Hi everyone.

Man this is more difficult than i thought it would be. Everything on this computer is in Japanese so i had to get the girl at the hostel to help me. Anyway, we are having a great time here in Kyoto. It is definitely one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. I was going to post some pictures I took yesterday but that seems to hard right now. Maybe in Tokyo there will be an internet cafe with english computers.

So our trip began with a canceled flight to Chicago and then a bump to united airlines to chicago. Then when we got on the plane we were told that the pilots were stuck in DC traffic. Thankfully we caught our flight to Tokyo but it required a brisk walk across the entire Chicago airport with our giant packs on...fun. So we flew our painful 12 hour flight, i forgot how much it sucks to fly thatlong, but its very worth it. Figuring out the trains to Kyoto was soooo easy, mostly because the people here have got to be the friendliest and most helpful of anyone Ive met. Its really amazing. You ask someone for directions and they are so happy to help, they acutally walk you to where youre going. this has happened to us several times but its still so shocking.

Japan is beyond what I thought it would be. Its so clean you could eat from the streets, yet there are NO trash cans anywhere. Its the strangest thing. EVERYONEs got great style, everyone. I have never seem more attractive people in my entire life. And everything is well thought out here and is so tasteful. Aestheticly everything is perfect.

So yesterday we went to the Toji pagoda which is surrounded by a bunch of temples and on the 21 of each month (we were lucky) a giant antique market. Itwas truely amazing. We walked for hours yesterday so we justtook it easy last night and went out for sushi. Today we are planning on getting a lot in, including a visit to Gion (where the geisha are).

As for the current situation in thailand, weve been doing our research, reading traveller forums and spoke with the american embassy in bangkok this morning. Everything and one says the same thing, its totally fine. The embassy said everything is back to normal. We are still going to keep up to date with the situation between now and monday and are going to register with the us embassy in thailand today. The thais are such peaceful people everything seems okay. So noone worry, if things got bad you know me, im not stickin around!

Thats all for now, ill try and post pictures soon. And and ill be making more calls in thailand, its REALLY expensive here. Email me if you want to know anything...i cant seem to break the computer addiction yet...