Happy new year! I know Melissa and I are having a good one. :-) I didn’t update the day before yesterday or yesterday because we were so busy walking around the streets of Kyoto and then falling quickly asleep when we got back. So, time to go back over what happened the past couple of days and to go over a couple of more things and thoughts on Japan while we ride on our last Shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo.

Well, I just upgraded Serendipity to v1.1 . Additionally, I decided to pick a new theme which I’m pretty happy with. FINALLY, I figured out my problem with the code snippets causing code to spill outside the theme range…it was because of the bbcode module.

Well, after a quick ride to Shin-Osaka, we managed to call Brookie Sloan and agree where and when to meet up with him. We called him again at 11:45AM or so and he gave us more details. We were to ride the subway (not the JR lines) to Namba station in Osaka. This would be a challenge because we were going to have to use the ticket machines, which turned out to be much cheaper and easier than imagined.

My Japanese pictures are (finally) online. You can check them out here:

Continuing from where I left off, the food at the onsen was fabulous! It was quite a large meal, too. They started us out with little tidbits of things and set a couple of burners ablaze under our soup stuff. They also lit a burner under something we didn’t know. After they served it to us, we realized it was gohan (rice) with fish in it. Everything was so delicately prepared and it was delightful. About a third of the way through our meal they brought us tempura which was very delicious. After all of that I was so full I was about to pop…but they weren’t done yet. They brought out a dish with Japanese raddish and fish, as well as dessert. The raddish dish had a delightful appearance and an even better flavor. By the end of the meal I was so full that sleep beckoned me. Melissa and I were in bed by 7:00PM.

Okay, so I finished my last entry before I wanted to. Let me get back to where I was.

I was so tired by 7:00PM last night that I was asleep by 8, throwing off my sleep schedule. Melissa was the same. Alas, I should probably describe my day before I return to the extremely hot onsen.

Currently I’m encountering problems with Xorg 7.1, evdev, and my Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical. The issue is that when I run ‘startx’, I get the following:

I’ve posted the first 2 days of Japanese travels to my blog. Over the next few days, I’ll try to post about 2-3 days of journals a day, that way everyone can slowly absorb the information. Enjoy!

After a nice night of rest and a much needed breakfast, Melissa and I are recharged just enough to get to the onsen in Okayama. As I write this, I take enough time every now and again to enjoy the wonderful scenery, complete with mountains, steep hills, and the Japanese-style rooftops.