Lucky in Japan

So, last night I only made it to 5.30pm before crashing out... but still a good effort as that was over 24 hours on maybe 90 mins of sleep. I set my alarm on my phone for 7am this morning. I woke several times in the night, but at one point it was clearly morning as a grey light was seeping in under the curtains. I went to check my phone and found it had run out of battery in the night and was completely dead. I got up in a panic as I had a tour to catch today and ran to check the time on the computers here... it was 7.06am. I call that pretty lucky. I managed to negotiate the trains fine again, and find the bus station pick up point pretty easily. I even bought a metro ticket for the right stop from a Japanese machine, so was feeling pretty pleased withy myself as I got there with 15 mins to spare. Those who know me well will agree that is something of a miracle!

The tour was fine-  we saw a lovely shrine and garden, but some stops were a bit pointless, akin to having a London tour stop at a shopping centre in Lewisham (it was a small shopping centre in a new district that mainly just has building sites and hotels so far - we stopped for Starbucks?!). I sat next to a lovely lady from Colombia and we chatted in Spanish all day, which had the unexpected side effect of my thanking all the Japanese people we met by saying 'Gracias'. Clearly my brain can only cope with 2 languages at a time, becuase I have learnt the Japanese for thank you!

I sort of made a friend last night at the hostel and we made tentative arrangements to go out for dinner and sake tonight. So, I'm off to go find her...

And just to say, for anyone worrying about me, so far I'm feeling happy and lucky and like a very clever girl for not getting lost! Kyoto tomorrow...