My next destination was Nara - one of the ancient capitals of Japan. I had been invited to stay with a family there - the Kitagawa family. I was met by Hatsuko (the mum) and Momo (the son). At lunch, I got to meet Katsuhisa (the dad) .
That afternoon, I was taken to the Todai-ji shrine, that houses the biggest Buddha in Japan which is 15 metres tall. There was a small hole in one of the pillars and if you can squeeze through it, you're guaranteed a place in paradise - there were so many school children queued up to do it! We wandered around the 
complex admiring the various shrines there (including the Kasuga-Taisha shrine that has over a 1000 hanging lanterns). We walked through Nara Park and got surrounded by the hundreds of deer there that expect visitors to feed them! Our final stop of the day was to Kofuku-ji as saw the tallest 5- storey pagoda in Japan - it's 50.1 metres tall.
The next day I met Tomomi (the daughter) and her boyfriend Hirohisa. The three of us headed off and went to explore two more shrines - Toshodai-ji and Shin-Yakushi-ji. That afternoon, we met up with Katsuhisa and went for a walk around Nara. Dinner that evening was sushi - my first time of trying it here (I had tried some in Vancouver and not liked it so I was a bit worried about eating it here!) I managed to eat some and its growing on me!!The next day, we went to Kyoto. Tomomi and I went around the Fushimi Inari Shrine - which has hundreds of Torii gates (big orange gates). It was a massive complex and we only wandered around a fraction of it! We met up with Hirohisa and went to East Kyoto to the Kiyomizu Temple - which sits on the hillside and gives a great view of Kyoto. We then headed over to Nijo-jo - which was the home of the Tokugawa Shogun when he visited Kyoto. Before I left to go back to Nara, we went and had green tea ice cream! Very bizarre having green ice cream but it didn't taste too bad!
The next day I went into Kyoto on my own. My first stop was to the Daisen-in temple complex - which is full of Zen Buddhist temples, the biggest being Daisen-in. One of the main focuses of these temples are the Zen Rock gardens - which I found myself just sitting and looking at. They were very impressive! I visited a couple of the smaller temples there before heading over to Kinkakuji - the Golden Temple. This was amazing - a temple on a small lake that was completely gold! It was really beautiful.
The next day, Hatsuko, Katsuhisa and I went to the Toei Movie Land - the Japanese Universal Studios. They had some special effects set up and lots of Geishas and trainee Geishas walking around. I also got dressed up in a Kimono (the traditional dress). Katsuhisa and I went through the haunted house which really scared me as actors suddenly moved and tried to grab you! I was glad to get out of there! We also went to see the temple of Tenryu-ji and the saw the cloud dragon, Unryuzu, which was painted onto the ceiling. That night, we went and had the traditional Okonomiyaki - but this time I had to mix the ingredients and cook it on a hot plate in front of me - it was good fun!
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