of the day it's quite possible to turn on the TV, flip through the channels and not find a single anime. A lot more anime is shown on cable, satellite, pay TV, pay per view and video on demand.

History Lesson from Kikue-san

We were originally scheduled to go to Toei studio park first, followed by several castles and temples. However our guide, Ms. Kikue (Kikue-san), decided that it would make more sense to visit the studio park in the afternoon and the shrines in the morning, because there were plenty of places to eat lunch close to the third shrine. She told me later that this actually caused quite a stir with the other Japanese tour guide. Kikue-san spent a few years in the USA as a student andpicked up a few American habits, as well as a new outlook on Japanese habits. Japanese society is very structured and rigid, and very few things are done spur of the moment. So despite that fact that it was a logical change, the other guide wasn't sure if it was a good idea to change the day's plan, simply because it was a change.

On our way to our first stop, we passed a huge kanji character embedded in the side of Mount Nyoigatake. The character “大” is pronounced “Dai” and means “great” in Chinese and Japanese. It was literally great, since the horizontal stroke of the character was 80 meters (262.5 ft) long! There are several such characters spread out around Kyoto. These characters are lit on fire