兄都- Kyoto

Astute readers will no doubt have noticed that those are not in fact the correct kanji for Kyoto (京都). It is infact a hilariously witty pun I created by replacing the Kanji for "capitol", with the one for "brother", both of which can be read as Kyo (きょう For all you Romaji-nazis I know are out there who complained about Yoo`s name last time around.

Anyway, to the point, It does infact seem to be the case that no matter where you go in the world, no matter how hard you might try, you just can`t avoid your family for ever. Drat...

So, here he is, being "Big in Japan" (in a height sense at least). Luckily for him he`s arrived right in the cherry blossom season here in Kansai, and he was even kind enough to bring some good weather with him! (Though I was less thilled about the 6am phonecall from Dubai Airport while he was en-route... Also apparently the immigration official at Osaka Airport gave him a horrified look when he explained that he was in Japan to visit "his brother", until he hurridly explained that I was a Kobe University student. All foreigners living in Japan being of course drug-dealing terrorists hell-bent on destroying Japanese society...)

I was a bit of a rebel and let him stay over in my room in Sumiyoshi for a night (Which is in theory ganz verboten but in reality nobody cares), telling him to keep a low profile and be discrete. Not 10 minutes late he comes back from the shower room at the other end of the corridor wrapped only in a towel and having taken (i.e STOLEN) one of the clothes baskets... dear dear (facepalm)...

So, off we went to Kyoto for a bit off culture, we went to Fushimi-Inari, (which I kept accidentally calling "Inari-Zushi", which is a kind of sushi...), which has an endless passage of over 10,000 torii gates running up, down and around the mountain overlooking Kyoto, as well as the Kodaiji (I again screwed up and asked for directions to the Todaiji, which is in Nara (Que puzzled looks on old woman`s face...) and the Kyomizudera (both of which I had never seen in the day). I`d forgotten Kyoto was abosolutely hoaching with foreigners (cherry blossom season not helping this situation), seriously, they`re everywhere (freaks me out a bit). Anyway, since the vast majority can`t speak a word of Japanese (Sean has since developed his own "unique" variation of "arigatou gozaimasu"), while at the Kyomizudera I was trying to fight my way through a massive group of Japanese school kids, so I said すみません (excuse me). BIG MISTAKE. IMMEDIATE 30 STRONG SCREAMING FAN CLUB SURROUNDING US.

Had some lunch in a tiny place in the backstreets of Kyoto, where I singularly failed to impress Sean with my linguistic performance. According to the old lady running the place, among the things I said were "My mother is very sick." and "My older brother lived in Japan for 4 years."... In my defence, she was deaf...

Sean seems to be enjoying it here, I can see he finds it very weird through, and also that he can see that he doesn`t really fit in here at all... (Seriously, I swear I get stared at 10x more with him than when I`m alone).