Home Sweet Home

Ahhhh! There is no place like home.... although we had to fly 9 hours through the night and not click my shoes three times! The past three weeks have gone so quickly and feel like a whirlwhind. We have seen so much it is hard to keep it all in the brain! One of the great things about going overseas and experiencing something new and different is it always makes me appreciate home and the usual routine that I grumble about.

After Kyoto we travelled up into Mt Koyasa, which is about 900m above see level and was SOOOO cold! It was about -1 degree over night and I was not really dressed for this! Poor ray had to hear about every possible description of cold! Koyasan was probably the most peaceful and magical places we have visited. It is the spot where Gobadashi, the original monk and founder of the shingon sect of Buddhism set up camp so to speak. He started out with one small temple, which grew to about 1500, now about 250. Today it is a place where monks and believers of this style of budhism make a pilgrimiage to visit his grave and pay respect. At one end of the tow is where he is said to be meditating waiting for the return of budha. ther is about a 2 km road the winds its way through a Japanese cedar forrest to his resting place and it is surrounded by about 500,000 graves, which line the path. It is the most amazing place- very peaceful. Even the most non-spiritual person would find it hard not to be moved. Guarding his resting place is a temple hall filled with about 2000 lanterns- most of them are now electric but there are two there that are said to have been burning for about 700yrs. We stayed in a temple- quite large ran by a head monk who is overseen by his 85yr old mum! This woman was amazing- still working hard running the temple! The food was the best vegetarinan food ever tasted!!!!

From this wonderfuly peaceful place in the mountains we headed south to Hiroshima. This is a truely beautifly city- with a very sad and grisly past. The city has a different feel to other Japanese cities- very hard to put into words. It is hard to imagine that this city and people were completely flattened not so long ago. we spent ages going through the peace park and visiting the A-bomb dome- which marks the epicentre. The city has a peaceful calm feel- dotted with very moving monuments to peace. The most moving statue was a mother protecting her two young children - at the bottom of this sculpture lay thousands of paper cranes that people fold and deliver daily. We headed over to a small island which has the famous Tori gates that are floating out in the sea- amazing to see.

On our second last day we went down to Fukuoka and saw the sumos!!! That was so much fun and sucha specticle to watch! there is so much ceremony that goes on that it often is longer than the match! There are nbo weight classes and often there are sumos up against other guys twice their weight- amazingly the little guys often win... far to quick! Ther top guys were huge and you could hear then crashing into each other....even way up the back where we were! It was a sight not to be missed.

Back to reality..... I had a great time but am happy to be home! If I do not see another buckwheat noodle for a while I will be happy! Now to sort out my hip and get back into training. I did manage a few runs- about 4kms and I was happy to see that my fitness was not too bad. So I am feeling positive and ready to attack the new year! Bring it on!!!

Sayonara!

I will add some photos when we go through the millions we took :)