He Says: Day....I have no idea

Let's call it 7 shall we?

The mechanitcs of travel is fascinating. I like it because it's between two norms. There's where/who you are at start. (Home / tourist / guest / lost & confused) and where / who you are at the end (work / hotel / imposition / more lost & confused) and in the space inbetween you're just about anything just like everyone else on your train/plane/magic carpet.

Lots of travelling within in the last few days. 3 trains and a plane ride between Tokyo and Okinawa was a chance to see a lot of countryside and a lot of random people travelling just as far as we. It's something of a small miracle we made it there as we did. Not having an exact grasp of the times involved when we left we made both flights to and from Okinawa nearly perfect as well as every connecting train.

Okinawa was an absolute blast. Deya and Chris are truly awesome people and we're lucky we knew them and could meet them here. After 5 days of fending for ourselves to find attractions and places to eat and sightsee it was great having a local's perspective. The trip is only about half over but I think that might be the highlight right there of the whole thing we shall see.

Last night we made it to Kyoto and today was a beautiful shrine and the international manga museum. We had our portrait done by a manga artist which I'm sure will be posted as a picture soon and grace our mantle or some other position of pride once we return home.

Kyoto has a pretty different feel to it than Tokyo pretty much obviously. Much more spread out to some degree. Buildings don't rise 50 stories but seem to have a much larger footprint. Where Tokyo builds up Kyoto built out. The real Kyoto I imagine is in all it's back alleys and fascinating shops, restaurants and bars. We duck down as many as we can but I'm sure there's a thousand wonderful places we'll never see. To some degree that dissappoints me. But really to truly get to know every nook and cranny of any city takes years, even if you speak the language, so I enjoy everything we manage to see.

I'm sure more pictures and recaps from Helen will be forthcoming as well.