By Will

We woke up in the Nara Hotel and packed up our bags to prepare to go to Kyoto. We went out through a covered arcade of shops and restaurants to a small breakfast place where we had toast and eggs. It was really good. After that we went to a place called Mr. Donuts. I had a chocolate donut. It was good, but my mom had some stale thing that tasted like a soccer ball (YUM!). We found these silly little gumball machines that spit out little figures. Me and Mike each did it. I got this buff warrior monster guy. And Mike got a silly little lady Thing. He was mad so we did it over. This time we each got these dumb broken monster guys (WOW).

We went back to the hotel to get on a train to go to Kyoto. We (of course) rushed to the next train and got lost trying to find the hotel. We dropped our bags and went to have lunch. My Japanese-speaking mother could not find the place. So when we were about to give up hope, I found it. “BOO YAH” I said. I felt like a stud. (Editor’s note: Will found the place by reading the first Chinese character of the three-character name. He identified the “Dai” which means big. He later said, “I couldn’t have done it without Rieko-sensei.” In subsequent days, he’s been reading hiragana like crazy — today Thursday, he read “Ki-no-sa–on-sen” “Mom, it’s Kinosaki Onsen!” It’s exciting to see the learning take hold…End of Mother’s/Editor’s note….)

We had lunch. Then we were going to go to this temple. It was sooooo crowded. Shnitzels, We barely made it to the top. It was pretty cool. It was quite a hassle getting back to the hotel but we did. Then we went to bed.