Japan - Clouds Went Away

And I caught a stomach bug. I was starving when I woke up this morning, but no sooner had I eaten the little pastries than I was regretting having walked so far from the guest house. Upon returning I alternated between my bed and climbing up and down the two stories to the restrooms, this became exceedingly difficult. After a couple trips I returned to my bed and lay there hating the impending feeling of doom that was nausea. I thought even throwing up would be better and tried to distract myself with other thoughts. Eventually I fell asleep, and eventually my nausea grew to the point where it woke me up and doom fell. Bleh. Any way, the rest of the day was spent something like that. I tried blogging at some point, but it took too much energy and I went back to sleep. I regained my appetite sometime after dark, but didn't feel up to leaving the guest house to find beef broth. I think I'm feeling better now having stayed in bed and fasted for almost 24 hours. I'm still very weak, dehydrated, and bed sore, but I'm hoping to remedy all of those gradually.

More importantly, my experience before tucking tail and returning to bed:
Saturday was cloudy, but not wet and I headed out with the intent of seeing downtown Kyoto. My first stop was a little cafe run by a rojin (elderly) couple. They very politely sold me a couple of pastries and a crustless sandwich cut into small pieces. I walked toward downtown Kyoto looking for a place to eat (it's rude to eat while walking). Eventually I wandered to a small parking lot and sat down to eat. As I ate a small elderly woman walked by and stopped to say something to me. My Japanese is almost nonexistent and so I told her that I didn't understand. "Sumimasen" I said. She looked very apologetic and returned my "sumimasen" before continuing down the street. As I was finishing and packing up the woman returned with a steaming cup of green tea. I didn't understand everything she said, but what I did understand was basically that she thought it was cold out and I should have a hot cup of tea rather than the cold bottled tea she had seen me drinking. =D She was so extremely friendly and polite, something I keep seeing here. It's heartwarming to say the least.

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