Today Ricky and I got up pretty early and got going. It’s a good thing because the shrine we went to was all the way on the other side of town and this is a big town. The gardens weren’t as nice as the ones we saw yesterday, but the temple itself was bigger. Behind the temple there is a bamboo grove that you can walk through. Where I’m from in NC, the bamboo gets about 2 inches in diameter. Some of these were about a foot across. It was very impressive. We talked to some locals in the temple and had a good time. Ricky and I definitely like Japan. When you go into these temples, you have to take your shoes off and wear slippers or go barefooted. I choose to go barefooted, but Ricky wore the slippers. The locals we met and I gave Ricky a hard time because our feet are a little larger than Japanese feet and Ricky’s heels hung off the back of the slippers. (pic included) We even had someone come out of their shoe store tonight to tell us they carried large sizes.

Once again this afternoon we played tag with the busses and it took a long time to get back to the hotel. By the time we returned, we decided to forget any more sight seeing and found the other pet shop recommended by the ADA people. This one was larger than the one from yesterday with a larger selection of merchandise in general. The plant selection was amazing, but the store did not have as many or as nice planted tanks. As far as fish, there was about everything you could want and many unusual varieties. They had about 5-6 different shrimp species for sale including bumble bee, crystal reds, and the filter feeding wood shrimp. They had some very large red freshwater crawdads. The owner didn’t speak English, but my bad Japanese allowed me to find out...... “Tabemas ka? Hai, tabemas......... YUK!! Ewww they eat them!

We only bought a couple things. I bought some ADA aquascaping tool that were on sale. I bought a couple ADA things the night before too, but forgot to mention it. I bought some Penac stuff. I’m not really sure what it suppose to do, but it looks like calcium carbonate and my aquarium could use some calcium I think and I hope it dissolves better than Equilibrium. Anyway, the find of the night (and Ricky beat me to it) was about 20 old issues of the AquaJournal. Issues 30 to 68 or so. Some were missing. There was a copy of #8 too and Ricky already has that, so he gave it to me. What a guy :-)

I did see one really cool piece of bait that I never have before. Some of you into these things may have already seen them. It was a Gourami that was shaped the same as one of those weird platies they have these days. I think they call them jelly bean platies or something. They are very short and their middle is blown up like a balloon. The owner had several medium size tanks of driftwood and rocks with anubias and java fern already tied and growing to them so you can place them right into your aquascape. I thought that was an interesting testament to the devotion to aquascapes and planted aquaria.

After the pet shop we went to down town Kyoto to take in the night life. We walked down the street in one of the shopping districts and had some supper. Kyoto is a happening place. It looks like Las Vegas with all the lights and stores. Neon everywhere. Not much to buy though. The Japanese have interesting taste in clothes and other things. Their dress is really out there. Wonderfully sweet people though.

Tomorrow we are going to a couple places south of Kyoto and then back to Tokyo. We meet up with Eishi who contacted us through the AGA mailing list. He called us yesterday, and we were very glad to finally meet him. Also we are suppose to meet Oliver Knott at some point. Saturday is the Nature Aquarium party!!