Unfortunately, the inside was quite dark, so the picture does not really show too much... In front of the temple there was a monk refilling a box with joss sticks. A ritual seems to be that visitor enlighten joss sticks and then "bath" in the smoke before they enter the temple.
We took the Subway from Osu Kannon to Sakae and bought jogging shoes for Elisabeth. She liked the ones I bought last week so much that she got a pair of her own ;-)
Even though it was a thursdag evening, Sakae was crowded as ever, and there were hundreds of restaurants, video halls and other entertainment, shops, karaoke bars... Just amazing!! Japanese nightlife is everything it promises to be - and even more...
We wondered the streets for quite a while without quite knowing which restaurant to go to before we decided to walk into what looked more like a real japanese street kitchen than a restaurant (see picture below).
It was quite funny to enter since everyone looked at us and some of the staff even started giggeling - we were certainly the only non-japanese in that place!! A reason to like it even more - cause we were looking forward to try out a real japanese place where japanese people go :D And it was obviously a very popular restaurant!! We ordered foot by pointing at what looked eatable and enjoyable, and hoped for the best.
Since it was my birthday I decided to order som hot Sake to go with the food and the delicious Kirin beer. And yes, I did wonder a bit about Sake costing 500 yen - as much as an entire meal (25.- NOK or 3 €)... but still - it's not your birthday every day!
What I had expected to be a small shot of Sake though turned out to be a glass (!!!) of hot Sake... An entire 3 dl glass!!! Elisabeth and I started laughing as they came with my Sake, but I was of course determined to empty it :-) And yes... hot Sake does get to your brain quite fast...
Our neighbours had great fun and enjoyed having blond, western women sitting next to them :-) They quickly ordered some typical food for us - if I am not wrong we had fried pork, marinated grilled chicken, pork liver, pork stomach and pork skin. Delicious!
And of course, they wanted to get their picture taken with us and even though their english was rather single words merged together and a lot of handwaving they were VERY talkative... 
And the more Sake they had the more fluent they got - or was it more that the the more beer Elisabeth and I had (and Sake for my part, the glass was not empty yet...) the better we got in interpreting them? Well, probably a good mixture of both, but nevertheless VERY amusing! Mano and Takagi even taught us some japanese sentences and expressions, not all of them equally appropriate to be published in this blogg... We had a really great time and enjoyed our japanese table neighbours - who basically ended up joining our table after a while, and actually wanted to show us Kyoto and the hot springs, take us to a place where you can have the best japanese noodles, ..... I don't even remeber it all ;-) Anyways, we've got their cards, so they are just a call away... :p
A few beers later, and finally I had managed to empty my Sake (which by the way was very good!) we decided to head home. After all, friday is a workday... What a great way to celebrate my 25th birthday!!!!
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