Maija's Stay

Maija's came and went, hence my absence. We did a lot more than I anticipated and I did post most of the photos on to facebook, but that was about all I had the will to do. I'll try to get them uploaded through the blog at some point soon. We spent the first weekend touring some of the ancient Kyoto sights together. Our first stop was Shōsei-en, a garden built in the late ninth century by a Heian Prince. The place had a really old feel to it, despite the buildings on site being re-built in 1865-1912 since the originals were destroyed by fire. (can you tell I read the info pamphlet?) Right after that, we hit up Kiyomizu-dera and arrived just in time for the last Dragon Performance of the year.
The next day we returned to meet up at a British style pub called the 'Pig and Whistle' with some of Johnny's English teaching buddies. After many gin on the rocks and Maija's gracious gift of tequila shots, we wound up at a club since the last train had long since gone. We all celebrated a bit too hard, and spent all Sunday recovering. Quite the welcome weekend for Maija.
Other things we did include: visiting the Botanical Garden on lake Biwa, ate at a Shabu-Shabu restaurant called the golden pig in japanese, went to Osaka's den-den town, went bowling in town, saw monkeys at Arashi-yama, visited our friend Mizuho's club "Giraffe" for her birthday party there, had nabe at Yuri +Johnny's apartment, and just relaxed in between all these events. It was really great to see Maija again since she operates in a completely different part of the globe, and we had a lot of fun. I think that she had a pretty good holiday.
Since Maija left on thursday, I've mostly been recovering from sharing her travels. Johnny, Yuri, and I went to climb a mountain yesterday in Omihachiman, it was called Hachimanyama. There were the remains of an old castle at the top, and it was beautiful weather. We went shopping afterwards, had delicious home made Gyu-don (thin meat cooked with onion and mushrooms put over rice with a raw egg cracked into the bowl and mixed around) with gyoza on the side, and watched "The Life Aquatic". It was a great dinner and a great movie. I still cant get over Bill Murray in that movie, watch it if you've never seen it.