Arigato

"Arigato" should be the first word that all Japan visitors learn.  It means "thank you", and I cannot believe the number of times we have had the opportunity to use it. Random acts of kindness abound in this country.

We got up early this morning for a breakfast--the kind where you sit on a cushion at a low table and get served all kind of delicacies that you can't name.  I remarked today that the only thing I haven't seen much is obese people, and I don't know how. The only ones I can recall were waiting in the line with us at the donut shop in Nagoya.  Anyway, I don't fit very well with my legs in front of me, and the waiter saw me struggling last night and brought me a little stool to sit on. "Arigato". Our checkout times was 10 am, so I had time to go take a Japanese communal bath (except I was the only one there at the time).  You go into a room and spray yourself and scrub off and then rinse yourself.  Then I soaked in a pool of hot mineral water from a natural source.  I almost missed checkout from the enjoyment。

This was also the kind of place where you leave your shoes at the front door when you check in and wear slippers to your room.  You don't wear the slippers when you are on the tatami mat, and you take them off when you enter the bathroom and put on the bathroom slippers.  Did I mention that the toilet has a heated toilet seat and that males sit down for all toilet functions?  I'm glad I had read the culture books. The toilets have different flush mechanisms to change water flow for the appropriate need.

 After we checked out, we went on a walking tour of temples and shrines.  This is a historic town and was covered with snow, so it was slippery going.  We finally decided that you really only need to see a few of these temples, and there is a shrine on every block and it had started to rain hard.  After a stop into one historic house (which was unheated) we headed to the train station (after stopping into a local bakery).  The trains run every hour, and we got there 10 min before the next train, and got on to head for Kyoto.  We changed trains in Nagoya to a bullet train, and that thing flew. Before you knew it, we were in the station in Kyoto where it was also raining hard.  We ran into a bunch of SAS kids there and they ganged up and went looking for lodgings.  We already had reservations and walked to our place in the rain.  We just got in from dinner where we got to watch the chef work.

Tomorrow is a Kyoto tour with a friend who lives here.

Arigato to all the folks who have helped direct us.