Saturday, January 08, 2005 :::
 
Uhmm… I’m alive? Plus I have broadband at my house now (just got it on Friday so I’m super happy), which means I may actually, time permitting, update my blog, my site and my livejournal account. Maybe even once a fortnight – perhaps more, depending on things I’m doing and so on. This is an improvement. I’m certainly hoping to do nothing but web stuff next weekend – this weekend is a bit of a write-off what with cleaning up after my brother’s three week visit to Japan, and all the laundry left over from that as well. Blegh.

Not that we didn’t have fun while he was here, and he got to see a lot of different places. Not everywhere I wanted to take him though – we couldn’t do Hiroshima for lack of funds and didn’t see much of Kyoto due to pressing need for presents and shopping for said presents. But he saw a lot, had a great time, indulged his and my love of anime and figurines and general geekdom while still being cultural and interested in everything. Here, for posterity, is a list of places we saw, some of the things we did and so on;

*local temples around my town,
*Himeji castle
*Nara, the giant Buddha & temples
*Osaka
*Tokyo
*Koyasan (in snow, which was beautiful)
*Homestay with a Japanese family over New Year
*a little bit of Kyoto

I got him on the train to Kansai airport in Kyoto, rushed to get my train back home and didn’t cry. At all. Though I wanted to. I really miss him now, even if we did get into little spats. It was really nice having him around and doing things together and just generally being with a member of my family for a while. In six months I’m definitely going to be ready to go back home and catch up with people. I’ve loved it here, really enjoyed myself, made new friends and learnt many new things. But it’s almost time to go back. I’m already planning on travelling around Europe though – I can’t believe I’ve lived in England all my life and have yet to see the neighbouring countries!

Methinks I’ve caught the travel bug…


::: posted by Saru at 3:39 am