Nara trip

It's been a busy last few days. I spent the night at a wonderfully immaculate hostel in Kyoto and visited Ryoan-ji temple, which has a traditional rock garden, then went into Osaka to join Kris and her charming adoptive parents, Kazuo and Nobuko, pictured below, for happy hour back at El Pancho's, the Mexican restaurant we had visited earlier. Kris just loves those yuzu margaritas!!

A more memorable meal for me was in Kyoto at a tofu restaurant. Now I know many people find tofu very bland and boring, but I have to say this was one of the most delicious and aesthetic eating experiences of my life. Who knew that tofu could be prepared in so many ways, and have so many tastes and textures, sometimes, chewy, sometimes melt-in -your mouth, lighter than air soft? Even the dessert was a green tea flavored tofu souffle like concoction. I did take pictures but am having tech problems downloading them.....hence the double picture of me in the Nara tourist office. (Just can't figure out how to erase the second one!!)Since you may be wondering why the comical statue has horns, it symbolizes the town of Nara, known for its many Buddhist temples and also many deer wandering around, badgering tourists for food. The photo below those 2 is me at a temple in Kyoto, Ryoan-ji, famous for its traditional rock garden.

Today I am going to Osaka to get my Japan Rail pass tickets for my trip to Tokyo in a few days and also I hope to use it to travel to Koya-san, a Buddhist temple town , where I think I'll be staying overnight at Buddhist monastery. It's in the mountains and should be a little cooler than the plains. I've been pretty lucky with the weather so far...it's not nearly as hot as I expected and just yesterday we had the first heavy rain of the season. It will probably get increasingly hot and humid from this point on, so I'll appreciate the cool hill weather.

More later....