Kyoto Pass & Adams New Car

So Adam bought himself a car, 1999 Nissan C35 Laurel. Here's some pics -



Went to Kyoto today, walked around Nijo Jo & the Imperial Palace -








Enjoy!

Snow Boarding!

Before I get to the awesome time I had snow boarding heres 2 random shots of my new Dildo gearknob & a big pile of cash!



Now the snowboarding!! It was soooooo much fun, I am really sore everywhere now (knee especially) but I loved it. First of all we were up at 5.15am to try and get there as early as we could. We met with one of Adams friends Haru at Hankyu Station Takatsuki-shi, jumped in the car and off we went to Shiba station to park the car and catch the bus up the mountain, here we have Haru & the view from the carpark -




Once at the top we found ourselves at the Biwako Valley Ropeway Station, basically this is where the cable cars left to head to the top.



This was my first time ever snowboarding & wow its hard... spent the first 30mins falling on my behind but all of a sudden it clicked, thanks to my incredible instructor Haru



After that basically spent the day practicing, falling over & generally having a great time -







Some interesting ones...

This is the snow ambulance -



Great wall of Vending machines outside the Ropeway Station -

Just a Quickie

Only a small one this time... running out of things to photograph in our local area...

Here we have Shinsaibashi-suji at night time...



Looks absolutely awesome at night time, it was raining so that's all I got. I will be going back to get more when it isn't raining.

Next up is a pic of my breakfast for the day - mmm egg & cheese on toast.



Comparison between beer in Aus & beer in Japan... the 1L can only cost 300ish yen... You can buy Absolute vodka for like $18 Aud. Best place to drink ever!



Thats all folks!

Kyoto F A I L & Awesome discoveries!

So yesterday was our second day out in the wilderness on our own, still haven't managed to get lost...

In conversation with alot of people back home we keep getting the comments along the lines of "Living the dream". Now I would like to start by saying I absolutely love this place, however I am still unsure I could work & live here for a year to a year & a half. This place is very intimidating to a westerner that can not speak Japanese. I have very basic Japanese now and it is invaluable, I can only imagine what it would be like to be fluent...

The local area we are currently staying in is very dense (population wise), as is nearly everywhere we have visited. It in parts reminds me of images of a 3rd world country, especially when rifing the train and looking out.

Here some pictures of the local streets to give you an idea of the scene in which we are staying, however a photo will NEVER capture the never ending chaos of it all -



This is Baller-ville Japland (they have their own garage of sorts and some form of front yard) -



On a lighter note, we have also had demands for more car pictures. Heres a cool van from our local area -



On our walk to the train yesterday we found ourselves outside of WALD the VIP experts of Japan, they have a shop 5 mins from us!?!?!




And a paparazzi shot of the Hottest R35 GTR I have seen EVER -



This thing had Carbon widebody that extended down as skirts then over the rear fender too. Soooo Hot!

After this revelation we moved onto the train to visit Kyoto, everything was closed, everything... We did however get to walk around the grounds of the imperial palace. Heres some shots -





Enjoy!!

Osaka Castle

So today was Hughsey & I's first day alone...

Started with the breakfast of champions, Pancakes & Grape Fanta...



Then off to the Takatsuki Police Station to see if they had his Passport which he decided to loose the day before "aho" (dumb ass in japanese). To his dumb luck someone had handed it in, gotta love this place for that sorta thing!

Afterwards Osaka Castle was the detination for the day, this place was awesome, been there since the 1600's, crazy!!

Some pics -





Temple & surrounding things -





These are the grounds men working away... never seen anything like it before -



Oh and also spotted Peta Solberg at the local department store...