Kyoto in search of Christmas Presents...

It's that time of year again when all hell breaks loose, the panic begins and the ideas required to choose presents for your nearest and dearest becomes the most prominent thought of every waking minute. Well, not to ture to form, this year I have avoided the usual "ah shite, it's Christmas Eve and I've no presents bought yet!" and got them all TODAY!!! Well, I got Dad's last night when I went to Umeda but I got the remainder of the presents today in Kyoto. So, the chances are, I'll have them wrapped (there's a first) on time for Christmas morning. The plan was to go to Arashiyama to take in the autumn colours but the weather was not the best and so I decided to go straight to Kyoto instead. Of course, when I got to Kyoto the weather was good, which was nice. The hills still had remanants of the autumn colours but I didn't feel like hiking up there today, still though they looked nice from a distance. I really like Kyoto, it's much more pleasant than Osaka and I think it's more vibrant. But that's me. I got there too early for most of the shops (they open after 10am) and so I went to visit one of the many temples there. If any of you have seen Lost in Translation and remember the scene when that fine thing Scarlett was hopping across these rather large stepping stones on a small pond, and then she was walking across the courtyard of a temple...well that was the one I was at today. As I was entering the gate to the temple, a chick came up to me (what's new in that I hear you say, I know) and offered to show me around the temple and tell me about the history of the place. She was from Kyoto University of Foreign Studies and she was in her freshman year. She was pretty cool and well sound, biy, so we walked around for about half an hour chatting. It's good to talk.


Speaking of talking, I was skype-to-skype with Stevo in London during the week, the line was perfect. Fantastic!! Everyone should get skype (free download folks) and then the whole world will talk for free...yes, folks, skype-to-skype is free. As I'm off topic, I just want to put a big shout out to C, who put his back out while at sea and is now on his way back home for some R&R...i'll be talking to you later fella, hope you're good biy (I've just been listening to Radio J on todayfm...class).

Anyway, after that I wandered around Kyoto for about 3-4 hours, taking in the sights and buying the pressies. It was damn cold though, the first time I have really felt that winter has hit in. It is due to snow tomorrow in the region but not in Osaka. It certainly feels cold enough for it. The shopping area of Gion in Kyoto is pretty vast and the people are beautiful, striking and dress in their own individual way. As my hands were full and laden down with a cornicopia of japanese delights, I didn't take any photos of the folks. Not to worry, I'm sure they'll be there when I go back again, which will be soon I would think.

On the way back to the Keihan line train station, the heavens opened up so I legged it into that fine establishment, Starbucks. They are literally everywhere in Japan, probably 1 for every 100 people!! They are more numerous than McDonalds in my opinion. This Starbucks is siutated overlooking the river in Kyoto so I was quite content to sit there, sipping on my tall soy latte (I'm after getting fierce posh since I came here, like), I saw, what ended up being 45(!), Black Kites just tumble out of the dark sky and gather just below me. I got my camera out of the bag but it was so wet I couldn't go outside. In typical fashion, when the rain stopped they all fecked off again and flew in different directions...such is life.

Now I'm back in the catbox and about to watch the tv programme 24. I watched an episode or 10 of it last week and I'm hooked. I've never seen it before. It's good tv. I happened to have about 10 episodes of the show on one of the dvd disks one of the lads gave me. So, the plan is to watch a couple of hours of this and then to bed. I'm up at 4am to go birding with Neil so I want to get to bed early. We're off to Biwa-ko, Japan's largest lake, in search of a very impressive eagle..fingers crossed it puts on a show for us. The weather forecast is not good for the Biwa-ko area so we'll just have to wait and see.

I'll write some more tomorrow, so stay tuned.

ps: by the way, the week just gone consisted of work, work, work...how boring.

pps: Carmo's diet: This week I've mostly been eating patents