Things we have learnt in the last few days

• To all men comes a time when you have seen enough temples
• A really good way of testing how much you love Japanese food is to visit an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant that provides a variety of food styles. Portion of chips or fish heads in slop I wonder?
• There is always a lovely cheap cafe selling gorgeous noodles for about £2 right after you have given up hope and gone to the overpriced place because you were too hungry to walk. Annoying!
• If you don't like cold green tea, you are unlikely to like green tea ice cream. Who thinks that stopped us?
• You have to be very careful when buying snacks out here; rice crackers with whole dried fish in them, rolls with sweet bean paste cunningly hidden inside, every bite is an adventure. Kara: "It's not that I'm squeamish, I just don't like it when my food looks at me".
• The life of your average Samurai seemed to consist largely of sitting around watching other people do all the work, before committing some minor faux pas then dying in some incredibly grisly self inflicted manner.
• Heated toilet seats are awesome. Also why have we in England been lifting up the toilet lids all our lives.? Like suckers. Put them on auto lift when you walk in!
• The low chairs and beds are killing us. We ain't that supple.