One thing i enjoy most during this trip is the little incidents from out of the blue which happened to make my interaction with the locals more interesting...

For example, we decided on the spur of the moment, while on our way to the museum on this cold windy christmas morning, to step into the corner shop at the end of the street which looked a little interesting. After looking around for a short moment, we decided that things were quite expensive and it's was just selling handicrafts from other countries like peru and mexico. We were just about to leave when the lady owner started talking to us in rapid japanese so we told her we were foreigners. She stepped out for a while and just as we were stepping out of the door, she appeared with two cups of japanese coffee for us. And before we knew it, we were sitting on the couch having coffee and trying to converse in my quarter-baked japanese from the language guide while she was telling us about the various items in the store. We didn't buy anything in the end but i think she didn't mind. Not a bad morning on the whole though a little side-tracked from our original agenda.

Merry Christmas.