So I am here in Kyoto after spending a day in Osaka at the aquarium and the castle. Silly Susan picked me up at the station, and as much as we had been saying about how excited we were that we were gonna see each other the first thing I said to her was, my bag is so heavy! And I cannot remember what she had said now, but the first thing I noticed was she had brown eyes, okay brown contacts, and with her brown hair and dressing, scarf, mini skirt over black tights, she fitted right in and I might not have spotted her in the crowd had she not come up and tap me on the back. Nonetheless, the lack of histrionics aside, it's nice to see her!

Singaporeans really do have a distinct accent. Today at the aquarium, I heard a lady go, "Later mummy buy you ice-cream." And I knew immediately where they were from. At the station in the afternoon, there was a family poring over the subway map, and from their conversation, there was no mistaking where they were from. So I offered them my help and turns out they were heading the same way towards the castle so I told them they could go with me and it was nice to have someone from home to talk to on the train-ride.

Later on at the everyone at the dinner table agreed. Susan's Israeli friend, I cannot remember his name, even went as far as to say she speaks pidgin english. We had an Udon party, home-made Udon where they put to good use what they had learnt on their field-trip last week. I had a good time, just talking to the people from all over the world, or just listening in on their conversations, a mishmash of languages, French, Thai, Korean, Singlish, broken Japanese, and it was interesting to discuss Thai politics with Thais, Mai and Cheer, who were happy to see Thaksin go.

After dinner, we watched a DVD, all in Mai's room, Love Actually, which most of the South East Asians have seen, but not the Israeli, French, Korean. Then there was an invasion by some animals as you can see from the photo below:

Crazy stuff!