APRIL

So, we arrive in Japan March 29th, we survive delayed flights, play cards, sleep in the most uncomfortable positions and run through airports, have no movie on our 10 flight over the Pacific ocean and are -1 bag when we arrive at the Tokyo airport, but we survive. We take the bus two hours to this city called Ashikaga and are picked up by two normal looking, english speaking guys who take us to the convenience store and then to the smallest apartment I have ever seen...Erin, if you thought you're bachelor pad was small, our whole apartment is one third the size!

The futon lasted about three weeks until I could not stand sleeping on the floor anymore and we bought an air mattress which started to leak after one week, we now pump it up two to three times a day :) but we are in Japan...

So our first month here we climbed the hill in the middle of Ashikaga to get some pictures of the city we will call home for the next year... it is pretty nice, about 70 kms north of Tokyo, there is a big river that runs through it, small streets lots of temples and shrines and the oldest universtiy in Japan. The Ashikaga Gakko, which was a little dissapointing compared to the temple right beside it. The Gakko is a Confusious school that was founded in 832, its super old but was just redone so nothing looks old and everything was in Japanese so we didn't understand any of it.

But, the beautiful temple right next door, Ban-naji, which was even more beautiful during cherry blossom season...here are some pictures.

There is also another beautiful temple on the hill, that has a million stairs on the way up, it was much more colourful...

The second weekend here we went to Nikko, which was absolutely beautiful. We got to sleep on a real bed for the first time in almost three weeks, the drive was quiet and peaceful just what you would picture Japan to be but a lot more mountainous than I had pictured. We explored the major temple in Nikko, Toshogu, and went for dinner at the cutest little place that is highly recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide book, the best yakiniku (barbequed meat on sticks), although I'm not a huge fan, and really good gyoza (asian dumplings) which I am a fan of, but there was this little old lady that spoke english and told us what we needed to have. The walls were covered with notes, money, business cards of foreigners from all over the world. It was pretty neat. The next day we picked up some travelling friends who were staying at the same hostel as us, we drive up to Chuzenji Lake which has Kegon falls, the pictures all looked great but it was pretty disapointing as the falls are damned so they weren't letting much water out that day it was more of a drizzle than a fall, but we saw some much more impressive water falls so it was cool. And we saw and our first snow monkey there.

So besides seeing the sights we were trying to figure out what we were buying at the grocery store or how to order food at a restaurant, and just we were suppose to survive without an oven and live together in one room...that was our first month...but we made it.