It has been a few days now since we left Nagano. The train ride to Nagoya was quite magnificent, winding through valleys surrounded by even more moutains than we saw before. We also watched vanishing point on my ipod during the trip, which was also a spectacular movie.

We arrived at Nagoya and was greeted rather quickly by Deena`s friend, Marc. He took us to his apartment just down the street from the train station and we got settled in before he left for work (teaching english). Deena and I took this time to wander around Osu, which was an area of Nagoya much like that of kensington markets. There they had vintage clothing stores selling all sorts of vintage tshirts from my childhood (star wars, ninja turtles, alf, californaia rasins etc.). We also came across many amazing toy stores with lots of toys that I could never find at home. Of course many of them were too big and expensive to fit in my bag, so I decided to wait outside the stores while deena browsed. As I was waiting outside a toy store, I noticed a hippy looking japanese man riding his bike past me. I thought that he looked familiar and I only realized who he was once he rode past me. Cotton Casino was his name from the (in)famous japanes psychedelic band Acid Mother Temple. For a moment I though to chase him down, but I was too starstruck to even move. A few seconds later he was long gone.

Later that night Marc and his room maties took us to a Japanese bar/resturaunt (Izakaya). I`m unsure what the resturaunt was called, but we all ordered many small dishes and shared them amongst each other. It was quite delicious. After a few small meals there, and a few drinks later, we headed to an irish pub where we drank a little more and then headed back to Marc`s apartment.

The next day was pretty laid back. Deena and I headed into the middle of the city to try and buy Battles (the band) tickets, only to find out that it was sold out. Pretty dissapointing. Afterwards we went back to Marc`s to meet his roomate, Bob Moody, for some japanese curry. Very delicous it was and a little spicy. Afterwards we went to an american sports pub, hung out and played some darts.

One of Marc`s friend`s, Phil (I believe his name was), was also at the bar with us. He began to tell us an interesting story about how he was to have some couch surfers crash on his couch, but got disconnected during the phonecall and they never called back. He felt pretty bad about it, because they called from a payphone so he couldn`t call back. Somewhere in the story he said that one of them was from Belgium.
`was the other from Kazakastan` i said
`yes` he replied, somewhat intruiged as to how I knew.
We had met them our 2nd night in Tokyo and saw them again in Nagano. They seemed to be taking the same route as us, and I`m sure we will be seeing them again soon… somewhere…

The next day, which is today, we left for Kyoto… once our landry was done drying. We had just checked into our hostel, which was rated pretty low on hostelworld.com and were very surprised with how nice the room was. It was a traditional japanese style room where you sleep on the floor. With the air conditioning blasting, I`m sure we will have a good nights sleep.
Tommorrow we are to once again get back into the sightseeing groove and hit up as many temples as we can, here in Kyoto. So far the weather here is nice and dry feeling, with a cool breeze cutting across the streets. This is a nice change from the humid and hot weather we had in Nagoya.

More exciting updates to come soon!

so long and thanks for all the fish