Oct. 1st - 2nd

We are currently in Shiga, a city outside of Kyoto, staying with a wonderful japanese family who are friends with the Bennights. We arrived in Tokyo about three in the afternoon japan time, and then we had to hurry through customs, inspections, etc and then had to catch a bus to the next terminal, then wait in more lines, and we just barely made it to our connecting flight to the Kansai airport in Osaka. Once we got there it was around 7 in the evening Japan time but it was about three in the morning our time :P. It was another hour and half by train and then another hour and a half by car to get to Hiroko`s house. It was almost midnight, but Braden and I had pretty much been up all night our time. We slept really well on our futon and the birds enthusiastically woke us up the following morning. One of them sounded exactly like one of Sally`s squeeky chew toys. But louder. It was actually kinda annoying but there were some other birds that sounded very pretty and one that sounded very... well, large actually. Shiga is out in the country, and Hiroko says there is a lot of wildlife out here, like bears and deer, etc. This morning we had eggs, sausage, and toast for breakfast, nothing too exotic, which is good to start out with in my opinion, we can eat the wierd stuff later! Today we are probably going to see more of Shiga, and then tomorrow morning we are catching a train to Matsue. It will be about a five hour train ride, but I`m looking forward to seeing the Japanese countryside :).