Wednesday:
On the advice of Yukimi and Keyoka we decide that the only place to see real Japan and samurai is at the movie studio so we take a short train journey to ego mura we spend several hours there looking at a recreated Japanese town, had our photographs taken with samurai and watch a short play about a samurai and his teacher who encounter ninja and an evil wizard and a demon. The Samurai is put under a spell by the wizard and attacks his master. The master kills the wizard and the samurai is freed and together they vanquish the demon (the dialogue was in japanese but the way in which it was done was so it could be understood without understanding the language). A bit later we see how a movie scene is put together, it was quite funny, twists in the plot and more ninja. The director talks through the all the fights and shows how the bad guy dies in the end pointing out all the movie secrets and tricks, When the scene is completed it is then run through in its entirety with cameras rolling the bad guy kills the good guy and everyone laughs. They have a massive collection of power ranger (full size) statues here, Jo is decidedly unhappy at me wanting to be photographed with them and more reluctant to have his pictures taken with one. When we leave we eventually find our way back to the small train station then back to kyoto for a quick nap before going out for a meal (thanks grandma).