Hi Everyone!

This is Lynn, Randy and Shaun posting from Japan!

We have many other pictures, but they are on our camera, and we completely forgot to bring our cord to transfer them to Cam's computer. Oh Well.

We went to Hiroshima on Saturday and visited the Peace Memorial Park. Karleen cried again! The museum does a good job of depicting the story of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and it is a very sad and emotional tour of the museum.

We went to a Japanese restaurant (we know - hard to believe). It was a great meal. There was a table of 15 Japanese men beside us – all smoking and drinking kegs of beer. Needless to say, we didn’t stay for a long time.

The next day we went to Miyajima. It is an island that has a floating Torii gate, shrines, mini wild tame deer, and we took a tram up to see the monkeys. The monkeys weren’t visible as they were in the forest eating. We are getting a kick out of the English signs. The Japanese language does not consider word order, like English does therefore, when they translate their language into English, the word order is a little out of whack! It is providing lots of entertainment for us.

Scenery from the top of the rope tram at Miyajima

We went to an Irish pub – Molly Mallon’s for supper. Right next door, there was a “casino” which we had to try. You change money for medals which are used in the machines (by the way gambling is illegal in Japan). $10 gave us 80 medals. The first machine I tried, I hit the bonus which gave me 1500 medals so Karleen and I decided to cash out. Well it took awhile for the little Japanese girl to explain that we couldn’t get money back for our medals – we had to either use them in the machines or leave them. This $10 provided entertainment for the five of us for about 2 hours! The streets of Hiroshima were very busy – a lot of people out and enjoying the night life. Shaun was trying to get a party to happen but after a long day, we just wanted to get back to our hotel and get into our nightshirts provided by the hotel.

We have used all modes of transportation in the last week. Airplane, bullet train, subway train, tram, bus, taxi, ferry, and lots and lots of walking!

Some of the interesting generalizations that we have made so far about the Japanese, are: the Japanese people live to work not work to live; the Japanese men like to drink – a lot! There are not a lot of children (which we find very strange considering there are a lot of people here). If we do see children, they are dressed to the nines –really expensive clothes – all brand names. Osaka is the fashion centre of Japan – the boots and coats that women wear are to die for. Most of the coats have fur - real fur. We believe that 90% of Japanese women are pigeon toed (that’s because we have been amazed at the many wild and different boots and footwear that people wear). A lot of the young Japanese men are metro sexual (Shaun’s term!). It is cheaper to eat out at restaurants than to buy groceries (yeah!) – although we have had a few home cooked meals. The Japanese people are very polite. Everything is very, very clean – it is amazing how they keep everything so clean with all of these people living here! We feel very safe here.

We also have new nicknames. Mold and Mildew (Cam & Shaun) are now Ani and ototo (elder and younger brother). Randy is Chichi (Chico for short!), Lynn is Haha and Karleen is “giri no musume”

We’re hanging around Osaka and Kyoto for the next few days. Tokyo on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and back home to Edmonton on Tuesday. It is going by way too fast!