Sumo wrestkers were wandering through the station in the direction of the bullet train. They are big. They also wear socks with their flip flops which is in my view a fashion disaster but now I`ve stood near to 2 of them I will not be telling them what I think. I was impressed until I happened to glance down and saw that one of them was trailing a suitcase behind him with the words `Marie Claire` emblazoned on the front. He lost all his manly butchness in a split second! Unfortunately as we were carrying our luggae we were unable to get a photo so you will have to live with the description. Big men, hair in pony tails, flip flops with socks and wearing dressing gowns.

Happy with our spot we hopped on a bullet train to Kyoto. The train lived up to more of it`s bullet name this time. And we got a great picture of Mt Fuji

When we arrived we spent one and a half hours trying to get money out of a cash machine. It shouldn`t have been so hard but we started to panic as it got to 6pm on Saturday and we only had 1000 Yen (5 quid) I had visions of livving a minimalist life until the banks opened on Monday. So if you`re ever stuck in Japan and you need a cash machine the key is to avoid all the banks and head straight to the post office!

We found a great place to eat that night next to the hostel. Halfway through the meal I start to feel slightly uneasy. 2 Japanese girls on the table next to us have stopped their conversations and are staring at me. OK, so maybe I am fumbling with my chopsticks and have noodles hanging from my mouth but that`s no need to stare. Then it gets worse. They turn to each other and start giggling. I`m starting to think that I have met my first rude Japanese person when one of the girls leans over to me and asks in broken English `Where are you from?` in a perfectly friendly manner. So I answer politely then they turn back to each other, giggle, talk in Japanes then the girl turns back to me with a dead straight face and asks the second most important question you need ask a Brit.....`Do you know Beckham?` !!!!!!!!! The disappointment on her face when wｅ said we`d only seen him play football! I think from now on if we get asked such an important question we`ll just have to lie to make us seem more interesting.

Sunday

It seems fitting that I should start this entry off because the whole day pretty much revolved around me! Me, me, me!
It had been chucking it down all morning and after sitting in the hostel lounge for quite some time we decided to go out to get some lunch. We found a brilliant pizza-pasta place. Not content with the amount of attention I was getting in this restaurant, I decided to do something to change all that....I fainted! Yes, you heard me right, I fainted in my seat with the forkful of carbonara halfway to my mouth. (Sorry Mum, it was too expensive to tell you about over the phone!)Emma and Caroline, I know you`ll appreciate this one as I have a habit of doing it in public places on holiday. Poor Rhod. He managed to shovel a glass full of ice down my back as I sat there delirious in my world of darkness and stars. You`ll be pleased to hear that my food didn`t go to waste though and that I carried on eating shortly afterwards as if nothing had happened. I even said to Rhod `Coor, I nearly fainted then!` He had a different version of events for me. If you can picture the scene I`m a little torn. I`ve just been presented with pizza and pasta and I am taken away from it in order to hold my girlfirends head up so she doesn`t bang it on the wall whilst she is not with the rest of us who are sitting in the restaurant. How inconvenient. I was swapping concerned glances between Anna (who I was obviously worried about) and my food (which I was desperate to eat for fear that I would perform the same stunt). Lets be fair. I was in no danger of pulling the same stunt. I have some spare capacity so I can miss a few meals.
I think it happened because I haven`t been eating enough so this `fiasco` has given me the perfect excuse to just eat loads now! Rhod is happy to go along with me on that one.

What can we add that could be more interesting than that? Nothing much happened for the rest of the day.