Catching up!

At the moment I am sitting in a log cabin in a forest in the mountains, nestled just next to a large stream. I can hear the water as I fall asleep and I listen to its pleasant sound with my coffee in the morning. Basically, it's like, bogus! But more on that later. I've been very busy the last few days, and my last hostel didn't have internet, so I want to catch up on my last days in Kyoto before moving on to the fun stuff.

After staying in Waraku-an for a few nights, I switched hostels again, this time to Orange Inn. I was pleased to find that I had a 10 person room entirely to myself. There were only 3-4 people staying in the hostel which could accommodate at least 50. Bonus! (lack of internet- Negabonus). The hostel has an interesting, if eclectic, array of media for patrons' use: A bunch of books in Japanese (on who knows what, not I), a dozen or so English language, college-level textbooks on the topic of City Planning, TWENTY-FOUR VHS tapes of the hit American sitcom, "Friends", and a collection of various BBC sitcoms. Needless to say, I only took advantage of the BBC sitcoms. After tiring of Japanese language stuff after nearly three weeks, I found a great deal of comfort in, "Only Fools and Horses", a superb BBC comedy sitcom- apparently rated by the British as the best sitcom of all time! Who knew?

Starting at Left: Silly Uncle Albert, Nice-Guy Rodney, Slick Salesman Dell Boy, and Boring-Character Grandpa

This show really helped relieve my as-of-late case of the Mondays. I was getting a little overdone on Japanese stuff- my only reading materials were a Japanese language dictionary, a book on Japanese grammar and a book of poetry by Matsuo Basho (Traveling writer who invented the Haiku). I was a bit Japan-ed out. But then I bought a great book, "Freedom Evolves", by Daniel Dennett. What a good book (boring end, though). I will definitely read more of his stuff. "Only Fools and Horses" helped as well. Currently, I'm armed with "Freakonomics" and "Man's Search for Meaning", both of which sound promising.

After a short break from touring and a filler up on English media, I was ready to attack more sights. New post for them.