Yesterday i saw my friend. It was awesome. His name is Takao and he was one of the students I taught as part of my teaching course. He is extremely unpretentious, honest and intelligent.

I met him in Nara which is a very scenic and historical Japanese city. They have many parks and shrines and a buttload of "tame" deer. These deer are everywhere and largely just stand around or eat grass. Their horns have been cut off and every year they are cut back. I found it all quite sad. You see them try and fight by attempting to lock there horns together. They then try and raise there necks to subdue the other, but of course they have no horns to lock so they raise there heads look a bit weirded out and do nothing.

There are various vendors that sell food for the deer. I didn't feel like contributing to what I feel is a pretty wrong so I didn't buy any and feed them, but watched others do so. It is sort of funny in a family guy kind of way.. The deer tend to hang around these vendors and so as soon as someone buys a pack of feed they basically swamp them. I saw two girls buy a pack each and get swiftly cornered with lots of deer snapping at them. Some of them biting and pulling at there clothes.

We went to this shrine Toudai-ji which is the biggest wooden structure in the world. It is also 33% smaller than it was originally built but has been damaged/burnt down a few times. Inside there is a gigantic statue of budda. It's pretty cool.

We also saw many school kids which I found interesting. One thing is there clothes are really freakin cute. The kindergarten boys have um those bobbin hats. I can't remember what the girls had but yeah it was cute and exactingly styled.

We hung around there for a bit then went to Osaka. Osaka is pretty boring if you don't like shopping. You can walk in any direction and there just heaps and heaps of shops, at least from where I am staying. There are no parks or anywhere to sit, you get the feel the whole thing is designed to keep people moving, as you can't keep buying stuff from the one shop.

The number of people is pretty overwhelming, there is a central strip in shinsaibashi which is just a sea of people and goes on for farther than the eye can see. Anyway we had some food, sat in a coffee shop and saw ghost rider. It is so so.

Today I am getting my credit card so I can finally relax about the money I spend. I plan to buy a camera, phone and mp3 player. I have already had a look at the phones and they are ridiculously cheap. Their budget level phones look awesome and all have cameras. They cost about $60. Cameras are also cheap, I can get a 10 mega pixel one for $600. Haven't had a chance to look at Mp3 players yet.

Once I get my camera I'll see if I can hook you up with some photos.