First Published – 6 July 2012

We arrived last night in Osaka, Japan. It took three hours of attempting to read the train map to get to nearly the right place. Then we had to walk the rest of the way to the hotel. We’re actually staying and playing the tournament in the city of Sakai, which is north of Osaka area KIX airport, but south of Osaka itself.

Once in to the hotel we were all very hungry and so we got our first experience of reading Japanese menus. Everyone seemed to get something edible. Then we all crashed out for the night.

Today,  Friday 6th we headed to Nara, to see the sacred deer and the biggest Buddhist shrine in the world, it’s also the world’s biggest wooden structure. Three deer were very tame and followed us around,  hoping for a deer cracker. I made friends with one by scratching behind the ears,  but then remembered the damage the deer did to mum’s car.

We experienced the Japanese wet season,  and were thankful that we brought umbrellas to Japan. Thanks for the tip Wozza. I took one step closer to enlightenment by going through a tiny hole in a wooden post.

Then had delicious curry noodles for lunch and walked to see another shrine. We then wandered into the town, Nara, found a great shopping arcade and looked at cool Japanese stuff. Found our way back to the train station and headed back to Sakai.

That’s about all for day 1. Apart from that we did some origami and made some stag beetles.